Hey there people still reading! Not much Lisbon/Jane interaction in this chapter but I wanted to make sure Lisbon and Marcus had the conversation that they're kind of going to have to have after everything that happened. Definitely wasn't a Marcus fan on the show because honestly I found the fact that he seemed to be rushing Lisbon for a firm emotional commitment to be pretty creepy. HOWEVER, you know that however he and Lisbon finally settle things is going to be super awkward/angry.

Obviously, Donaldson couldn't go home again. The thought occurred to him along with a rush of what felt like super-intense gravity trying to pull him down through the floor of the room. Until that point he'd always thought that when people talked about "the enormity of the situation" it was a mere euphemism; this was a physical weight. For an instant, he pictured himself being sat upon by a massive, invisible elephant. The idea tickled him enough that he let out a single puff of laughter which sounded embarrassing and obscene in the quiet medical suite.

The nurse, who had given him permission to change out of the flimsy medical gown, called to him over the sliding curtain that bisected the room, "Everything okay, Captain?"

"Sure," he replied. "Sure thing." A long pause. Donaldson could hear the guy typing something into his computer. "Do you know where I'll be staying tonight? I mean, I can't go home can I?"

"I couldn't say, Sir. Special Agent Jenkins should be here in a minute. He'll have more information than I do."

"But, they're not charging me with anything."

"Not my place to speculate, Captain."

Donaldson finished dressing and sat on the examining table, consciously straightening his spine and rolling his shoulders back. Of course they weren't charging him with anything, it was just that he couldn't go home right now. They'd have to assign him new housing, or maybe he'd find a place off-base. Living on-base wasn't mandatory and single soldiers on-base were required to live with roommates. That was what he'd do: get a new place and fix it up. He was good with his hands. All that HGDIY stuff that Madison had been so crazy for. They definitely weren't going to charge him with anything. He was the classic boy-next-door type, the classic tennis-and-swimming jock with a lean and efficient build to match. People liked him, he'd actually been voted Most Likely to Succeed and Most Popular in high school. You could tell by just looking at him that he'd never do anything to hurt Madison and the girls.

"Hi, Marcus," Lisbon said, hating herself just the tiniest bit for the instinctual note of false levity in her own voice: a drifting fragment of her chaotic childhood where even rote placation might rechannel her father's anger away from its intended target.

"So, I assume by the lack of contact that something came up." Under Marcus's cold anger, deeply buried, she could hear the faintest note of hope; a note so subtle that she might not have noticed it if Marcus hadn't been so determined to move things along between the two of them by peeling himself open emotionally. The act of "letting her in" as he'd called it was less an invitation than it was an engulfing, she realized now that she'd had more than a moment's distance. He'd wanted badly for their relationship to be an end to his searching for something after his divorce. She supposed she didn't blame him, but that didn't make it right. At any rate, that's how she could hear that sweet, singing undertone of hope that quietly begged her to say something, anything, to explain why she hadn't been on that plane, hadn't answered her phone, why boxes of her things were sitting in his place as a constant reminder of whatever terrible fault line had opened up in their relationship.

"Uh, yeah," she managed, lamely.

She could almost hear him kill that earlier hope. His voice hardened and sharpened to a razor edge, the better to cut its throat. "Jane."

"Marcus, I'm sorry. I…"

"Please. Just save it, Teresa. Save me the fucking false excuses, okay?"

She was suddenly excruciatingly aware of the fact that she was having this conversation in the most exposed of locations: right in front of the briefing room in this fishbowl of an office. A light pressure on her left elbow made her start slightly. She looked up and found Jane's sympathetic eyes steady on her. Gently, he guided her into a nearby interview room.

"Stay?" he mouthed, a question quirking his eyebrows.

She shook her head, knowing that he'd easily read the gratitude in her refusal. "I didn't plan on things going this way, Marcus. Things between us just moved so fast."

"I'm sorry you feel that way. I thought we were both on the same page."

"We were! At least, I thought we were, but things have changed for me. That might not be the most satisfying answer, but it's the one I've got." She held her breath. Jane had better not make her regret any of this, not as long as they both lived. The more rational part of her knew that wouldn't be possible. They were both humans, both had perhaps more than their fair share of stubbornness and yearning for independence. Very likely there would be moments where each felt regret at taking the harder, more unfamiliar path. It was the surety that underlay all that that Lisbon was counting on to carry them through. Surety in steady looks and sympathetic hearts and the knowledge that, whatever it meant, good or bad, they were each other's person.

"I knew, I KNEW there was something going on between you two."

"There wasn't. At least, not then."

"He's going to make you fucking miserable, Teresa, you know that."

She felt her cheeks warm with the first flush of anger. "Maybe so," she managed evenly. Getting mad at Marcus was a good recipe for ending up with all of her personal belongings burned in the public square. They had those in DC, right? Then again, Marcus was a reasonable man. It was more likely her boxes would have a nice, private date with a trash compactor.

He laughed, but there was no happiness. "C'mon, Teresa. He's a psychopath. You said yourself he was a cold bastard. He's incapable of caring about anyone but himself."

Forget the boxes. If they were gone, so be it. "That is out of line, Marcus. And I think you know that."

"You're out of line, Teresa. You don't fucking call me for almost three days now, don't answer my phone calls. I don't know where you got this idea that you can walk all over me and I'll just lie back and take it. The last time we talked, you agreed to MARRY me and now you're not coming at all? I'm sorry, I don't switch gears that fast."

She bit her lip. In a way, he was right. There was no good or clean way out of this and no one involved was going to be covering themselves in glory anytime soon. She wasn't about to insult his pride and provoke further ire by delivering any version of the "you're a good man" speech. Most likely he already hated her; might as well go for broke. "My things are at your place, right?"

"Right," he replied tightly, sounding as if he were a hairsbreadth away from collapsing under the weight of the sharp reversal of his fortunes. "Right. You'll need those for...for whatever the hell you do in the future."

"Yeah. I can come and get them. We just caught a case, but I should have time in…"

"Tomorrow."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'll be at work. I'll leave your name and a key with the desk manager. I want you gone by the time I get home."

"Marcus, you're not being…"

"Fair? Reasonable? I'm done with all that with you. I'm all out of fair and reasonable. I gave you all that before and now I'm done. Anything that's not gone gets tossed. Understand?"

"Sure." She clamped her lips together so tightly the small muscles at the corners of her mouth began to ache in protest, but she was too afraid of what might slip out if she relaxed her control even the tiniest bit.

The flat silence on the other end of the phone told her that Marcus had hung up. When Jane came in to see her she was partially collapsed in one of the interview chairs. No tears but her eyes looked very large and somewhat watery and her mouth was drawn into a long, miserable line. He brushed his fingers lightly against her temple, curving softly through her hair, and behind her ear. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of her own breath for what felt like a very long time.

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?