A/N: Thank you for the reviews, favorites, and alerts. I'm still not sure how I feel about this chapter, but there are only so many times something can be reworked. I ended up looking at a lot of the ways people can cope with grief and begin to move on: humor, distraction, alcohol. (Liquid courage is pretty heavily featured here, largely because Sam's got issues and he needs to talk about them one way or another.) Anyway, I don't know that I love how it turned out; please let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: See Part 1.

Part 2: stop me so i can begin

I guess nothing ever really changes, Andy thinks ruefully. It's been the longest year of her life, and she'd been naïve enough to think she's made some progress: she's a full-fledged cop, really coming into her own. A fairly skilled negotiator. A homeowner, for crying out loud. She's in a relationship that… well, she's not entirely certain at the moment, but generally speaking, she's accepted that Sam is basically it for her. Leaps and bounds by any estimation – and yet despite all of it, she's back on Traci's stupid couch, turbulent emotions slowly shredding her from the inside out.

They've been in the living room since her arrival four hours earlier; not saying much, just flipping back and forth between sitcom repeats and hokey made-for-TV movies. Andy keeps glancing at her friend to gauge her state of mind. Traci seems to be doing slightly better than this morning – not that the grief and loss aren't still etched in deep lines across her face, but she does appear slightly calmer, more settled. Talking to Peter probably helped her a good deal, Andy figures. Plus, bad TV is a lot more therapeutic than anyone ever gives it credit for, and they've been downing pots of Traci's favorite chocolate-coconut herbal tea like it's going out of style. It actually would be a fairly okay evening, even given the awful circumstances, if Andy could just get her conversation with Sam to stop replaying in her mind.

She's trying not to glance at her phone too often or obviously; finds before long that she's patting herself on the back for waiting a whole five minutes before checking the screen, only to feel her heart sink when she continues to see nothing but the cheerful background image she's quickly coming to despise. It's hard to figure out what she expects from him, really. After all, she's the one who walked out, who did what she made him promise not to. There's no reason for him to chase after her, to beg her to come back; she doesn't anticipate that he'll all of a sudden become that guy when he never has been. Of course, it goes well beyond that (because doesn't everything with them?). He's not avoiding contact with her right now because he's angry or trying to prove a point; he probably wants her to reach out first to ensure that it's what she really wants and she isn't being wheedled into it. Casually allowing her to set the pace is an ability of his that routinely astounds her.

Well-intentioned patience and consideration aside, though, she finds herself realizing just how bad a mental place he was in when she left, and fears he's getting worse every minute that she's here and he's there and the damn phone doesn't ring.

Traci eventually looks up at her during a commercial break. "How's Sam?" she asks, a wry half-grin crossing her face.

"Wouldn't know," Andy mumbles.

Traci reaches for the remote, turns off the reality show they've been halfheartedly watching for the last twenty minutes. "How was he when you left?"

Andy shrugs. "He said…" She trails off.

Traci leans toward her. "He said what?"

Don't do this to her. "We don't need to talk about this right now," Andy insists, shaking her head. "I was thinking maybe we could put on Toy Story or something. I mean, I know you've seen all of Leo's movies a million times, but Pixar totally puts in all that stuff for the adults, and…"

"Andy," Traci says sharply, shooting her friend a fierce look. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know."

Andy glances down to her curled-up legs, picking at imaginary lint on her jeans. "He… he thought Jerry might have been right. Well, he said he didn't know, but that Jerry's instincts were always good, and… he should've made him take someone else with him." She forces herself to meet Traci's eyes. "If I had listened better, or if my head hadn't been screwed on totally wrong that day…"

"Don't." Traci's jaw is firmly set. "Don't even start, do you hear me? There is one person who's responsible for what happened to Jerry, and he's headed to prison for a long time." She pauses, swallows hard. "Promise me you will not do this to yourself. Either of you."

Andy hesitates. She thinks about telling Traci the truth: that she doesn't want to make excuses for herself, that convincing Sam not to take responsibility for something is next to impossible. Instead, she nods, squeezing her friend's hand. "Okay."

