Henri Brown was in a good mood. Sure he was going in to work, sure that meant only crime and slime ahead, but hey, that was his life. Dismissing that, it just might be a good day. He and his partner had a relatively light case load- a relief after pulling double duty when Jim Ellison had turned up missing for a few days last week. He was looking forward to the rest and relaxation of a simple nine-hour work day.

He left the elevator and glanced around the familiar walls. Major Crimes, his home away from home. And everything was same as usual. Rafe was already there- his partner had probably shown up at the crack of dawn. He was fighting with his girl again, and the two of them avoided each other like the plague when they disagreed about anything. Brown personally gave the relationship another week before Rafe got tired of the extra hours at the station and decided she wasn't worth it.

Joel Taggart sat at his desk, on the phone, calmly talking to someone or other. He acknowledged Brown with a nod and a quick smile without breaking the flow of his conversation.

And yeah, there, through the glass, was Simon, also on the phone, but he was standing, probably yelling into the receiver about something or other.

Ellison's desk was empty- what a surprise. Jim and Sandburg were probably off chasing terrorists or fighting psychotic dog catchers or God only knew what.

Everything was right with the world.

And then it wasn't. "What the hell? What is this?" Brown looked down at the stack of files that had doubled on his desk overnight.

>From his seat to the right, Rafe smiled tightly. "We get Ellison's cases," he answered.

"Aww, man. He's only been back for a few days." Brown dropped into his seat, picking up the first case file and flipping through it aimlessly. "What happened this time?"

"Accident. Sandburg."

"Damn it. That kid." Brown leaned over for the cup of coffee Rafe offered and saw the exhaustion in his partner's eyes. "Why don't you collapse or something, man? Simon's such a soft touch for Jim when his partner goes down, maybe he'll give me time off."

"Yeah, right, no problem." Rafe retorted amiably. No, he wouldn't even think of doing that, and they both knew it.

"So Hairboy's gonna be alright?"

"Apparently. He's back at their apartment, Jim's taking care of him."

"Wanna go by during lunch?" Brown knew Rafe always liked visiting the two roommates- Blair's cooking and Jim's house cleaning were a nice change from his partner's sloppy apartment and Chef Boyardee dinners.

"What lunch?" Rafe nodded at the files pointedly.

"Hell," Brown replied with feeling. "Well, what's first? I see Sherry kicked you out again, you must have gotten some reading done while you've been here."

"Yeah, yeah. No Sherry talk, alright? It's too early and my head hurts too much already. Let's just get started."

Rafe couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so tired. It wasn't like he was used to the three-squares, nine hours rest routine days that Joe and Jane Civilian got, he never had been, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Not since he'd tried to put himself through college by working two jobs and going to class had he ever felt so weary, and so directionless.

For the last three days he and Brown had done double duty, interviewing witnesses, tracking leads, meeting with informants, and occasionally actually making an arrest. They hadn't worked a less than twelve hour shift for days, and it was starting to show.

So when the elevator door opened and Jim Ellison's nod and grin greeted him, Rafe felt a weight lifting off his shoulders and the weariness in his steps suddenly fading. "Jim! Great to see you back, man. Where's Blair?"

"School. Had to catch up," Ellison replied. "Where's Brown?"

Rafe snorted slightly. "Is he ever on time?"

"Stupid question, sorry."

"So you're back, right? Not just paying a visit?" Rafe couldn't hide the hope.

But Jim didn't see it, back to studying his files- HIS files, Rafe saw with a grin. Not his problem any more. "I'm back."

Rafe beamed as he went to his own desk and turned the computer on. There were a few things he had to check out that he'd left undone last night, and with any luck he could get them done before Brown showed up and the two of them could head out and do their own field work.

The phone rang over at Jim's desk, and Rafe listened with half an ear as the gruff detective answered. "Ellison....Hey, Blair."

Rafe heard the affection in Ellison's tone and hid a grin.

"Whoa, calm down. What's wrong?"

Uh oh. Blair had a problem. This wasn't good. Concern for the kid fought a small war with the voice inside him that simply sighed and said *not again*, and won. Rafe left his desk to wander closer to Jim.

"Alright, alright. I'll be right there....No, I'll send them over. Don't worry about it, just get away from the area and stay low." Jim hung up quickly and stood, entering Simon's office without a knock and blurting out in a voice that everyone in the office could hear, "There's some maniac shooting a gun at the U. Blair just called. Better get an ambulance and some black and whites over there. I'm going to see what I can do."

Rafe stopped him as he made his way to the elevator. "Jim, what's up? You need backup?"

"No thanks. I just hope Sandburg doesn't get hurt," Jim spoke almost distractedly as he brushed past Rafe and into the opening elevator doors.

"Is Blair near the shooting?" Rafe called out.

