Let's just right into it and I will pretend I'm not terribly nervous about this one...

Gillian tugged herself tight in the long cardigan as she walked down the hallway, thinking she should have stopped to get some hot beverage at the vending machine before going into her session. Not that Dr Scully's office was cold, but Gillian did prefer to feel warm rather than cold and some hot chocolate would have helped, even if coming from a vending machine. Not to mention, her therapist had been on a warpath recently and she knew that having something to sip during the session could help her buy some time here and there.

As a professional herself, Gillian understood the doctor's frustration but as the patient she didn't like to be pressured. Emily's visit had been as unexpected as welcome, even though they had spent the first 20 minutes of it dancing around some understandable awkwardness and ignoring the elephant in the room. But that had just been a diversion from the routine she had settled in, a routine made mostly of being on her own wherever allowed and doing a lot of talking when requested but without really saying all that much. It had been seven days and she was aware of the fact that things were going slowly, but after all time was the reason why she was there.

Well, that and many other reasons she wasn't ready to talk about yet but shush, that was supposed to be a secret.

As far as she was concerned, being able to openly say that it hadn't been just a car accident had been quite the accomplishment, but Dr Scully didn't seem to agree. Especially after Emily's visit, she had been more keen than usual to get to the bottom of it and Gillian knew she was in for a fight. But even knowing that, when she entered Dr Scully's office and she spotted a familiar silhouette sitting by the window, Gillian realised she didn't know half of it.

For a split second, she was glad that she didn't have a beverage because it would have certainly been dropped on the floor. Not so much because Cal was there, in some deep part of her mind Gillian wasn't entirely surprised, but mostly because when she looked at Dr Scully for an explanation the woman looked back at her like a mother about to scold her child.

"To his credit," the therapist started right off the bat, ready to fend off Gillian's objection and outrage, "it took a lot of convincing to get him to come. Nearly had to drag him here."

Gillian shook her head slowly but didn't say a word, then looked over at Cal. He was sitting by the window, slumped down in a chair with his feet propped up on the windowsill, giving his back to the room. He might have looked like he was just watching the world go by, although there wasn't much to see from a third floor window in that place. Gillian knew that for a fact, having spent hours doing the same herself, but that wasn't the only reason why she knew he wasn't enjoying the view. She could only see the back of his head and his shoulder, but she knew what it was: he was tense, uncomfortable, and by the position of his arms Gillian could tell that he was probably fidgeting with his hands in his lap. From what she gathered by his silence and his posture, she had no trouble believing that Dr Scully truly had had to work some kind of miracle to get him to come.

Still, Gillian felt the move as an invasion. Not to mention the array of physical reactions going through her: all of a sudden she felt sweaty and dizzy, nearly panicking, and for some reason the left wrist trapped in the soft cast sent a painful warning message for the first time in days. So she looked over at Dr Scully, who seemed a little less confident in her own decision but still stared back with a certain degree of assertion.

"We're not making waves Gillian, and what's worse is that you're not even trying. You told me what happened and that was something, but I have the feeling you threw that to me as a bone to chew so I just might drop the roast on the table." Dr Scully spoke firmly, probably disregarding most of what her profession considered appropriate with regards to communication with patients, let alone with another person in the room. "You could be here for months, or any other place like this, and you wouldn't be any closer to admitting what the real problem is. It would be unprofessional of me to enable this kind of behaviour. That man there," she pointed at Cal, who still didn't move nor turn around, "is making the very same mistake of letting you get away with this behaviour, only he's doing it because he's scared of what might come up if he digs into it." This time, when Gillian glanced at Cal she clearly saw him flinch: that remark had hit the spot big time. "This is my last chance to break through with you. It's either this, even if it fails, or I will sign off on your release and you'll have to find someone else willing to play along and somewhere else to hide."

She clearly had no intention to wait for a reply, because after her little speech was over Dr Scully stood up from behind her desk and left the room. Gillian was baffled by the quick exit as much as she was by everything else, well aware of the fact that she had been trapped in more ways than one: she was stuck with Cal and, most importantly, Dr Scully had called her bluff and exposed her cowardly plan to hide away from her problems.