Traci's face relaxes. "Okay. Good." The landline rings in the kitchen, and Traci releases Andy's hand to stand up. "You should probably call him," she instructs over her shoulder as she exits the room.

It's simple enough to press '2' on her speed dial; a whole different ball game to follow it up with 'send.' Andy's finger is still hovering over the button when Traci comes back in.

"Dov and Chris will be here in twenty," she announces. "They're bringing DVDs and Mexican… told them to skip the tequila, but I don't think I'll complain that much if it shows up." The corners of her mouth begin to turn upward, replaced with a look of exasperation when she sees Andy staring at the screen of her phone. "You didn't talk to him yet?"

Andy shakes her head. "I'll probably just end up wanting to go back over, and I… I need to be here with you." Right, Andy. Keep telling yourself it has nothing to do with how little you want to have that conversation.

"No, you don't," Traci counters. "Look… yeah, I'm probably not going to be in a good place for a while, but I know where to find you if I need you – same thing with my mom, or even Dex. Peter and Jill said to call whenever, and they're only ten minutes away. And the boys are coming over with tacos and Mel Brooks movies, so I probably won't even be able to get them out of here tonight." She smiles briefly. "But Sam… he doesn't really have a lot of people. His sister, right? And you said it sounds like she talks to him more than he talks to her. Oliver, too. If there's anyone he really needs right now, it's you – so just call. I'm going to pee." She walks out once more.

Andy can't contain her smirk; the bathroom is in the other direction. She completes the call before she can contemplate it any longer. Her heart begins to thud heavily against her ribs, her hands galvanized and drumming an involuntary restless cadence on her knee as she presses the phone between her ear and shoulder.

By the third ring, her anxious fingers have stilled; by the fourth, she realizes she hasn't actually considered what to do if he doesn't pick up. (Leave a message – and say what? Let him see the missed call without any explanation?) But the shrill buzz of the fifth ring has barely begun when she hears a click and a clearing throat.

"Hey," he says softly.

She closes her eyes. "Hi."

Neither says anything for a moment, then they both speak simultaneously. "Are you okay?" he inquires as she asks, "Could you maybe come get me?"

(She walked here – but it gets really cold once the sun goes down, and there are a few blocks in between that are less than inviting after dark.)

He sighs. "I, um… I can't."

Can't or won't? "Oh," she says, trying to maintain a tone consistent with him having just told her that the grocery store was out of her third-favorite cereal. "Okay. Then I'll… I'm fine here, so…"

"No, Andy, I would," he hastens to explain. "It's just I… I've had a few drinks, I really shouldn't be driving."

Her heart sinks. Great. "If you're drunk, we can talk tomorrow or something," she ventures quietly.

"No," he repeats with earnest. "I'm not, I promise. I've just had one too many to get behind the wheel." He pauses. "Maybe you could… I don't know. Give me an hour, I can make some coffee and…"

"Don't," she says quickly. (She's seen enough car accidents to know that despite the myths, hurriedly consumed coffee doesn't do a thing to induce sobriety.) "I can just walk or take a cab or…"

"Not a cab," he interrupts forcefully; she hears a deep breath, and his voice is more controlled when he resumes speaking. "And you shouldn't be walking now. I don't know, maybe…" He trails off, clearly at a loss for other options.

She runs a hand through her hair. He's slipping away right now, hurtling toward the quiet defeatism that's been responsible for years of loaded conversations in which nothing and everything is said. In another minute, he'll suggest that waiting until tomorrow would probably be better, and – convincing herself that that's really what he wants – she'll agree.

Unless she doesn't. (Unless she can't.)

"Do you want me there, Sam?" she asks.

He sounds a little surprised when he answers. "I… yeah, I want, I… I need you here."

It takes her a moment to respond. (She wonders how much of a role alcohol played in that particular confession; finds herself surprised that she doesn't really care.) "All right," she concedes. "Then I'll figure something out."

