Shane couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. When he blinked his eyes open, the medic was crouching at his side. Drew had released him and one of Drew's hands lay on Shane's shoulder with surprising gentleness. Shane would almost have thought the gesture possessive and protective if he hadn't known better.

"Good," the medic said. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," said Shane automatically. "Great." He moved to stand up; both Drew and the medic pushed him back down.

At least the head trainer seemed to take Shane at his word. "He's fine," the man shouted to the assembled students. "That's why you can't escape a proper chokehold by biting. Gives your opponent a chance to pull your neck in if he's set up properly. That's choking-arm hand on opposite bicep, other hand on the base of the opponent's skull. If the set of the chokehold hadn't been correct, we'd have had a different outcome. Good class, everyone; I'll see you again this afternoon. Now get down to the dining hall and give our combatants some space."

Most of the agents filed dutifully out of the room. Bert, the highest ranking agent, stayed behind, and so did Kim, because everyone seemed to realize that asking her to leave would be effort wasted.

Shane tried again to sit up; this time Drew and the medic allowed it, but their hands stayed on his body as if they thought he needed help. He scowled.

The medic's eyes shifted quickly between Shane and Drew. "I'm sorry to ask this, but can you tell me who's who?"

It was Drew who answered. "I'm Drew. He's Shane."

Bert raised his eyebrows in surprise. Kim gasped in horror. If Shane hadn't been so angered and embarrassed by the whole thing, he might have been pleased by the revelation that even though both of them had lost track of which twin was which, neither one of them had given much consideration to the possibility that Drew might have bested him.

"All right, Shane," the medic continued calmly as Kim and Bert knelt down beside him, "what's the last thing you remember?"

"Turning my head at the wrong angle and realizing I was about to lose the match," Shane muttered irritably.

Kim glared at Drew. "If you'd already won, why did you have to knock him unconscious?"

Drew held up both hands in mock-surrender. "It was muscle memory. That's what you do when your opponent turns his head when he's in a chokehold."

"Even when it's your own brother and it's all for show? You've never heard of pulling your punches?"

Drew pointed to his own jaw, which was already swelling. "Did you notice Shane pulling his punches?"

Bert dropped a hand to Kim's shoulder. "Drew's right, Kimberly. Drew couldn't reasonably have expected Shane to make that particular mistake." Bert looked from Shane to Drew again, as if he still wasn't entirely sure whether to believe that it was Shane who had lost consciousness. Then he pulled a cold pack from the medic's kit and handed it to Drew. Drew wasted no time in pressing it to his jaw.

"Does your head hurt?" the medic asked Shane.

"No," said Shane.

"He told me yesterday that his head hurts all the time," said Kim unhelpfully, as if anyone had asked for her opinion.

"Fine," said Shane. "My head hurts no more than usual, and Drew never actually hit me in the head. One kick to the chest, which I felt, but my ribs aren't broken. One hard punch to the stomach, which knocked the wind out of me for a few seconds. You should be asking him about his wrist and his jaw."

"I will," said the medic. "But we're checking you out first. Since you've suggested it, I'm going to feel your ribs."

Shane rolled his eyes heavenward but submitted to the examination. The medic grunted his approval before moving along to Drew and testing his jaw and his wrist for swelling and mobility.

"Keep the ice on your jaw for a while," the medic instructed Drew. "On your feet, Shane."

Gratefully, Shane stood up, relieved that he felt no dizziness when he did.

"All right," agreed the medic. "You're both free to go."

"Excuse me, what?" Kim interrupted. "Drew is free to go as far away as he would like. Shane is not."

Both Drew and Bert swallowed their smiles. Shane despised them both.

Bert gestured for the medic to leave; the medic could not have fled more quickly.

"You are not the medical professional here," Shane informed Kim. "Loss of consciousness for a fraction of a second does not warrant a trip to the emergency room."

"It was two or three seconds," said Drew, apparently determined to be every bit as unhelpful as Kim.

"Two or three seconds isn't a danger, either," snapped Shane. "It was oxygen deprivation, not a blow to the head. There's nothing for a doctor to evaluate."

