It's dark and heavy and angsty, and I woke up with this in my head. Wouldn't go anywhere until it was on paper.

Invincible. To any outsider he always seemed invincible. More lives than a cat, and at least two guardian angels on each shoulder. He could take risks flying, he could fire an AK-47 in an open court room, he could outsmart terrorists, murderers, survive torture in a Chinese prison and step on a landmine and walk away with barely a scratch.

Some of it was luck. Some of it was brutal strength. Other times thinking on his feet. A lot of those times, it was a dispassionate plan. It was always about being in control.

He'd learned to be in control. Once his father went missing, he felt something inside him shift, and he needed to be strong. Strong for his mother, strong for his dad, because it was his job now to look after his mother until he was back.

Boys don't cry. How many times hadn't he heard that? You need to be strong for your mother, son. Instinctively, he'd known he'd better heed that advice, even though he'd wanted nothing more than to scream and cry and beg the universe for his dad back.

The holding in had become custom. He needed to be strong. He needed to keep his emotions under control because there was little use for them. Not in a cockpit, flying ten thousand feet above the earth, not in a courtroom where he needed to convince a jury. Emotions made you vulnerable, and the last thing he needed was to be vulnerable.

So he bit back on his emotions, control executed with perfection, because that was what he did. No tears. The three times she had seen him cry he'd given himself hell over, but it was what it was.

He held on to the same control when he needed to kill the terrorists, unstrap her from the table she was bound to, and make sure they got the hell out of there. Destroying the Stingers brought some sense of accomplishment, but crashing the plane made him feel the control he was so desperately trying to hold onto, slip through his fingers.

It hadn't stopped. He'd needed a few moments to catch his breath, just to realize that he'd done it and she was safe. Before he had the chance to wrap his brain around it, she'd demanded more answers than he could give her and the situation had spiraled even more in the opposite direction. He was on a roller coaster he couldn't stop. He couldn't punch out and there was no emergency break that he could pull on.

Even now, a few days later, standing in what used to be his office, he was looking through a fog. His heart was beating a mile a minute, his hands were clam, his mouth felt full of cotton balls. It took the last of his long-perfected need for control not to let go and scream. This was all unfair.

He'd laid it on the line, he'd given up everything to come and save her, trying to table a conversation that he knew was only going to make things worse when neither of them could think straight, and now the Admiral was punishing him for not breaking the code that he claimed to live by.

Never leave a man behind.

She'd told him never. She hadn't even told him no. She had told him never. If him giving up the Navy hadn't been the ultimate act of selflessness, of his love for her, he didn't know what it would take to make her see that.

His heart started beating even faster and he tried to swallow. He controlled his reaction to his discharge, biting down on the remarks bubbling up in his throat, the disappointment in his Commanding Officer, sorry, former Commanding Officer, carefully veiled. He could do this. He could hold on to that last sliver of control and not let them see how it affected him.

Harriet looked up at him with apprehension, her blue eyes filled with tears. "Sir…"

"It's all right, Lieutenant." He wrapped an arm around her in a brief hug and kissed her cheek. "Be happy, Harriet."

Jennifer struggled for control as much as he did, but where he had learned to conceal it behind his perfected mask of indifference, hers was clearly visible on her face. "Commander…"

Squaring his shoulders with much more bravado than he felt, he shook his head. "Chin up, Petty Officer." Then softly: "You should be proud of yourself, Jen. I know I am."

A single tear slipped down her cheek and she nodded, swallowing hard. "Aye, sir. Thank you, sir."

He nodded to Bud, then stole a last glance in the direction of her office. Did she feel like everything that had happened in the past few weeks was beyond their control, too? Had the lashing out she'd given him more to do with her struggle to make sense of all of this, just as much as he was? He didn't know. All he knew that he wanted her to be okay. It all came down to this, didn't it?

"Please be happy, Sarah," he whispered to no one in particular. God knew she deserved to be.

He still clung to his control leaving the building, into his car, back to his apartment. The little red light of his answering machine blinked, but he ignored it. Whoever it was, they wouldn't need him. Both the Admiral and Mac had made it crystal clear. He wasn't wanted. Not his presence, not his loyalty, not his friendship, nor his love.

He'd been strong for everyone else, whenever they needed it. He'd always get everybody out and make sure they were all okay, because that was his role in life. They could all lean on him, because when he was there, everything was going to be okay.

All he had wanted was for her to be safe. That was the only thing this expedition had been about. The way they'd had to handle it was unorthodox at best, but it was how things went. Especially when Webb was involved. Even her dispassionate plans had a way of not being enough in situations like these, so they had to improvise. He wasn't sure who he hated more at this point: the Admiral for breaking the SEAL code, or Webb for not thinking the mission through and providing decent back up. Or had Webb figured he'd come crashing through the door anyway, because that was what he'd always done?

The water he tried to swallow had trouble going down, and the only reason his hand wasn't shaking was because he willed it not to. Just as he willed his heart to slow down, pushed down on the hyperventilating he felt simmering. Not yet.

The iron grip on his emotions had gotten him through the toughest of times before. He could do it again. Start again. He needed to think ahead.

She had told him once he needed to let go before this control of his became a noose he could no longer untie. But his control was all he had. Today had made that abundantly clear.

He didn't give himself time to think it through. Going into the bedroom, he got rid of his suit in favor of jeans and a T-shirt and packed a bag. In fact, packed up half his apartment, stored everything in his Lexus and went on his way.

The drive gave him something to focus on, other than his troubled breathing, pumping heartbeat and the never ending cycle of reruns of the South American debacle in his head. He could pretend for a little while this was only a trip; he'd be back in DC and back at JAG after the weekend. He hadn't said goodbye to her forever. It was only for a little while.

They both needed time to think about what had happened, time to come to grips with it. That was it. He hadn't lost her forever yet.

Sarah Rabb looked up out of the kitchen window when she heard a car pull into the driveway. She recognized it from earlier visits and frowned. What was he doing here in the middle of the week?

Stranger still, he killed the engine but didn't get out of the car. Throwing her dish towel on the counter, she slowly made her way to the front porch.

She couldn't see his face when he finally made it out of the vehicle, but she knew her grandson well enough to know something was seriously wrong. His shoulders slumped, his steps slow, heavy, as if putting one foot in front of the other took every grain of energy he had left. Maybe it did.

When his face finally came into view, she pressed her lips together and felt a shiver run up her spine. Unfortunately, she recognized the emotions in his eyes, too.

He willed himself to take the first step up the porch, but when he saw the expression on her face and the concern in her eyes, something in him snapped. His breathing became ragged, and he gulped for air. His legs gave out from under him, leaving him on his knees at the edge of the porch, trembling, grasping for something to hold on to. A first tear slipped down his cheek and the control he'd fought so hard to keep, vanished into thin air.

When it did, he finally let go.