A/N: Let me start by saying yes, I do know how painfully long it's been since I updated this (or anything at all for that matter). I have no excuse. For a while I was unemployed and instead of writing I was distracted by painting. And then I stopped painting and did this crazy thing called sleeping. Anyway, that's all to say I've been doing sweet nothing in my spare time instead of writing my million stories I need to finish. It's something I want to fix.

So, my dear sweet readers who have been waiting oh so patiently, here it is. Apologies for any typos - i've spent the last couple hours trying to proof read this but I'm kind of at the point where if I read it again, I won't like it enough to post it.

He wipes down the counter, the fridge handle, the back of the stove where she always manages to get…whatever it is she cooks. He stands back for a moment to admire his work. The kitchen is clean. It goes well with the clean living room. And dining room. And bathroom. He's not entirely sure what the status is on the bedroom - hasn't spent much time there in the past two weeks.

It was all he could do not to drive past Sam and Jules' house that night, hoping that maybe if he was going by she would come out. Talk to him. Join him for coffee. Go home with him. Something that wasn't staying the night there.

Instead, he'd spent the night on his couch. Staring at the door, waiting as if she was just out with her girlfriends and he was just waiting up for her. As if she'd just walk in the door and tell him all about how Cassie's got a new car, Meg has a fear of flat shoes, and Andrea's boyfriend is an IT guy and they should totally double some time. But she didn't. He woke up the next morning, in the clothes he'd worn home from HQ, slumped over on the couch. Alone.

At least it was morning then, so he'd done the only thing he could think of: grabbed his keys and headed over to Sam and Jules' house. They must have known he'd be there at the crack of dawn because Jules was at the door when he pulled into the driveway, an extra cup of coffee being poured in the kitchen. He'd lost some of his nerve over night and on the drive, so when Sam told him to have a seat at the kitchen table he'd made no attempt to argue. Jules returned to the kitchen with Noah, told him Natalie would be right down, and nearly dragged Sam out the door. We're going for a walk, she told him, that'll give you two some privacy. He still wasn't sure why exactly they needed to do that - he was sure Natalie would just get in the car and come home with him.

Instead, she slowly walked into the kitchen, bare feet buried beneath baggy track pants, the rest of her engulfed in an oversized t-shirt. Grabbed her coffee off the counter. Settled in the chair opposite him.

"Sam said that if I wanted somewhere to stay tonight I had to try to talk to you."

And that did him in pretty thoroughly. Even as he'd pleaded with her for details - more explanation than simply I can't - he knew the conversation was going nowhere.

"Nat, this is ridiculous."

"Spike, I just-"

"Just what? Natalie, just come home with me and we'll figure this out, whatever this is."

Even as she shook her head he wasn't sure she was saying no. That is, until she stood up, hands trembling, and took off her ring-his ring-The Ring, and set it on the table in front of him before retreating up the stairs.

And that was that. He called, daily, sometimes more, in hopes that she'd change her mind. Most of the time it went to voicemail, and even when she did pick up-

He jolts, nearly trips over himself at the sound of the knock at the door and is there within seconds, grinning as he opens the door. "Oh, it's you," he mutters, just a little too loud as his face falls.

Raf blinks hard, gives a sympathetic smile before letting it slip into a smirk. "Well, it's nice to see you too. Did you forget we have plans today?"

Spike shakes his head, turns to grab his jacket off the back of one of the kitchen chairs. "Sorry I just… was hoping it was someone else. Ready to go?"

With that they're off, Raf driving them both to the burger place he's been raving about for the past month. It seems he's become a bit of a foodie in his spare time - what else was he supposed to do as the only single guy on the team?

Raf chews thoughtfully on a fry, surveying the burger in front of him, appears to be working on a strategy. "Look, all I'm saying is you need to fight for her. If you don't fight for her, you'll never forgive yourself."

Rolling his eyes, Spike shakes his head. Takes a minute to start on his burger before answering. "I have. I call more than - lets just say I'm not concerned about appearing desperate here. Besides, you're giving me lady advice here? Really?"

He lets out a small smirk before throwing Spike a stern glare. "I'm serious. I've been in your shoes and it is not fun. I did nothing, and I paid for it."

