St. Joseph's hospital, Tacoma. Wednesday afternoon. July 28, 2004.

A woman singing. A familiar voice, a familiar song. Familiar smells, too. A hospital.

"Mom?" Neal said.

The singing stopped on a gasp.

Neal opened his eyes and focused. He'd fallen asleep on a chair in Henry's room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma. "That song..."

"It's a favorite of mine by Carole King," Noelle said. "'You've Got a Friend' – I used to sing it as a lullaby."

"Yeah." Neal stretched. "As a six-year-old in the hospital with food poisoning, I kept asking for the song I heard the last time I was sick, and Mom wouldn't sing it. Or couldn't, I guess. She probably had no idea what song I meant. I guess I remembered you singing it on the visit to Baltimore you told me about, right before we went away, and later I mixed up the memories in my head. I didn't know who you were anymore, so I thought it was my mom singing."

"Oh, sweetie," Noelle said. "I wish..." She trailed off.

Neal looked at Henry, who was still slumbering. All of the blood had been cleaned away by a nurse. Other than a few bruises, Henry looked fine. But he hadn't woken. "Any change?"

"No. The lab is testing the chemicals Robert used on him. The doctors tell me this is partly a physical reaction and partly emotional. He doesn't want to wake up and hear that his father was killed to save his life."

Neal checked his watch. The day had started so early he felt like it was the middle of the night, but it wasn't barely past noon. Of course that was 3pm Eastern time. "Do they have food here?" he asked.

Noelle nodded. "They'll bring a tray for us if we call." She reached for a menu on a table beside her and handed it to Neal.

He read through it, and was pleasantly surprised at the options. They ordered a variety of things to see what would tempt them. Visions of Robert's body on the warehouse floor were overriding Neal's appetite, but he thought Noelle should eat and therefore would force himself to eat as well to make sure she took care of herself.

While they waited for the food he asked, "Are you okay? I mean, I know you were divorced, but you loved Robert at first, didn't you?"

Noelle leaned back in her chair, looking tired. "For a long time, yes, I did. At the moment I'm still in shock, I suppose. There's a base of relief that it's over and that I don't have to worry about him hurting Henry or you or anyone else. On top of that there's the guilt about being relieved that someone's dead. Add a scoop of regret that he'll never have a chance to mend his ways and rebuild a healthy relationship with his son. And sprinkled all over that is sorrow stemming from the memories of our early marriage, back when he seemed to be the perfect husband. We had some happy times then."

"Scoops and sprinkles. Sounds like a banana split."

"Grief is complex, and you experience it in many flavors. A banana split is a good analogy." She reached over and held his hand. "And you picked up quite a bit from those psychology classes you took with Henry. It's sweet of you to worry about me." She let go and picked up her purse, retrieving a sheet of paper she handed to Neal. "I think we both know I'm not nearly objective enough to be your therapist anymore. This is a list of therapists in New York who I think you'd like. The first one does some consulting with the FBI already. You could request him if you need to talk about anything work-related."

Neal glanced over the list, then folded it and placed it in his wallet. He knew she was right, and yet he was surprised that he already missed their sessions, especially given how much he'd resisted therapy at first.

They fell into silence as the food arrived, as if it took all their energy to raise up enough semblance of hunger to eat. When they were ready to give up, Graham arrived. "Good," he said. "Thought I might have to twist your arms to get you to eat anything."

"It wasn't easy," Noelle admitted. "Are you done for the day?"

He nodded. "FBI has enough paperwork to drive a person to drink, but my part's done. Peter will be a bit longer yet." Graham had insisted he wanted to stay busy, and Neal suspected Peter had done his best to distract the man from the loss of his son. Now he looked at Henry with concern. "How's my Tiger?"

"Tiger?" Neal repeated.

"Always reminds me of a cat," Graham said. "Even when it looks like he's lazing around, you know his mind is full of schemes and mischief."

"Graham and Julia called him Tiger when he was little," Noelle added. "And when Meredith dressed you kids up as animals, he seemed to enjoy being a tiger the most."

Neal nodded. Graham's description was apt. It was unnerving to see Henry so still and quiet, knowing that he wasn't busy scheming. Wanting a distraction he said, "I've heard stories from my Caffrey grandparents about what we were like as kids, but I haven't heard your perspective. What was miniature Henry like, Pops?"

Graham appeared touched that Neal was still willing to call him Pops. He pulled up a chair and once he was seated let his gaze land on Henry. Now he looked more fond than worried. "A couple months before he turned four, our company picnic was rained out. Everyone gathered on blankets in the lobby of the building to eat, and then we went upstairs for a game of hide-and-seek. It was always popular with the little ones when they visited the office. Over the years – we're talking decades here – the rules have been refined. The kids would divide into hiders and seekers. Grownups would join in, too, for that matter. I used to tell my investigators that playing hide-and-seek with the little ones stretched our minds. The seekers went to the kitchen for a snack while everyone else hid. When everyone was found, they'd usually swap places, with the original hiders taking a turn doing the seeking. Little kids usually lasted a round or two before they needed a nap in a nice quiet executive's office."

