Here we are. Wow, this flashback really got your guys going!

Guest: This reaction might have seemed odd, but something in the way Cal looked back then in that episode really pushed me to explore something different than Gillian just comforting him.

Kathy: good guess, but now we're going back to the present

Well, time to move on. Oh, and a note: no new chapter until Friday, I am travelling and won't be able to keep up.

The fact that, and the end of it all, he was ok, did not help in the least.

There was a long black out phase after Cal's departure, the time the convoy needed to get to the village. While she waited for them to be back online, Gillian took refuge in her own office and asked Loker to come and fetch her when they were ready.

It was only one hour, give or take; it was quite possibly the longest hour of her life and, she didn't know that yet, it wasn't even going to be the worst.

When Loker came to get her and she went back to the lab, Gillian noticed something different from the day before. Some of the soldiers were wearing body cams, and they had quite the display of split screens in front of them. One of the cameras seemed to be dedicated to Habib, probably Cal's doing. The image feed was a bit shaky but mostly ok, although the audio was a bit broken and disturbed by the microphones picking up random noises and voices all around.

Gillian saw the villagers welcome Habib, frantic and grieving, but they couldn't hear what they were saying because the interpreter was kept at a discreet distance for that first exchange. She was scrambling with her eyes, trying to follow all the action on the screen and, of course, to spot Cal and try to mentally locate him on the scene. For a few minutes, she marvelled at how different it was: when they had someone in the cube she could keep track of the person they were interrogating as well as the various monitors, but for some reason at that moment she couldn't follow all that was happening before her eyes.

Then, to make matters somewhat worse, an additional feed came through showing Habib's cousin back at the base, sitting in a small room with a face that spoke of tension and terror. Gillian was about to devote her attention to him, knowing it was the easiest target considering how nervous he looked and that he wasn't in the middle of two loud and vocal groups out in the desert. A soldier was in the room with him and Gillian started questioning him, as usual kicking off with harmless questions to find her baseline. The man was clearly on edge about something, and she started to probe him about his relationship with Habib as well as the two deceased.

She was just about to open her direct channel with Cal and ask him to question Habib about it when his voice came through from the main monitor. He was talking to Habib, or at least Gillian thought so because she couldn't see Cal yet, but his questions were unquestionably targeting Habib on something he had seen.

From then on, they worked in a distanced tandem that easily put most of their double acts to shame: Gillian kept probing the cousin about family ties, digging deeper and finding that there must have been a connection between the way he felt about his relatives and his nervous demeanour; on the other hand, Cal seemed to have found a gold mine in asking Habib about what he knew about the assault rifle his father had been handling when he had been shot. Even without consulting each other, they seemed to be on the same page or at the very least after the same truth. At some point, Torres came into the lab to relieve Loker from his turn but the young man didn't feel like leaving: relationship or not, when the bosses were firing on all cylinders like that it was a crime to walk away from the show. The fact that they were doing it thousands of miles away from each other was an added impressive factor, and soon Torres too was caught up in watching.

It was easy for them to get distracted by the spectacle, but Foster and Lightman were all business, each badgering their own side and upping the tempo as they smelled the trail of truth getting stronger and stronger.

Too bad by the time they got there it was too late.

It all happened fast, too fast for those watching and listening to really understand.

Gillian had just asked the cousin if he had any idea why Habib's father would have an assault rifle in the house, noticing how the question made the man sweat even more profusely than before, and Cal was onto something of his own when he started asking Habib about his sister. She saw it first, what was the answer to the question the military had been asking was: by the way the cousin reacted and spoke about the rifle, Gillian started to piece together that Habib senior might have actually been trying to harm the soldiers with the weapon. Gillian had been so focused on her own interrogation that she hadn't been able to keep track of Cal's, and she was suddenly desperate to get to him with her discovery. Almost at the very same time, Cal was going one step further, badgering Habib with questions about his sister in a way that made her think she might have gotten something wrong on her side. She still couldn't see Cal, which was enough to make her nervous even without the thought brewing inside her mind that something was about to go down at the village. Gillian kept calling Cal's name and trying to get his attention, but he was too invested in his own line of questioning to pay attention to her.

Until he saw it.

She did too, the shaky bodycam focused on Habib showed it to her clearly and before she could say - yell, shout, scream - anything to Cal, he was the one yelling at everybody to stop the man. He had seen it too, the killer's gaze suddenly erupting on Habib's face, and that was when all hell broke loose.

And at the end of it all, at the end of the screaming and yelling, the gunshots and the explosions, the fact that Cal was ok was of no consolation at all.

