CHAPTER 9 / EPILOGUE

The days in the hospital room passed slowly. At first, he slept a lot, but once the drugs were reduced he was awake more and more. Still, much of the time, they sat in silence. He would lay with his head back, staring out the window with half-lidded eyes. When she would speak, he would respond, but he didn't start conversations. They didn't talk about Lisa anymore, but she worried at that and kept trying to figure out how to bring up the topic. Then she would just decide to wait a little while longer...give him more time. They played card games occasionally. Shawn and Gus visited fairly often and he didn't even seem terribly annoyed by them, most of the time. Admittedly, they did try to be on their best behavior, but they still slipped into occasional bouts of teasing. One day they brought in a DVD of Lassie Come Home which she confiscated immediately, shaking her head at their puppy-dog looks.

On the fourth day, when she was almost dozing in the mid-afternoon quiet, he cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter in his bed.

"Juliet," he began soberly. "I need to do something. I need your help."

She sat up, suddenly alert, and braced herself. "What is it?"

"I want to go to her funeral," he said, not meeting her gaze.

She blinked. "Oh. It's tomorrow. I'm not sure they'll clear you to leave the hospital, yet."

"Can you get that done for me?" he asked, finally looking at her with a desperate need that made her heart skip.

She took a deep breath. "Are you sure?"

He nodded and cleared his throat again, looking down at his hands.

"Okay, Carlton. I'll talk to your doctor," she said.

She was simultaneously anxious at the idea and relieved. They hadn't talked about Lisa, and he hadn't seemed to really grieve yet. She knew he needed to, though. Maybe this would be a way for him to deal with her death, finally. Juliet got clearance from his doctor for a three hour leave, but she was told to keep him from exerting himself and that he should stay in a wheelchair. She was dubious about her chances with that, but she agreed to try. When she told him, he had one more request.

The next day, she brought her car around to the entrance of the hospital and waited, fidgeting with her dress uniform. Finally, the automatic door opened and a nurse came out pushing Lassiter in a wheelchair. He was wearing his dress uniform as well which she had retrieved from his apartment the night before. Her eyes started to sting and she berated herself for getting emotional before they'd even left for the funeral. His mouth was set in a grim line, but otherwise his expression was hidden by his aviators. He pushed himself gingerly out of the chair and climbed into the front passenger seat as Juliet helped the nurse fold up the chair and put it in the back seat. They drove to the funeral home in silence. She noticed that he was holding his right hand over his stomach where the knife had gone in. He'd been doing that a lot lately, and she was pretty sure it was unconscious. She glanced again at his face as they drove but his jaw was set.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Fine," he said, jaw clenched.

She sighed. The closer they got, the more she could sense anxiety radiating from him, and she wondered if she should've agreed to bring him. When they arrived, almost everyone from the department was present. The officers all had their dress uniforms on, even though Lisa hadn't been an officer herself. Shawn and Gus were wearing nice suits, and even Henry was present. Juliet and Chief Vick managed to keep Lassiter in the wheelchair through the service, but when they went to the ceremony at the grave he insisted on standing. Juliet stayed next to him the whole time, and when Lisa's parents approached, she could feel him shiver. She put a hand on his arm but his face was set and stoic. Lisa's mother hugged him warmly and told him she was glad he was getting better. Lisa's father shook his hand and thanked Lassiter for being her friend. He told him she'd mentioned enjoying her date with him, and they'd been happy to hear it. He managed to respond to both of them with a steady voice, speaking words of consolation for their loss and words of thanks for their kind thoughts. But as soon as they moved away, she felt him start to slump.

"I think it's time to go," she whispered to him, and he just nodded. His jaw was trembling and he put his sunglasses back on quickly.

When she brought his wheelchair over, he fell into it heavily and put his hand on his stomach, clenching at his dress coat tightly. Shawn came over, then, inquiring, and she could see concern in his eyes, but she told him they just had to get back to the hospital and asked him to say their goodbyes to everyone. He nodded. She could see he understood. The drive back was just as silent, though his anxiety had been replaced with an aura of desolation. She'd been so worried about him through the event that she hadn't even cried herself, but she knew it was coming. They got back to the hospital and got him changed and settled again in his bed. A nurse checked him over, and then finally they were alone in the room. The silence was alive. It seemed to be waiting.

Carlton was resting in the reclined bed, looking out the window with his half-lidded eyes, then he suddenly sat up straight and looked at her. She stood up immediately and went to him. He opened his mouth, but the words couldn't come out for a moment. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his right hand from his stomach, squeezing it with both of hers. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to swallow several times, then he opened his eyes again.

"I wish...," he started in a rasping whisper, looking at her with bright pain. Then his gaze shifted inwards to the well of grief he'd been holding in for so long. "Oh god...why couldn't I stop it?" His eyes filled and began to spill over. He put his left hand up to his mouth and gasped as he started to, finally, let it all go.

She threw her arms around him and hugged him as he cried in great, heaving sobs. She hung on and held him tight against the storm of emotion, feeling her own tears soaking into his shirt. Part of her worried at the violence of his wracking breaths, hoping that he wasn't doing himself damage. But it was a storm they had to weather. She kept her arms secure around him, holding him together as he covered his face with his hands and grieved.

oOoOoOoO

"You know how people always ask us how we can do this job, when there's a chance, every day, that something could happen, that we could be killed? I guess they think that must be our worst fear."