"Like yours?" Neal asked.

"Well, yes, I'm told my office was well-suited for napping. Seeing the little ones resting safely around me... I guess you could say it energized me. Made me want to keep doing my job and make the world safe for them."

"It was common to see Graham leading meetings with a baby in his arms," Noelle added. "Everyone knew he was a big softie."

"With a killer instinct for business and investigations, mind you," Graham added, sounding so much like Henry that Neal had to grin. "Now the littlest ones, say three or four years old, were usually found first, because they got impatient with hiding. They'd wiggle and squirm and talk or even sing. The seekers would grab them and send them back to the parents who'd gathered in the large conference room to play games. Now it so happened that Henry had been in the office the last couple of weekends. Something big was going on at the university where Noelle was teaching, and Robert..." Here his breath hitched. "He volunteered to bring the boy to work with him. They'd played a few rounds of hide-and-seek during those visits and Robert, well he was always pushing the boy to try harder, to stay quiet longer and so forth. Drained the fun right out of it. So on the day of the picnic, little Henry wasn't as excited about the game as his playmates were. He went to the kitchen with the seekers and we almost had to push him out when it was time to start looking."

"Hard to imagine," said Neal, thinking of rounds of the Hospital Game over the years, Tuesday Tails last week, and a host of other times they'd merrily chased each other well into their twenties.

"One of the rules of the game was that if someone had their office door closed, it meant they were working and didn't want to be disturbed. The kids avoided those offices, and weren't allowed to close doors behind them if they hid in an office. On that day, Julia had gone into her office. We'd been married about eight years by then, and everyone still held her in awe. She was so brilliant and so often lost in her own world of numbers... People naturally tended to be quiet and behave around her. My kids were still afraid to shove an infant in her arms, for fear she'd get distracted with an abstract math problem and put a baby down someplace unsafe. Not that she ever did anything like that, of course."

"But we honestly didn't know if she liked children or not," Noelle said. "She didn't jump into the games with the kids, and we didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so we didn't push her to join. Her quiet nature didn't seem like a fit with the cheerful chaos of Win-Win events."

"We'd gotten to the end of the first round of the game, and realized Henry was missing. These things happened occasionally. A young seeker would get tired and plop down for a nap someplace. A group of us went looking and I knocked on the door of Julia's office to ask if she'd seen the boy. And there he was, sitting on her lap and chatting with her. He was clearly well-entertained, and much to my relief she seemed quite engaged in the conversation and not annoyed at all. Unlike Robert. He started telling Henry he'd failed by quitting the game. You could see the boy's upper lip quiver and I expected him to start crying any minute, but Julia stood up and said Henry had found her right away and she hadn't realized they shouldn't stay in her office."

"Robert was sputtering, saying that Julia never played," Noelle added. "And in that proper British voice of hers, she said she always played when she was invited, and Henry had been the first to invite her. She took him by the hand and they strolled into the kitchen to join the next round of the game as partners. She said she needed Henry as a partner to tell her what to do since she'd never played before."

"He took that so seriously," Graham said. "Making sure she stayed with him and didn't get lost as he told her what to do. And she kept a straight face the whole time. After that, playing with partners became part of the game."

"He introduced the concept of an accomplice," Neal said. "Not bad."

"I was impressed," Graham said. "Julia was, too. She told me later that his approach to seeking his cousins was quite advanced for his age, and she wrote an algorithm based on it to find where meaningful data was 'hiding' among less useful bits of data."

"Turns out Julia was wonderful with the children. She didn't want to be pushy, thinking we didn't trust her. But in fact she'd worked as a nanny when she first left the university. She said toddlers gave her useful insight into chaos and patterns, and that experience inspired some of the first papers she published."

"You know, she reminds me a little of Mary Poppins," Neal said, thinking the comment would bring a smile.

"She used to say, Robert could do with a spoonful of sugar," Graham said, his breath catching in a sob.

Noelle put an arm around him as he cried. "It's all right, Graham. It's all right." Her eyes were filled with tears, too.

###

Peter breathed a sigh of relief when Graham returned to the hospital. The man's stoicism was cracking, and Noelle would be much more adept at dealing with things when it finally crumbled.

Still, Peter almost wished he could leave with him. Sometimes it seemed the FBI specialized in paperwork, and it increased drastically when there was a fatality.

Another hour had melted away to paperwork when Annina Brandel stepped into the conference room he'd been using as an office. "Agent Burke, thanks for supporting me in your official statement. I'm glad you didn't kick off an interagency feud with the marshals about my presence and role in the shooting this morning."

"I'm not a fan of feuds," Peter said.

"If you see Neal, tell him I was impressed at the way he drew Robert's attention. That distraction he provided made all the difference. It's obvious Robert was planning a version of suicide-by-cop and intended to take his son with him."

"Yeah, it was impressive. And I hope to God he never does something like that again. Neal's a consultant, not an agent."

"True. But you did give him a weapon."

