A/N : God! I need to start a new Thirdwatch story like I need a hole in my head!! But it started itself so here it is.

A from Faith's recovery. Before the phantom pain, the therapy.. and all that junk.

My newly reclaimed feet buckled when I heard him.

"I know. I know Honey I miss you too." He sighed deeply. "What was I supposed to do? She was completely helpless Caroline, I've been with her for 16yrs. What kind of man would I be if I left her when she was in a wheelchair?

I talked to the lawyer again today. About the kids. He filed a temporary injunction. He said the judge would leave it up to them. Emily's sad, but she understands. Charlie just misses you."

I'd worked so hard. So hard for that moment. The moment when I could show the world confidently I could walk again.

And now he'd never see it.

Because I'd gone from the bed to the wheelchair to the crutches to the cane to walking..

But now.. I ran..

God help me I ran.

Five years later.

(Staten Island side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge)

Getting pulled over was not the plan.

Getting off the bridge and off of that damn island was. At least it hadn't happened in Brooklyn, where the possibility of a cop knowing me was an actual possibility. I should have taken the long way. My ridiculous quest to get back to Maryland before tomorrow made me do the thing I swore I'd never do: return to New York City. That's how I ended up here on the damn Verrazano anyway. Speeding out of Brooklyn. Running once again from my old life, but now the red and blue lights make me numb.

For a second I squint at the small bag next to me. I know that my badge is in there somewhere, buried under years of accumulated stuff. I wonder if I flash it at the guy he'll give me a break.

I don't know how convincing it will be when I stop to blow the dust off. I'd like to pretend I don't know why I've kept it all these years, but I do.

I go pull out my license and registration when me my blackberry rings. I force it to my ear and continue to rummage.

"Not now Alan I'm getting pulled over." I quip.

"Told you to fly." Comes the tart reply.

"Come on, I can't be on the phone when the get up here, they hate that."

"You know, you only write about cops, E. You have no idea what they actually like and dislike."

"Later."

Usually comments like this only sting, but today it lights my stomach on fire. He's right I should have flown. Or at the very least, gone around NYC. I've never known anyone from the 122, so I have no name to drop to get me out faster.

I hear the cop tap the window and I roll it down with out glancing up.

"I'm looking for my stuff." My fingers brush up against my badge and I'm once again reminded of why I keep it.

The reason is the same every time I hold it in my hands and picture a certain pair of blue eyes.

"Jesus." As soon as I hear it the burning in my stomach turns into an icy foam. My hands still, forgetting their purpose as cool shock runs through me. I lift my head, my frustrated expression dropping. "Christ."

I turn and look into a certain pair of blue eyes.

"Faith?" I'm motionless, he squints his eyes like he's trying to be sure. For one insane second I think maybe my brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses will throw him. I hand him my license, as if to add more doubt, but his eyes slip closed when he sees the name and he sighs. "Get out of the car."

"Why?" I suddenly hope the slight accent I've acquired will quadruple. "Is there a problem officer?"

"Damn it Faith get out of the car." He pulls the lock up through the lowered window and swings the door open. He's reaching for my arm when he realizes his damn near elderly partner has gotten out and is clutching his sidearm. Bosco moves between the two of us, shielding me from the idea itself more than any actual danger, but his chest heaves all the same. The last time he saw me I was recovering from a gun shot wound. "Shit! Sam put the damn gun away!"

He turns back to me and pulls me reluctantly away from the car before giving me a long look. His hands rest lightly on my shoulders before traveling down my arms and up again, like he's checking me for injury. I guess finding none visible he impulsively pulls me to him. I feel the tremble that flows from top to bottom as he holds me and then it's over.

He pulls back dragging me to the passenger side of my jeep and hoists me inside. Before I could move, I hear the familiar click of nickel plated handcuffs doing what you buy them to do. I jerk my arm away only to wince as the round plates pull against the roll bar of the jeep.

"Boz what the hell?" He and I both flinch with the easy of my outburst, as if yesterday we spent the evening catching skells in the RMP.

"Insurance." He turns to his partner. "Sam I'm done for the day." He's yanking off his radio. "Tell Sarge I had an emergency." Sam regards me for a moment before shrugging and taking the walkie.