Left to her own devices, Gillian kept her eyes on Cal, to his seemingly immobile being, and she quickly realised that he was probably scared as much as she was. But she was the patient, she was the one who needed fixing; he was a spectator with no obligations to stay, he clearly didn't want to be there and didn't know what to do with himself and could have walked out of there any minute. He wasn't going to, Gillian knew he wouldn't: as opposed as he might have been to the idea of coming to see her, he wasn't going to bail out at that point.

It was oddly comforting, after days of being there interacting with either strangers or medical staff - with the exception of Emily of course - to be facing someone she knew, someone who knew her; even if it was the last person on earth she wanted to see. But she needed time, some preparation: on her best day she wouldn't have taken Cal Lightman head on without a plan, and given the circumstances she was from being on her best day. But she wasn't a coward, despite what Dr Scully might think, and now that she had been thrown into the ring she was going to fight.

Keeping her eyes on what she could see of Cal, Gillian went over to the armchair Dr Scully usually occupied during her sessions and sat down. The armchair was made of thick leather and the material squeaked and cracked as she sat down, a noise that stirred the first reaction out of Cal as he motioned to move.

"I can't do this if you're watching me," Gillian warned him, and he immediately stopped moving. "You really didn't want to come?"

"You made it pretty clear you didn't want to see me."

The first exchange worked like a double edged sword, meaning hearing each other's voices again for the first time in days cut deep in a way neither of them had imagined.

"But you're here."

Gillian's words dropped in the silent space between them like an accusation, to whom neither of them could tell. She heard him take in a deep breath, a horrible hissing sound that didn't belong to him: a sound that spoke of fear, doubt, uncertainty and enough frustration to fill the room.

"My daughter called me a coward," he said, his voice oozing with haste, probably towards himself. "The most important person in my life…told me she was disappointed in me."

"Is that why you're here? Because of Emily?"

Why am I doing this?! Gillian questioned herself the moment she spoke. Why do I have to antagonise him?

"Your therapist is a pain in the ass. She seems to think I can help." Cal quipped in response. "And yes, Emily is not letting me off the hook."

"You think it's your fault, don't you? That this happened because of you."

Gillian saw him shrug, but she knew he wasn't as nonchalant as he tried to appear.

"I don't know Foster. I don't know what to think."

"Do you want me to tell you?" She took a moment, looking for different words. "Do you want to know?"

The noise that came from him was a soft grumble, unintelligible, then he stood up. Gillian tensed, but Cal just stood there with his hands in his pockets, pretending to keep looking outside the window just for the sake of honouring her request.

"I shouldn't have come. I should go-"

"You didn't answer my question, Cal."

"What do you want me to say?" He scoffed, and Gillian could tell by his body language that he was fighting against every cell of his body not to turn around. "If I say no I'll look like a self absorbed asshole, or worse yet a bloody coward like Emily says. And if I say yes I'll still look like a selfish bastard who thinks everything is about me."

Gillian wanted to tell him that it was neither, that he was none of those things, that it would have been only fair for him to want to know. More than anything, she wanted to tell him to get over himself and just ask her, say whatever was going through his mind: really, since when he had developed a filter to keep that trap shut? However, she kept it all to herself. She knew that tone, she recognised the way he had asked those questions out loud, addressed to himself more than to her. That's what Cal did when he didn't want an answer at all, but was looking for a way to vent and let out things he'd otherwise not shared for the life of him.

That was what he did when he was stalling, buying himself time and courage to get to the real point.

She waited then, bringing her legs under her body as she curled up on the armchair even more, desperately wishing she had indeed taken a beverage. She kept throwing brief glances at him, knowing he could probably sense she was looking at him and feeling the weight of it all, and realised she had been holding her breath only when Cal seemed to deflate, his shoulders sinking, the tell tale sign that he was ready, despite himself.