"No walking," he says, the question in his voice belying the confidence of his words.

(She's the first to admit that it can be a little stifling when he tries to tell her what to do under the pretense of protectiveness – but at this moment, she's not about to complain about his looking out for her. Thinking of Traci, she's frankly pretty damn relieved that he's there to do it.)

"No walking, no cab," she confirms. "I'll see you soon."

Traci is standing in the doorway as she hangs up. "Take my car," she instructs before Andy can say anything. "I'm thinking I'm in for the night."

"Trace…"

"You two need to fix this," she says with certainty, pulling a set of keys from a hook on the wall and holding them out to Andy. "I need you to fix this. And, uh… don't worry about rushing it back in the morning."

The determined look in Traci's eyes makes it clear that this is an executive decision. I don't know why she's so hell-bent on this, but if she thinks it'll help… Andy eventually nods and accepts the keys. "Thank you."

Chris and Dov arrive as she's heading out, carrying between them five bulging paper bags adorned with bright lettering and cartoon cacti. (Another opaque bag, suspiciously bottle-shaped, protrudes from the open top of Chris's backpack.) After a quick inventory, they insist Andy take some of the overabundant takeout with her. As she shuts the door behind her, she hears Dov's indistinct voice followed by a slow chuckle from Traci. Walking downstairs, she smiles a bit to herself; whether or not the tequila turns out to be beneficial, her best friend will be in good hands with the two of them tonight.

She texts Sam before she starts the car to let him know she's on her way. It's not especially surprising to see him sitting on the stoop when she pulls up ten minutes later, elbows leaning on knees and hands clasped together. His head snaps up as the car slows to a stop, and he rises and jogs out to the driveway, opening the driver-side door as soon as she shuts off the engine. At least he's walking in a straight line, she thinks.

Inside, once the to-go boxes are in the refrigerator and she's kicked off her shoes (force of habit; she finds it unnatural to be anything but barefoot while indoors), they stand in the living room, neither apparently certain how to approach the distance between them. Andy finds herself trapped in the conflict that unnerved her on and off for nearly two years before the Alpine finally broke the ice: simultaneous desires to move toward him and back away. He eventually motions for her to sit, and they settle at opposite ends of the sofa: her knees drawn to her chest, his back ramrod straight.

"I shouldn't have left before," she begins, but he waves her off.

"Traci all right?" he asks, eyes carefully directed someplace just above her head.

Andy nods. "She'll get there. Dov was saying something about a Men in Tights drinking game. Probably good I got out of there when I did." She tries to smile, but finds the corners of her mouth resistant to the idea. (Looks like her Grade 2 teacher was right; make a certain face long enough, it freezes that way.)

Sam murmurs something that sounds like acknowledgement before silence again overtakes them.

(It's not that Andy thought this would be easy. Really. Doesn't mean she wasn't hoping it would be.)

She sighs. "When you said… what you said, it got to me. I started to feel like if my gut instinct was wrong, the whole thing could've been my fault."

"It wasn't," he says quickly.

"I know," she quietly confirms. "We had it narrowed down to two, and only one of them could be right. What happened after… that was different." (Interesting; saying it aloud actually does help it feel like the truth.)

He nods, a single sharp jerk of his head. "I said it before; it could've gone either way. But I should've known better. Shouldn't have let him go alone. If anyone's to blame for this…" he trails off.

"No, Sam," she says emphatically. "If you really think that's why this happened, that it's because you should've known better, then I should've known better, too. And hell, Jerry should've known better than to take off by himself."

His eyes narrow. "Are you saying it's his fault that he…"

"No," she interrupts, her tone softer but still fervent. "I'm saying that the only person to blame is the one with the knife. You're no more responsible than anyone else, and however many times I have to tell you that until you believe it, I will."

He lets out a breath, slouches against the backrest of the couch. "It's not that simple, Andy."

"I know," she says gently.

"No, not just…" He rubs a hand over his face. "I was distracted, the whole damn day. Back on the way to Sudbury, when you said I compartmentalize – you weren't wrong."

