Jazmine wanted to think that maybe Chuck had only meant that he cared for her as a friend, but when she visited him after his ankle surgery he was heavily medicated, and the first words out of his mouth - once he finally recognized her - were "Hello, my sweet wonderful Jazmine".

She tried to play it off as a joke, because Herc was still there and how awkward was that, but one look at the huge smile on Chuck's face and Jazmine knew there was no putting that cat back in the bag. "Sweet AND wonderful - maybe I'll keep you this drugged up forever," she said, sitting in a chair next to his bed, and blissfully Herc excused himself from the room.

"I wanted you to come see me and you came," he half-slurred. "I'm so happy you're here. You're so much prettier than my father. Why are you laughing? 'S true."

"Oh my god, Hansen, you're lucky I'm not recording this. I could ask you just about anything right now, couldn't I?"

"You can ask me anything anytime you want. I'll tell you. I trust you." His eyelids were starting to droop, but he held one eye open wide enough to take in her startled reaction. "Whadderyou getting so upset about?"

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "I don't know. I just...Chuck, you don't even know what you're saying right now."

"I do too. I said I trust you. Because you're a wonderful amazing girl and I think I like you." His eyes were closed, but he was still talking. "I'm so glad you snuck into my room. I'm so lucky I know you. I'm…" He trailed off, and Jazmine stood up to leave. "Where are you going?"

"You need to get some rest. I'll be back, don't worry." She paused at his bedside, then leaned over and kissed him softly on the forehead.

"Thas's not a real kiss," he complained sleepily.

"Nope," Jazmine agreed. "Have a good nap, Chuck."

The mess hall was busy as usual, but slightly less busy - the first wave of civilians had been relocated to offsite housing. It gave Jazmine an odd pang of happiness mixed with anxiety that she tried to shove to the back of her mind as she sat down in front of her brother, who was just finishing the last of his dinner.

"You said you had good news?" she asked in lieu of a greeting.

Raleigh chuckled at her excitement. "I finally talked to your lawyer."

"Wait, I have a lawyer? When did that happen?" Jazmine gave him the side-eye. "Is this another one of those things you didn't want me to worry about?"

Raleigh's guilty look confirmed her suspicions. "Yeah, I guess I should stop doing that."

She sighed. "Okay, you talked to my lawyer. About what?"

"When I came to get you, that didn't mean the feds were giving up their case. They wanted some conditions around your release, so I hired a lawyer to handle that stateside. One of the conditions was that you have to share a place of residence with me for the foreseeable future." Raleigh leaned in, making sure that she was listening. "Obviously, that's going to limit your options if you want to go to college."

"That doesn't sound like good news."

"Well, I wasn't done yet." He looked like he was trying to suppress a smile. "They caught the main players behind both the embezzling and the black market kaiju parts. I guess that made somebody pretty happy, because they're willing to drop the shared residency condition. So you're not stuck with me forever, and you can go anywhere you want, as long as it's not the U.S." The smile was out in full force now.

It took a minute for Jazmine to process everything Raleigh had said. "I can go anywhere?" He nodded. "That is good news! That's great news!"

"It does make things a lot easier." He sat up again, his shoulders relaxing a bit. "How's Chuck? Herc told me he was pretty happy to see you after his surgery."

"Chuck's...fine." She could feel the heat rising in her face. "He was so doped up he barely knew his own name. He probably would have been happy to see you."

"If you say so." His smile had morphed into a teasing smirk.

"I don't think I like your tone." Jazmine glared at him as she stood up to leave. "And you need to give me my lawyers' contact information, so I can be involved in conversations about my own life."

"Okay, okay. I'll write it down for you." Raleigh dropped the smirk. "I know my opinion doesn't count for much, but I'm really proud of you. Keep doing what you're doing, I'll help you out in any way I can."

Jazmine gave him a small smile in spite of herself. "I will. Thanks. But no more leaving me out of the loop."

Raleigh held up a crooked pinky finger, and she reached out and hooked it with her own pinky. "I promise. I'll let you know if I hear anything else."

Chuck was cleared to leave the medical facility the next day, but since Jazmine was working a double shift Herc had been the one to help him back to his room. Truthfully, she hadn't tried very hard to rearrange her schedule - he was asleep both of the times she tried to go check on him after promising she would, and each time she left it got a little harder to make herself go back.

She knew he'd be expecting her to stop by after work, though, so she took a deep breath and knocked on his door, still in her scrubs in case she needed a quick excuse to leave. "Come in," he called, and she put a big smile on her face and opened the door.

"Hey, sorry I didn't come see you again," she said, perching awkwardly on the chair by the desk.

"No worries, the nurses told me I was sleeping when you came by - what's wrong?" he asked, concern creeping into his expression. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," she lied. "I'm just - I had to work a double, I'm really tired."

"Really? So you're not upset about the things I said while I was coming off the anesthesia?"

She couldn't look him in the eye. "You remember that? It's okay, I know you didn't mean any of it."

"What if I meant all of it?" he asked, and hesitantly Jazmine lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. "Would it bother you more, or less?"

"I don't know - we don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to," she said, looking desperately for an out.

"It sounds like you're the one who doesn't want to talk about it," he said, and she could hear the notes of annoyance under the casual tone he was trying to keep.