Cal sighed audibly, absently rubbing on his beard before leaning forward and stretching his arms on the windowsill. Then he shook his head heavily and sighed again.

"I watched the footage of that day. Every minute of it, from start to finish." Gillian didn't need to ask what day he was talking about, she knew he meant the day of the accident. "I watched it all about two dozen times, I didn't even skip through the parts where nobody was around. I could pretty much tell you who did what around the office every second of that bloody day." She heard a frustrated moan escaping his lips, the worse was about to come. "I saw nothing, Foster. Absolutely nothing."

Nothing that would give me a sign, nothing that would help me understand why you would do such a thing. No warning, no clue, not a single thing or flashing expression on your face that could explain what happened later that night. No pain, no agony, no sadness, no guilt, no regret…absolutely nothing.

Cal didn't need to clarify that, Gillian knew what he meant. She wasn't surprised that he had done that: looking for an explanation, for a reason, was well within his DNA, but she had hoped he wouldn't go down the same rabbit-hole of self-inflicted pain his mother had taken him to.

"Because there was nothing to see, Cal," she said eventually, hoping to relieve him from his crashing guilt.

It didn't work, it couldn't be that easy, but she noticed how he strengthened his back again, hands in his pockets, how he once again seemed to fight against the instinct to turn around and look at her. The roles had switched, they both knew it. Now she was the one with the confession to make, the explanation to give, and Cal was going to shut up and listen the best he could.

"Nothing happened that day, or the day before or the one before that," Gillian explained, imagining that he had gone through more tapes than just one day. Then she sighed and stood up too, walking over to the fireplace on the other side of the room where she started to absently play with the origami figurines lined up on the mantle. "There was nothing to see Cal, it was a day just like any other. I've been busy, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. Something in my lunch didn't agree with me but that's about the worst thing that happened to me." Cal could feel by her voice that she wasn't looking at him at that moment, so he dared to turn enough to catch a glimpse of her and he saw her seemingly intent in ordering the animals according to some criterias only she knew. "When I left the office I realised that I didn't want to go home and cook dinner, so I just stopped at Terrazza to pick up some food." Cal smirked, amused that she was trying to be so dismissive about that while knowing full well that a visit to Terrazza meant a generous portion of parmigiana with garlic bread and, of course, an even more generous serving of tiramisu. "It was a busy night, I was waiting by the counter. And then I saw him…them. Alec was eating there at one of the tables, with a woman. I know her, well-" She shook her head and Cal caught sight of a sad smile, but he would have been able to tell it was there even if he hadn't seen it. "I remember her from some events at the State Department, but I can't quite remember the name. They were eating together, smiling, flirting… I saw the rings, matching wedding bands. Then she stood up, maybe to go to the bathroom…and Alec picked up the baby."

This time Cal couldn't stop himself from turning around completely and taking a good look at her, and when he saw her for good, for the first time in a week, he nearly wished he hadn't. He hadn't seen her so sad and distraught in a long time, since the day Sophie had been taken away from her, and the worst part about it was that she was trying so incredibly hard to look like she wasn't hurting.

Scratch that: the worst part about it was that even knowing all that the first thing that came to his mind was that he should have been ashamed of himself for feeling relieved that what had happened hadn't been about him. There you go, he thought. Self-absorbed asshole and selfish bastard all wrapped in one.

"He didn't see me, I didn't expect him to. But I saw him, with his baby. When we were married I saw pictures of him as a child and trust me, no doubt about it. He was happy, bouncing that little boy on his lap and smiling at him… He's a father, Cal. I saw him with his son and it hit me." She shrugged, but Cal could tell it was like a disgusted shiver. "I knew already that it was me, why we couldn't have children…a part of me still kept hoping it was also him, but obviously that's not the case. I wish I could tell you what was going through my mind Cal, I really do. But one moment I was there waiting for my dinner and the moment later I was in my car driving away from there as fast as I could."