She looks at him, waiting; he's going to have to give her a little more than that to go on, and he knows it.

"If I can't separate the job from personal stuff, it starts to take a toll on both," he continues slowly, as if sounding out each word before allowing it to emerge. "And…it's been getting harder to do that when it comes to you."

She nods, like she understands significantly better than she actually does. "You're saying it's harder to stay focused at work because we're together?"

His eyes lock with hers, and damned if in vino veritas isn't suddenly a whole lot more than she bargained for. "Because I love you."

For three little words, they sure can throw you for a loop, she thinks. It's overwhelming – the exhilaration at his voicing the sentiment she's long known he feels; the concern and confusion and, fine, just a touch of irritation that he could transform an expression of joy and adoration into a reason for trepidation and doubt.

At times like this she desperately wishes she was privy to whatever skulks around in his head, inevitably responsible for this apparent self-flagellation though which he's putting himself, even as she admits internally that sometimes it's easier not to know. He'll tell her when he's ready, in an hour or a year or another lifetime, but right now she watches the muscles of his jaw work nervously and lets her heart break a little for him. "I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be a good thing," she eventually says.

He shrugs helplessly, gaze drifting to the carpet. "It's complicated."

She allows the sound of tense breaths to fill the air as she takes time to choose her next words carefully. In the end, she opts for blunt confrontation. "How much more miserable are you going to make yourself, Sam?" she asks, not unkindly.

He raises his head abruptly, looks at her with something akin to alarm. "What do you… Miserable?"

"Yes." She stares back at him. "You love me. Right?"

He tilts his head and gestures with both hands as if to indicate that it's obvious.

"And we've already established that I love you. After everything that's thrown itself at us, it keeps coming down to you and me, and… I don't know, I think we have a shot at being really happy. Look, if this week has taught me anything, it's that life is short. If you have a chance at that kind of happiness, you'd be crazy not to take it while you can, right?"

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "More you have, the more there is to lose."

"You won't lose me," she quickly attempts to reassure him.

Immediately he rejoins, "You can't promise that. Not in this job; not when it's already come as close as it has."

She's never wanted less to admit that he's right about something. "Fine, I'll give you that one," she eventually acknowledges. "I might not be able to control everything out there, but Sam, when it's my choice? You'd better believe that I'll do what I have to do to get the job done and come home."

"Taking chances makes you a good cop," he refutes. "I don't want to be the one who takes that away from you, even if it scares the hell out of me."

She can't decide if she wants to wrap her arms around him or roll her eyes. (Not an uncommon dilemma throughout the history of their relationship, but she's more than a little unnerved about the direction in which they seem to be headed right now.) "Taking chances doesn't mean you have to be reckless," she points out. "I mean, has it ever occurred to you that I don't love being a danger magnet? The near-death thing, it gets old pretty fast. So there are a lot of reasons I'm trying to be more careful. You're a really good one, okay? But you're not the only one."

His expression is inscrutable, and she continues talking because she doesn't anticipate much caring for his reply.

"And let's not even pretend that I'm the only one who's gotten into dicey situations. When I saw that body bag after the Mermaid Lounge; when I was waiting to see who was going to walk out of that farmhouse…" She draws in a deep breath, tries like hell to keep it steady as she exhales. "You're plenty capable of scaring the hell out of me, too."

"I know," he says quietly. "I don't want to put you in that position either, all right?"

She lowers her feet to the floor, scoots toward the middle of the couch. Now that she's started talking about this, it's proving difficult to stop. "You could go back under. I think about that sometimes, you know, what it would be like if you just disappeared one day. No way to contact you, no idea when you'd be back. I thought it was hard before, but now… I don't know. I don't think I can fathom what that would be like. And I can't ask you not to do it when I know how much you love it. I wouldn't."

He laces his fingers together, pressing extended index fingers against his mouth. "It's a moot point."

When he doesn't continue, she leans forward. "Um… I'm not following."