"We don't actually know whether it was oxygen deprivation or a blow to the head that meant you woke up not knowing who the hell you were less than two years ago!" Kim snapped back. "You were never properly treated then, and you haven't been the same since."

"We are not alone," said Shane, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. "Calm down." He knew before the words left his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say.

"Oh, no, people might start to think the great Shane Donovan needs things like medical attention once in a while," Kim said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "Don't worry. I won't start any blasphemous rumors about how you also need to eat and sleep once in a while."

"It's none of your business," said Shane tightly. "Not what I eat, how much I sleep, or whether you've been arrogant enough to decide that I'm not right in the head."

She rolled her eyes. "Believe me, I would love for it to be none of my business. But you are still Andrew's father. And I watched what it was like for Andrew to lose you. I will not put my son through that kind of utter despair when I can do something to prevent it."

She was infuriating and aggravating. "I am not dying, Kimberly."

"You don't know that, because you refuse to find out."

Bert— who was supposed to be Shane's friend, not Kim's— had started to look more conflicted than embarrassed. "It wouldn't hurt anything to get checked out, Shane. If you really never had a brain scan, the ISA probably shouldn't have reinstated you."

"Well, we all know how much the ISA values the well-being of its agents," said Kim.

"I'm going to write the order, Shane," said Bert, and he really did look sorry. "The worst case scenario is that it's a waste of a few hours of your time. I have to work with the students in the afternoon session, but I'll send—"

"Me," interrupted Drew.

"No," said Shane.

"Technically, I'm your next of kin since you're no longer married to Kimberly," said Drew.

Technically, Eve was Shane's next of kin now that she was a legal adult. But Shane didn't see the benefit of pointing that out. She was in Africa, and— well, she was in Africa. There was no reason to get into the little matter of the quality of her judgment since it would be impossible to reach her anyway.

"You're the one who choked him into unconsciousness," objected Kim. "If anyone is going with him, it's me."

"You are going to class this afternoon," said Shane.

"I agree," said Bert. "If you don't want your brother to drive you, Captain Donovan, you can choose one of the other agents who can afford to miss the afternoon session. But it's going to be someone. And under the circumstances, I can give you an order and I am giving you an order."

"Fine," Shane snapped. "Drew can waste his afternoon at the hospital, too." It was a fitting punishment for Drew's crime of… well, Drew hadn't actually done anything wrong recently as far as Shane could tell. But there was probably something Shane didn't know about. There always was.

"Then that's settled," said Drew with false cheer. He slung his arm over Shane's shoulders. "We'll get changed and cleaned up, and then we'll go."

"I'll have the car keys and the order ready for you at the front desk," said Bert.

For once, Kim didn't say anything. And when Shane snatched a glance at her, he wasn't sure whether she looked hurt or victorious.

The hours at the hospital were boring. Shane had been hospitalized so many times in his life that the idea of being there carried none of the stress or humiliation it might have done if he'd been less experienced. He didn't care about being paraded from room to room in a hospital gown. He didn't care about being sent to wait in the hallway while technicians reset machines and doctors reviewed test results. He didn't particularly enjoy the CT scan or the MRI themselves, but only because it would have been very difficult to jump to his feet and defend himself had one of the technicians been a spy sent by Lawrence Alamain to murder him. But he also didn't think that that was especially likely.

At last, the doctor sat beside him and pointed at an image of his brain.

Shane didn't need medical training to notice the dark spot.

"This blow to the head occurred two years ago?" the doctor asked.

"Two years ago next month."

"Any trouble with your memory?"

"Initially, yes. Not any longer."

"Pain? Headaches that resist over the counter medication?"

Since Kim had made sure that his health was public knowledge anyway, there was no point in lying. "Headaches are almost constant. I don't know whether they have a physical cause or not. They do respond to medication, but I don't usually take it."

"Any personality changes that you've noticed, or that other people have noticed?"

"I don't think so." It wasn't a lie, exactly.

"Any emotional challenges? Anger, depression?"

"I would have been angered and saddened by a number of things that occurred regardless of whether I'd ever hit my head."

