September 4

“See, it ain’t difficult,” Vin said easily, pushing the cutlery into place. “This is the court house, and here’s the van coming up, and here,” he moved the salt into position on top of a stack of coasters, “up on the Hillier building, you’ve got an almost perfect line of sight between the two sets of doors. Now, if we can get some sort of decoy, pull the guards out of line completely, it’s a piss easy shot.” He looked up at Ezra hopefully.

“This is a hypothetical assassination we are discussing.” His tone made the words a flat order.

Vin pulled the plate of nachos, formerly standing for the courthouse, towards him and spoke around a mouthful. “Yeah, that’s right. Hypothetical.” He stroked a finger along the line of sight from the saltcellar to the forks standing in for the van.

“You aren’t considering this seriously, Mr. Tanner?” Ezra asked more urgently. He didn’t even want to think about how and why Vin knew the layout of the courthouse and nearest high buildings.

Vin looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Woulda been nice to take him down.” His eyes went distant, fixed on a scene that only he could see. “Him lying there, nice little hole plumb between his eyes, and him just staring up at the sky. An’ all them stupid lawyers and prison officers scurryin’ ‘round like they’re next.”

“A delightful fantasy,” Ezra agreed, not without a certain amount of wistfulness. “And yet, the very first place they would look would be up; and upon locating a sniper position it would not be a gargantuan step for the most imbecilic police officer to consider your involvement in the attempt.”

Vin glanced at him, mildly irritated. “Ain’t no damn attempt. If’n I’m shooting, he’s dead.” He crooked a smile at Ezra. “Hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course,” Ezra agreed weakly.

“Nah. You’re right. Need to do it sneakier.” Vin shook his head, “Would just hate to get took in.”

“Or indeed, arrested and incarcerated for the rest of your life.”

“You boys’d break me out,” he said comfortably. “Chris wouldn’t stop bitching about it, but hell, I could live with that. Go live in Argentina. Got nice weather there, I hear.”

Ezra just stared, his jaw dropped, until Vin slanted a look at him, and shook his head.

“Jokin’,” he said easily, and Ezra shook his head.

“You better be. We’ve lost enough people for this year.”

“One too many,” Vin said quietly. “Buck’s goin’ crazy.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Tzivokis?”

“What about her?” Ezra felt a sick uneasiness that he was moderately sure owed more to Vin’s words than the jalapenos and extra hot salsa that his friend had ordered for them both.

“Ya didn’t hear?”

“Flattered as I am by your touching faith in my omniscience, I fear I must break the unhappy news that I am not in fact as all knowing as you appear to believe. No, I did not hear. If I had, would I be asking?”

“Slept with her.”

His jaw dropped again until Vin kindly pushed it up with a greasy finger. “Catchin’ flies, pard.”

“He did what,” he demanded, as quietly as his agitation would allow. “With Ellen Tzivokis? Is he mad or just blind?”

“Reckon he was looking forward to the pillow talk,” Vin said simply, and poked at a mound of congealed cheese that had attached itself to the plate, until it came loose, trailing long yellow threads. “You want?” He waved it in Ezra’s direction, then grinned at his flinch and tipped his head back to get it all in.

“Well, I hardly imagined it was for her looks or charming personality.”

“Thought you’d’a liked her, Ez,” Vin said, prodding at another bit of solidified cheese.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, hell, Tzivokis only married her for her money and connections.”

“And because she knew his business better than he did.”

“Well, that too.” Vin popped an escaped jalapeno into his mouth and closed his eyes as he savored the taste. Ezra shook his head.

“Revolting,” he muttered, but even he wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Buck’s sleeping habits, or Vin’s eating habits.

“I reckon,” Vin said slowly, sucking his fingers clean between words, “that we oughta keep a closer eye on ol’ Bucklin.”

“If he’s reduced to bedding Ellen Tzivokis then I would have to agree.” Ezra frowned. “I heard a rumor that Roberts was putting out feelers.”

“More’n a rumor.” Vin’s face turned completely serious. “One of the kids downstairs from me knows I want to hear anything on the streets about --” he stopped, not saying the name, as though it might superstitiously cause harm to its owner. “Roberts is credited with letting Paulsen know about Tzivokis moving in a couple of weeks ago.”

Ezra put the pieces together almost instantly. “Buck went to --” he stopped before he could say the name out loud, just as Vin’s fingers bit cruelly into his wrist.

“Tzivokis is out for blood -- and it won’t be her that gets it in the neck,” he murmured so quietly that Ezra was more lip-reading than hearing him.

Ezra sat quite still, and then nodded once. “Agreed.”

“Can take turns.”

“As long as you’re not planning on assassinating anyone.”

Vin just smiled at him, and then wiped a finger around the plate to pick up the remaining guacamole and sour cream. “Start tomorrow?”

“Well volunteered. I take it we aren’t bringing our esteemed lord and master into this?”

“Don’t need to know.”

“But will he kill us or Buck first if he finds out by some other route?”

