Forgiveness of Things Past

Note: Takes place during and after "Remembrance of Things Past". Many thanks to Lanie who helped me find the perfect title! :)

Something was wrong with the grave. Francine saw it long before she reached it. It was only when she stood right before it that she couldn't refuse to acknowledge it any longer.

Someone had dug up the grave.

Someone had dug up the grave and broken open the coffin and Lee's body was missing. Francine didn't know how long she stood there, dumbfounded, trying to think but unable to form a coherent thought. Why would anyone dig up Lee's grave and steal his body?

Someone touched her shoulder. She jumped and spun around, ready to strike. The man behind her quickly stepped back and raised his hands.

"Sorry, miss. I didn't want to startle you. Are you okay?"

Francine took a closer look at him. Judging from his clothes – work-gloves, green dungarees and plaid shirt, baseball cap, wellingtons – he was one of the cemetery caretakers. She thought she remembered seeing him somewhere in the background during the funeral but she still retreated a few steps. With an agent-killer on the loose you never knew.

"Did you see who did this?" she asked gesturing at the opened grave.

The man shook his head.
"No. I'm working here three days a week and two days ago, it was fine."
He frowned.
"Who would do such a thing?"

Francine blinked. She felt as if she were waking up from a trance.

Who would do such a thing? Well, obviously either someone who wants Lee's body real bad or someone who wants to make sure he really is dead and buried.

"I don't know", she said. "Would you please stay here and see to it that no one touches anything? I'll have to call this in."

Billy. She had to tell Billy. He would know what to do. In fact, she was ready to bet her entire wardrobe he wouldn't only know what to do but also what was going on here.

God help you, Billy Melrose, if I find out you lied to me about Lee being dead!

As it turned not only was Lee faking his own death exactly what was going on but also, Billy knew about it. And Amanda. Amanda King had been in on this almost from the start while she, Lee's friend of many years, had been left in the dark. Francine kept pacing in front of Billy's desk while he was talking to Lee. It was either pacing or smashing something. It didn't matter what as long as it shattered with a loud, satisfying crash.

Billy frowned at the receiver in his hand.
"He hung up."

Francine didn't answer. She didn't trust herself to say anything without betraying her inner turmoil. She stopped pacing, though, and folded her arms across her chest.

Billy sighed.
"Look, I'm sorry you're upset –"

"Upset?" she cut him off and laughed. "Why on Earth would I be upset?"
Billy tried to say something but she raised her hand to stop him.
"I'm not upset. And I have no time to talk - I have to get back to work. Excuse me please."

She turned on her heel and left, closing the door only a little more forcefully than was necessary. A huge accomplishment considering she felt more like tearing it off its hinges and hurling it across the bullpen. She wasn't upset. She was furious. Which was so much better than being hurt.

Lee didn't expect to run into trouble at the Agency when he returned. Of course that was before he saw Francine. When the elevator doors opened she was standing in the corridor talking to Duffy. When she spotted him her expression suddenly changed. Hardened. Grew cold.

Uh-oh …

In his frantic rush to get to Amanda and during the ensuing fight with Sinclair he had completely forgotten about Francine and how she would react when she found out he had only faked his death.

She's upset. Of course she is.

Maybe they shouldn't have left her out of the loop. He sped up his step. He needed to talk to her – but she obviously didn't want to talk to him. She turned on her heel and walked away, down the corridor in the opposite direction.

"Francine, wait!" he called after her, drawing the attention of everyone in hearing range.

He heard something clatter to the floor behind him.

Francine walked faster. He followed her trying to catch up, only to get a door slammed in his face when she suddenly took a sharp turn to the right and dodged into a room. Lee heard the deadbolt click in place.

"What the – Fran-"

"Scarecrow!" Billy called behind him.

He turned.

Billy stood in the corridor just outside the bullpen, surrounded by agents who were all staring at Lee. He wondered why until it occurred to him they probably had found out just now, by him showing up here, that he wasn't dead after all.

"Leave her be", Billy said and nodded at the bullpen. At his office.

Lee glanced at the door again. Billy probably was right. Francine wouldn't talk to him – or listen to him – as long as she was that upset. Better give her some time to calm down.

Francine listened at the door. She heard Lee's footsteps move away. Still – better wait a little. It might be a trick. He might only pretend to leave to lure her out. She didn't want to talk to him now. She actually felt like she didn't want to talk to him for quite a while.

"Uh …" someone said behind her.

She turned. A young man, vaguely familiar, stood by the second copier clutching a stack of papers to his chest. He wore glasses that threatened to slide off his nose.