"Oh?" He's torn between doubt and surprise - suddenly occurs to him that relationships aren't really something the two of them have ever discussed.

"Yep," Raf nods, takes a sip of his water. "Anna Sparrow. Broke my heart and left me to pick up the pieces."

Spike sits in silence, waits for him to continue.

Shaking his head at his own story, Raf frowns, sighs as he continues. "I didn't even try. Those 2 weeks were the best 2 weeks…We swapped addresses but I didn't even try to write her. That was the day I stopped eating pudding snack packs."

Spike glares at him. "Excuse me? How old were you?"

Shrugging, Raf sighs once more. "She moved away and fourth grade was never the same."

"That is not the same."

"Hey now, when it's love-"

"No. Your fourth grade crush moving away is not the same as my fiancée leaving me."

Raf shakes his head, maintains his serious expression. "The heart doesn't care how old you are or how much time you had. The heart cares about the time it didn't get."

"You know what? You should quit SRU. Write that crap down for greeting cards or something. I can't believe you even tried to-"

"But the point is," Raf interrupts, "The point is you can't just stop trying here. Not yet."

So he doesn't stop trying. He changes tactics, because frankly he's tired of hearing her voice on her answering machine and not being able to actually talk to her. Figures he spends all his time on the computer anyway and opts to email her. Daily and sometimes more. Caves once in a while to call her, leaves a voicemail, rolling his eyes at himself while he works out the details of plans b through z because he knows her, and her stubborn streak alone could necessitate the use of all 25 backup plans.

Natalie falls into a rhythm. At least, that's what she calls it. Truthfully it's a circle, lives day to day without ever moving forward. Isn't sure which way forward is anymore.

She goes to work in the morning, 'home' to Sam's in the evening. Sneaks a long lunch here and there to visit with Noah while Jules takes time for herself. At least, that's what Nat tells her she should do. She doesn't, because she's Jules and she sees the time as an opportunity to work on something around the house, but the effort is appreciated just the same.

Either way, Natalie uses the time with her nephew as some kind of pseudo therapy session where she tries to sort out just what she's done with her life and what she's going to do with the rest of it. Talks in run on sentences and gauges Noah's answers to her questions by his facial expressions, his bodily functions. Chooses to believe a smile is yes and a burp is no. Figures it's the closest she's ever going to get to actual therapy because she seems to have inherited the Braddock gene for stubbornness.

She also does a lot of thinking. Stares at her cellphone as it flashes 'new message' and thinks about what this message says, what he's thinking about. In her head she's got a theory for every one of those messages, tells a story to herself about what he said to the empty noise of her voicemail.

Had to call her phone provider last week and up her voicemail plan. Ran out of space and wasn't ready to delete.

Can't delete because she hasn't listened, and she owes him that much at least.

It's when she's rocking her nephew that she hears the whole thing.

She always does. She's managed to weasel herself into her brother's family's routine, calling dibs on putting Noah to bed once or twice a week. Sure, she knows the second she turns the monitor on and makes her way back to her room down the hall Sam or Jules, or both, will be in to check on Noah. She doesn't take it personally though. She long ago accepted that they're somewhat overbearing parents. She watches them fawn over Noah, constantly in awe of the child as he goes through what has to be the natural process of growing up. She's decided they're obsessive.

Of course, it could just be the way parents are. Truth be told, her friends are all too unstable too have kids. No, they're not nut-cases, just a little…floaty. They're her, 4 years ago. Travelling, seeing the world. Having a new "relationship" in each country they visit. Never planting any kind of roots anywhere, with anyone. Plus, it's not like she has kids of her own.

She sighs, watches Noah's eyes flutter shut as she rocks him, turning her head ever so slightly towards the wall to hear more.

It's not that she wants to hear it. She hates that there's something to hear in the first place, but she's got this curiosity that keeps her there, listening.

Listening to the quiet voices mixed in with the harsh whispers. She knows from experience that they use those harsh whispers when they have a greater point they're trying to get across. She calls it reverse yelling.

It threatens to send her into a backwards spin, a trip down memory lane to when she was barely able to reach the faucet at the bathroom sink. Listening from the top of the stairs, her head pressed against the railing as she heard her parents argue. It was always about the same thing, and sure, they always got along fine the next morning, but the memory sends a chill down her spine as she wonders if maybe bad relationships run in their genetic code.