“Oh, he’ll kill you first,” Vin said cheerfully. “He likes me better’n you.”

Ezra gave him what he hoped was a withering look.

“You gonna eat that?” Vin pulled Ezra’s buffalo wings over and helped himself. “Mmm. Good,” he said, muffled.

“I don’t know why I bother.”

Vin looked up, his eyes unexpectedly serious. “Sure ya do, Ez. Sure ya do.”

Ezra smiled faintly back at him, and then scowled at his next words.

“It’s my purty blue eyes,” and he batted them winsomely at Ezra, and stole a handful of Ezra’s fries.

---------------------------------

September 6

“I don’t think I can,” Casey shook her head, panic edging into her voice.

“Casey Jane Wells, I didn’t raise no coward,” Nettie said sharply, and Casey flinched.

“Aunt Nettie, please.” She looked up and Nettie’s motherly heart twisted at the mute pain in the eyes of a girl more like a daughter than a niece.

“Casey, what happened when your uncle put you up on Timony the first time?”

“I fell off.”

“And what happened then?” she asked relentlessly.

“It’s not the same! Don’t you see it, you stupid old woman, it’s not like getting back on some horse. It’s meeting them after they got him killed.” Her voice caught on a sob, and she wiped angrily at her burning eyes.

“I think that’s just about the most selfish thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth. I’m downright ashamed of you!” Nettie said, disappointment in her tone. “You see Vin when he drops in. How is this different? You think he won’t know why you won’t speak to him? You think they don’t blame themselves already?

“They’ve lost someone they love too.” Her eyes softened, and she rested a hand on Casey’s face, tilting it up to look at her. “Casey, honey, believe me, you’re stronger together than apart.”

“I was stronger with JD, Nettie! With him!” She turned away and took a couple of steps up the stairs. “Tell them to go away.”

“No.”

Casey froze for a second, then carried on up the stairs. “It’s a free country.”

“And it’s my house.”

“If you want me to move out, then just say,” Casey said bitterly.

“Don’t be more stupid than you can help, girl.” Nettie snapped back. “Buck is going to be here in minutes. You come down and take a good look at him. You don’t have to say a word. You don’t even have to come downstairs. Sneak your look from the top of the stairs if you’re too blamed scared to face him.”

Casey made no reply, and Nettie closed her eyes briefly, blinking away the blurring tears, although her voice was as sharp as ever. “I’m hoping you’ll find the strength in your heart to do this, Casey.” She watched the girl stalk away, and added, “For JD’s sake, if not for Buck’s.”

Her parting shot hit dead center, and Casey froze at the top of the stairs, then shrugged.

“Whatever,” and she ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Nettie let it go, though normally she would have taken Casey to task for her rudeness. God knows the girl had enough trials, but Nettie was at her wits’ end. She was certain that the girl needed to talk to someone who had loved JD near as much as she did. And perhaps, helping Casey would help Buck. A long conversation with Chris Larabee the week before, while Casey hid silently in her bedroom, had given her hope that they might be able to kill two birds with one stone.

She sighed and headed towards the kitchen when the distinct sounds of tires on gravel alerted her. She glanced through the kitchen window just in time to see Larabee’s Ram go past. She hurried back to the door and opened it, waiting for the two men to walk up to the porch, carefully taking in every detail. Buck was neat and clean, but he moved like a man double his age. He smiled at her as she called a hello to them both, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, and when it faded his face fell into tired lines, his tanned skin sallow and unhealthy, and marred with fading bruises and healing cuts.

“Good God, Buck Wilmington. What the heck have you been doing to yourself?”

Chris grimaced, and shook his head behind his friend. “Morning, Nettie.”

“Chris. Don’t stand around there letting the bugs in. Come in. Soda? Iced tea?” she offered as she led them into the airy kitchen.

“Soda is fine.” Chris said. Buck looked a little green and shook his head.

“Some of your iced tea would be a real treat, Miz Nettie,” he said, with a faint echo of his old charm and ebullience.

“Have a seat, Lord, don’t stand there looming over a body.” she ordered and fetched the men their drinks.

“How are you keeping, Buck?” she asked more gently as she handed him his glass.

He tried to smile at her, and for the second time that morning she felt like crying, or maybe hugging him, an impulse she would never have credited she could feel around the young reprobate. She quelled both urges sternly and handed Chris Larabee an unasked for glass of sweet iced tea too.

“Had better days, Miz Nettie,” he admitted, his eyes on his glass. He took a sip, and offered that tired little smile again. “You make the best iced tea of any I’ve tasted.”

“Ah, stop that,” she chided mildly, trying to be the same as ever when everything had changed.

“How’s,” his voice deserted him and he took a gulp of the cold, sweet liquid again. “How’s Casey doing?”

“I’ve had better days, too, Buck.”

