The End

Death Story
by Lucy

"Rafe, the guy at the counter has a gun."

Rafe frowned at his partner. "I saw it. I was just hoping it was a figment of my imagination. Some great place you brought me to, H."

Henri Brown resisted the urge to stick out his tongue like a three year old, and stayed serious. "What's the move here?"

Rafe glowered. "Man. I dunno. I guess we call him out."

"You sure?"

"No. You think you can get close enough to take him?"

Brown studied the man. His movements were getting more and more tense as he stood at the register, watching the frightened woman pulling out money. The diner wasn't crowded, but if this guy tensed up and started shooting, people would get hurt, no question. "I don't know."

"There's no one near him he could take hostage. Let's just take him before the food gets cold."

Brown sighed. "Alright." He started to stand, but stopped with a grin.

"What's funny, partner?"

"Did we turn into Jim and Blair when I wasn't looking?" He raised his voice slightly to imitate the young police observer. "Cause this is, like, SO the kind of mess they would get into."

Rafe grinned. "Hey, maybe I could glare the guy into submission, and you could talk the gun out of his hand. Wanna try it?"

"As often as Blair ends up in the hospital? No way. Let's just do it our way."

"Gotcha." Rafe slid out of the booth along with his partner, both men drawing their guns slowly.

Brown approached the man casually, gun pressed into his side and out of sight until he was close enough to know he would be between the robber and the rest of the diners.

A quick glance at Rafe assured Brown his partner was right behind him, and he raised the gun carefully. "Hey, man. Cascade PD. You might wanna put the gun-"

The man wheeled, his hand swept up, and he fired.

Brown collapsed in a heap.

Rafe froze, momentarily stunned by the suddenness of the attack.

The robber also froze, looking shocked by his own actions. Crazed with sudden fear, he turned and raced out the door.

Rafe dropped to his knees beside his partner, forgetting the would-be thief. "Brown? Hey, Henri, talk to-"

He froze, turning his partner's body over onto his back. Seeing the blood leaking steadily out of the neat little hole in his temple. "Henri?" He swallowed. "Henri..."

From a distance, he heard the sounds of the counter woman calling for an ambulance. Time must have passed, and he became aware of the blaze of sirens.

He could see the medics racing in, could hear their negative reactions when they saw his partner, and could feel himself slowly standing as they moved Henri to a stretcher and out the door. He didn't register anything, though. He was aware of everything, but he could only register one thing.

Henri was down.



"Banks."

"This is Captain Simon Banks?

"Yeah, who's this?"

"Captain Banks, my name is Michael Hunsley, I'm a doctor at Cascade General."

Simon sat down heavily. Darryl. Something happened to his son. "Yeah?" he could hear the hoarseness in his own voice.

"One of your men has been involved in a shooting. His partner was in no condition to call you himself."

Simon glanced out the door and into the rest of the Major Crimes office. There was Jim, chatting on the phone with, judging by Jim's relaxed smile, Blair Sandburg. Which left...

Simon swallowed. "Henri or Rafe."

He hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud until the man on the other end of the line answered. "Henri Brown. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Captain."

"Is he...how is he?"

"I'm afraid Mr. Brown was killed."

His throat was suddenly dry. "What?"

"He suffered a gunshot wound to the head. He was declared dead in the ambulance."

Simon tried to croak out a response, but couldn't. He lowered the phone back onto it's cradle with a suddenly shaky hand. He sat for a long moment, trying to get himself together, and finally stood and went to the door of his office. He walked out, going for the elevator, knowing only that he had to get to the hospital.

"Simon? Hang on, Chief. Simon, what's wrong?" Jim held a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, his eyes immediately concerned.

Simon turned towards him, his eyes refusing to focus. "Henri." His voice was raspy.

Jim's expression went dark. He brought the phone up again. "Blair? Meet us at Cascade General, now." He hung up and picked up his jacket.



They had wasted too many miracles.

In that very waiting room, standing as they so often did at the end of a day, or a disaster, Blair, Jim, and Simon had sent up one too many prayers for recovery. That had to be it. There was no other way they could justify what had happened. How else could such a stupid, random accident manage to take one of their own away from them? After all Jim and Blair had survived, how could their friend have fallen so easily?

Blair could only think of one answer. They had wasted all their miracles, all their dumb luck. And he thought back on every single time he'd ended up here, watching over Jim, or vice versa. He thought back to every single time he'd thrown a prayer up to the heavens, asking not only for Jim to survive, but for Jim to wake up, Jim to recover faster, Jim to stop having nightmares.