"Oh."
Francine followed his gaze from the locked door to her and back to the locked door. She smiled at him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see you."
Her brain connected a name with his face.
"You're – Beaman, right? Effrom Beaman from Fabrication. What are you doing here? This isn't your level."

He hadn't been working here for long, had he? Maybe he had got lost?
"I – well –"
He reached up to adjust his glasses. The papers slipped from his grasp and scattered on the floor. He looked down.
"Oh great", he muttered and scrambled to pick them up.

Francine noticed he seemed uncommonly flustered, even embarrassed. Before she could offer to help Beaman had scooped up the papers.

"The – uh, the copiers on our level don't work. Some of the guys from Tech are on it but we needed these papers so I came up here", he murmured without looking at her. "Excuse me please – I have to go."

He stepped around her, still without looking at her and leaving more space between them than strictly necessary, and reached for the doorknob.

"It's locked", Francine reminded him.

"Right. Thanks."

He turned the latch, slipped through the door and hurried off down the corridor, towards the elevators.

Francine looked after him.

What was that?

She shook her head and stepped out in the corridor. Neither Lee nor Billy were anywhere in sight. Good. She didn't want to talk to any of them right now. Maybe later. Tomorrow or so.

When she returned to the bullpen, though, "tomorrow or so" got postponed indefinitely. She happened to glance at Billy's office and see him and Lee through the window since the blinds weren't drawn. They were both laughing.

Francine straightened.

"Oh, you think this is funny?" she murmured. "Fine."

Duffy, who had been approaching her, stopped, did a U-turn and quickly headed the other way.

One week later Lee was going over a new assignment with Billy in Billy's office. When the door opened he looked up from the file he was studying. Francine entered. She brushed past him without sparing him a glance, as if he weren't there, and dropped a file folder on Billy's desk.

"Duffy's expense report for the Dubai assignment", she said, turned and left again.

Lee looked after her.
"She's talking to you?" he asked.

"Only as much as strictly necessary."
Billy opened the folder, took a look at its contents and closed it again.

Lee shook his head.
"The last time she didn't talk to me for this long was when we broke up." He turned to Billy with a half-smile. "Remember that drama?"

"Oh yes, I do – and how it ended."
Billy scowled at him.
"You better go and fix this, Scarecrow. Fast."

"Me?" Lee protested. "This whole thing about faking my own death was your idea. Including not telling her anything."

"I know", Billy said and folded his hands. "But she's more likely to listen to you. I'm her boss – you're her friend. Besides, I already tried."

Lee couldn't argue with that.

"Go after her", Billy told him. "We can finish this later."

Lee hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't want to mend things with Francine – he just had hoped he could wait until her mood improved. And this assignment here was important. On the other hand – the longer he waited the worse it would get. As much as he hated drama and people making a scene he didn't want things to escalate to a point similar to last time. And besides, Francine was his friend and he did owe her an apology.

"You're right."

He got up and put his folder on Billy's desk.

"If I'm not back in an hour – ask her where she buried my body parts …"

He found Francine in the copier room – alone. Perfect. He closed the door. The conversation might get quite loud so closing the door might be futile but he still didn't want anyone else to catch more of it than necessary. Francine must have heard him but she didn't look up from the stack of paper she was running through the copier.

"Hey", he said.

She didn't react.

Lee frowned.

"So, how long are you going to not talk to me this time?" he asked.

Francine picked up the copies and originals, set them aside and loaded the copier with more papers.

"Hey! I'm trying to talk to you!"
Lee stepped closer to her. She moved away, still not looking at him. He sighed.
"Look, I'm sorry we upset you –"

"Upset? Oh, I can assure you I'm not upset."

She finally did talk – and she looked at him, too, and it was plain to see she really wasn't upset. She kept her expression neutral but Lee knew her too well to fall for it. The stormy grey of her eyes told him she was hurt and angry. He remembered that kind of look only too well from when they had broken up.

"I –" he started but didn't get any further.

"I mean – why would I be upset?" Francine went on and anger was clearly dominating now. "Just because you two made me think one of my best friends was killed? Now why on Earth would I be upset about that? Or about Amanda King being in on it – Amanda, whom you've known for barely a few months."

She turned away from him again, back to the copier, grabbing the copies that came out of it and tossing them on the stack of papers already done.

Francine thought of those few days after Billy had told her Lee was dead. Those terrible nights where she hadn't been able to sleep, where she lay awake for hours thinking about Lee and crying, too, because it was better to cry at home, in her bedroom, where no one could see her than to get all teary-eyed during the day whenever she was reminded of him at the Agency.