All three turned around to find Casey leaning against the kitchen door. “Buck--”

“Casey, sweetheart, I am so sorry--”

Casey shook her head and he stopped at once. “Come on. I wanna show you something, Buck.” She nodded at Chris politely, and headed out the back door, Buck trailing meekly in her wake. Chris made an abortive start after them, held back by Nettie’s hand on his arm.

“Let ‘em be.” She drew a deep breath. “There ain’t nothing they can kill each other with out there, and they maybe need to deal with this on their own.” Chris tilted his head towards her in acknowledgement of her point, and settled silently back into his chair.

Outside, Casey headed for the stables. “Here,” she called quietly, and nodded at the large end stall. “She foaled last month.”

Buck peered in, his eyes adjusting to the relative dimness. “Is that the mare that you and JD bred with Chris’s ornery beast?”

“Yup. Look!”

Buck leaned over the door of the stall and smiled to find a spindle legged colt half hidden behind his chestnut mother. “You two made a good choice there.” He offered his hand to the mare, and she nuzzled at it, then ignored him when no treats were forthcoming. He clicked his tongue and offered his hand to the colt.

“He’s real friendly.”

Buck smiled as the small creature investigated his palm curiously. “Nosy too.” He ran his eyes over the small body. “Good lines,” he observed and Casey nodded. He didn’t look at her as he asked, “You okay?”

There was a long silence, which in the end, Buck decided to break himself. “If it helps: I’m not.” He meant to keep his voice rock steady, but somehow his grief shattered it into gravel.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” she whispered, and Buck shook his head.

“Yeah.” He glanced at her and found her twisting her engagement ring back and forth, staring blindly at her hands. “Careful, he spent three months picking it out.”

She grinned up at him unexpectedly, tears on her lashes. “I know. He said all y’all were about ready to shoot him.”

Buck snorted. “That is purely true. I swear that boy had every one of us round every damn jeweler in a hundred square miles.” He reached over and lifted her hand, looking at the sapphire set deep in a simple white gold band. “He wanted it to be perfect.”

“I know,” she said again. “Buck--”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Is he -- do you think -- I mean...” She sniffed and wiped at her nose, then rubbed her hand on her jeans. “Is he really dead, Buck?” She looked up finally and pinned him with her clear brown eyes.

“I --” He looked away. Was it fair to tell her what he believed? When it flew in the face of all the evidence?

“Buck. Please?” He looked at her, really looked and found the Casey he’d known gone, leaving in the student’s place a woman who was living with unbearable pain, who deserved to have him speak what he believed to be the truth.

“Casey. This is what I think, okay? Nothing more’n that. Most people think I’m crazy, or desperate, or just too dumb to recognize the truth, you understand me? I don’t have no evidence, no proof, nothing except what I believe.”

She nodded eagerly, desperate for hope. “Okay, okay, so you might be wrong, but...?”

“But.... No.” He shook his head helplessly. “I don’t believe he’s dead. I won’t believe it until I see a dead body.”

“But how do you know? Did you hear something? Anything? It’s been nearly four months now, surely there’s something?” she begged, “Buck, please, you’ve gotta tell me, you owe me. Please? Anything at all?”

He thought of the dangerous, stupid, illegal efforts he’d made to find the truth, and the long series of dead ends and false leads that were all he had found so far, and was forced to shake his head slowly. “Nothing I can rely on. Wild stories about crimes, and conspiracies; stories about people who aren’t JD at all.”

She flinched at her fiancé’s name, and he touched his hand to her shoulder lightly.

“Then how do you know?” she whispered.

Buck shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. “I just do.” His smile died. “Maybe Nate’s right. Denial. Maybe I just don’t wanna know. But I can’t help it. I don’t know how to give up on him like the others have.”

“Nothing but faith?”

“Huh?”

She smiled blindly at him. “Just blind faith to keep us going.” She stepped in and buried her head against his chest. “Thank God for you, Buck. I couldn’t believe on my own. Not any more.”

He slowly closed his arms around her slight frame, and nodded, his own eyes badly blurred as she shook, weeping in great gasps into his shirt.

“I’ve looked so hard, Casey.” His whispered words were too quiet for her to hear. “And I’m so tired.” He rubbed her back slowly, staring across the stables at the far wall, feeling almost as though it was someone else holding the crying girl. “So tired.” He wasn’t sure he believed any more either, for all his fine words. Perhaps it was a cruelty to try.

“I miss him so much, Buck.”

“I know, little girl. I know.” His mind was a blank. He couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort her. Didn’t dare to sympathize in case her grief broke his hard-erected walls.

“I keep thinking that maybe I should have done something--”

“No! If anyone’s to blame here it’s me. I shouldn’t have let him go under.”

“And when did you ever stop him doing anything he’d set his mind on?” she laughed, leaning back a little.

Buck shook his head ruefully. “Never, sweetheart. You remember that too?”

“He isn’t gone, Buck.” She laid her head against his chest again, her eyes closing peacefully. “We just have to wait.”

