A/N: We pick up after the events of Five Years and Ten Days and Ten Days More, in which Jamie and Eddie began to navigate engaged life. This piece takes us from a few months before the wedding until just afterwards.

This is also in answer to a series of thought-provoking prompts for Jamie to address his PTSD in a substantive way. I should warn you, I've been missing the gritty cop reality and angst that I used to write a lot, and there will be memories of death and traumas and people reacting badly.

Of course there will be smut n' fluff, because they are important too. And awfully fun.

As we are now in Hiatus Standard Time, the wedding will take place some time in summer, but it will be mid-October directly afterwards as Season 10 starts.

And A/N #2: for the rest of the summer I will be working on this story and Detour Ahead, and no others! One close-canon and one canon-divergent story is plenty!

Sunday, April 28, 2019
St. Patrick's Church

"Hey, Geoff," Jamie says, as Father Markhum looks up from his coffee and beckons them into the small study.

"Morning, Father," Eddie says, still carefully formal.

The sun is high and bright after the early 8:15 Mass, piercing the three tall, narrow Norman windows and picking out the details of age: the small bronze knobs on the bevelled glass panel doors of the original 1852 built-in bookcases, the marble-based pen rack and ink bottle on the thick oak desk.

Markhum keeps a couple of Cross fountain pens in the rack and signs his letters with them, though it's as much because he's one of those pen people as because he likes the tradition, Jamie thinks. His father is, too, though he's capitulated to Baker's silent warfare against fountain pens in the office since the incident with the cartridge in 2006.

The study was designed to be a retreat from the busy life of the world outside the windows, a place where a priest may invite the individual to an encounter with the holiness inherent within, rather than reminding an entire congregation of the Divine all around.

I'm badly in need of that today, Jamie thinks, and takes a slow inhale of old dust and incense and Eddie's light shampoo.

Jamie remembers when this was Father Llewellyn's study, and Father Rossi's before that. He spent hours here as a child and as a teenager, often poring over the few old texts stored here, and pretending to understand. Father Rossi in particular encouraged visits from his teenaged self, after Confirmation classes were over, patiently explaining the Latin and Greek roots of modern interpretations of church philosophy. Rossi understood that the youngest Reagan needed solid answers, not exhortations to keep the faith when the faith seemed contrary to experience.

Jamie credits Rossi with a great deal of the ease with which he began his law studies, preparing him for a career of seeking proofs for the basis of his beliefs, even though he knows Rossi would have preferred he become a priest himself. He's as comfortable in this study as he's been anywhere, and finds himself refreshed and revitalized after a visit. Especially in recent years, when he and Geoff Markhum get to unwind over a glass of good scotch on a Wednesday night, after shift and after Confession.

For Eddie, though, this is still a new and strange space, full of arcane sights and smells, and a literal and metaphorical wall of Catholic doctrine that is, at times, at serious odds with a great deal of what she believes and fights for every day. She's fascinated, but also often frustrated, especially when tenets of the faith are in complete conflict with evidence-backed science and the progressive society that she – and Jamie – also believes in.

Sometimes he can only nod and laugh. "We're human," he reminds her. "And we're cops. We're not saints out there in uniform. We couldn't be cops if we were. And the Canon isn't the Patrol Code - or the Criminal Code. We have to make those tough choices between the ideal and real life every day on the street, right? So no, it doesn't feel like cherry-picking to me. It's about what's applicable to the situation at hand."

She knows that pre-marriage counselling and discussions with married couples are requirements of a Catholic church wedding, and she's happy to participate. They are, after all, full of sound and tested advice for a long and healthy marriage, and it's a chance to dig deep into big questions they might not otherwise take the time for. But for her, it's an emotional workout, without the sense of rest and respite.

"You'd think it'd be easy for me to talk to you about anything, after all this time," she'd excused herself, after emerging in a tearful, confused daze from their first session, "But picking apart everything I believe about families, and why – and trying to explain the most important things about my life to a total stranger, however nice a person they are…I'm not used to this."

