This is an AU-set two-shot. It's post Day-Game but pre-rest-of-season. It's written in honour of fellow author and flashpoint fan Syuuri's graduation from her post-secondary programme! Congratulations to her on seeing all that hard work come to fruition - I'm thrilled for her. I tried my hardest to write her some fluff but it ended up being miserably bad. In the end, we settled on angst with the potential for a happy ending.

Disclaimer: Things I do not own: CTV, CBS, ION, Flashpoint, any of these characters, a decent pair of freaking socks, any of the twilight novels or an ipad.

There is something strange and alarming about the way Sarge walks when he's got something on his mind – some piece of bad news that will blow the team wide open. The slow measured pace as he trots across the metal floor, heels of combat boots clicking rapidly against the polished linoleum. There's something about the stiff line of his shoulders, in the furrowed brow and diverted gaze – something that has Sam's nerves prickling and his spine slowly straightening.

The General, in army dress, had made the same walk down white hospital halls to his waiting son to tell him what he already knew – that his baby sister Sarah really was gone. The doctors hadn't been able to save her. Or the day the report on Matt's death had closed. Sam had sat for what seemed an eternity in that hard plastic chair outside the military courtroom – waiting. Then, his father's footsteps. Calculated. Measured. Shoulders rigid, mouth flattened to a grim line. Inconclusive – the word he'd wanted to hear least. They'd never know how it was he ended up in target range – how Sam had been given the signal to fire when men in the live area.

Here it was again – that damn walk. The same one Greg had stepped into the conference room, informing them Holleran had booked trials to replace Lou. The same stiff, brisk stride as he'd walked Wordy out of HQ for the last time.

That walk never means good news.

"Something wrong, Sarge?" he asks, casually as possible. He leans against Winnie's desk, half-heartedly listening to their dispatcher field the ringing phones. Jules hasn't arrived yet. Hence the reason he's loitering around the front desk, like some neglected puppy awaiting its long-lost owner. It's ten minutes until shift starts. Meaning, in SRU time, she's twenty damned minutes late.

She's been withdrawing lately. Pulling away, tugging back. She's always been guarded – that was part of the charm of Jules. You had to battle your way in, pushing at every turn until she'd finally relent. She never needed him. Maybe that's what burned his ass so badly. The fact that she'd never lean. Never give. Never sway. And damned if he didn't feel like he needed her.

She'd done it once before – after she'd been shot. She'd slowly slunk back from him. He tried his best but he couldn't hold onto her. She'd walked. He can't face it again. He'd loved her then. But he's lost over her now. He can't stand to let her go again. He isn't sure there'd be much left of his heart if she sashayed out once more. But that was the way things seemed to be heading, surely.

"Sarge?" Spike asks, stepping up to flank him. "Are you all right?"

Greg reaches up with restless hands to push back his SRU ballcap and scratch his head. His mouth doesn't quirk in his usual greeting grin. "Briefing room in five."

"What's going on?" Spike asks, confusedly looking between Sam and Greg. Sam, not having any answers, merely shrugs.

"Spike, Ed took Raf down to the gun range. Can you go round them up?" Spike hesitates just long enough that Greg pats him on the shoulder in what might have been an attempt to comfort and assure, but to Sam, just looks like irritatingly stoic.

With Spike's boots echoing as they hurried away, Sam is left with Greg and the interminable silence. "What is it?" He asks finally.

"Sam."

This can't be good. Not when Sarge's voice is so quiet, not when he says his name in that dead calm tone.

"You can tell me. I can take it." He insists. His throats begins to close up, panic rising up from the pit of his stomach to choke him.

"Sam. This would be better in private." The empathy in Parker's eyes has Sam's heart picking up pace until it rams against his ribcage in a thundering beat.

A thought strikes him, knocking the wind from his chest. "Is it Jules? Is something wrong with Jules?" He demands.

"No." Parker answers quickly. But then he wavers. "Well. Actually. That depends. Jules. … She came to see me last night, at my place. She's resigned from the SRU effective immediately. She's got two weeks vacation and sick days coming. She's decided to take them."

Sarge didn't understand it himself.

He'd been pouring over grade 12 math homework in the kitchen with Dean. He hadn't remembered trigonometry to be so damned complicated – who the hell needed to know how to measure angles by triangle side length? Seriously? When would you ever need that knowledge? A triangle was a triangle? Who gave a rat's ass what the side length was or what the interior angles were? He'd rather face a junkie with a carving knife than stupid trigonometry. Not that he'd admit that to Dean, who seemed every bit as frustrated with the strange laws of shapes. The doorbell had rung and they'd both leapt at the opportunity to escape the exercises on that demonic little handout.