“He loves you so much, darlin’. If there’s any way in this world to come back to us, you know him. Stubborn as stone.” His hand rubbed in circles on her back, and she nodded.

“We only had a year to wait.”

“I know, I know.” He tightened his grip as she shuddered.

“One more year and I finish up the veterinary science course. Why did I tell him we had to wait? It wouldn’t have mattered?”

“Don’t, Casey. What-if’s will kill you.”

She sobbed helplessly, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “Might be gonna kill me anyway.”

“Not you, kid. You’re tough, you’ll see. We’ll wait it out, we just gotta have faith.” Even if neither of them believed it.

He just held her and rocked slowly from one foot to the other.

---------------------------------

September 12

“Buck, a word?” Buck looked up and found Ezra standing at the door.

“Come on in, Ez. What’s up?”

Ezra walked over to the window and stared out of it silently. Buck shrugged and turned back to his computer and the report he was putting together with painstaking care on a suspected arms cache being used by some of the street gangs.

“I know what you’ve been doing.” Ezra kept his back to him, leaning against the window, hands resting on the wall either side. “And I have to say that I protest your foolhardy behavior in the strongest terms.”

Buck froze for a moment, and waited.

“I don’t know if you realize this, Buck.” He turned around and met Buck’s startled eyes. “But I have spent more time and effort smoothing over the ripples you are leaving than is wise. For either of us.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

Ezra smiled. “I’m glad you don’t intend to pretend you don’t know what I am talking about.”

“It’s a free country.”

“Mr. Travis specifically asked you to desist.”

“In work hours,” Buck corrected, and Ezra nodded slowly.

“Would it help if I told you that you have shaken some very dangerous, very stupid trees? That some of the less friendly people of this good city are a hair’s breadth away from putting a contract on you?”

“I don’t care,” Buck closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again, and saw pity in Ezra’s green gaze. “No one asked you to interfere.”

“There you are wrong, my friend,” Ezra said softly. “JD--”

“Don’t!” he protested, raising a hand abortively in a warding off gesture.

Ezra carried on relentlessly, “I would not be the friend I have come to think I should be to yourself or to that boy if I did not look out for you.” He paused a long minute, but Buck didn’t look up again, and he took a deep breath. “JD asked us all to look out for you, if ... if anything untoward should happen to him.”

“He ain’t dead!”

“Did I say that? I think we can agree, however, that his disappearance, and his unknown status would be the very soul of ‘untoward’.” Ezra’s voice sounded as though it came through gritted teeth.

Buck shrugged, and Ezra carried on, apparently oblivious to his gesture. “I would be remiss in my duty--”

“‘Duty’. You’re one cold bastard, Standish,” Buck said, but there was no heat in the words, only weariness.

“Very well. I -- I find that watching you hurtle headlong towards disaster is too painful to not try to avert.”

Buck jerked as Ezra’s hand settled on his shoulder, very gently. He hadn’t even heard the man move.

“If there is anything I can do to prevent myself from losing another friend, then I will,” he said implacably; simply. “I have lost one friend too many as it is.”

“He isn’t dead!”

Ezra’s eyes were compassionate as Buck’s angry gaze hit them. “Really?” he asked, very softly. “My friend, in your heart of hearts, do you believe that?”

Buck shivered.

“I have looked too. Everywhere I could, and some places that I should have let be. Buck.” He waited until Buck could bring himself to meet his eyes again. “If he could come home, don’t you think he would be here already?”

“I’ve gotta hope.” Even with his face turned away Buck knew that his strangled tears were only too obvious.

“I know.” He could hardly hear Ezra’s voice, it was so soft.

“There ain’t no body. They wouldn’t even prosecute Madison for it.”

“I know.”

“He’s gotta be alive, Ez.” Buck said helplessly.

“Do you believe that? Or just want to believe it?” Ezra’s voice was infinitely kind, and Buck wrenched away.

“No.” He stood and shoved Ezra away, all the midnight words that tormented him now out in the open, spoken, in a low, compassionate southern accent. His breath caught. “No...”

He looked back, and found Ezra watching him sadly. “The people you talked to?” He had to stop and clear his throat roughly. He wondered if Ezra had really gone so far as to talk to his former CIA colleagues, knowing how much the man hated the time spent on liaison with them from the FBI, almost more than he had come to hate the FBI itself.

“Yes?”

“Did they know -- did they say... anything?” He couldn’t quite ask if he’d spoken to the people in the black. Maybe he was afraid it wasn’t true, maybe he was afraid it was.

Ezra just shook his head slowly, and Buck closed his eyes, and turned away.

“Buck--”

He kept looking out the window, wondering if he should turn around, or just fall apart right where he was.

“I’ve looked too. Not the same places, not the same way, but I have tried looking. We all have, in our own ways.” There was a little pause, and then Ezra said, very quietly, “You’re not the only one missing him.”

“I know,” he said, and nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. “Thanks, Ez. I’ll -- I’ll remember what you said.”