It was a waste. Jim was his best friend, closer than brothers. His other half. But he would give Jim those nightmares back in a second if it meant they had one prayer left to use for Henri Brown.

He wiped at the tears roughly. It wasn't fair. It was so damned unfair.

"Blair?" Jim's voice was broken at his side.

Blair faced his partner, sniffing hard, trying to hold in the threatening wave of emotions.

One look at his partner told Blair he didn't have to worry. Jim's face was streaked with tears of his own, and he met Blair's eyes, unembarrassed about the emotions. He reached out to his Guide hesitantly, an unspoken request in his eyes.

Blair saw that look and felt himself cracking. He stumbled forward and fell into Jim's arms, needing the contact the same way Jim did- to ensure himself that somehow things were going to go on from here.



Rafe watched through dull eyes as Simon and Jim came in. He watched through the same glassy fog as Blair joined them a short time later. And he watched with detached interest as they each got their fears confirmed by that doctor, and studied their reactions.

He had been in a daze for the last hour, since the shooting. Hour. Felt like years. He felt like an old man, hunched in that chair. He was stunned, confused. Still not able to really compute anything.

But then he watched Jim and Blair as they comforted each other with a tight hug.

And something in him snapped, releasing a wave of fury that cut through the fog in his brain like a..like a bullet. He surged out of his chair, and was at the two men in a flash. With an almost inhuman growl, he planted a hand on two shoulders and shoved the two men away from each other.

Jim and Blair stumbled back, surprised. Jim faced Rafe with a confused look that quickly melted into a guilty frown. "Rafe..." His voice was a whisper.

"Get out of here," Rafe ground out without a pause.

"What?"

Rafe turned on Blair. "You heard me. Get the hell out of here!"

Simon came up behind him and set an arm on the quivering shoulder. "Rafe, listen-"

"Shut up, Simon! I want them out!"

Jim and Blair looked at each other, and Blair nodded brokenly. "Maybe we should..."

Jim glanced over at Rafe, then turned in agreement. He took a step towards the exit door, and Blair followed him without a word.

Rafe wasn't satisfied, though. He didn't want them gone, he realized. He wanted them...he didn't know. "No!"

The two men turned to him after a moment.

Rafe couldn't get control of himself- at that moment, he didn't even want to. "Who are you, anyway? Who the hell are the two of you, that you've lived?" He jerked furiously out of Simon's reach. "You end up here all the time. You've been shot, how are you still here?" He faced Blair squarely. "Who are you that you came back from the dead, you piece of shit? How could you live after being drowned?"

Blair seemed to wilt in front of him, and Jim's arm instinctively went to his partner, bracing him, the pain in his eyes warring with sudden anger.

It wasn't enough. "Answer me, god dammit! Why are you alive? Either of you? Who decided you should live? Who decided he shouldn't?"

Confronted with his own dark thoughts in the form of the grieving man, Blair sagged even further.

"He had a wife! He had a son! What do you have? What makes you two more fit to live than He...Henri?" His body shook with a sudden sob. "Answer me!" He was screaming now, over his tears.

"Rafe, please..." Blair stumbled forward a step, misery coating every feature.

Rafe looked the younger man square in the eye. "It should have been you. It should have been Jim." He fought to contain his tears. "It should have been anybody but him."

There was a pause. Rafe suddenly went still, his tense muscles relaxing abruptly, his efforts to fight his emotions finished. Shaking, his voice was suddenly hushed. "It...it should have been me."

Simon reached the young man. "Rafe, listen to me."

Rafe moved out of Simon's way quickly. He looked around the room, as though seeing it for the first time. He saw the devastated look on Blair's face, the tightly-controlled mask covering Jim's reaction. And he realized what he'd been shouting at them. "I'm..." The hoarse whisper was the closest he could come to verbalizing the apology. His eyes darted to Simon, whose hands had gone over his eyes. He stumbled away from the captain, towards the door that stood behind Blair and Jim.

Blair let him pass without a word, but Jim's arm reached out to stop him. "Rafe, wait a minute."

Rafe didn't reply, just yanked his arm away and kept moving forward, out the door.

The three men left behind were stricken and silent. There were no words that could adequetely fill the quiet that had fallen.

There really was nothing to say. No phrases, no often-used, petty comforts would do. None of it was worthy of the man who's life had just ended, or the man who's life had just been destroyed. And Blair couldn't help but feel that Rafe had been right. All the times he'd thought his luck was horrible, every time he'd woken up in the hospital with a bad shoulder or leg, and wondered why fate had cursed him, he should have realized how truly lucky he was.

He knew it now, though. Henri Brown's death had brought it home to the young man.

And he wouldn't forget ever again.

The End