"You. Homework." Greg ordered, finger jabbing the looseleaf paper, covered in doodle-like diagrams. Dean's hopeful face fell.

Greg grinned as he strode down the hallway, content in his respite. But that wouldn't last because the moment he opened the door, he'd known something was wrong.

It was Jules on the porch. She was wearing an old RCMP sweatshirt that drooped at the hem. The sleeves were too long and had to be rolled back, lazily and cuffed at the wrist. Her hair was tugged back into a braid, wrapping down over her shoulder. But it was the eyes that concerned him, red rimmed and deeply shadowed. She looked sad – lost even.

"Jules, have you been crying?" He asked. "Are you all right?"

"I have to tell you something." She managed to say, voice barely holding. She wouldn't let it crack. No vulnerability. Can't be weak.

"What's wrong, Jules?" Greg stepped forward, to wrap an arm around her shoulders, guide her into the house. She looked cold, small shoulders slumped against the night's chills. But when he moved forward she raised her hands to ward him off, stumbling back a step.

"Don't. I just need to tell you." Jules sucked in a breath, unsteadily. She needed it off her chest – she needed to just lay it out. Something this big – there was only way to do it. Clean and totally detached – like snapping a dislocated shoulder back in place.

"I'm leaving. I need off the team."

"Jules, did something happen? Are you alright?" Worry flooded him – worry and fear. They'd worked together for seven years. He'd come to think of her as family – a de facto daughter. He wanted to know what was hurting her so he could fix it. He wanted to know what put that miserable look on her face and those horrible words in her head. "Jules, you can talk to me. I can help you. Did you have a fight with Sam?"

"No." Jules answered immediately, almost viciously. She clamped down on his arm suddenly. "You can't tell him. Please. Promise me you won't."

"Jules." He sighed her name. The confusion was overwhelming.

"Promise me." She insisted. Her grip hardened, fingers digging into his forearm.

"Okay. I won't tell him." Greg relented.

"I'm sorry, Greg. I'm so sorry. I can't stand doing this to you." She released his arm. She knuckled her weary eyes, praying to god that she wouldn't cry anymore. She couldn't afford to break down now. "I need to be gone. I've got some off time coming. Combine that with the sick days I haven't used this year, it'll come to two weeks."

"Jules. I can help you - whatever this is." Greg said. "You love your job. You love the team. Don't do this to yourself."

"I know. I'll miss it – I'll miss you all." She could feel her defenses cracking, her voice trembling. Her

"Then stay. I'll help you. Anything you need." Greg assured her.

"It's complicated. It's beyond anything you can control. I'm sorry. I wanted to say… Thank you. You've been better to me that I deserved. I wish I could find a way to do this without disappointing you."

"Jules." Greg protested. She shook her head. He swallowed the words, not knowing what to say. For a man that made his living talking people down, he couldn't for the life of him find the right words to say to her. He wanted to give her some reason to stay, some measure of comfort that might change her mind, but couldn't.

He hugged her. She fought back tears as she wrapped her arms around him, rocking under the porchlight. This family meant as much to her as her own. Leaving them would break her heart. Useless, frustrated, the leaked out, racing down her face.

"You could never disappoint me, Jules. You'll always be welcome here." He murmured in her ear.

She couldn't breathe – could barely hold back the threatening sobs. "Okay." Her voice was ragged and teary.

"Tell him …" She wasn't sure what she wanted to say to him. She loved him. She'd miss him. She was sorry. She'd never forget him. "Tell him goodbye for me?"

Greg didn't reaction – not at first. Long seconds passed before he grimly nodded.

She spun on her heel, racing off before she cracked entirely. Greg watched as her jeep disappeared around the corner, a blur of green and black, before slinking back to the kitchen. The problems on the worksheet, crisp triangles and clean squares, suddenly felt like nothing at all. They were sterile and simple, the way the real world never was.

"Sarge, that's impossible." Sam insists

"I'm afraid it's not. Jules is leaving." Greg's voice is low and quiet, as if that gentle tone could cushion the blow.

"But she loves the job. She's worked her whole life for it. She wouldn't just throw it away. She wouldn't." It simply wasn't Jules. Sam knows her. He knows her more intimately than he knows anyone else on this freaking planet. And there is no bloody way she would walk away from the SRU. Not willingly, at least.