"Surething Maurice." He doesn't question, although I can tell he wants to. I don't snicker at the Maurice, even though I want to. He rounds the other side, jumping into my car before casting me another look of numb disbelief.

"You can't do this." I mutter.

"I just did."

"I could have screamed." I balk shaking my head at his stupidity with a yank on the cuffs. "I could have claimed you were kidnapping me."

"But you didn't." He's still breathing heavily and part of me wants to tell him to take little breaths like the therapist told him too.

"This isn't legal." I huff.

"Neither is faking your death." He whispers.

"I didn't fake my-." Even I know I don't deserve to be indignant.

"No. You just left us all to wonder." He snaps. "That's much better, you're right."

He goes back to his heavy breathing and the car goes back to it's silence. I for my part can't take my eyes off of him. He looks older, older than five years should make him and more than a little broken.

I wonder for a second who he pissed off to end up a traffic cop on Staten Island. He'd have had to go pretty high, like Police Commissioner, but hey with Bosco anythings possible. Hell, for all I knew about New York Politics, Cruz could have been Comish by now. My mind is playing out that scenario when he suddenly speaks again.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Where the hell are you taking me?"

"I looked everywhere.." He sucks in more air and I watch his fingers tighten on the wheel. "I wanna know where the hell you were."

"Maryland." I whisper, earning a glance from him before he sets his gaze back onto the road.

"My place." He says softly a few seconds later.

"What?"

"Where I'm taking you." He reminds. "My place." For one insane moment I want to tell him that Queens is back the other way, but instead I just let him drive down the coast until he takes the South Beach exit.

I know he feels my questioning glance, but he ignores it and I guess he has the right too.

When he pulls into the driveway of a small little house and I realize the possibility for the first time, Maurice Boscorelli could have a family. A wife, kids, a dog.

I stare at the house for a few seconds blinking at him.

"Wait here."

Before I can tell him how ridiculous that sounded to a woman handcuffed to the roll bar of her own jeep, he's in the yard on his phone, talking softly.

I wonder if he's telling his wife about me. I wonder if it's the first she's heard of me. I picture her inside making dinner with her preschool age daughter. The image makes me breath as quickly as Bosco had been.

He opens the door slowly, phone still pressed against his ear as he fishes out his handcuff key.

"Thanks Ma." The phone is clipped shut before I could say anything. Like 'Help Rose! He's got me cuffed to the car!" I doubt I would have anyway.

"Did you tell her?"

"That you were here? No."

"Thank you." I whisper.

"I didn't do it for you." He growls unlocking the cuffs. He watches me gather up my bag walks cautiously behind me to the house.

"I'm not gonna run Bosco."

"Forgive me for not trusting you, Emily. Or would you prefer Ms. Charles?" He sneers. I close my eyes when he says it, biting back the urge to ask about the real Emily and Charlie. I don't want to know how perfect there life is with Fred and the woman on the other end of the phone.

"I wanted to feel close to them." I whisper and he scoffs.

"No you didn't." His head shakes frantically. "If you wanted to feel close to them you'd have been close to them. Maryland is not close to them- Faith!" He spits out my name like it's an accusation itself, like he's daring me to try to pretend with him. When I don't he jerks the door open and shoves me inside.

We are not met with the wafting smell of homemade bread or Italian food being presisley prepared over a hot stove. Unstead he kicks a skateboard away from the door and moves a laundry basket off the couch before dropping me on it.

We stare at each other. His quick breathing starts again, but now he can pace, and pace he does. I watch.

"Boz sit down."

"Don't call me that." He warns, in his most threatening voice. I let him pace a few more times before he turns towards me with a shake of his head.

"Why?"

Ahh. The million dollar question. I part my lips to answer when my Blackberry rings from the spot where I've dropped my bag.

I make a move towards it and he ups the volume of his question.

"Why? I mean obviously you had access to a fucking phone Faith!" I jump when he kicks the coffee table. My Blackberry goes silent. "So why then? Why would you let me and everyone else go on thinking that you were dead in a shallow grave somewhere?"

Again my lips part and again a phone rings. It's his this time. He looks at the screen.

"You get to answer yours?" I mock. He violently holds up a hand.