The doctor nodded. "I don't foresee this affecting your ISA clearance or your ability to work at all. I wish that we'd had an earlier scan for purposes of comparison, and I suggest that you have your local hospital take another look in six months or so. My suspicion is that your brain is continuing to make new connections to work around the injury and that there is no danger of a relapse. I do want you to bear in mind that it may be very difficult to separate your physical and psychological reactions to the accident. You were already aware of that with respect to the headaches. I don't think there's any reason to hesitate to take a painkiller when it's needed. It's when they're no longer effective in reasonable quantities that we'd want to have a discussion."

"I'll keep that in mind. Thank you."

"Good," said the doctor. "Get dressed. You're free to go."

Shane found Drew casually reading a newspaper in the lobby. He was half-surprised to see his brother there; part of him had suspected that Drew had planned to take the ISA's car and vanish into the ether with whatever new intelligence he'd picked up at the training center.

Drew folded the newspaper and dropped it on the table. As usual, Mikhail Gorbachev glowered up at them from the front page. "How did it go?"

Shane shrugged. "Waste of time. I know nothing I didn't already know." He'd learned what the giant dark spot on his brain looked like, but that hardly mattered. He'd already known that something had happened to his brain two years before, and he'd already known that somewhere along the line he'd resumed functioning as if the incident had never occurred.

Drew nodded and they walked in silence back to the car. Once they were safely inside and Shane had checked for listening devices, he looked at Drew again. "You can leave me here and take off if you want," he said quietly.

"Leave you here? Why?"

"The Soviet Union is going to collapse regardless of whether Gorbachev steps down or is taken out in a coup."

"I'm aware of that," said Drew. "Anyone with access to a television or a newspaper knows what's about to happen."

"But that's why Tarrington is willing to send you there even though he doesn't trust you to so much as hold a gun inside the training center. If you betray the ISA, he can deny all knowledge of you, and you'll probably get killed anyway. It's a whole new sort of chaos and danger."

Drew flashed a broad grin. "I know. That's why I like the idea so much. Are you sure you aren't jealous?"

"Not jealous enough to volunteer for the job. It's a fool's errand, Drew."

"And I'm just the fool to run it. I came to the training center because I wanted to. I accepted that mission because I wanted to. I do not need you to hold the door open and let me escape. Last time I escaped it was all very dull."

Shane couldn't argue with that. "Good luck, then."

"Thank you. And good luck to you when you speak to Kimberly again."

Shane sighed and leaned back against the seat. "What you said during the fight— is that the general consensus?"

Drew grinned again. "To be clear, you're asking me for a report on the gossip about your romantic life?"

There was no way around it. He hadn't asked Drew that sort of question since they'd been teenagers. He wasn't sure he'd done it even then. He'd been so young when the world had collectively decided that he and Emma had been destined for one another, not that he'd minded at the time. "Yes, that is what I'm asking," he admitted, swallowing his pride.

"No," said Drew. "No one knows for sure what the two of you did or didn't do when you left the game at the first break." He paused at a red light and slid his eyes over to Shane. "But it wasn't difficult for me to guess. She's hardly made it a secret that she still loves you, and you've barely taken your eyes off of her all week."

"That's my job."

"It's not. Not like that."

"Kayla and I—"

"From what I know of Kayla, the two of you are not suited to one another even if you happen to like each other."

"You haven't seen Kayla in years, and the last time you did see her you were in the process of kidnapping a child she loved like her own. A child you kidnapped by impersonating me, by the way."

Drew shrugged. "Fair enough. But if everything is in the past with Kim, I'm not sure why you were so distracted when we were sparring that you made a mistake an untrained recruit wouldn't make. I'm not sure why you were so upset that she wanted you to get medical attention today. That was hardly malevolent. And it seems like that might affect your perfect relationship with Kayla, if you've never done a proper post mortem on your relationship with Kimberly."

"If anything, we've discussed it rather too much."

"And then you made love to her?"

Shane didn't answer. "When are you leaving?" he asked instead as the car sailed into the garage beside the training center.

"Tonight, if Tarrington allows it. There's certainly no reason for me to stay here. I can't impersonate you at the moment." He pointed at his swollen jaw. "The game was pretty much over as it was."

