To avoid completely spoiling the story, I can't say much, but remember, there's no character death.

There's one scene in here (5th section) where one character broaches the topic of suicide, and the other character denies it very vehemently. Suicide itself isn't even explicitly mentioned, but for the sake of being realistic, I needed to have that scene in there. However, like I said, it's 5th section only, so if you need to avoid that, go ahead.

"Look," he says, then stops. Starts again. "You weren't supposed to go this way."

There's silence, a stillness that isn't broken by anything on this hot summer day.

A young, blond man sits against a late gravestone and picks at a hole in his jeans as he talks.

"You were supposed to be- to be, you know, Jack. You were supposed to work with me and make jokes and laugh. A lot."

A bird chirps, far away, but the blond's lost in his thoughts. His fingers have begun to shake, and he twists them together.

"The way you- it was stupid. It wasn't even- it was- that man came out of nowhere, nowhere, and you saw him. You took him down."

The man has become agitated, twisting his fingers through blond locks.

"It should've been me. It should've been me, it wasn't supposed to be you-"

Tears are running down the man's face.

He makes no move to wipe them away.

"It should've been me, Jack! It should've been me! He was coming for me!"

He's screaming now, bringing his hands down hard on his crossed legs, overcome with the need to hit something, anything.

"It should've been me. It should've been me."

His screams dissolve into hitched sobs, the whispers continuing to pour forth.

"I'm sorry- I'm sorry- I'm sorry, it's my fault, it should've been me."

The man raises his head.

"You're dead and it's my fault."

There's a beat of silence. The tears continue, unchecked.

The man stays there until night falls. He's collapsed back against the headstone when he finally, resignedly, allows his eyelids to shutter closed.

When he wakes, he's still in the cemetery. It's been perhaps an hour or two, and night has truly come.

He stands, hesitates, brushes his hand along the top of the newest gravestone. "At least you're with your dad, right?"

He leaves.

When he arrives back at his house, he finds Bozer waiting on the porch. He can see packed bags through the windows of Bozer's car. The blond's steps stutter, but he forces himself to continue moving forward.

Bozer meets him halfway up the sidewalk. "Look, Mac, it's not you."

He blinks. "What's going on?"

His tone is wary, rightfully so. Bozer's next few words shatter his carefully built composure. "Riley and I- we can't do this anymore. We're going to go live normal lives, far away from here."

He looks over at the car. "Where's Riley?"

Bozer shrugs. "I'm picking her up from her place. Like I said, we can't do this anymore. That's why we're leaving in the middle of the night. This way, we might be less likely to turn around."

His roommate holds out a hand, and, tentatively, he takes it. Shakes it.

Bozer leaves without another word.

He's moving to a smaller apartment, he decides after two days.

By the time he's back at work- two weeks after Jack's death- he's completely moved into the tiny, one bedroom, one bathroom place he found near the Phoenix Foundation.

When he walks in for his first mission without Jack, Thornton's there waiting for him. She motions to a man who's standing off to the side. "Agent McCormac's going to be your new partner," she says.

He nods, outwardly accepts it.

He's raging on the inside, screaming that Jack cannot be so easily replaced.

They move on to mission details.

It becomes a pattern- he goes on a mission with an agent, and they refuse to go on another with him.

Crazy, they say. Reckless. Foolish. Insane.

Patricia talks to him one night, underneath the stars as they sit on the roof of the Phoenix Foundation.

She asks him if there's any truth to one word that the agents have mentioned once or twice.

He vehemently denies it. He knows that Jack would want him to live. That he would never forgive him if he did- that. He knows that he can't let Jack's death have been in vain.

It's the most emotion he's shown since Jack's death.

Eventually, they start sending him on mission by himself. There's not a single agent that understands why he won't take a gun, why he insists on making things from what he can find around him.

There's not a single one that understands him as much as Jack did.

So, he goes by himself. Fights by himself. Survives by himself.

He pushes himself to the point of breaking. When Patricia refuses to give him any more missions until he takes a few days off, he shouts at her.

She tells him to go home, or she'll assign agents to force him to go home.

He's leaving the building when it happens. There's a sharp prick right above his heart, and he realizes that he's been shot by a sniper, hired by someone he helped take down, no doubt.

He feels the blood leaving his body, that liquid more precious than the ruby whose color it shares, and his eyes slide shut as he falls into a deep, consuming darkness.

He opens them to find himself staring at a white ceiling, the sound of a steady beeping filling the room. He raises his hand, only feel a slight tug on it.

Beside him, a mass of human that he's only just noticed stirs.

He freezes.

The man lifts his head, and-

"Jack?"

Jack smiles, looking relieved. "Hey, buddy, you're awake."

"How?"

The question is filled with desperation and a silent plea for this to be real.

It has to be real.

Jack speaks softly. "You were drugged. A hallucinogenic that sent you into a state where you were trapped in your own mind with your worst fears. We couldn't get it out of you, so we had to wait for it to wear off."

He feels strange. There's so many things he wants to say, but all that comes out is a small "Oh."

Jack understands.

The man clutches at the brunet, the strong, calloused hand a lifeline tying him to reality.

They stay like that until he falls asleep, content in the knowledge that Jack is here.

Jack is here, and unharmed. Jack is alive.

He can't ask for more than that.

Jack was originally going to stay dead and this was all going to be real, but I couldn't bring myself to write that.