She quickly dismisses that theory. They aren't her parents. They'll get through this and be just fine. Still, some level of guilty conscience has her dying to know what exactly they're on about tonight.

"Oh come on Sam, she's your sister."

Great, it's the usual. Jules has been asking Sam for weeks now to talk to his sister, find out what's really going on. Evidently she's not buying the 'it just wasn't right' line. She muses for a moment that that kind of sense must be what makes Jules such a great cop. She tunes out for a moment, rocks Noah and wonders what kind of gift one buys an 8 month old child for Valentine's day. It's coming up, a fact that she's painfully aware of.

She hears the conversation shift topics. Now this one she definitely saw coming.

"Why can't we do this one thing, just this one thing for your mother?"

She'd been at the kitchen table with Jules, her Mom on speakerphone earlier that day. The request was simple in theory, but endlessly complex in reality. She'd invited the five of them - Sam, Jules, Noah, herself, and Spike - out to the family home for dinner. At Jules' raised eyebrow she'd shot her a stern glare, pleading with her not to say anything about her and Spike's… situation, because of course she hasn't told her mother she broke off their engagement. She knows the woman too well to know that the second she tells her that, she'll be en route to Toronto, prepared to lock Natalie and Spike in a room until they resolve their issues. Glaring at her, Jules had shaken her head, but ultimately held her tongue. Her mother's request still nagged at her though. Dinner was one thing. Dinner in celebration of her late father's birthday was a whole other minefield. She couldn't stomach the idea, not with the tension in her life already. She knew Sam would never go for the idea, at least not willingly.

She's just set Noah in his crib when she hears it. That reminder that, oh that's right, her older brother - her hero - is human.

"Because. Because I'm mad."

Natalie narrows her eyes, as if it would help her to understand what was going on on the other side of the wall.

"Do you know what the last thing I said to him was? He called one afternoon when I was home. Noah was napping and you were gone to the gym. Everything was fine until I mentioned you going back to work. Do you know he didn't think it was right that you were going to go back to work? Turns out he wasn't your biggest fan. Said something about poor or cold parenting, absentee mother - I don't even know anymore but it set me right off and I told him he didn't get a say. I told him to shut it, and I told him to stay the fuck out of my life. Well," There's a huff and a pause, and she can only imagine the look on Sam's face - on Jules' face - as she waits for him to continue. And when he does finally break the silence it's like she's right there, watching him put the words together. She knows it's meant to come out cold, like a cruel joke, but it doesn't. Instead, it comes out with more emotion than she's heard from Sam in years. Decades, even. "I guess he finally did what I asked."

She slouches against the wall, buckles at the knees and in one smooth motion she's on the floor of her nephew's nursery, frozen in shock because her eavesdropping has backfired, and she can't un-hear what he's said.

So Sam's got issues with their father's death - she could have guessed that. Should have. Would have, had she not been so wrapped up in her own drama. And for that, she hates herself a little. She's made a mess of her life, and because that wasn't enough she trampled into her brother's home so that he and his wife can spend their nights bickering over who's going to talk to her and when. She almost laughs as she realizes that even as she's having these thoughts, this epic moment of clarity, there she is again, wallowing in self-pity. She absently tunes in for a brief moment more, hears something about what's wrong with us lately? and something about needing some time to themselves. She blows out a breath, stands on shaky legs, and, after flipping the switch on Noah's monitor, makes her way back down the hall to her room.

She lays awake that night long past any reasonable hour, staring at the ceiling. Noah has a rough night too, wakes his parents at 3am for the first time since she's been there and she almost smiles. Figures it's almost convenient that she's awake. She hears a cackle from down the hall, followed by a loud shushing sound and what she could swear was the whispering of her name before the sounds fade into small giggles she would never have heard had she not been waiting for them.

It comforts her, the knowledge that in spite of their earlier spat her brother and his wife are on good terms, and she finally believes that she can get some sleep. Even as sleep creeps in on her though, her thoughts run rampant landing on one conclusion: first thing tomorrow morning, she's finding a way to make it up to Jules and Sam.