“Thank me by staying alive, Buck,” Ezra said, and left.

---------------------------------

date unknown

”Mr. Dunne?” The ATF academy training director called from his office, and JD stood and marched smartly inside.

He stood rigidly, his hands behind his back, his eyes facing straight ahead over his nemesis’s head.

”Mr. Dunne. Take a seat.” Rob Becker sighed, and paper rustled. JD risked a quick look and found the man staring at a file marked DUNNE, J. D. He stayed standing. “Mr. Dunne, would you like to explain your actions?”

”Er. No, sir?” he said tentatively.

”That wasn’t a suggestion, Dunne.”

”Sorry, sir.”

”I understand the exuberance of youth. Really I do. However, I cannot condone, under any circumstances, the breaking into federal property whether physical or electronic. For one thing, hacking is a federal offence.” He looked steadily at JD, who squirmed uneasily. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Dunne.”

”I didn’t hack into it, sir,” he said confidently.

”Then who, exactly, redecorated the main front page of the ATF intranet with your class’s marksmanship results? The tooth fairy?” “Me.”

”I see. But you claim you did not do so illegally?”

JD frowned, “Well, you see, sir, Tina asked me to look at it, and I had some free time, and I figured out what the problem was. And fixed it for them as a favor. She asked me to. She gave me the passwords. Sir.”

”And the scores?”

”Were a demonstration page that I accidentally uploaded in the wrong directory. Sir.”

”I see.”

JD risked another look, and caught amusement on the man’s face.

”So it was all an accident?”

”Oh yes,” JD said earnestly.

”Son, you are the absolute worst liar I have met in a long time. However,” he paused, and a smile twitched at his face. “Sit down, JD.”

JD sat, biting his lip.

”However, Tina Thessonalides agrees with your assessment of the incident, so we will overlook it this once.”

”Thank you, sir.”

”Don’t do it again, Dunne,” Becker looked at him sternly. “It’s not worth it.”

”I’ll remember that, sir.”

Becker sighed again, and shifted another document to the top of the pile tilting it up as if to read it. “However, it seems virtue -- or the lack thereof, is its own reward. Or not, as the case may be. You appear to have had a certain impact on the rest of the ATF with your little escapade.”

”I have, sir?”

”You have.” The man chuckled. “I have to say, I felt that the reaction of some of the higher ups was a little heavy handed, and I did protest, but they are insisting.” He wouldn’t meet JD’s eyes, and he felt sick. They were going to throw him out. God, he shouldn’t have done it, it was so fucking stupid, and he’d never-- His attention snapped back to the training director. “You’ll discover, son, that sometimes, the most fitting fate is punishment and reward all in one happy bundle.” Becker was smirking.

”Sir?”

He straightened his face with an effort and cleared his throat. “Mr. Dunne, I have received a request for your assignment on graduation to an ATF taskforce in Denver. In fact, there was more than one query, but a gentleman by the name of Travis seems to have prevailed amongst the various contenders for your doubtless enviable charms.” JD reddened and stared at his feet determinedly. “He seems to feel that RMETF Denver need a computer expert with a sense of humor.” He slid a sheet of paper across the desk to JD. “I think Larabee shot the last one.”

”Computer expert?” JD gasped.

”Sense of humor,” Becker said deadpan.

He blinked again, and then processed what Becker had actually said. “Chris Larabee? The Chris Larabee?” He grinned hugely. Stupid plan? Yup. Risky plan? Oh yeah. Successful plan? Score one for Team Dunne! And he’d scored Larabee, no less. If it hadn’t been for the minor detail of standing in the director’s office, he would have executed a victory dance on the spot.

”There’s only one, thank God. I’ll admit, his team of wiseass misfits do their best, but there’s no one quite like Larabee.”

”I’m really going to Denver?” he said, incredulous joy in his voice. “I’m going to work for Larabee in Denver?” Mom would have been so proud of him.

”You’re going to Denver.” Becker shook his head sadly. “And may God have mercy on your soul.”

---------------------------------

September 15

Buck stared into the darkness. The condo was dark and empty of everything but trash and memories.

He finished the beer in his hand, and tossed the bottle onto the floor, not caring as it rolled under the coffee table and clinked against the last one.

He’d thought he had understood when Chris had done this. Now, his turn, and he wondered how Larabee had stood him and his well meant interference.

He wasn’t drunk. Not sober of course, but for the first time he truly understood what they meant when they said that alcohol was a depressant. A faint smile pulled at his mouth, and he brushed away tears. JD had told him that. He couldn’t even remember why the boy had been talking about it, but he’d turned around, and, oh, yes, the smile widened. He’d been razzing Buck about his ‘prowess’ and the effects of alcohol on... He closed his eyes and tried hard not to let it hurt, but it did, more than he could bear sober.

He’d tried everything, and all he could think of was how JD would jerk his chain about the messy apartment; about the lack of women and the quantities of beer.