Major Miles explained it to her later, not without a touch of relief.

Zainab Habib, the young girl who had been killed, had been the owner of the rifle that had started it all, and her father had been indeed trying to turn it over to the American soldiers to avoid any trouble; not so much for the rifle itself, but because he had found out that his teenage daughter was part of a rebel group. When he had tried to give the weapon away, not only had she tried to stop him, but she had tried to fire the gun at the soldiers.

As far as the Major was concerned, that solved their problem: the shooting had been justified. Obviously however, the story didn't end there.

Unlike his sister, Asad Habib had no ties with rebel groups but to find out that his closest relatives had been gunned had been enough to light up the fire of revenge inside him. He had shared his plans with his cousin, which explained why he had been so nervous as the keeper of the very heavy secret. Major Miles and Captain Faulkner had been so preoccupied with good appearances and transparency that nobody had thought about thoroughly searching Habib: he must not have believed his luck and how easy it had been for him to sneak a small but powerful explosive device to the village, wheeled in by the very military he wanted to arm.

Thanks to quick thinking from the soldiers after Cal had yelled out the alarm, Habib had been the only casualty. And thanks to the body cams, the case was most definitely closed with no further questions on the motives for the soldier's actions.

Major Miles was extremely grateful to the Lightman & Foster Group for the support, for how they had gone out of their way to accommodate the difficult situation and, of course, for the end result. Gillian had listened to all that with a fake expression of interest and relief, saying all the good things and reacting as she was supposed to. How she managed not to ask the officer why Cal wasn't there for the debrief, where he was and when he was coming back, Gillian honestly didn't know. All she wanted to do was dismiss the woman on the other side of the line and just find out when Cal was going to travel back, and the only reason why she didn't burst was that Major MIles eventually volunteered the information herself. Cal had already left the base as they spoke and started his journey back, however she wasn't sure when he'd be back in Washington exactly.

It would have been easy for her to find out, or at least try. Cal's phone might have been on, at least reachable with a message he could respond to later on, she might have even called in some favours and find out when he was due back. But she did none of that, trying to convince herself that it was just a waste of time and that she wasn't doing it out of spite.

Instead, with the case wrapped up she finally went home, which as of late meant Cal's house, for the first time in days. She went home and took a long shower, an even longer nap and thought about herself until she fell asleep in Cal's bed - their bed - still haunted by dreams that couldn't be erased just because she had been told he was fine.

She didn't get many hours of sleep and it wasn't good sleep either, and in the morning she called in to say she was coming in a little later. Nobody felt like questioning her or pointing out that that would leave the company without any of the partners for a few hours, and Gillian didn't feel bad about playing the boss card for once.

When she eventually did get back to the office it was business as usual, meaning that she had days worth of other cases to catch up with and get back into the usual groove. Being busy always helped to keep her mind off of other things, and thankfully after a couple of attempts with people asking her when Cal was coming back they realised that they'd better steer clear of the topic.

What they didn't expect, not even Gillian, was for Cal to show up on his own without even a call to let her know he needed to be picked up from somewhere.

It was just after lunch, Gillian had finished eating her Chinese takeout - or more precisely poking at it with the chopsticks - and was going to the breakroom to get some coffee. She passed by Cal's empty office, briefly glancing at the closed door out of sheer habit, then she turned the corner and stopped dead on the spot when she saw him. He was coming towards her, pacing the hallway with that determined stride that was so characteristic of him and that she often found somewhat sexy, although that day it was nothing of the sort. Cal spotted her immediately and advanced even faster, ignoring voices and gazes trying to get his attention and welcome him back, approaching and at a fast pace that revealed to her details about him with every step. His skin was red with sun and dark with dust as if he hadn't had time nor care to clean up before leaving, his beard was a mess of uneven levels and small knots, and his clothes were all kinds of dirt and crumpled. All of that she had expected, more or less, but not the faint limp on his left leg, the half-hassed bandage around his left wrist and certainly not the black eye and cut on the right side of his face.

When they truly saw each other, when their eyes connected, two very different things happened. Cal smiled, his mouth digging its way out from under the thick beard and opening up in a smile that went all the up to his eyes, and after a second of pause he resumed walking towards her with renewed urgency. On the other hand, Gillian didn't smile, she didn't even flash an expression of relief or happiness: instead, her face hardened for a second then she turned around and walked away.

