See prologue for story information and disclaimer.

Sorry for the delay. Here's the next chapter and thanks for waiting. Also, I apologize if the flashback is inaccurate. I have no idea how 9/11 went down for cops.

Chapter Eleven

Flack didn't feel like himself all afternoon. After Sarah had suggested going to Ground Zero, he had frozen up and fallen on his usual coping technique. Pretending certain things hadn't happened was working for him, but he couldn't pretend if she made him go there. He had been surprised she had given in so easily, but he assumed she hadn't finished with the issue. If he knew one thing about women, it's that they always wanted men to talk through their problems. He'd have to come up with some sort of strategy for that conversation.

After their lunch, they met Stella for shopping and he was demoted to bag boy. According to Stella and Sarah, he couldn't be trusted to match clothes, so his opinion was only useful if they needed to know how an outfit would affect a man.

This would usually be a good thing for Flack, who didn't generally enjoy shopping. He could have let his mind wander to the latest sports news or a case. However, this time his thoughts drifted in an entirely unwelcome direction. Sarah's suggestion brought painful memories to the forefront of his mind; memories he thought he'd buried long ago.

Ten year old Junior was playing in his front yard, shooting a tennis ball into a makeshift hockey net, when a moving van pulled up next door. He stopped and watched as big men started unloading furniture and carrying it into the house. A woman with red hair rushed out of the car that had pulled up and started yelling at them to be careful.

Junior realized this was the new family that his mother had mentioned at breakfast that morning. He watched as a man with brown hair and a boy with red hair around his age got out of the car. After a couple of minutes, the boy noticed him and came over.

"Hi," he said. "My name's Jerry. Do you live here?"

Junior jerked a thumb towards his house. "Yeah, I live right here. I'm Don Flack, but everybody calls me Junior."

Jerry nodded. Junior grinned as he saw some hockey sticks being unloaded from the truck.

"D'you like hockey?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's great," Jerry said.

"Wanna play?"

Jerry nodded and a friendship was born.

From the day they met, Jerry and Junior had been inseparable. They remained the best of friends through middle school and high school. After high school, Junior had gone to the police academy and Jerry had started training to be a firefighter. Even though they didn't live next door any more and they didn't see each other every day, they were still as close as ever. They were brothers in every way but blood and Junior was sure that would never change.

It had started like any September morning. Flack was on his beat with Moran. It was a couple of years since he'd been Junior on a daily basis. He was now Flack, the beat cop, except when Moran called him 'kid'. The only times he was Junior were when he was at home or with Jerry.

He and Moran had been eyeing some local gang members who were looking suspicious when they heard a scream from the diner across the street from their squad car. With the instincts of New York's finest, they jumped out of their car and ran across the street.

Whatever they had expected to find, it wasn't a crowd of shocked patrons staring at the television above the bar. Flack looked up at it and he understood. On the screen was something that couldn't be true, except in movies. The World Trade Center was smoking. A plane hit it again and again as the news channel repeated the footage.

Moran was snapped out of his shock by a voice on his radio saying 'Attention all units'. The diner patrons turned to look at them and Moran nudged Flack's arm.

"Come on, kid. We've got to get down there."

Flack didn't actually get to the site. He got stuck on crowd control a couple of blocks away, since he was such a young cop. When he got home much later there was a message on his machine from his mother.

Years later, the only part of the message he'd remember was his mother's voice full of tears saying Jerry was dead.

"Don, what do you think?"

Flack was jolted to the present by Sarah's voice. He looked up to see her standing in a tight, red dress that hugged her in all the right ways. He answered her question with the only thing he could think of.

"Gah."

She smirked and turned to Stella. "I think this is the one."

She walked back into the changing room and Flack's mental faculties returned to him. He tried to regain his emotional control. It had been a long time since he'd thought about that September day when his almost brother had been crushed by a collapsing building. He wasn't the same Junior he had been back then. He wasn't even the same Flack.

Stella looked at him questioningly.

"You okay, Flack?"

He blinked and forced he usual grin. "Yeah, just bored, that's all."

She smiled. "We're almost done. I promise. I've got to go back to work in an hour or so."

The time went more quickly for Flack when he merely concentrated on how good Sarah looked in the outfits she tried on. In the end, she bought the red dress to wear to the musical that evening and a couple other nice outfits.

When they left Stella, who was mumbling about needing to talk to Danny, they headed back to the apartment to get ready for dinner and their musical.

When they got there, Sarah turned to Flack and said, "Don, about this morning,"

He held up his hand and she paused.

"Can we talk about this after the show?" he asked. "I don't want to ruin the night."

She didn't look satisfied with that idea, but she nodded any way.

"Alright, Don. If you're sure."

"I'm sure," he said. "Besides, we don't have a lot of time before our dinner reservations and it's a long story."

She smiled and they went to get ready.

They were on their way out the door when they noticed a message on the machine. Flack pressed the button and they heard Mrs. Monroe's angry voice.

"He put you on his machine?" she yelled. "Sarah Alexandra Monroe, you listen to me. You'd better get yourself off this machine and back home where you belong. I don't want to have to say it again."

The click of her hanging up was followed by a few moments of silence. Flack wasn't sure how Sarah would react. For a second, he thought she was about to pack up her stuff, but then she started laughing.

"Oh Mom," she said. "That's not going to make me want to go back."

She turned to Flack and smiled. "Come on, Don. Let's go. We don't want to be late. I'll call her later and tell her I'm not leaving."

Flack let out a breath that he didn't know he had been holding. He smiled and held out his arm for her. She took it happily and he felt unreasonably pleased.

When they got back from the musical, Sarah couldn't stop singing the songs. Flack would normally have been annoyed, but he found it endearing with Sarah.

"So, Don, did you want to talk now?"

He sighed, and wished she had kept singing. Despite his misgivings, he nodded and they sat down on the couch.

"Why were you so upset?" she asked.

He took a deep breath, taking a moment to be wonder why he felt like he had to be completely honest with her. He looked at her, seeing concern and something else shining in her eyes, and he remembered. Oh right, that's why.

"When I was younger, I had this friend, who was almost like a brother…"