Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.

"I don't understand."

"I don't need you to understand," he told her looking at her with something that might be termed pity just visible in his eyes. "I just need you to respect that I have my reasons for asking."

"I don't want to lie to her, Roger. She'll want to know."

"Will she?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll make you a deal, Heather. Don't ever lie to her for me. Just don't bring up the subject. If she ever mentions me or wonders out loud about what happened to me, then consider yourself free to tell her where I am. I'm just asking that you don't force the information on her when she doesn't want or need it."

"Just because she might not make a production out of missing you, you want me to leave her thinking the worst about what might have happened to her fiancé?"

"I'm not her fiancé anymore," Roger told her, "I'm just a guy that she knew once upon a time."

"She loves you," Heather insisted. She had been so excited to find Roger here. He had helped her navigate the confusion that was Cheyenne, and she could honestly say that they were better friends now than they were before (something nice in the midst of the chaos). She could not, however, understand the stance that he was taking, and she was running out of time to change his mind. "She was going crazy thinking that you had been in a plane crash when everything first happened."

"Heather, please," he suddenly looked exhausted (and not the kind that came from the kind of work hours he had been pulling). "I told you I don't expect you to understand. Just do this for me."

"I don't like it."

"But you'll do it."

"She'll say something," Heather insisted.

"When she does, then you can tell her."

"Is this some sort of test because . . . ."

"If it makes you feel better, I don't understand why you're going back any more than you understand why I'm not."

"It's home," she responded automatically.

"If you really believe that, then I think you are going to get yourself more hurt than you already have been." She opened her mouth (to question or protest - she wasn't sure which), but he held up a hand to ask her to wait. He paused for a moment and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose as if he was trying to stave off a headache.

"Just take it from someone who knows," he finally said. "Sometimes, going home isn't all it's cracked up to be. All those people with those clichéd lines about how you can't go home again . . . they're clichés because they are true." He gave a pained smile before he continued. "Look, I'm not asking you to embrace cynicism or anything. I'm just asking you not to go rushing in full of information that she may not want to hear. Just don't lead. That's all I'm really asking of you - let Emily be the one to lead the conversation."

She agreed because what else was she supposed to do. She hadn't actually thought it would matter. She had really believed that the subject of Roger would come up soon enough that she wouldn't even have to worry about keeping her promise. It turned out that she was wrong.

"It's the not knowing that's the worst."

Those words were never intended to hit a target in Heather's heart. They weren't even spoken to her. It was one of the refugees that had been resettled in an empty house in town talking to the worker from J&R that was in charge of running names through the search database. It wasn't her conversation. She was just standing nearby waiting to have a word with Emily about something she had picked up on the radio.

Emily spent a lot of time hovering around the J&R table, but she only seemed to ask them questions about supplies and the reopening of the school. Heather saw the slight stiffening of her shoulders when the other woman spoke. She saw the way her fingers twitched as she turned to walk away from her place in line. She didn't even notice Heather standing there as she brushed by her.

Promises to Roger warred with the knowledge that she could relieve Emily of the not knowing. The problem was that Emily never acknowledged that there was something that she was stuck not knowing out loud. She hated knowing and not telling, but she had to admit that Roger had been right. Emily never mentioned him. She didn't, however, think that Roger was right about the reasons. Surely it was because it hurt and not because she didn't care to know? She remembered Emily in those early days when she was so lost in Roger being missing that there were times that she didn't recognize her friend as the person that she had always known.

Roger hadn't seen that. She didn't know if anyone had ever told him about it either. Who would have? She didn't have an answer for that. Roger had caught her so off guard with his request that it hadn't occurred to her to mention it at the time. She kind of wished that she had thought about it now. Yes, Emily and Jake seemed to be a thing, but life happens. That didn't mean that she didn't wonder and wouldn't want to know if the man that she had been going to marry was still alive.

She made up her mind in that moment that she was going to break her word to Roger at the first opportunity where she could sit down with Emily in some place where a half a dozen people wouldn't overhear them. She was pretty certain that that conversation deserved privacy.

Somehow, in the time that she had been back, the two of them had never been alone. It had just never worked out that way. Heather hadn't pushed the issue - been too busy really to realize that there were always other people around whenever they spoke. She would find a time. She would find them some privacy. She would explain - that was her planned course of action.

Then, life happened.

Bonnie Richmond was dead. Ravenwood disappeared from the town seemingly instantaneously. People from New Bern were trying to take a hit out on her. Chaos reigned, and she was somehow in the middle of a potentially treasonous plot involving stolen documents and maybe even the answers as to why all of these things had happened in the first place. Between getting involved and getting arrested there hadn't been much in the way of time to have a chat with Emily.

In the aftermath, the place where they were living became a focal point for too much of the wrong kind of attention. There never seemed to be an opportunity. She didn't even see Emily for a three week span there at the start. A part of her was glad that she had kept her mouth shut. Would it do any good for Emily to know that Roger was living in the capital of what was now a declared enemy? Would it? She just didn't know, and she was no longer in a position to be telling anyone anything.

Why hadn't Emily just asked J&R when she had the chance?