Undeterred by the unexpected reaction, Cal went after her and tried to speed up as much as he could despite the awkward limp. He didn't call for her, they were probably calling too much attention to themselves already, but kept his eyes on her as she went back to her office. It was a dead end and they both knew it, and Cal was more than happy about it because clearly something was up and after 18 odd hours of travel he wasn't going to be pushed away that easily.

Cal stopped only a second at the door, looking inside and seeing Gillian nervously pacing the floor by the bookshelf against the back wall of the room. He tried to assess what he was in for once entering the room, to prepare in a way, and even though he thought it was nothing good he just couldn't stand another minute away from her. So he took a deep breath and went in, opening the door and closing it behind him once he stepped in. Gillian glanced at him briefly, glared actually, not only keeping her distance but folding her arms and turning away as he approached.

"Gill-"

"No, Cal."

It was all she said, all she had to say especially when accompanied by a very clear stop gesture with her raised hand. It was a tough pill to swallow for Cal, and he understood he'd better adjust his approach, and quickly, if he wanted to have any chance to get through to her.

"I'm sorry, love. I-"

"Don't you dare," Gillian hissed back at him, shaking her head. "I don't want to hear it.".

"Just-"

"No. Shut up Cal, I mean it."

She really did, and Cal didn't need to be a deception expert to see it. Her eyes were red and wet, which might have been due to the stress and lack of sleep of the previous days but he wasn't going to let himself believe that. Her voice was shaky, charged with emotions that she was trying really hard to keep under control, and Cal desperately wanted to close the distance and hold her.

"I just want to explain, Gill," he said in a low voice, tentative, taking a few steps towards her. "C'mon love, let me-"

The slap came out of nowhere, even more than the one that nearly one year before had brought them together. Cal was surprised, by the gesture itself and by the strength of it. Yet after a second, feeling his cheek burn and sore, he thought he could easily understand that.

"Ok," he said then, taking a step back and watching with pain in his eyes as Gillian turned her back to him, trying to hide whatever the slap meant to her. "You're right, Gillian. I understand." Cal saw her shoulders shake, her stance tense, and took another step back raising his hands to signal he was backing away even though she wasn't looking at him. "I'll- I will be in my office, ok? Just… waiting for you."

He wanted to say more, to say something else rather than cowardly retreating, but head on confrontation clearly wasn't the way to go. Still, Cal gave her one last look hoping she might just turn around and talk to him, but that didn't seem to be the case and he started walking towards the door. He only managed a couple of steps however, before he felt Gillian's hand grab hold of his shoulder and forcefully spin him around before hugging him tight. Cal's body reacted on its own, returning the embrace and desperately abandoning himself in her hold, burying his face in the side of her neck and shivering at the desperate seizure of her arms and hands on him. But before he could take another step and move things further Gillian let go, not only that she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him away, stepping back and going back to the corner to put some distance between them.

If the slap had been unexpected and the hug more than welcome, that last reaction left Cal utterly confused. He watched as Gillian sought refuge in the corner of the room, the same they had gotten used to calling the 'make out spot', avoiding his eyes and just to look in his general direction altogether. Cal clenched his jaw, dying to go over there and shook her out of it, but it was clear that it would have been a failing strategy. Then he turned around, thinking about repeating that he was going to be in his office whenever she wanted to talk and deciding against it in the end. He could understand she needed time and space, and that there was no space for him at the moment.

Whether he agreed with that or not it didn't matter, so he left the room and went back to the main lobby to retrieve the baggage he had dropped there when he had arrived, eager to find Gillian and announce his return. Sounding as normal as possible, Cal told Anna that he was going to be in his office but didn't clarify that he was available if they needed him, then he left and retreated to his private room.

Once there, Cal didn't quite know what to do with himself. He was knackered after the long and uneasy travel, he had been nervous enough about seeing Gillian and eager to spend time with her, and confused by the fact that she hadn't tried to reach out to him to find out about his travel arrangements. Her reaction gave him as many answers as did questions, but the one thing he knew was that he'd better let it boil down for a bit.

In his office, Cal closed the door and went to his desk, trying for a few minutes to check emails and messages before realising that he was way too tired to be doing something that complicated. He gave up then, going for the couch and kicking off his shoes before laying down, telling himself he was only going to rest his eyes for a bit while he waited for Gillian. He fell asleep within minutes, his body reacting to the fact that for the first time in hours there wasn't a vibrating and noisy aircraft shaking and rumbling all around him and shutting down peacefully.

What was supposed to be a quick nap turned out to be a 4 hour rest, and what should have been interrupted by Gillian's arrival was instead broken up by Anna, waking him up and letting him know that it was getting late and everybody had gone home already.

Including Dr Foster.

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