And into a tree, Cal couldn't stop himself from thinking. Of course he kept his mouth shut, and his eyes on her as she finally stopped fidgeting with the paper animals. Gillian then motioned to turn around and Cal averted his eyes, bracing himself for the rest.

"I thought I was over it, I thought I had accepted it…I guess part of me always thought neither of us would ever-" She bit at her bottom lip and closed her eyes, and Cal could tell by the tone of her voice that she was trying not to cry. "It all came back to me while I was driving, all the pain of those days and every time I- I don't know how I ended up around here, I was just driving and thinking that no matter what I do this pain would always find me, and then the road bent and the curve got closer and I was going faster…and then I started thinking if there was a way to make it stop. Forever."

Cal had his eyes closed, his whole being tuned in on her words as he fought against his instinct to walk over to her and hold her. He heard her soft sobs, not full on crying but dangerously close, but thankfully it didn't last long and she seemed to recover. Cal listened attentively, catching her soft steps moving about the room with apparently no pattern, until he heard the cracking and squishing sounds of the armchair again. He honestly didn't know how he had managed to respect her 'request' not to visit her for an entire week, but as he found himself less and less able not to turn around to look at her Cal had to wonder how the hell he had managed that.

Worst still, he started to think that Dr Scully might be annoyingly right about both of them.

"So no Cal," Gillian sighed after a while, her voice coming a little stronger having shed the emotional baggage. "It's not your fault I tried to kill myself."

For the second time in two days, Cal felt as if his soul left his body like water flushed down a toilet. He regretted having stood up, he immediately felt dizzy and void of energy, barely able to speak. Yes, he had figured that out almost immediately on his own, maybe since from the moment it had been implied that she might have been drunk at the wheel. The lack of skid marks had been the clincher, the obviously painful sign that she hadn't even tried to stop the car or swerve to avoid the turn and trees at the end of it. If she had indeed been drunk that might have explained it, in part at least, but the ugly truth was simply that she had just let it happen.

Cal had imagined it more than once, just for the sadistic fun of hurting himself probably. Gillian behind the wheel, holding onto it, staring ahead with glazed and absent eyes, an empty look that didn't belong to her: he had pictured her, watching motionless as the sharp turn approached one metre after the other, not doing anything even as the headlights of her car flashed on the fast approaching trees, coming closer and closer… He had known before Dr Scully brought it up, and he certainly didn't need to hear Gillian herself saying it out loud.

"Gillian-"

"But Dr Scully is right, it's because of you that I am here." Her voice changed, a little lower, and Cal thought she must have been looking away from him, unable to sustain the sight of him even if he wasn;t looking back at her. "What I tried to do- No, what I did… When I woke up in the hospital and I remembered, when I realised what I had done, all I could think about was that I did the one thing that would affect you the most. That's why I couldn't face you, Cal. I knew you'd put it together, that you'd go after this looking for a reason, chasing my motivation until the end of time and I felt like I did this to you. Suicide of all things, I should have known better and I knew this would affect you-"

"Bloody hell Gillian, what kind of monster do you think I am!"

He yelled. Cal didn't simply raise his voice; he shouted at her from the top of his lungs. He was done with it, that was the last straw. No more waiting, no more playing safe, no more giving her time and space, no more doing what she wanted; he could not take that, he'd far sooner accepted that she had tried to take her own life because of him rather than having to deal with the fact that by nearly killing herself she thought she had done him wrong. So he not only yelled at her, but he finally broke down and turned around, taking a couple of steps towards her. Gillian was ready to face him, immediately noticing his hands, closed in tight fists and shaking as he tried to contain his emotions. Despite his words and the yelling, she knew those raw and strong feelings were not directed at her: he was mad at himself for being, or having being at some point in his life, the kind of person who could indeed stoop so low as to make her attempted suicide about himself.