"Don't say a God Damn word." He hisses. I know it's serious. He doesn't usually curse like this. A damn it here or a jack-off there, but fuck and God Damn are not his words. I watch as he takes a breath in an attempt to calm himself moving into the kitchen and what he thinks is out of my earshot.

"Hey Sweetie." My heart aches when he says this and for the life of me I don't know why. "No. No. Sweetie every things okay. I just want you to stay there for the night."

He closes his eyes when he lies to the woman I can only suspect is his wife. I creep closer to the kitchen, I can't help it.

"He'll be okay. Just keep the hall light on." The daughter I created for him in my head turns into a son with Bosco's unruly curls. "Put him on." He waits and I watch him press his lips together. "Hey Champ."

I picture a four year old with scrapped knees from attemts to ride the skateboard in the entryway.

"No I'm fine. Yes. I promise. I'll pick you up tomorrow. Okay put her back on." He runs his hands over his hair. "Don't be difficult." He tells his wife when she says what ever she says on the phone and I want to kick him for treating her like some petulant child. I taught him better than that. "It's about a case I'm working on. I'm going to be late tonight and I dont' want you two home alone." He drops his head to the ceiling. "I know you're capable but I want you to stay at my Mom's and that's the last word. Got it?" Last word? What kind of woman is he married too? "It's okay. I know. I'm fine Sweetie I promise. Love you too."

He hangs up the phone, jumping when he realizes how close I am.

"You didn't have to be an ass to your wife on my account." I tell him coolly.

"My what?" He scrunches up his face.

"Wife."

"What wife?" He shakes his head at me like I'm stupid and turns back to the fridge pulling out a beer with out offering me one.

"Jeez Bosco you knocked up some dumb girl and you didn't even marry her?" I snip.

"There is no wife and I didn't knock anybody up." He shouts back.

"Then who are Sweetie and the Champ?" Even in my head I sound cruel.

"How 'bout we worry about what you actually did instead of what you think I did?"

"All I did was speed over a bridge." I yell.

"Abandoned your kids. Made me think you were dead. Made half the police force spend hours of time and money looking for you, changed your name and never looked back and.. oh! yeah.. Sped over a bridge!" He yelled before storming past me back into the living room. "Your damn bags ringing again!"

I manage to put up my arms before my bag hits me in the face and he storms out of the house.

"Did you get a ticket?" My publisher asks as I shakily say hello.

"No." I whisper.

"Talk your way out of it? What was the guy a fan?"

"Something like that."

"What's wrong now?"

"Nothing." I lie, moving around theliving room. There are pictures of Charlie and Emily on the mantle. Little league and dance, birthdays and Christmas. I start to shake as I look into my daughters eyes. She's laughing at the camera. Tears slip down my cheeks as I grasp a silver framed picture of my son in a white suite. First communion? I wonder, looking at Rose standing behind him beaming from ear to ear. I'm trying to fathom Fred letting Bosco and his mother back into my children's lives when I hear Alan's voice.

"E? Are you there?"

"Yeah.." I say faintly. "I'm just tired." I press my lips together to keep from sobbing. "I think I'm going to stop for the night. Take a few days to get there. I don't know why I was so damn impatient anyway."

"You should have flown. "

"Probably." I stop on a gold placard engraved with 'Worlds Greatest Dad.' So much for not impregnating anyone. "Alan, I gotta go. I toss the door open to find him sitting on the porch face in his hands.

"Why'd you come back?" He asks softly.

"You handcuffed me to the-."

"To New York."

"I was in Connecticut on business." I tell him, sinking down next to him on the steps. He snorts before nodding.

"You must be doing okay." He taunts, chucking at finger at my Blackberry. Or maybe it's my clothes, or purse or shoes.

"You bought a house on Staten Island you must be doing okay."

"Back-stoppers." He mutters.

"What?"

"Back-stoppers bought the-." He shakes his head. "I had to get the kids out of the city."

"Ah.. The kids." I hand him the placard. He looks at it in confusion. "And their mother who you didn't impregnate?"

He blinks at me for a second before giving me the sour milk face.

"I'm sorry Faith but I think if I'd impregnated you twice I'd remember."