"Yeah," Jim answered as the doors started to close, his voice reflecting his anxiety. "Says he knows the guy doing it."

Rafe waited for the doors to shut completely before letting out a low curse. Blair would get hurt alright. It was the way these things went.

With a sigh, he wandered to Jim's desk and grabbed the stack of files, bracing himself for another long day.

Brown tried hard to ignore the silence coming from his partner's desk. He tried, but he couldn't make it. The solemn air, so strange coming from Rafe, was starting to wear on his patience. Something was wrong with him, that was for sure. And he wasn't talking, not to Brown, not to anyone.

It was a week after Blair's wrist had been sprained at the university, as he fought with some loony shooting students. Thanks to Blair, there was only one casualty that day. Thanks to Blair getting hurt, Rafe and Brown spent another two days living at the station.

Now things were back to normal, relatively. As normal as they got around there.

Simon had given Jim and Sandburg a special assignment, some kind of top-priority case that meant once again, the cases Ellison had been handling were given to Rafe and Brown. But it wasn't too bad- Jim and Blair were around to help out most of the time- this assignment they had seemed to be more research than anything else at this stage, and Blair was eager as a puppy dog to help his friends out. But it only cut an hour or two out of any given day, and Brown still found they spent all of their waking hours either at the station or out pursuing some lead.

It was wearing him down. Rafe, too. His partner had grown more quiet than usual as the days went by, the circles under his eyes got darker. But today he had shown up- Rafe, for God's sake- almost twenty minutes late, looking like he hadn't slept a wink, and he didn't say more than three words to anyone, including his partner, the entire morning.

Finally, when Rafe got up to go to the bathroom, Brown decided enough was enough, and followed him, perching himself on the edge of the sink counter, waiting for his partner to finish.

Rafe opened the stall door to see him there, and blinked, surprised. "Henri. Somethin wrong?"

"That's my line, ace." Brown retorted. In the flourescent lighting, Rafe looked horrible, haggard and unhappy, five years older than he was.

"Whaddaya mean?"

Brown hid a grimace- even the lazy, dull speech was unusual. "I mean, you look and sound like a zombie. What's wrong with you?"

Rafe shrugged and went to the sink to wash his hands. "Just tired. Can you blame me?"

"I've seen you tired, this ain't it. Talk to me, partner."

Rafe met his eyes through the mirror, then turned to look at his own reflection. He winced and looked away.

"C'mon, Rafe. You can tell me anything, you know that. What happened?"

"My sister," Rafe started slowly.

Brown raised an eyebrow. He liked Emma, Rafe's sister. She was a hell of a cook, a good woman. She and Rafe were close. "What about her?"

"Dead."

It took him a minute to realize Rafe had actually said it. "What?"

"Dead. Last night."

Brown's face fell. "You're....you mean, 'dead' dead?"

Rafe nodded slowly.

Oh shit. "What happened?"

"Dunno. Heart trouble. She had some kind of seizure. Died at the hospital."

Where Rafe had been all night. Oh shit, oh shit. "Why didn't you call me?"

Rafe blinked, turning to look at his partner, then shrugged. "What's the point?"

That stung Brown more than he would have cared to admit. "The point, partner, is I'm your friend. I could have been there for you. Why don't you tell Simon? You shouldn't be here today, you must be exhausted. Come on, Rafe."

"What? Whaddaya want me to do? I can't stay home. With Jim and Blair so busy, who's gonna handle things here? And you're just as tired as I am, there's no way I was just gonna call you at one in the morning and make you get up just to babysit."

"And it didn't occur to you that maybe I'd want to be there?"

Rafe met his partner's angry gaze, and his expression melted away, leaving behind a tired blankness. "Sorry, Henri. I guess I just wasn't thinking too clear, you know?"

Brown's anger immediately vanished. He reached out and put a hand on his partner's shoulder. "It's alright. Are you okay?"

"I guess. I have to be, right?"

Brown didn't answer. He simply followed Rafe when he went out the door to the bathroom and back to the Major Crimes office.

Damn them, anyway. Everyone in this place, driving Rafe to this. It had gotten to the point where Blair Sandburg gets a twisted ankle and he and his partner get a two-day vacation, and Rafe has a tragedy Brown knew was tearing away at him, and here he was, still taking up Jim's slack.

No, that wasn't completely fair. Jim and Blair didn't control the things that happened to them, and lord knew they had more than their share of troubles. Besides, Blair wasn't even officially a police officer. He was, more or less, an innocent bystander, and every injury he suffered was one too many.

But God, neither he nor Rafe could take much more than this.

"What the hell is this? Rafe, Brown, what kind of report is this?"

Brown frowned at the voice of the large detective and spared his partner a glance before looking up into Jim's face. "What's wrong, Ellison?"

"Did either of you graduate high school? How am I supposed to get anything out of this?"