"Sam, she was very adamant that this was what she wanted. I tried to convince her to stay, but she wouldn't hear it." Greg says. Which, he hates to admit, was the reason he was breaking his promise to her. He'd lain awake hours, stretched out over his bed, listening to the cars flick by. Heard it taper down from the heavy drum of the late traffic to a trickle of cabs to only a few restless cars meandering through the back lanes and alleys of Toronto. He'd tossed, wrestling with that burden. His mind was made up now, though. He couldn't reach Jules. But Sam was another story entirely.

"I don't understand. She's leaving the SRU? It doesn't make any sense at all." Sam rubs a hand over his forehead, pressing his fingers to his temples until the skin beneath turned white with exertion. His heart is pounding in his ears until he could scarcely hear Greg any more.

"I asked if she'd told you. She said … she asked if I would do it. She asked me to tell you goodbye for her." The word is like a knife to the gut, cutting clean through to his stomach which plummeted in free-fall.

"No." No. No. That is not good enough. That is not okay. No. He shook his head viciously.

"I can give you an hour personal." Greg offers. "And Sam?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I'd hurry."

The first time she'd broken his heart, he'd been too proud to grovel. Sam admits now, squeezing his car between two slow-moving Mack trucks, that he wasn't above it any longer. She'd stirred things up inside in – beautiful things, hopeful things. She had no right to prance out again and take that all with her. No right at all.

The speedometer urges every faster as he continues to weave along the highway, skirting around traffic. Horns around him blare, the perfect accompaniment to his black mood.

He wonders if he'd feel numb this time. Hollowed out and empty. She'd left him feeling miserable and wooden last time.

He swings his car across her driveway. To his relief, her jeep is still there, guarding the house like some kind of squat beast. Tearing the keys from the ignition he wrenches open the door, slamming it shut behind him. He storms up the steps and pounds an angry fist on her door. If he strains, he could just hear her reluctant, padded steps through the door, can see the shadow fall over the peephole. He waits.

Minutes passed. Finally the door cracks, swinging inwards. Sam grits his teeth and passes over the threshold. He hates doing this here – it feels like her terrain. Her territory. Home advantage, Jules. He needs all the leverage he could get.

The first thing he sees was the oversized suitcase, crammed to the brim, lying on its side by the door. Not a moment to soon, he thinks grimly, red haze fogging his vision. His eyes meet hers, angry blue on terrified brown. She's never seen him so furious before, anger broiling up inside him until he seems to radiate it, pulsing out in waves. She takes a step back, uneasily.

"Going somewhere, Julianna?" His voice is deadly calm.

"Sam." She licks her lips, trying to moisten her bone-dry mouth. She wants to hurt him – badly enough that he'd leave without a fight. Maybe that will make this easier. She can think of a hundred things she could say to him. He'd been a mistake, she'd found somebody new, she didn't need him, couldn't love him. The words won't come to her dusty, constricted throat. She couldn't force them up over that lump in her chest.

"Do you think you can just waltz on out of everyone's life - out of my life -without an explanation? Without even saying goodbye?"

"I told Greg to tell you…" She weakly protests.

"I know. Oh, I know that, Jules." Sam hisses. "He told me. I never figured you for a coward. But here you are, running away."

"Sam. Don't make this hard. It doesn't have to be this way" She tries to reason with him. He advances, she retreats. She finds herself pressed flat against the wall with nowhere to turn. He looms above her, furious and hurt. She turns her head so she would have to look in those eyes. She can stand his anger but his pain and betrayal - that was something else.

"Of course I'm going to make this fucking hard. I'm in love with you." It wasn't the way he wanted to tell her, a bitter and desperate accusation. He'd wanted to ease her into it, so maybe she'd learn to love him back. No chance now.

Tears well up. She thought she had cried all that she could. Clearly she'd been mistaken. They haze over her vision until everything blurred. She doesn't raise a hand to wipe them away.

"Sam. Don't." She pleads.

"Yeah. That's right. I love you. I've loved you from the start. You, you - always you, Jules." His thumb grazes over her flushed cheek, pushing away a tear. It's a strange and gentle contrast to his angry words. "I can't stop loving and you can't walk away. Not again, Jules. Don't do it. Don't go. Don't leave me."

"I can't do it Sam." It hurts her to say those words when his hands were upon her. To turn him away even as he tries to comfort her. She looks down, away. Anywhere but him.

"Why won't you trust me? Goddamn it. I've always been here for you. Every fucking step of the way, I've always been there. You never let yourself need anyone. Not once. I'm asking you, Jules. Need me." He cradles her face, turning her chin so their eyes met. If she was going to damned well break his heart, she is going to do it looking him in the eye.

"Sam."

"Don't ask me to let you go, Jules." He's fighting for his life here – can't she see that?

"Sam. I'm pregnant."