He glances up at the ceiling briefly before he begins to speak. "Not that Guns and Gangs has been banging down my door lately, but… yeah, I can't go back to that. I did love it, you're right. A chance to do some good and escape from all the other shit at the same time, who could turn that down? Living in the roach motels, working the crappy jobs, I could handle all of that. But if I go back, all I'll be thinking about is whether my handler is corrupt. If something completely out of my control is going to get me killed."

"There's always that chance, undercover or not," she interjects. "You said it yourself."

"Yeah, there is," he continues. "But it's also different now. More to come home to."

She nods slowly as the realization of what he's saying sets in. "But you're scared to lose it."

"And you're not?" he counters. "Like I said… it's complicated."

It really is. Andy realizes that whatever she says next will take them down one side of the proverbial fork in the road at which it seems they've arrived; they can resign themselves to the impasse and give up, or push past it. The former simply isn't an option in her mind, and she doesn't want to give him the choice. "So what, you thought we'd fall in love and we'd just never have any problems again?" she asks, the ghost of a grin creeping across her face.

(Cracking a joke might be the easy way out, sure – but they've earned the right for something to be easy this week.)

He raises an eyebrow. "Would you have complained?"

"Probably not." Her smile widens slightly. "Would've felt a little weird, though, don't you think?"

"Oh, yeah," he says, unable to conceal his sarcastic smirk as he stretches an arm across the back of the couch. "It wouldn't be as fun without a challenge."

She lets out a short laugh despite herself; thinks about moving closer but doesn't.

He's watching her eyes dart back and forth. "I don't bite, you know," he says casually, as if he doesn't care either way what she does. (She knows better; he cares more than he probably should. Always has.)

As she slides across the couch and settles herself against his side, she murmurs, "That's not entirely true."

He snorts, shaking his head as he wraps his arm around her, thumb stroking her shoulder and chin resting on the top of her head. "Then call it a figure of speech."

The silence into which they fall is comfortable, despite the words suspended heavily in the air around them. Andy hates these kinds of conversations; she can handle addressing whatever elephant finds its way into a given room, so long as there's some kind of resolution. But she finds that they're left with a lot of issues unearthed and staring them in the face, with no way to settle them just yet. Not while they're bogged down in the aftermath of Jerry's death, most of which she knows has yet to come. An attempt to put any of this to rest would be temporary, a false reassurance that everything is now officially fine when she knows it won't be for a long time.

She anticipates that this talk was the first of many; for all the effort she and Sam put forth in order to procrastinate, it actually wasn't too bad, but any future discussions along the same vein will probably involve a lot more tension and a lot less actual communication. The danger of their work isn't going away, and she's more than a little apprehensive about what they might say or do to each other in the name of resisting fear.

(She briefly entertains the thought of plying him with just the right amount of alcohol every time it comes up; doesn't completely dismiss the idea. She sort of doubts he would say no, either.)

If nothing else, she thinks as they eventually rise and make their way toward the stairs, it's a start. They got through today; they'll figure out how to deal with tomorrow when it arrives. She's too exhausted to imagine any other possibility.

In the morning, Sam puts the watch in a shoebox that he keeps on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, pushed all the way back and buried under a stack of extra blankets. Andy's never seen it before, and tries not to peer over his shoulder to examine its other contents, but she suspects that whatever else is in there has similar significance to him. Things he wants to keep close enough so he won't forget, but not so close that they keep him incessantly tethered to his darkest memories.

As he replaces the box, he notices her watching him and shoots her a quizzical expression. "What is it?"

She shrugs. "Nothing. I'll go make some food."

Downstairs, she quickly starts the coffeemaker and pulls takeout containers from the fridge; she'll likely have to convince Sam that cold quesadillas more than suffice as breakfast.

(The thought of bickering with him over something so trivial – it's both comforting and disconcerting how very normal it seems. It occurs to her that however tortuous the path before them, at least they're on it together.)

Yeah, it's a start.

She'll take it; she doesn't think either of them can handle another ending.