Brown's fists clenched under the desk. Jim was in a mood today, and he didn't know why. Probably emotional fall-out from the latest Blair-induced crisis, although the kid was just fine, standing there watching his partner blowing out his anger. "What do you have a problem with?" he asked slowly.

Jim tossed the paper on his desk, and Brown glanced down at it. Damn. The report from an interview of a suspect's husband yesterday. Rafe's report. Brown knew exactly what Jim's problem was- Rafe was still a wreck. Emma's funeral was the next day, and Brown knew Rafe and his rather estranged parents were fighting constantly about the details. Rafe's work was suffering- the man he'd interviewed for Jim's case had gotten off with a few vague, half-hearted questions, and Rafe's reports tended to be succinct, vague, and of the see-Jane-run variety. Exactly what it would take to get on Ellison's bad side.

Rafe simply gazed up at the older man. "Jim, what do you want? I gave the interview, I wrote a report."

Jim blew out a breath, ignoring Blair's calming hand on his arm. "Look at this," he retorted, snatching the report out of Brown's hand. "'Asked husband what he knew, husband didn't know anything.' What the hell is this? Did he tell you he didn't know anything, or did you draw your own conclusions? Rafe, this doesn't help me at all. I have to go back and interview this guy again."

Brown could see the emotions warring on his friend's face and spoke up. "Then go interview him, and get off our case."

"Excuse me?" Jim's eyes turned to him.

Brown met his gaze, feeling more tense than he had around Jim for a long time. This was all wrong, this was the old Jim, this was the old Brown. This was the two men pre-Blair, when Jim had made every attempt to piss of everyone around him. Had Ellison been driven to this by the problems plaguing Blair?

"Come on, Jim. Back off. It's time for lunch." Blair was tugging at Jim's arm.

"In a minute, Chief."

Blair gave Brown an apologetic look, and backed off slowly.

"Now talk to me, Rafe. Tell me why you wasted your time and mine by writing this shit report."

Rafe's handsome face was struggling to remain neutral. "Sorry, Jim."

"Sorry? You're never this incompetent, what the hell is up with you? You're acting like some spoiled kid pissed off about a homework assignment he didn't want and botching it up on purpose."

Something in Brown snapped, seeing the slumped shoulders of his friend and partner, knowing if he could see his face he would see lines of exhaustion and red-rimmed eyes. He jumped out of his seat, nearly knocking the chair on it's back. He took a swift stride around the desk and into Jim's face. "What the hell gives you the right to talk to him like that?" he demanded, his voice louder than it maybe should have been.

Blair returned to his partner's side in a flash, and Jim's face went a shade redder. "Brown, I think you'd better get out of my face before I get angry."

"Fuck you, Jim!"

Behind Brown, Rafe slumped even further at his desk, his head in his hands.

"What the hell is going on out here?"

Jim didn't even turn. "Stay out of this, Simon."

"Yeah, right." Simon left the doorway of his office and approached the gathering officers. "Henri, Jim, what's the problem?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Jim grumbled.

"Oh, shut up." Brown snapped. He was too far gone now to gather himself in front of his boss. "Do you know what it's like for us, Ellison? You know how hard it is to do a day's work here- try doing double that. And not just once in a while, no. You and Blair are either off on some secret job none of us peons can know about, or you're in some hospital or lounging around your apartment, recovering from your injuries." He saw Blair's own hurt expression, and quickly continued. "No, man, I know what that's like. I'm not angry at you for getting hurt. But you don't ever stop to think about the fact that you've got four other detectives in this office, and we've got more than enough on our hands without your workload too."

Simon cut in now, coming in between the two men as Jim turned red and opened his mouth to retort. "That's enough, Brown! Get your ass in my office, now!"

"No." Brown stood his ground. "You're just as bad, Simon. You don't think about the fact that me and Rafe've been home maybe five hours in the last two weeks when we weren't sleeping. Every single time these two get into trouble, we go through the same thing, and we don't say a word, cause there shouldn't be anything to say. But it's gotta stop somewhere! You give these two all the space they need, and you're riding us constantly. You've got some boy's club formed, you're always off together sharing secrets, and I guess the two of us just weren't invited."

He felt a hand on his own shoulder suddenly. "Henri, don't."

He glanced back at Rafe, and away again before the look in his partner's eyes could make him stop. "So Blair hurts his foot, they both go home for a few days. Fine. Meanwhile, Rafe's family's dropping dead, and he's too intimidated by this little circle you have to even tell you about it. He can't ask for time off, cause that'll leave the ones of us who stick around with that much more work, and now GI Joe over here is yelling at him cause he didn't cross his t's and dot his i's. Well, I'm sick of it. Yeah, Jim, the report's probably bad. The interview probably wasn't that great. But what do you expect? He's gotten three hours sleep in the last three days, and he spends his waking hours working here or planning his sister's funeral, which he probably won't even get to go to because he'll be here in the god damned office doing your paperwork!"

