Time, they say, is the great healer. Nine months had passed since Hutch found what was left of his partner’s destroyed body. He bent over and selected another smooth, white stone from the beach and studied it for a moment. A Scripture verse, memorized decades ago during a lonely childhood, crept into his memory: "…I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it…" A new name...

A new life. A new beginning.

With an unconscious grace, Hutch drew his arm back and pitched the stone back into the ocean, skipping it across the waves. A sense of déjà vu overtook him for a moment, remembering a few years ago as he and Starsky stood on another beach. That day he had hurled the badge he had come to hate into the ocean, and the badge his partner still honored along side it. But Starsky had chosen their friendship over duty. Another stone followed the first. What am I throwing away this time?

He continued to watch the play of sunlight across the water, the reflection stinging his eyes. The lonely cry of a seagull broke through the sound of the waves lapping at the shoreline and the whistling breeze that lifted the hair from his brow. For some reason, the bird’s mournful song brought a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes unbiddened. Tears came so much easier since then. It was funny how he measured the timeline of his life from when he found his partner… found out how much Starsky was willing to sacrifice for him. Sometimes the price of love was high. Too high.

A trembling hand darted up to wipe at his eyes. Starsky had always loved the ocean. Hated to get wet, but loved the water. Loved the waves, the gulls, the shells and the driftwood that washed ashore. For Hutch, it had once held great mystery, its hidden depths a treasure to be discovered. Now he simply enjoyed it for its beauty with an uncomplicated pleasure, much like Starsky always had.

Hutch continued starring out into the sunlit waves and didn’t hear the other’s approach until he was standing next to him.

"You okay?"

Hutch smiled gently in response and turned, grateful as he always was for another day. "Sure, you?"

Starsky smiled knowingly and turned his gaze out to watch the waves. Hutch kept his eyes riveted on his friend’s face, marveling at what he found there. For a heartbeat Hutch was back at the warehouse, staring in disbelief at the ruined shell of his partner. The trauma unit surgeon’s voice rang through his memory. "Flail chest by blunt trauma, that's what's causing him to cough up blood. Scleral hemorrhage, lower mandible jaw fracture, fractured zygoma. Concussion, and subacute subdural hematoma. Multiple fractures of the femur, penetrated artery resulting in life threatening blood loss. Dehydration, shock…your partner should be dead, Detective Hutchinson."

Scars and healing tissue still lingered, but the reconstructive surgeries were nothing short of miraculous. The surgeon had been none other than the cousin of Romer Avelechez, the first uniformed officer murdered. The plastic surgeon did everything within his power to restore the detective who had withstood Capernicus, and his gratitude was extended to the partner that had administered "appropriate justice" in the doctor’s eyes.

Only those who knew Starsky intimately could tell his features were minutely different. The nose was a bit straighter, the cheekbones a bit more pronounced, but perhaps that would fade when he put back on the considerable weight he lost since the first of the surgeries. The plastic surgeon had done an incredible job returning Starsky’s destroyed features, though the patient joked this was his one opportunity to improve on "perfection", and perhaps fulfill his mother’s secret wish for her son to look more like Paul Muni.

Strangers and acquaintances would only notice healing scars on a handsome face, evidence of an often violent profession. A fading scar followed the side of his head along the left earlobe; a thin disfigurement broke the curve of his right eyebrow, and another scar on his upper lip seemed only to show when he smiled, which was seemingly more often than Hutch.

Therapy was making considerable headway in regaining Starsky’s strength and mobility, whereas months ago the future seemed bleak. The extensive internal damage had seemed to be a constant source of frustration. Infections had come and gone, reeking havoc on the surgical repair. Upon admittance to the hospital, Starsky had undergone emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding, rebuilding the flail breakage of four ribs and a punctured lung. One kidney and his spleen had been removed, as well as a portion of the large intestine.

The self-inflicted damage to his wrist had been of great concern to the orthopedic specialist. It was almost four months before noticeable headway had been made in use of the right hand and forearm. However, Starsky was now able to grip and hold a glass on his own. The day he was able to accomplish this task marked a turning point in his recuperation. His left hand kept a tight grip on the cane assisting him in walking, which was significant in and of itself. Considerable damage had been done due to the multiple fractures in his left leg, but determination propelled him along from a wheel chair to a walker, then to a cane. Starsky kept a running bet with Huggy as to how soon he would begin walking unassisted. A loose fitting shirt masked more scars that few were privy to, but he simply attributed them to a lifetime’s collection, and philosophized he’d probably get a few more in the next sixty or so years of active duty.