Finding out that Billy and Lee had lied to her had been bad enough. Finding out that Amanda King – Amanda King, of all the people out there! – had known about that whole scheme, too, had been like a slap in the face. And now Lee stood here, right before her, and probably thought all he had to do was give her one of his radiant boyish smiles and all would be forgiven.

"Look, I'm really sorry but –" he started.

She threw a quick glance at him. At least he wasn't smiling.

"I don't care", she cut him off because she knew exactly what he was going to say.

It very likely would contain such keywords as "need-to-know only" and "important" or "vital" and all that stuff Billy already had told her. She had just turned and walked out of his office when he had been halfway through his little speech and Billy hadn't stopped her.

"I don't care if you're sorry because, honestly, you should have known better – both of you – than to do something like that. That's the second time within the past two years I lost a friend – or at least thought I did. Allan was my friend, too."

Lee paled just the tiniest bit and retreated just the tiniest fraction upon her mentioning his former partner. The one who had taken a bullet in the head for him. The muscles in his jaw clenched.

"Do you have to bring him up?" he asked, his voice tense.

"Yes. Because that's how I felt when Billy told me you were stabbed and died on the way to the hospital. And when I went to the cemetery to try and get myself sorted out your grave had been dug up and –"
She stopped and shook her head.
"Never mind. At least that's how I found out you were still alive."
She turned away from him again.

Lee didn't say anything. He remained silent for quite a while. Francine wondered what was going through his mind. Most likely, he was thinking about Allen. The only sound was that of the copier producing more copies. Then that stopped, too. Lee still didn't speak.

"I'm not a block of ice, you know?" Francine said quietly. "Even though almost everyone here seems to think so."

"Hey."

She turned her head to look at Lee. Both his expression and voice had softened considerably.

"I'm sorry. Really. If I'd known –"

"You two would still have done the exact same thing because, form a professional point of view, that's exactly what you do in a situation like that."
She half wanted Lee to protest but of course he didn't. They both knew she was right.
"From a personal point of view, though," she went on, "if you want us two to remain on speaking terms you better not do something like this again."

Lee opened his mouth to tell her that as much as he would like to he couldn't promise her that. A soft, almost timid knock on the door stopped him.

Francine straightened.
"Yes?" she called.

The door opened and revealed a young guy in a suit that for some reason seemed out of place on him. He wore glasses and was carrying a stack of papers.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt but –"
He patted his papers.
"I need to copy those and –"
He shrugged.

"You're not interrupting", Francine said with a smile. "We were done anyways, right?"

Lee nodded and put his hands in his pockets. He was pretty sure that guy didn't belong on this level but didn't know where to place him.

Francine picked up her copies.
"Your copiers still haven't been replaced?" she asked.

The guy shook his head.
"No. There was a delay. I don't know why – we were told Supplies is trying to get it fixed."

"Oh well, in that case you should have them by Christmas if you're lucky."

"Christmas?"
The guy smiled at Francine – and immediately stopped again as if he had caught himself doing something he wasn't supposed to do.

"Yes, right, maybe Easter next year", Francine said.

The guy only nodded but didn't reply.

"Well, then – I guess I'll see you around."
Francine gave him a parting smile and left. Lee followed her.

"Who was that?" he asked when they had moved away from the copier room.

"Effrom Beaman from Fabrication. He's been coming up here to copy stuff all week long."

"Because the copiers on his level are all broken", Lee said.

It didn't make any sense. The Steno Pool was closer to Fabrication and they had copiers there, too. Why was he bothering to come up here instead?
Then he saw Francine's smile and understood.
"Ah, I see. He's not coming for the copiers."

"Let's just say I have it on very good authority that their copiers were fixed days ago."

"And he's still coming up here only to get a glimpse of you." Lee shook his head. "Poor guy. He's absolutely crazy about you. Maybe someone should tell him he's not your type."
He glanced at Francine and kept his expression neutral.

"Maybe someone should tell Amanda King she's not your type", Francine shot back without blinking.

Lee almost stumbled.
"What do you – she's not – now wait a minute!"
He regained his stride.
"Amanda King does not have a crush on me!" he protested.

"Of course she does", Francine said. "Like every other woman working here – at least those who are still breathing."

Lee stopped and stared at her. She kept walking. Before she entered the bullpen she turned to him, just for a moment, to give him that little smile that told him he had been forgiven. He took his hands out of his pockets and breathed a sigh of relief. Francine Desmond wasn't someone he wanted to be at odds with – and not just because it made working here difficult.