Brown ran out of steam, finally. The hand on his shoulder, that had tightened almost painfully when he mentioned the funeral, had sapped the anger out of him. He was left glaring at Jim and Simon, ignoring Blair's round eyes, and hoping he hadn't done anything to hurt his partner's feelings any more.

Simon drew in a deep breath in the silence that followed. "Are you through?"

"For now," Brown replied flatly.

"Fine. Now, it looks like we have a few issues we have to work out. Why don't you come into my office?"

Brown knew what was coming- he really didn't want to go into that office. But he sighed. "Fine."

"First, I want you to apologize to Ellison and Sandburg."

"What?" His voice shot up an octave.

Simon's face was hard. "Apologize."

What was he, a kid? "Come on, captain."

"Whether what you've said it right or not, you have no right to attack your fellow detective that way, especially about things that aren't his fault."

"I'm not sorry about what I said," Brown replied through gritted teeth.

"Apologize."

It wasn't Simon's voice.

Henri turned surprised eyes on his partner. "What?"

Rafe was pale, but his eyes stayed firmly locked on the other's. "That wasn't fair, Henri. To them or to me."

He was in the Twilight Zone. Brown couldn't believe the words coming out of his partner.

Rafe could see the denial. "Henri, you're tired, you're not thinking right. Everyone here knows what it's like to get hurt, physically and emotionally, by what we do. It happens to Jim and Blair more often than the rest of us, for some reason, and they have to deal with that. They shouldn't have to deal with us, too. Think about what it must be like for them, huh?" He blinked too-bright eyes over at the subjects of the conversation. "Blair, sorry about everything. I'm sorry you got hurt, I'm sorry you're gonna feel so guilty about what H just said. Jim, I'm sorry I messed up. Just leave the report on my desk, I'll fix it." He drew in a shaky breath. "Simon, I'm sorry. Everyone, I'm sorry. I...I gotta go to lunch." Dangerously close to breaking down in the middle of the office, he didn't wait for Simon's okay. He turned and slowly made his way to the stairwell, leaving the men behind him in stricken silence.

There was a long pause. Brown found himself wondering whether he should go after his best friend, but he hesitated. He had to clean up his mess here first. He turned slowly back to Jim, but his eyes stopped on Blair, who was looking at the doorway Rafe had just left, his eyes watering.

"His sister died?" the observer asked finally, his voice barely above a whisper.

Brown nodded. "Four days ago. Some kind of heart failure."

"Shit." Simon responded. "Why didn't he tell me?"

Brown shrugged. "Exactly why I said. He didn't think he could miss the work, and he thought you'd be too busy with Jim's case to be able to give it much thought."

Simon met Brown's eyes slowly. "I've really messed up here, haven't I?"

Jim spoke up now. "No, I think we all did." He looked over at Henri. "I'm the one who should be sorry. You were right, I didn't even think about what it must be like for you guys to have to carry our weight when we're not here."

Brown sat himself heavily at the closest available chair. "I'm sorry for yelling like that. I didn't mean all of it."

Blair spoke up suddenly, his voice surprisingly matter-of-fact. "Alright, great. So everyone's sorry. Big deal. What do we do now?"

Simon answered. "We do better. Henri, I still want to talk to you. I want you to tell me everything you and Rafe have kept hidden from me the last few weeks. I can't change it, but I can sure as hell make sure it doesn't happen again."

Brown nodded. "Sure, Cap."

"When's the funeral?" Simon asked suddenly.

"Tomorrow afternoon."

"Fine, you're off tomorrow. Both of you. He'll need you there."

Henri's voice reflected his surprise, and his gratitude. "Thanks, Simon. That'll help."

"Yeah, see if this helps. You two have a week off after tomorrow. With pay. I'll order Ellison and Sandburg not to get hurt, and we'll see how it feels to carry another person's burden for a few days."

Brown grinned, but realized what that meant for Jim and Blair, and glanced over at them. To his surprise, both were nodding their whole-hearted agreement.

Henri let out a slow breath, wondering briefly exactly why they hadn't gotten this out in the open earlier.

"Are you two gonna be alright?" Simon asked him quietly, his eyes going back to the door that marked Rafe's hurried exit.

"Yeah, Simon. We'll be fine. Give him some time, you know? He's going through a lot."

Simon nodded. Time. That's what it would take for all of them, to heal the wounds he had been too blind to see were there.

The next day, the lonely solitude Rafe was feeling as he gazed down at the coffin that held his sister's body was broken as a car pulled up, and his best friend and partner, along with the entire staff of the Major Crimes office, emerged in their black suits, and took their spots beside him.

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