“You’d understand, wouldn’t ya, little brother?” he whispered, and blindly reached into the case and pulled another one. Of course, if he was here, he wouldn’t need to understand, for he’d be alive and --

He popped the cap off the bottle, letting it fall where it would, and gulped down half the bottle.

JD’s Will lay on the table.

Chris had brought it around earlier -- the kid had filed it with his personal paperwork at the ATF for some reason. And for some reason Larabee had decided that now, a month after the boy would have turned twenty-four, a month after Travis had ordered them off the case, was a good time to give it to Buck.

He let it lie where it had fallen from his hand.

JD wasn’t dead. What does Ezra know? a small, treacherous voice asked. Did he mean there was no word, or that he knew that he’s -- that he’s... and he drowned the voice with more beer. He had seven years before they could force him to touch any of it, and they could take their seven years, and have another seventy and he still wouldn’t--

He pressed the beer bottle to his forehead and closed his eyes tightly, but tears squeezed out anyway. He’d read it. Couldn’t stop himself, like rubber necking at a traffic accident. He’d told Chris he would be fine, ignored the doubt and the offer to stay, and more or less pushed him out of the door. And then he’d read it.

Stupid kid. What the hell did he think Buck was going to do with all that junk? Three computers in various states of repair. Ice hockey gear. Climbing gear. Clothes that not even Goodwill would consider taking. A poster of Angelina Jolie, a life size cut out of Sarah Michelle Gellar. He made a small choked sound. Casey had told him that the girls had to go, and he’d promised, then hidden them where he could still look at them every now and again. A broken skateboard, a battered pair of rollerblades. Dozens of balls, everything from tennis balls to baseballs -- signed and unsigned, through to footballs, soccer balls, basketballs...

All the junk that had driven him mad when JD was living in it. And that was still driving him mad, because JD wasn’t living in it.

His heart twisted and he moaned lowly, wondering if he was ever going to survive this.

“Chris did. Chris survived, and it was Sarah too. And it got better.”

Chris had me. Who do I have left? No one. Not one of them believes me.

He barely believed himself on days like these.

“I can survive this. God. It’s not like he was -- is --”

He might as well have been blood kin. Everything but blood. There was enough blood between them already, given and shed in each other’s defense.

“Don’t tell me he’s not kin,” he said harshly, and finished the bottle in his hand. He hefted it, eyeing the wall, and then threw it hard, watching motionless as it rebounded unbroken, leaving a dent on the wall. It rolled back, under the table and knocked noisily against the others.

“I’d know if he was dead,” he whispered into the empty night, and no one contradicted him. “He can’t be dead.”

But sometimes it was too hard to remember that he knew this, and the black grief that settled on his shoulders seemed to freeze any inclination towards looking for JD, to moving, to anything except sitting here, wrapped up in pain, drinking his beer and wishing he was dead too. Every line, every source, every desperate attempt had come up empty, blank.

Nothing.

Blank fog clouded his mind, made the words of others sound hollow and far off, as though he was left alone in a vast place, the only person as far as the eye could see, both the focus of all attention, and ignored beyond bearing.

Sometimes, he felt as though he did know.

The debrief meeting this morning had been painful. A final examination of the Madison case, what had gone right - and what had gone wrong... Vin and Ezra’s outrage that they had failed to nail Madison for JD’s murder drove spikes of grief through him. Madison couldn’t be jailed for murder, because JD wasn’t dead. No one else seemed to see that. Not even when he said it, softly and reasonably. They smiled at him with pity in their eyes, and carried straight on giving up on the kid.

At least the lawyers had believed him. They too believed that JD Dunne was alive. Madison had gone down on the lesser, indisputable kidnapping and false imprisonment charges along with the gunrunning. Consecutive sentences meant the man should never leave prison, although the chances were he’d be back out in ten. Chris had been furious. They all had, except him. He was the only one that understood.

“Where did you go, boy?” he said softly. “Where are you? One word. Just one, and I’m there. Doesn’t matter what’s happened. Don’t nothing matter. You know that. You just come on back home. Please?”

---------------------------------

September 16

Vin and Ezra swapped looks as Buck rushed out of the office, dead on six.

“Your turn or mine?” Vin asked laconically.

“I believe it is yours,” Ezra tilted his head with a smirk, and Vin swung his leather jacket at him, clipping his shoulder before pulling it on.

“Funny how that works out,” Vin said dryly, and Ezra shrugged. “Maybe we c’n both go this time?” he asked tentatively.

Ezra considered him for a moment, and then rose to his feet. “A depressing chore can always be lightened by good companionship.”

“Don’t know as I’d go that far, Ez,” Vin grinned, and they headed out.

“Nathan’s gonna get himself a thick lip one a these days,” Vin observed out of the blue, and Ezra blinked.

“Well, possibly--”

“Caught him talking to Buck again this morning.”

“Damn.” He pressed the button for the elevator, and drummed his fingers on the wall. “I thought Josiah had taken care of that.”

“Thought so myself.”