"Because I don't know what it is that we're not talking about," Jazmine blurted out, unable to maintain her poker face. "You used to be somebody I could hang out with when I wanted to get away from Raleigh, and then it stopped being about that, and you started being my friend and then it stopped being about that, too, and now I don't know what this is anymore." He was silent, taking in her words. "I don't want to screw things up the same way I screw everything else up."

Chuck wheeled over to her as close as he could in the tight confines of the room, and reached out to take her hand, threading his fingers through hers so their palms were pressed together. "First of all," he said, "if somebody's going to screw this up, we both know it's gonna be me. Second," he continued, cutting her off before she could protest, "all I know is that I like spending time with you, and there's not a lot of people I like spending time with. So let's go with that." He pressed her fingers to his lips and gazed at her over the tops of their hands. "If that's all right with you."

A slow, cautious smile spread over her face. "So you meant it when you said I'm prettier than your father?"

"One hundred percent," he mumbled against his hand. "You have met my father, right?"

She laughed, pulling her hand away. "I really need to go take a shower. But I'm off tomorrow, want to see what kind of trouble we can get into?"

"Absolutely," he said, and winked at her as she shut his door.

As it turned out there was not a lot of trouble they could get into after Mako confiscated the air horn, so they settled for sitting in the mess hall with Max and making up stories for the people that walked by. Chuck picked out an older couple sitting by themselves. "What about them?"

"Hmmm." Jazmine contemplated them for a moment. "They were childhood sweethearts who got split up when her family moved away. He got married and had a couple of kids, and then his wife died in a kaiju attack. They ran into each other again on the street, totally by coincidence, and she was engaged but realized she still loved him, so she broke it off to be with him."

Chuck made a gagging noise. "That's so precious. I think I'm going to be sick."

"Shut up!" She shoved him gently. "Look how sweet they are!" As if on cue the man reached up to caress the woman's cheek, and they leaned in for a quick kiss. Chuck gagged again. "Fine. How about…" She scanned the crowd, pointing out a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties sitting by himself. "That guy."

"Serial killer," Chuck said in a dramatic whisper. "He made his last kill right before the Hong Kong attack, and now he's trying to lay low, until he can move out of the city and on to fresh hunting grounds."

"Okay, you suck at this," Jazmine said. "You've said everyone's a serial killer."

"Well they look just like everyone else," he said in a solemn tone, but broke into a grin when she shoved him again. "You just happened to pick three people who I think look like serial killers!"

"I think you're a serial killer."

"Maybe I am. Maybe I'm plotting your death right now." He wiggled his eyebrows and tried to look sinister, and she laughed at him. "Is that what you'd do if someone was trying to murder you? Laugh at them?"

"Yes, if they were as bad at it as you are." She turned to survey the crowd again. "Do you want to pick someone else, or are we done with that?" He didn't answer. "Chuck?" She looked over to find that he had gone pale, and was clutching the arms of his wheelchair with a white-knuckled grip. She could see sweat beading on his forehead. "What's wrong? Is it your leg?"

He shook his head slightly. "Nn-it's not-" His chest rose and fell rapidly with his shallow breathing. "Can't-"

Jazmine leapt to her feet and pushed his chair towards the doors. "I'm taking you to medical. It's gonna be okay, just hang in there."

"I can't breathe," he wheezed, and Jazmine threw courtesy out the window as she maneuvered the chair through the halls, pushing it with the weight of her body, screaming at passersby to get out of the way as they hurtled towards sick bay.

They let her sit at the nurses' station to calm down, and she gulped water out of a plastic cup and willed her heart to slow down, but it pounded in her chest for half an hour until the doctor came out to talk to her.

He was sitting behind a curtain in triage, and as she stepped around it he looked away. His face was still pale but his breathing had slowed back to normal, and she could see the fading marks from the oxygen mask they'd put on him. It was obvious that he didn't want to see her. She sat down anyway.

"You had a panic attack," she said hesitantly, and he set his jaw. "You scared the hell out of me." He didn't respond. "Have you had them before?"

He didn't answer until it was clear that she wasn't going to leave until he did. "A couple of times."

"Did you tell anyone?"

He shook his head. "They weren't as bad as...as that."

"Jesus, Chuck," she breathed, exasperated. "You know that's a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder." He gave an irritated sigh. "Don't fucking do that, this is serious. Have you talked to anyone? A counselor, anything? Since the Breach?"

"I don't need to talk to anybody," he snapped, looking at her for the first time since she'd arrived. "It was no different than what I've been doing for most of my life. Business as usual."

"Bullshit," she snapped back, and they glared at each other. "That was not business as usual. That is not normal, and don't even try to tell me that it is."

"I grew up fighting giant monsters that came out of the ocean, and you want to talk to me about normal," he sneered.

"The giant monsters are gone," she almost yelled at him. "And I know it was a fucked up world you grew up in, because I grew up in it too, but you helped change everything. And now you need help changing, and there is nothing wrong with that."

HIs scowl faded a bit, and he looked away again. "Then you'll be happy to hear that I have to talk to someone. Doctor's orders."

"I am happy to hear that." Her voice softened. "I hope it helps."

"Me too. I thought I was dying for a minute there."

Jazmine paused for a minute, then got up and stood behind him, bending over to gently put her arms around his neck. He turned his head to rest his forehead against her cheek. "You're not allowed to die on me, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." He reached up to cover her hands with his own, buried his face in her neck. "Take me back to my room?"

"Sure." She held him for a few moments longer before standing up to wheel him out to the hall, towards his room.