"I know," he'd assured her, with a squeeze of her hand as they left. "It's different when you've grown up talking about all this stuff with a family of investigators that doesn't believe in privacy rights."

But she'd spent hours doggedly working through the homework questions that Markhum had set them, and had waded knee-deep into the online courses he'd recommended, too. And she'd come back to the second counselling session with her homework and a lot of questions, and he'd loved her all the more. It was for him, for them, that she was putting in this effort.

He thinks often of what effort he might make on her behalf, to carry his part of this thing between them. He's ashamed to admit how often he stalls out. He can try to support her career with the insights he's gathered over a lifetime of being raised by cops. He can try to give her family stability and a chance to put down her roots without fear of anyone leaving her. But it feels like he's over-Reaganning her when he does.

Which is why he's still chewing himself out over the thing with Witten and the softball team. The light just faded in her eyes in a way that's stayed with him far longer than her anger.

He should have told her the truth about Joe a long, long time ago. That task shouldn't have fallen to Danny.

He should really have explained that he trusts her judgement, but he doesn't trust other officers not to try to get near her, or trash-talk her just like they do all the brass, including all the Reagans and Reagan cousins in the NYPD, too. That kind of talk can linger and have a corrosive effect, even if there's nothing at the heart of it. And he knows more than a few senior detectives who would be genuinely interested in her career ambitions while finding her new family connections tempting, too.

He should have explained that he honestly didn't realize what an intense, immediate reaction he'd have to the very idea of her joining a fraternal organization. He didn't realize how close to the surface his own thoughts and feelings were.

She knows all of this, of course. He knows she knows. But because he's a damn good lawyer, and more to the point, because he's the youngest of a pack of nimble-tongued Irish, he had a list of defenses at the ready.

Witten's a trouble-magnet.

They're all fronts for agendas.

We only join the ancient organizations.

He winces anew at the memory of that little bon mot.

Well, at least he was there with Sean at her first softball game yesterday, both of them cheering on the recently assembled NYPD Cuffs to a 4-2 win against the Department of Corrections Lady Larks.

Over brunch, before the game, he'd given her a tiny star in white gold on a fine chain necklace.

"For luck," he told her, fastening it for her. "I'm not trying to token my way out of trouble. I'm sorry I was such a jerk and I hope you kick ass out there, and those are two separate things."

She'd turned, her eyes alight, and she'd kissed him so sweet and soft that he felt unworthy of her. Later, he'd watched her jog out onto the field with her new teammates, in her blue uniform jersey with her own name in golden-yellow lettering across the back, and he felt like he was back in high school watching the cute girl with the bouncy blonde ponytail under her helmet, barely believing she'd just smiled at him.

It had been so good to see her throwing her whole self into something just for her. And it was more than a good day out. He'd missed that feeling of playing hard as part of a team, instead of his solitary boxing and running regimen. They'd trooped off the field, both teams sweaty and muddy and laughing, and headed out for beers together after cleaning up.

It was a different sensation, being introduced in the pub as "Janko's boyfriend Reagan."

Watching Eddie and her teammates and new friends had made him drag old fears and old memories into the light. There's a truth to those fears, yes, but they've also slowly formed iron bars around a vital part of him that he misses. With her help, he thinks, he might regain it. Learn to trust again, instead of seeing danger behind every overture from any cop he doesn't know personally.

He's never truly dealt with the fact people have tried to kill him. Not the first time, when it was fellow cops, and not the most recent time, either, when only Eddie's instincts and her fierce and furious love for him, stripped down to the bone after being shot herself, saved his life.

His reaction, when Joe's car was sabotaged with him inside, was to blame his father and Joe and the entire FBI and NYPD and God and himself. His reaction to nearly dying at point blank gunshot range was to ask Eddie to marry him, as soon as legally possible.