Then Gillian stood up, moving carefully and slowly when she took a step towards him and she saw Cal recoil on instinct. But he was looking at her, unable to keep his emotions in check when she looked back at him, and completely at a loss of words and thoughts when their eyes met for the first time in days. That was when they both came undone, not just for that past week but for all the months they had spent apart while being almost always so unbearably close. It all went through them in a silent two-ways exchange, a mutual flux of images and memories not just about the months they've been apart but going further back, to their relationship and even before that. If there ever was a perfect way to describe the concept of 'getting under each other's skins', they both felt that it must have been the way they felt at that very moment.

Feeling some way about it, about each other…they had learned that it wasn't enough. Feeling, no matter how strongly, didn't account for much if they couldn't get past that phase and move on to more elaborate things such as moving or, even better, talking. But moving was a start, and somehow Gillian managed to do just that by walking past him and standing by the window, the spot he had been occupying until then. Cal followed her, well aware of the fact that for some reason he was out of breath and thinking it might have something to do with how fast his heart had started racing the second she had brushed past him. Then she leaned on the wall by the window, folding her arms to brace herself before she spoke.

"I didn't want to see you because I was ashamed of what I had done, Cal. The thing you fear the most-" She shook her head and an absent and melancholy expression took over her face. "And I didn't want to see you because when I woke up in that hospital bed I realised that if I'd had you none of that would have happened. The doctor came to tell me about my injuries, the police came to question me and all I could think about was that with you I'd never been there to begin with. I had everything I needed with you Cal, and I just let it go and what kills me is that right now I can't even remember why."

She felt and heard him come closer, just a step, and shifted ever so slightly to allow him to read her face when she continued.

"With you…when we were together, I didn't feel that pain, I never felt like something was missing. I had you and I didn't need anything else." Gillian let her arms go loose and sat on the windowsill, looking at him as he stepped closer. Cal saw tears, just there at the corner of her eyes, tears that were hard to reconcile with the soft smile on her lips. "I've been hiding away in here all this time because I realised that…and that I don't know how to get back to that." Gillian looked down and took a deep breath, gathering energies before the last stretch looking back at him. "Because I didn't know if I even have the rights to want to go back to that, and because I don't know if you would let me."

They both knew that, after that, the ball was in his court. Gillian looked away, not wanting to take the risk to see in his face that his answer to her enquiry was not what she was hoping for, holding her breath. It seemed to take forever, but then she heard him approach, careful and light on his feet. She kept looking down at her own feet, catching a glimpse of him as he moved closer still, eventually sitting next to her. The proximity hit her like a tornado, invading her senses and mind. The way he smelled, the strangely comforting warmth his body always emitted to her, the tension in his muscles, the steadiness of his breathing: everything about him, every cell of his body said something to her and not for the first time Gillian realised how much she had missed that cacophony of elements thrown at her seemingly at random.

Her heart was beating so fast that she could barely breathe, and when Cal's hand gently rested on top of hers Gillian was sure both motions stopped altogether for at least a few seconds.

"I never stopped loving you, Gillian," he whispered. "And as much as it all seemed to make sense when we broke up…for the life of me love, if you ask me now why that happened I'd never be able to explain it again, let alone understand."

"Cal, I'm Sor-"

"No, no love." He squeezed her hand softly and scooted closer, his mouth closer to her ear. "Let's not do that, taking blame or apologising. Takes two to tango, that was on both of us equally. I'm not going to ignore it, but I want to learn from it." Cal leaned even closer, resting his forehead on her shoulder as he breathed out with a painful sigh. "With you, if you let me."

Gillian tilted her head slightly and rested it on his, her fingers melting with his and gripping tightly.

"I won't lose you again Cal." she said then, her other hand finding the back of his head to keep him close. "Don't let me do it."

"Only if you promise me you won't let me screw it up again," came his reply, eradicating a soft chuckle out of her.

Then he pulled back, slowly, and when their eyes met again it was as if a world they hadn't been able to recognise anymore suddenly made sense once more. Only it was better, the colours seemed brighter and everything around them in the room looked like an improved version of what they had been looking at before.

Because that was the kind of thing that happened when they were together.