They exited the car. Shane shook Drew's hand, then changed his mind and pulled Drew into an awkward hug. After all, Drew was going off to become a martyr or a hero or an international terrorist and there was no way to know for sure which.

Regardless of whether Drew lived or died, this might be the last time they were together like this, on something like positive terms. Another last, so soon after his last conversation with Peach.

"Be careful," Shane told Drew.

"Same to you," Drew told Shane.

And they went their separate ways, Drew off to find Tarrington and Shane in search of Kimberly.

It wasn't hard to find Kim. She was in her room, and she looked expectantly at him when she opened the door.

"The injury to my brain is very clear on the scans, but the neurologist says that my brain has been making new connections to compensate for the injury for two years, and there is no danger of a relapse or further complications," he announced without preamble. "He almost literally told me to take two aspirin and not bother calling him in the morning."

She opened the door a little wider. "Maybe you better come in," she said.

He took her up on the invitation and sank down to her bed, knowing she would have no choice but to sit beside him and not really caring. The sheets wouldn't even have been washed since they'd lain here sweating and naked the night before. What was sitting side by side next to that?

"The doctor asked whether the people around me noticed any personality changes," he began, because he had to begin somewhere. "You said that you did. Did you mean— did you mean anything beyond my no longer being in love with you?"

Kim looked at her folded hands in her lap. "Yes. And no. I have a hard time being sure of what's you being angry with me and what's you having had a lot of changes in your life recently and what might be something more."

He leaned back against the wall. "I was afraid that that might be it."

"Afraid? Why? Did the doctor say—"

"The doctor says I'm fine, and I gave him essentially the same explanation that you just gave me. But sometimes it would be nice to have a definitive answer instead of shades of probability."

"I can understand that."

"I know you can."

"And I'm sorry, Shane. I can't say it enough that I'm sorry for the role I played in some those life changes that weren't for the better. I wish that you had come home and we'd thrown the door open wide and hugged you and kissed you and told you that we'd been waiting for you."

"We discussed this last night," he said tightly. "There's no need to repeat it." Who knew what else they might end up repeating if they did?

"And I wish I hadn't needed to leave when I did. I wouldn't trade Jeannie for anything. Not anything. She's my daughter, Shane. There aren't very many people in this world that I would choose over you, but I had to protect Jeannie just like you would have to protect Andrew or Eve."

"I never asked you to give up Jeannie," said Shane, appalled. "She's a beautiful little girl. I've enjoyed the time I've spent with her."

"Except when she reminds you of Cal."

"I would have gotten over that if you hadn't left the moment you thought that I might have had the slightest conflicted feeling. I accepted Andrew as my own long before we realized that Emma had switched the paternity test, and I would have done the same for Jeannie if you ever had the faith in me to give me half a chance!"

Tears swam in her eyes. Sometimes Shane wondered what it would be like to cry as easily as Kim did. More often, in recent years, he just wished that he could feel anything at all.

This wasn't one of those times. He didn't want the anger and he didn't want the grief and he didn't want the love and dear God he did not want the flashes of sexual attraction and sheer ecstasy that he got whenever he and Kim were alone together for an extended period of time.

"I couldn't risk it," said Kim at last. "I couldn't risk what might have happened before you came around."

"And just what might have happened?"

This time the tears spilled down her cheeks. "The last time I was pregnant with a baby girl, I didn't— I couldn't— we couldn't keep her safe. I felt her moving in me. We could see the outlines of her hands and her feet. We heard her heart beating and she was just about ready to meet us when—"

"I know, Kim," he said softly. "You don't have to tell me any more."

"I thought that if I stayed in Salem, it would happen again. Better to take her somewhere safe, where there wasn't so much tension. Because I couldn't go through losing Jeannie, too. It almost killed me the first time. I wouldn't have survived it again, and I needed to be here for Andrew."

"You could have told me that at the time. I had my memory back. I might not have seemed entirely myself, but I would have understood that, Kim. I would have helped you make the arrangements. I would have gone with you, or at least visited you."

"I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't have the words."

"Why didn't you say what you just said?"