They got into the car, and waited in silence until they got off again at the parking garage level.

“You got any plans for the weekend?”

Vin shook his head. “Let’s take the jeep. Less conspicuous.” Ezra nodded agreement and they both got in. “Nah, not really. Need to get some groceries in. Promised I’d go up to Nettie’s, help with some of the chores.”

“Very kind of you.”

Vin shrugged. “They kinda got used to having,” he stumbled for a moment, “havin’ someone around to help out.”

“Ah.”

“Casey’s coming up on her finals this year. She can’t spend too much time up at the ranch. An’ Nettie’s getting on now.”

“She’s certainly no spring chicken,” Ezra said acidly, then shook his head. “I suppose though, she is no older than my own dear mother.”

“Ain’t much alike between your Ma and Nettie,” Vin grinned. “And I sure don’t see Maude takin’ to ranching!”

“That much is indisputable, my friend,” Ezra smiled back, real amusement in his voice.

Vin drove in silence, following Buck’s dark green sedan.

Ezra’s smile faded. “How is young Casey?” Ezra asked quietly, uncertain of the question’s reception.

“Still missing him something awful.” Vin didn’t take his eyes off the road

Ezra looked down at his lap. He hated not knowing what to say. This was all new territory, offering honest, sincere thoughts to a friend who was hurting as badly as he was. “Yes. I imagine she would.” He looked up and tried to smile. “I’ve not as yet been so fortunate as to find the lady with whom I would desire to spend the remainder of my life, such as it is. I suppose they were lucky.”

“Yeah.” Vin hesitated, then took a right. “There he goes.”

“I continue to be amazed at your skills.”

“Good. Ez?”

“Yes, Vin?”

“Ya know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

“No more was it yours.” Ezra didn’t look at him, his gaze on Buck’s distant car.

Vin snorted. “Yeah. Thought so.” His blue eyes flickered to look at Ezra, who looked away a second too late to pretend he hadn’t seen the compassion and sorrow in Vin’s face.

Ezra did look at him then, and without words they turned back to the business of following Buck, keeping him safe in payment of an ineradicable debt.

He heard Ezra say very quietly, “Touché, Mr. Tanner. Touché.”

They followed Buck until hours later he finally reached his condo, watching silently as the lights came on, and some minutes later, turned off again.

“Time for bed,” Ezra said quietly, and Vin nodded and started the jeep, heading first for Ezra’s place.

“You want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

“I would appreciate that,” Ezra agreed.

He pulled in, and waited for Ezra to leave the jeep. Ezra sat still for a long moment, and then shook his head.

“This can’t go on.”

“No.” Vin looked down into the darkness at his feet. “Josiah says he’ll stop eventually.”

“He’s going to kill himself first.”

Vin shrugged. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t tried. He’d heard Ezra yesterday. Nathan had tried. Josiah kept trying to break through.

“I think.”

Vin waited for Ezra’s next words, but they were slow in coming.

“I think, forgive me, that Chris must be persuaded to help.”

“You think he hasn’t tried?” Vin said sharply. No one seemed to care that Chris was laboring under guilt for letting the kid go in, for losing him. No one seemed to notice that unless he could not avoid it he hadn’t spoken the kid’s name since Travis took them off the case. “You think he doesn’t see it?”

“I think,” Ezra sounded like he was picking out his words with exquisite care, “I believe that Chris has decided that, just as he believed he would rather suffer alone in extremis, so Buck too must be allowed to grieve in his own time, alone; that he should give Buck what Buck never gave him. Perhaps he has forgotten that in the end, being with others was the only thing that made his life worth the living.” Vin looked quickly at Ezra, and found the man staring out the windshield fixedly. Vin shook his head. “Don’t know why you’re telling me.”

Ezra slid him a disbelieving look.

“Okay. Fine.”

“That’s all I wanted.” Ezra stepped out of the jeep, and shut the door, then stuck his head back in through the perennially open window. “Not too early, Mr. Tanner?”

Vin smiled slowly. “Sure, Ez. Not too early,” and he pulled away, barely giving Ezra time to get his head out of the way. “Now, what was ‘early’, again?”

---------------------------------

September 18

Chris scowled. Eight in the morning, and it was only too clear that Wilmington, yet again, was half hung over, half still drunk. He felt disapproving eyes on him and looked round, glaring back at the rest of the team.

“Buck? My office, now,” he said sharply, and turned on his heel. He probably had a couple of minutes to think of what the hell he was going to say to him.

I know how you’re feeling.

He couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite, could he? He’d torn strips off that journalist woman who’d lost her husband and thought that that meant she understood his pain.

Buck was the comforter in this relationship. Not him. He was the one in pain. He winced. Seriously selfish, Larabee.

“If I hadn’t agreed to take him on...” he said to himself, and jumped when a voice answered.

“Someone else would have. They’d have wasted his God given talents, and stuck him in a lab,” Buck’s voice broke in. “He’d’ve hated it. Quit in a month and gone back to writing his own stuff and making people like us pay through the nose for it.”

