Ok, let's see if this works out the way I hoped...

She knew he was there, she could feel him, but for the time being she decided to ignore him. After all, after three days she had gotten the message and understood that was what he wanted.

They had been too late. Even with helicopters and emergency vehicles in standby, dozens of rescuers spread out and ready to mobilise the second they had a location; by the time the dam holding back Tracy's memory had broken down it had been too late. When they had finally found Stuart Loomis, in the middle of a cold and dark evening, it had been his lifeless body the one they had recovered. There had been no consolation whatsoever in discovering that the young man had died shortly after the incident, killed by the deep crack left in his skull by a rock before any of the other things they had been worried about could. No solace for Ranger Sawyer and his men, none for Tracy, and none for Gillian.

And certainly none for Cal.

He had been in his office when the news had come through to Sawyer's phone, the grim announcement almost whispered through the speaker. Cal had taken a few seconds to process the news, not interested in anything else coming after that, then he had walked through the library and into the hallway, stopping just a step before Gillian's office door. She had been in there with Tracy, keeping her company and trying to take her mind off of the actionless wait. Gillian had spotted him through the glass door, trying to not to give it away with Tracy. Cal had stood there, hands in his pockets, sombre and serious enough for her to understand what the update was even if he hadn't bothered shaking his head no slowly. Then Sawyer had appeared next to Cal, the crackling of his radio catching Tracy's attention, and it had all been downhill from there.

The girl had easily realised there was no good news and had started crying with her face in her hands, screaming and yelling at herself. Gillian had immediately hugged her but her eyes had remained on Cal, a debate going on inside her: take care of the distraught young woman who had just lost her boyfriend or deal with the look of utter desperation and shock on her own significant other's face?

Of course Tracy had to be the priority, but the thought had stayed with Gillian, the same way she had stayed with the girl when she had called Stuart's family and her own. She had been there when Sawyer had shown her some carefully edited pictures to confirm it was indeed Stuart, and when they had been told that the young man had died not long after the incident. It had taken a couple of hours to get through that and by the time Tracy had been taken home by her parents, in the middle of the night, there had been no sign of Cal.

With, sadly, nothing else to do, Gillian had parted from Sawyer and gone looking for him. Everybody else had gone home hours before, and late at night the office was so silent that even Gillian had felt it too eerie. She had gone to his office first but he wasn't there, and once moving to the library she had known for sure Cal had been gone for good. If possible, the small room had been an even bigger mess than when she had found him in there earlier, with the exception that if the initial turmoil had been caused by frustration the new layer of chaos had clearly been brought by rage.

She had tried to call him, not surprised to have no answer. She had left the building with the intention to drive to his place but his car had still been there at the office, a clear sign for her that he had probably gone to some bar with the intention to put himself in the condition of being unable to drive himself home. Gillian hadn't been a fan of any of that, but with him not answering the phone there wasn't much she could do, short of driving around all the bars she thought he might have gone to. She had gone home that night, to her own place, figuring if Cal had left without saying anything he'd hardly expected her to be waiting for him at home.

The day after he had come to work, in appearance looking mostly normal but not as sharp mentally. He had been quiet, never a good sign, shying away from work and people unless really necessary, herself included. She had tried a couple of times, but had been shunned away; not by him, with words or looks, but just by the way he looked. Brooding, silent, darkness all over his face, eyes empty and looking at nothing in particular. Romantically involved or not, Gillian had known better that the version of Cal was not to be messed with. She had wanted to, of course, for his own good, but she had respected the silent and perhaps involuntary request to be left alone.

But that had been three days ago; three days of them barely talking or even sharing the same room, let alone a bed; three days of employees throwing worried glances at him and questioning ones at her; three days of him wearing the same clothes and not shaving; three days of watching him spiral and dwell on the failed mission.

And she was done waiting.

She had chosen the day of the funeral as an arbitrary deadline, making sure Cal knew where and when it was. She had thought…she had hoped he could see that as a moment of closure, but she hadn't been all that surprised when she hadn't seen him at the cemetery, not at first at least..

As it turned out, the fact that she hadn't seen him amongst the other mourners coming to give Stuart Loomis a last salute didn't mean that he wasn't there. Not for the first time, Gillian looked up from the booklet she had been given and tuned out from the priest's words, looking a few yards ahead to the same spot that had caught her attention while the crowd gathered around the coffin. Cal was still there, wrapped in his coat with his hands in his pockets, hiding behind a pair of useless sunglasses, his face further hidden by what was now a nearly full grown beard, albeit out of control. She hadn't seen him for an entire day and even from a distance he looked worse for wear, but she had to fight the urge to go after him.

Once the funeral was over and after a quick word with Tracy, Gillian had scouted the area around but unsurprisingly Cal had already gone. That didn't matter to her, not anymore: he'd had his time and space, she wasn't letting him do that any longer.

After a quick stop at her place to change into something less depressing, Gillian went straight to his house. She had her own copy of the keys and let herself in, not surprised that he wasn't there nor that the place looked no better than the library on the night of. The thought of tidying up didn't even cross her mind; if she wanted to have a chance to get through to him, playing maid was not going to help, and washing up dishes and cleaning up was not the kind of fixing he needed anyway. She went upstairs to check his bedroom, feeling like it had been a lifetime since she'd been in there, then went back downstairs and made herself comfortable on the couch with a book, the TV on more for company than anything else.

Cal arrived a couple of hours later, having spent almost as much waiting outside, sitting in his car. It was winter and it got dark early and he could see the lights on, not to mention Gillian's car parked nearby, and he had seriously considered driving away. But he knew he couldn't run away forever, and if he hadn't been too busy dwelling on his own thoughts he would have probably recognised that Gillian had been more than patient.