Active duty--that was the goal. While a few scoffed at his partner’s determination to return one hundred percent to his former level of activity, those who knew Starsky--really knew him--didn’t doubt for a moment the determination that fueled him toward a complete recovery.

You can’t keep a good man down, Hutch thought to himself. Starsky turned to face him as if hearing the unspoken words, and reached out to grip his partner’s elbow with his right hand. Both men relished the growing strength evident there.

"Hutch, how you really doin’?"

Hutch glanced quickly away from the probing blue eyes, coming to rest on the inside of his partner’s wrist. Scar tissue puckered the flesh in a thick, two-inch line.

"I’m fine, Starsk." The huskiness of his voice betrayed his inner turmoil. "What do you say we head back now?"

Starsky glanced down to where his partner’s gaze had lingered on the scar, then back to the troubled eyes. "Hutch…"

Hutch pulled himself away from the gentle grip. "Let’s go."

"No. Nope. Not this time. We need to talk, and I’m tired of tap dancin’ around this." Awkwardly, Starsky began lowering himself to the sand, trying to catch himself with one arm while balancing himself on the cane with the other. Hutch automatically reached out to help him, but threw his arms up in frustration when Starsky waved him off, wanting to do it himself. The result was Starsky falling on his backside with a grunt rather than the dignified sitting he was trying for, but he was pleased with the results, however graceless.

Stretching the stiffness out of his leg, Starsky rested his cane across his knees and looked up at his partner, squinting into the sun lighting Hutch from behind like a halo. "So talk to me."

Hutch paced a few steps in mild exasperation, clearly avoiding the unspoken topic. "Starsk, there’s nothing to talk about. I’m fine. You’re the one who’s gone through hell and you’re fine. Everybody’s fine."

Starsky shook his head. "That’s not the point and you know it. Yeah, I feel like I’ve been to Hell and back, but I didn’t go there alone. Something’s eating you up and I’m tired of waiting for you to want to talk about it."

Hutch merely rolled his eyes and avoided looking at him. Starsky extended his right hand. "C’mon, sit down for a minute. You’re driving me nuts. C’mon."

Hutch finally looked at his friend’s face and sighed. Reaching down to take the proffered hand, he hesitated at the sight of the scarred wrist. The increased strain around Hutch’s eyes was not lost on Starsky.

"So that is it. I thought as much." Starsky exhaled softly, retracting the outstretched arm and holding it in his lap. The moments of slamming his wrist onto the shard of glass played before him in pieces him like a broken film. "Hutch, sit down. Please."

After a few tense seconds, Hutch unceremoniously threw himself down beside his partner and drew his knees up to his chest. Wrapping his arms around his legs, he stared out at the dancing waves. Hutch’s voice was tight when he finally responded. "What do you want me to say?"

"Hutch…this is tearing you apart. I need for you to tell me what’s going on inside that head of yours. We’ve always been able to talk through the mental garbage."

"Look, I’m fine. And we’ve been through all of this before…in the hospital…your counseling sessions…it’s all been talked out."

"Yeah, we’ve talked, but apparently it isn’t all out." Starsky turned his focus back out to the waves for a moment, looking beyond the seascape to the not-so-distant past. "I know it was really hard for you to quit feeling guilty about what Capernicus did to us, even though nobody blamed you, except you. Everybody thought you had gotten past it. Ya know, you’re really good at covering stuff up, but the only person you had fooled was you. I know there’s been something else you wouldn’t talk about, even after all this time." Starsky looked back at his friend and extended his right arm, slipping it gently between the other man’s chest and forearm. "It’s about this isn’t it?"

Immediately, Hutch’s shoulders dropped from their tense position as he tenderly cradled his partner’s arm against him. With his eyes squeezed tightly shut he turned his face away. "Starsk…I…my God, Starsk…"

Hutch couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt when he learned the lengths to which his partner had gone in order to protect him. It happened during the interrogation of Eddie Fraiser, as the hood described all the horrors they had put Starsky through. Hutch had never come so close to losing complete control as he did that night, listening to Fraiser give his statement. Names, dates, and locations were rattled off, fingering several public officials in California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. At first, he refused to believe the hood’s account of Starsky’s attempt to end his own life, but then the pieces fell into place. Fraiser detailed the murders of DA Watkins, Avelechez, Perrigo, Randolph, the pilot and U.S. marshals on the helicopter flight, and the attempted murder of Kevin Franscoli, whom they found on the verge of bleeding to death in the print shop storage room. More than a few tears were later shed when Hutch was able to wheel the recovering Kevin into Starsky’s hospital room. He had later spoken to the federal judge on Kevin’s behalf, and the young man was placed in a state operated adult care program rather than tried along with Fraiser. The detectives began visiting Kevin every week at the care facility after Starsky’s release from the hospital. Both men were encouraged to find him settling in to his new life and looking forward to being allowed to work with some of the younger students with their outdoor activities very soon.