"You would have taken it as an attack on Eve. She was very vocal about not wanting me to be pregnant again, and when you didn't have your memories you told me that you were… less than impressed with my relationship with Eve."

"That was when I didn't have my memories!" Shane exploded more loudly than he'd intended to.

"But you were still you, and you observed what you observed."

"I didn't know that I needed to take anything Eve said with a shaker full of salt."

"I wasn't in a position to fight that battle again," said Kim. "You had to choose your daughter, and I had to choose mine."

"She would have been ours, Kim. She should have been ours. I would have raised Jeannie and loved her, just as you tried your hardest with Eve. Except it would have worked with Jeannie, because Jeannie wouldn't have had the same terrible early life experiences that Eve had that— that made her unable to accept what you were offering. I know that you were more of a mother to Eve than either her adoptive mother or Gabrielle. Eve knows it, too. She even admitted it in therapy once."

"I remember," said Kim softly. "That was when I thought we were going to make it. All of us. You and me and Andrew and Eve."

"One of the happiest times of my life," said Shane. "One of the least lonely."

"I didn't want to abandon you," Kim repeated, pleading now.

"I know." Shane sighed. "What a mess it all became." He glanced sideways at Kim. "I must admit that I'm a bit surprised that any part of you wants to try again. What I said this morning is still true. Our relationship was hard. We were always in crisis. It wasn't sustainable. Every time I thought that we were on solid ground, there would be some new problem that was damn near insurmountable."

"And some of those problems were your fault and some of them were mine. But a lot of them weren't really either of our faults and they couldn't happen again. You had exactly one ex wife who was likely to kidnap our child and doctor his paternity test. You had exactly one obsessed ISA partner who was willing to murder your ex-wife and frame me. You had exactly one long-lost daughter who…" Kim trailed off.

"You can say whatever you'd like to say about Eve," said Shane begrudgingly.

"I have nothing to say about Eve beyond saying that I hope that this life she and Frankie are planning in Africa works out."

"As do I."

"I do wonder about Eve's cousin, though," Kim pushed, looking a question at Shane without asking.

"Joan Pascal? She looks remarkably like Gabrielle, doesn't she?"

"If Gabrielle was willing to give up one baby for adoption—"

"I checked," said Shane curtly, admitting that he'd had the same thought. "I went deep into her files and did everything short of drawing her blood myself. She's a niece who looks like her aunt. She's not Gabrielle's daughter, and so far as we know you are correct that I only have one long lost daughter from the time after Emma died and before I met you."

"Thank you for telling me that," said Kim.

"You had a right to know. Considering everything."

"Thank you," Kim repeated. "And thank you for telling me what the doctor said. I know that you hate being fussed over and I know that we aren't married anymore, but seeing you hurt, Shane— it's never going to be easy for me. It's always going to feel like something's ripping me into pieces. I'll pretend as much as I can, but—"

"Don't pretend."

"What do you mean?"

"Pretending is what got us here. Pretending that everything was fine and we could just move on and put each other in the past. Pretending that not saying something meant that it wasn't true. Pretending that— that—"

Their eyes locked.

"I love you," she said.

This time, Shane wasn't about to leave the words hanging between them. "I love you, too. I always have."

She kissed him and he kissed her back, long and hard and passionate. He was gasping for breath when she pulled away and began to remove his jacket and unknot his tie.

The jumble of words that spilled out of him made very little sense. Love you. Forever. Wasted time. Beautiful. Need you.

"You have me," she answered.

"Then take off that ridiculous outfit," he told her. "I didn't like seeing you in that green dress last night, and I don't like seeing you in that, either."

She started to divest herself of her own clothes, and Shane was quite enjoying the view when she stopped.

"Kim?" he asked.

"Did the doctor say that this sort of exertion was all right for you?"

Shane scoffed. "I'm fairly sure that the doctor meant to explain that this sort of exertion is absolutely necessary for me. I feel better than I've felt in years."

"Oh," said Kim. "Well, in that case."

She stood before him completely naked, just as irresistible as she had always been.

Twenty hours remained before the closing reception, and Shane had plans for every one of them.

To be continued.