Juliet was standing at the window, looking out at the sunrise, feeling raw and hollowed out from the previous night's catharsis. She hadn't realized he was awake and turned to him, studying him for a moment. His eyes were still bright with sadness, but his color looked better than it had for a week. He was going to be released in another day or two. She hoped, finally, after everything, that they were over the last hurdles, that things could start getting back to normal.

"Yes," she said simply, waiting.

"Well, they're wrong," he said, staring out the window at the rising sun.

"What's your worst fear?"

"Killing an innocent person," he said, the hollowness of his voice suggesting a world of guilt.

"You didn't kill an innocent person, Carlton," she said softly.

"Close enough," he said.

She sighed, thinking perhaps the hurdles weren't quite all gone. "Do you know what my worst fear is?" she asked.

"What is it?"

"Losing my partner," she said, meeting his eyes.

He pursed his lips and drew in a deep breath, then he nodded and looked down at his fidgeting hands. After several minutes of silence he cleared his throat. "Hey, I never asked how you found me," he said. "That building wasn't obviously a pool hall. Did you just start breaking down all of the doors on Olive Street?"

"I was about to do that," she said with a wry grin. "But then Shawn got a sense of the right building."

Lassiter rolled his eyes in a way that she hadn't seen for too long. "Spencer," he said with a note of forced dismay. "What did he do, get a vision of cue balls?"

"Blue chalk," she said. "He spotted some on the sidewalk outside of the door."

Lassiter gave a half shrug and nodded. "I see. He's got a good eye," he admitted quietly.

Juliet smiled and nodded back.

"So I missed a sweet shootout over car hoods then," he said, obviously in a talkative mood.

She laughed. "It didn't seem so sweet at the time."

"I know, but it sounds like you really kicked butt, partner."

She grinned. "Oh! I should tell you what happened to Gus at the end. Oh my gosh, that was funny. I'd almost forgotten about it."

He sat up straighter in bed and started smiling in advance. "What?"

"Oh, god, if I tell you, you have to keep it a secret. He'll kill me if he knows I told you."

"Screw that. Just tell me!"

She laughed and told him the story.

oOoOoOoO

His last day in the hospital, Gina North came to visit. She walked into the room tentatively, as if they wouldn't welcome her presence, but then she gave both Juliet and Lassiter big hugs which took them by surprise. She told them about Braden's case, and that they were hoping he wouldn't get too much jail time. His lawyer was pushing hard for probation and community service since he was cooperating and was going to testify against his father, but they'd have to wait and see how it worked out. She thanked them both, for helping him and for finally getting Riley behind bars. Her eyes teared up and she put her hand on Lassiter's, looking him in the eye and saying "thank you" and "I'm sorry." He choked up a bit and simply said the same things back to her.

Three weeks later they were sitting on a bench near the beach, watching the sun set over the ocean. They'd made it a habit after he'd been released to have dinner every night. Over the past weeks, he'd gotten a clean bill of health from his doctor and had gone through all of the required psychological evaluations in the aftermath of the shooting and stabbing incidents. The IA investigation of the shooting had been completed, and he'd been cleared. He'd received notice that evening that he was officially reinstated and could start work again the next day. She could tell he was relieved, and she was too.

The weeks off had been hard for him. He was never a fan of psych evals, and he'd had to undergo more intensive ones than normal because of everything he'd gone through. He'd managed to get through his time off well enough, though. He'd even discovered a way to cope with his forced exile by turning the tables on Shawn for a while. He'd taken to walking into the Psych office and talking to Shawn about his shooting range performance of the day or about episodes of Cops he'd been watching, enthusiastically critiquing them to Shawn's dismay. It got to the point where Shawn had tried to take refuge at the station, begging her to get Lassie to leave him alone while he was trying to work. She'd been unable to hold in her laughter at that, and she was pretty sure Shawn was still a little mad at her. She couldn't help it though, the thought still made her smile.

She sighed and crumpled up the paper wrapping from her sandwich. She'd had to work late, and he'd agreed to meet her for dinner at the bench. They'd done it often enough over the past three weeks. Her cases had been keeping her busy with having no partner to help.

"I realize I never told you about my dream," said Lassiter out of the blue as he gazed out at the sunset.

Her eyebrows raised. "No. Do you want to?"

He gave a half-shrug, but then he said, "That night, the dinner with Lisa, she hugged me when she left. It kind of surprised me, and I didn't really hug back."

Juliet's brow furrowed as she waited.

"That's all, really. I just keep dreaming about the hug, then I wake up when my phone rings."

"I'm sorry, Carlton."

"I know," he said with a wave of his hand. "It's just that, last night, I dreamed that I returned her hug. It's the first time I dreamed that."

Juliet looked at him with a sad smile, but he kept his gaze on the horizon. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Juliet straightened and stretched her arms. She still had work to finish and had to return to the station.

"So are you ready to get back to work tomorrow?" she asked, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

He was sitting with his left arm stretched out on the back of the bench and his right hand resting on his stomach. He seemed content.

"Absolutely," he said, with feeling. He looked at her with an enthusiastic glint in his eye. "Are you ready to have me back?"

"Oh, hell yeah," she said with equal feeling. "I have a month's worth of paperwork for you to finish."

A grin spread slowly on his face, and then he started to laugh. She laughed along with him. "Okay partner," he said through his laughter. "You got it."

THE END