Through the months of healing and therapy, Hutch tried his best to resolve the turbulent feelings gnawing at him. The last thing he wanted was for Starsky to be worried about him, or worse, that Starsky would somehow subconsciously blame him for what he went through as a hostage. Such an admission would destroy Hutch. It was better to try and bury his fear than have to embrace it if it were true.

"Aw, Hutch. I’ve told you before it was the only choice I could make then. Is it…?" Starsky struggled with a half-formed thought. "Is it because I lost hope? That I wanted to die? If you had come...I didn’t want you to come, Hutch. They would’ve killed you. Buddy, what is it?"

Hutch remained silent, but shook his head. Starsky searched his mind for other reasons. "Hutch, look--I knew that there was no way anyone could possibly find me in time. I was coughing up blood, there just wasn’t…wait, when you...when you were sick?" He still found it difficult to talk about the time that Hutch had the plague, it had been too close a call. "Remember? You were in the hospital and they were just about to put you in the oxygen tent. You knew that you were dying. You just knew, right?"

Hutch didn’t speak, but merely turned his head a bit more in his partner’s direction. "Well, at that point I knew it, too. It’s weird, but somehow you do know. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of hours…the internal bleeding...they say I was going into shock. If they had gotten me to make the call to you, they would have killed me right then anyway because I had served my purpose. I heard them say so, and I had no reason to doubt they wouldn’t do it. Hutch, I also knew that if you heard my voice, there wasn’t anything on this earth you wouldn’t do get to me, even if that meant giving up your own life. And that’s what would have happened. Hutch I had to do this. There was no way out of this one. I was going to be dead soon anyway, so a few hours wasn’t that big of a sacrifice."

As soon as the words were out of Starsky’s mouth Hutch’s head snapped around as if he’d been slapped. Pale blue eyes burned with an inward rage and self-loathing as he leapt to his feet. "A few hours? Starsky, you sacrificed everything because of me--for me. They beat you to within an inch of your life and left you for dead, drove you to the point of slamming your wrist into a chunk of glass, and you’re telling me that finishing yourself off was no big deal? My God, Starsk!"

Starsky’s expression softened under the delayed outpouring of Hutch’s pain. "And I’d do it again."

The honesty and love that radiated from his partner’s eyes felled Hutch and brought him to his knees beside him. "Starsk…"

Starsky’s voice was warm, taking the sting out of his words. "Hutch, you idiot. You’d do the same thing for me and never think twice about it. It’s always been that way with us. Why should it surprise you now?"

"But, Starsk…"

"‘But, Starsk’, nothing. You didn’t do this to me, the bad guys did. This isn’t your fault, it’s the bad guys’ fault, and the bad guys got theirs. That’s what this is all about. I’m okay with this. I’m not saying that it’s no big deal and that I’m not glad they’re rotting in Hell right now, but I’m really okay. I need for you to be okay with it, too, but for real. No more guilt, no more beatin’ yourself up over something you didn’t do and you couldn’t control."

"I don’t know if I can…"

"Of course, you can. I’ll be with you every step of the way." Starsky began to struggle to his feet. This time he didn’t refuse Hutch’s help. Once he got upright, Starsky quickly searched his partner’s face, grateful to see a little less strain than he did before, and perhaps a small release of the guilt that had gripped him by the heart for so long. The pain and anguish weren’t completely erased, but it was a start. With a chuckle Starsky drew his partner into a tight embrace, all but losing his balance in the process, threatening to pull Hutch down with him.

Steadying them both, Hutch returned the embrace. After a moment he pulled away, staring hard into the cobalt eyes. "You’re really okay? You’re not just saying it for my benefit?"

"I give you my word. When have I ever broken my word to you?"

Hutch remembered the promise made in a warehouse, cold as a tomb. "Never."

"All right then. We’ll get through this together. I promise."

Hutch looked at Starsky with less haunted eyes. "Me and thee?"

"It couldn’t be any other way."

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