The more he tugs on that thread, the more of the tangle comes into view. It's all jumbled with the other deaths and near-deaths he's witnessed and been too close to. He's got them hopelessly confused with survivor guilt, duty, family love, and having to depersonalize the people he's taken down himself on the job. Staying on the shop floor was as much about staying under the radar and not making himself more of a target, as much as anything. Knowing his environment so intimately that he could detect the slightest shift in the atmosphere, and be on guard, with Eddie, his extra sidearm, beside him.

Eddie understood his mind before he did, he thinks with a small jolt. She knew it the moment Danny explained how Joe died. She instantly perceived the danger he faced back then, and intuited what it meant that he'd never spoken of it, in all their years together. She put it all together – his mother and grandmother's deaths, Joe, Vinny, Gina, Linda, and the too-close calls they had both had last year.

She hadn't said anything, not until she was sure that Danny had spoken to him –

(oh, and had Danny ever spoken to him: "Why the hell do you think our old man wanted us both to face down Malevsky with him beside us? For revenge? No, man. He needed us to see it was over with our own eyes. Better to deal with seeing brains on the wall once than be looking over your shoulder forever. I still cried on Linda for a week after that. I was that terrified of losing you, too. And if you think you're on some higher plane than that, kid, I got news for you.")

– but she'd clearly forgiven him very quickly and was concerned enough that he saw it in her eyes.

She's been very patient since then, waiting for him to figure it out. He remembers how many times she's been a target herself, for being his partner, for being a woman, and how she reached out to him for help when she needed it. She's tougher than he is in many ways. She's so familiar with being a target that she was able to step into that mode and use it when a case called for it, trusting her team to have her back, and he was the one who went overboard and freaked out about it.

But I'm fine, Danny's the one with PTSD. Two tours in the hell of the Iraq theatre with shitty ground support, bad leadership and bombed-out civilians. Who wouldn't be traumatized? But me? I'm here at home with everything I need. I don't have any of the symptoms of PTSD because I have no reason to…I didn't die, and everyone who did knew the risks of what they were doing…

Oh, that's not true.

I just don't show any of the symptoms of PTSD, because I know what they are and I think I'm too smart for that.

"You're looking well," Markhum says to Eddie. He scoots his chair to one side of his desk, to avoid giving the impression of a boss. Eddie still has to remind herself she doesn't have to stand at attention until she's invited to sit.

"Thank you," she smiles, and slides into one of the comfy old green guest chairs. "It's been a good week."

She gives Jamie one of her old radiant smiles as he sits in the matching chair beside her. He drinks in the fathomless love in her blue eyes and the glow of her hair in the sunlight and the winking star at her throat and the triumphant long scrape down her arm from sliding into home base, and for a moment he wants to put his head in her lap and weep for no specific reason other than that he trusts her with every particle of himself and he's out of denials.

"It has been a good week," he agrees, smoothing his tie to stop himself from fidgeting with it, "but as I'm sitting here now, I have to admit that the week before wasn't so good. And I'm starting to realize how deep a lot of it went. Is it okay – " he turns to Eddie, "Could we get into the stuff about the softball team a bit today, instead of whatever's on the program? And about Joe," he adds. "Because knowing you know about it isn't enough. I don't want to be dragging all that into our marriage, and I – I need some help with it."

"That's why we're here," she responds quietly. It takes Jamie a moment to realize what she means, and he looks at her again. She's holding out her hand, if he wants to take it.

He does.

"I know I don't have to worry about you," she says carefully, "But I do worry for you. I think you've been carrying so much for so long it's just become normal, until something happens to put you off balance. So if you hadn't brought it up, I was going to, soon. Either here or through work, and with or without me there. Whichever works best for you."

"Oh."

She smiles. "You can't scare me off, Reagan. Deal with it."

Markhum nods to the coffee thermos on the desk.

"You might need some of that. Help yourselves. Let's get started."