He looked up, and smiled awkwardly at his old friend. “Yeah, I know.”

“He told me once, you know, he planned the whole thing. He wanted to get noticed by a decent team.”

Chris half grinned, remembering the day he’d come in and logged on to find the Class of 2001’s score sheets plastered across the front page of the ATF intranet, JD Dunne’s name heading the list, instead of the usual logo and links. “Still pissed me off when Travis hired him over my head.”

“He ain’t dead, Chris,” he replied seriously, and Chris’s eyes snapped to meet Buck’s.

“Buck--”

“No, don’t you ‘Buck’ me, I mean it. There ain’t no body, and until and unless there is one, I ain’t believing he’s dead. I ain’t giving up on him.”

“Buck, don’t do this to yourself.” Don’t do this to us. Don’t do it to me.

“Why? Because it’s easier to bury an empty pine box six feet under, where it can’t hurt no more? Well, Chris, it hurts anyway. Dead or alive, it’s gonna hurt until I know.”

“And if it’s the worst?”

“Then it hurts worse than it does now. Chris, you’ve got to have some faith in him. He ain’t dead. I swear I’d know.”

He half believed that Buck had the right of it, however impossible it might be. He wanted to believe it. But then, he’d wanted to believe other impossible things, and they had never come true, no matter how hard he wished.

“Buck, I’m going to suggest that you take some time off, and get some counseling.”

“No!” Buck was abruptly on his feet, bellowing from inches away. He stood too, and leaned forwards, resting his hands on his desk.

“Dammit, Buck, I can order this, if you want?” he said quietly, voice hard and final. “Put it on your permanent record.”

“What I want, is for you to get your damn face out of my business!”

“It ain’t your business! Not when you bring it into work! Do you think we don’t know?” He walked around the desk and deep into Buck’s personal space. “Hell, you come in looking like shit, and the boys don’t know whether you’re going to explode or break down. We don’t know where your head is at. We don’t know which way you’re going to jump from one day’s end to the next.” He drew a deep breath. “We can’t count on you any more.”

Chris paused at the stricken look on Buck’s face. “You’re so deep in your own pain, you can’t see anything else. I can’t put you on the streets like that, but I can’t keep you here indefinitely without others noticing.”

“Let ‘em notice.”

“Buck, if Travis starts taking official notice you’re finished.”

“I’ll be all right. Just let me be, won’t ya at least do that for me? I’m dealing in my own way.”

“You aren’t dealing at all,” Chris said coldly. “I’m not gonna say I understand. I’m not gonna tell you I know what it’s like. But you hear this. You lost that boy. Dead or alive, he ain’t here and it just about rips you in two.” He took another step in and his voice softened, “And we don’t know where you are either, Buck.” He moved to look into his friend’s bleak eyes, tentatively resting one hand on his arm. “You ain’t here, that’s for damn sure. You’re off thinking about him, wishing and dreaming, until sooner or later you’re going to get one of us dead.”

“That’s rich coming from you, Larabee!” He shook off Chris’s touch and stood, turning away from him.

“If you push this I’m going to have no choice but to suspend you.”

“Then suspend me, dammit!” He reached to his waist and dragged the badge clipped to his belt off. “Here!”

“Buck, don’t be such a fucking drama queen.” He ignored the badge and drew a deep breath. “You need counseling. I’m going to insist. Whether you stay here or not.”

“You got no right!”

“I’ve got every right! I have five other men out there who need you too.” He hesitated, and added quietly, “God damn you, Buck, I need you, and it’s not just the job, okay? I need you. But you aren’t any use to anyone like you are now. I’ve been trying to cover for you, but it can’t go on. Listen, if Travis finds out, it’s going to be mandatory desk duty and counseling. And he’s going to find out soon enough.”

A look of betrayal swept Buck’s face, followed by one of cynical comprehension. “Getting your own back, Larabee, telling some tales out of school?”

Chris swung at him. Buck staggered, one hand going to his jaw. He worked it slowly, his eyes warily fixed on Chris’s.

“Chris?” he said in disbelief, and Chris, for one awful moment had no idea what to do.

And then he remembered another fight. Another drunk, and a concerned friend. A punch thrown... and realised he knew exactly what came next.

“You damned fool,” he said roughly, and dragged Buck to the couch at the side of the room, and sat them both down, one arm securely around Buck’s shoulders. Buck dropped his face into his hands and he shook. “Let it go, Buck. Let him go.”

He wanted to turn away as the dam burst, knowing this only leeched a little of the poison. But Buck did this for him once. He owed him. And besides.

“It’s okay, Buck,” he lied quietly, rocking a little. “It’s gonna be okay.”

He hesitantly reached his free arm around Buck, until he had encircled him completely. Besides. Buck needed him.

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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the fandoms listed herein. I am certainly making no money off of these creative fan tributes to a wonderful, fun show.