When he got inside he didn't even bother calling out her name, nor waiting for her to come over to greet him. He didn't even take off his coat, instead he followed the noises coming from the TV and stood on the door of the living room, looking down at Gilian curled up on the couch with a book in her hands. For a moment he thought she was going to keep reading as if she hadn't noticed he was there, but then Cal realised he would have probably done something like that and she was far too much of a good person to stoop down to that level.

Gillian immediately closed the book and straightened up, looking at him as she sat up, taking in the view of him. The impression she'd had at the cemetery proved to be right, he looked much worse than the last time she had seen him. Tired, his eyes circled, a little pale and overall like he hadn't been taking care of himself. The general picture was mildly tamed by the growing beard he clearly hadn't bothered shaving, but under that there was the face of a man who hadn't had a single positive thought in his head for days.

She decided to look past it, no matter how bad things were inside his mind Cal must have known he looked like a shadow of himself, but now that they were both there she wasn't going to let him go. Gillian made sure the way she was looking at him conveyed all that with no room for doubt, and was glad when he finally gave her a small nod before stumbling his way to the armchair. Silence followed, deepened when Gillian muted the TV, and they dwelled into it for a while. Cal couldn't look at her, Gillian had the feeling he hadn't been able to look at anybody since Tracy's eyes had found him that night through the glass door of her office, but instead landed his eyes on the silent images coming from the TV.

Inside her head, Gillian decided to give him five more minutes and nothing more. He had had days, far more time than what would have been advisable in his situation, and if he wanted her to leave him alone again this time she was going to force him to say out loud.

"Don't shut me out, Cal," she said once the five minutes were up, dying to reach out for his hand as she spoke. "Talk to me, please."

She wanted to add something, she wanted to say that if he wasn't going to talk to her what was the point, what was her role in his life if he couldn't go to her in time of need, but she didn't. Instead she watched him, his eyes absently following the images on TV as he didn't move a muscle for what felt like forever.

"Are you here to tell me it wasn't my fault?" Cal finally spoke, his voice raspy as he had probably not spoken a word in hours, maybe the whole day. "That we did everything we could, that it wouldn't have changed anything?"

"I'm here to listen, Cal," she replied with no hesitation. "I might not be able to help, maybe there's really nothing I can do…but if you don't talk to me we will never know for sure."

"So this is for your benefit?" He scoffed. "So that you can clear your conscience about me?"

Spite, rage; Gillian had expected them. It was an obvious defence mechanism, aggressive deflection at its best, and she brushed it off.

"I've done nothing wrong," she countered then, holding back the 'neither have you' she wanted to add.

"Then what do you want?" He hissed. "Why are you here?"

"You know why."

"Because you love me?" He almost laughed, his words a bit sluggish and Gillian wondered if he hadn't stopped for a drink on the way back from the cemetery. "Because you want to fix me?"

"Cal, you've been tearing yourself apart for days over the death of someone you've never even met. Any human being who can feel so strongly about something like this hardly needs any fixing." For the first time Cal looked at her, with intent, trying to establish if she was just being condescending. He saw nothing of the sort and his eyes stayed on her, although he wasn't entirely aware of that. "And no, not because I love you. But because you love me."

How could she do it? How could she be so merciless and yet so understanding at the same time?

Cal had dreaded that confrontation for days, preparing for it like for a battle. He had expected her to push him, to try to convince him he wasn't to blame for Stuart Loomis' death and to fight back with the load of self-pity and frustration he had been carrying around for days. Only then, seeing the soft determination in her eyes and feeling more and more the desire to take her hand and to touch her, Cal realised she had probably been ready for the very same thing, except she had been right about his side of the fence and he was clearly wrong about hers.

When he moved it was like an out of body experience, at least at first. More than standing up he crawled from the armchair to the couch, tentatively reaching out for her hand as if he was afraid she could push him away. Only then they finally touched, when his fingers found hers and gripped them tight, his brain seemed to realise it was actually his body going through that. Gillian let him keep his own pace, watching silently as he looked down at their joint hands, then as he laid down on the couch resting his head on her lap. He never let go of her hand as he curled up on his side, and with the one that was still free Gillian started to gently brush his hair and forehead, a soothing caress only then Cal realised how badly needed it had been.

"He was 21," he said after a while. "She's 20, pretty much Emily's age…and she will have to live with this for the rest of her life." Gillian wanted to say something but she knew it wasn't her moment, not yet. "They're kids, Gill. We catch killers and criminals, terrorists, we chase liars an fradusters…and we couldn't help these kids."

"We can't help everybody, Cal," she whispered softly, not to patronise him but to painfully remind herself of the ugly truth.

"What about the next time we fail, love?" There was so much pain in his voice and Gillian just wished she could do more, that she felt more positive about it too. "I froze Gill. I didn't know what to do, I panicked. And if it hadn't been for you we wouldn't even have that one chance."

"We are a team, Cal. We win and we lose together."

He turned on his back slowly, wanting to look at her as he told her that wasn't much of a consolation, that he didn't like losing, but he had to stop. Gone was that sweet confidence of her, that way of looking at him knowing she had to push and make him feel miserable before he could feel better. Cal had thought it was annoying at first, sanctimonious even, but now that it was gone he wanted it back. What he saw instead was pain and regret, guilt, a complex expression he had seen in the mirror for days, and once more he understood too late he had approached that all wrong. He had put the blame of the failure on himself but he had been able to see that trying to help had been a team effort, that whatever little hope they might have had had come from them working together. What he had failed to see, to even think about really, was that the weight of the failure had not rested solely on his shoulders. But when he saw her absent gaze shy away from him and the solitary tear coming down her cheek, the epiphany hit him at full force.

Too bad it was too late to do anything about it.