Peter nodded, thoughts swirling through his head. Neal, at Masterson Music, saying that Texas was home. That statement matched the birth certificate the marshals had issued him in December. But that document was a fiction. Neal had said something recently about being born in Baltimore and being confused about why he hadn't been born in the D.C. area instead.

There was no way Peter could praise Neal for taking that risk this morning. Others would. Annina, and Hughes perhaps. Peter couldn't. If he tried, he'd trip over the fear and emotions that accompanied watching Robert's attention and gun swing toward Neal. But maybe he could do something else to let the kid know he was appreciated. Something to increase his sense of roots and family, and to combat that flight instinct that still had his suitcase packed in case he needed to run. "Are you heading back to New York?"

"Yes. I've turned over custody of Jason Ford to my colleagues here. I have a flight home tonight."

"When you get back, could you do Neal a favor and look up his birth certificate?"

"I thought we issued him –"

"The real one," Peter interrupted. "The original. The marshals would have taken it when he entered WITSEC, right?"

"That's right. What does he want it for? He really shouldn't use it, you know. It would invalidate the cover story we invented for him."

"I understand. If we could get a copy, I'd make sure he destroys it after he sees it. It's just that he's trying to put down roots, or trying to restore old roots. Having that document, or seeing it... I think it would make those roots seem more real, more substantial. Does that make any sense?"

"It's starting to. I'm fairly new to the marshals, but my experience tells me that if I file a request for a copy of the document, it will take months to get to New York. It simply won't be a priority compared to the needs of families still under protection. It would be faster if I filed a request authorizing you access to Neal's file the next time the Bureau sends to you D.C. That's where the original certificate would be. They'd probably let you make a copy if I submit the right form."

"I'm due for some training and management meetings at headquarters in a couple of weeks. That would work." Peter stood up. "Annina, thanks. Things could have been so much more tragic this morning. Robert's son, his father... Neal as Henry's best friend, me as a friend to most of them... Any of us could have shot Robert, and it would have left us reeling. You making the shot gave us the best option in a bad situation." He shook Annina's hand. "It's good to have an ally in the marshal's office, and I hope you know you have allies in the Bureau now, too."

###

Peter arrived at Henry's hospital room mid-afternoon, while the doctor was shooing everyone out so she had space to check on her patient.

Graham's eyes looked red. That wall of stoicism must have finally crumbled. Not sure what to say, Peter patted him on the back. "How's he doing?" Peter asked, in the hope that talking about Henry would be safe.

"Nurse was in a few minutes ago and said he's coming out of it. That's why they sent the doctor in. Noelle summarized everything they told her over the last few hours as he's been deeply unconscious, sleeping off the effects, and no lasting harm."

"Good. That's good news. Umm. I talked to my team back in Manhattan right after you headed over here. Allen Winston was there all day working with them, and they umm... They told him. He said he wouldn't tell anyone at Win-Win until you're ready."

There was a hitch in Graham's breath. "I should've called people, right? Julia. My other kids. I just... That makes it seem real, somehow. Makes it impossible to ignore how bad it was. What time is it?" He looked at his watch. "Julia will be wondering why I haven't called. Excuse me." He walked down the hall toward a waiting room, pulling out his cell phone.

Peter watched him sadly. He'd already called El to tell her about the morning's events. That had been wrenching, and she hadn't even met Robert Winslow. But she knew Henry and Noelle and had met Graham, and of course she was horrified that Neal had been seconds away from being gunned down.

Noelle and Neal had walked away for coffee and returned with a cup for Peter. He'd had plenty of coffee at the Bureau, but he took it and thanked them for their thoughtfulness. "Graham's calling Julia," he said.

"He's been putting it off," Noelle said. "Telling people about the death makes it seem more real. It took a couple of hours before I could face calling my parents. I could tell they wanted to fly out here and join us, but I told them to wait. Hopefully we can all go home tomorrow." She paused. "Will they... the FBI, that is... will they release Robert's body soon?"

Peter nodded. "There's some paperwork required to return him to Baltimore, if that's where you plan to hold the funeral. I filled out most of the form, and was holding onto it until I knew your plans. Should I go ahead and make the request?"

"Yes, please. Graham and I talked about it, and we want to hold the funeral in Baltimore. And, umm... Does one of us need to umm... identify...?" She couldn't quite say it.

"No," Peter assured her. "None of you needs to go to the morgue."

"Thanks," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"I called Angela," Neal said, picking up the conversation. "She and Paige stopped by the hospital and stayed a few hours when I first got here. They plan to come back this evening if Henry's still here, or they'll drop by the hotel if he's released."

The doctor returned and announced that Henry was waking up. She pulled Noelle aside to discuss the details and timing for releasing Henry.

Peter followed Neal into the room, where Henry was still asleep but seemed restless. "Wake up, Tiger," said Neal. "That's right. I know Graham's old nickname for you. I'm going to tell Angela and the teasing will never end. You know you want to be awake for that."

"Mmmph," was the response from the bed. Peter supposed the sound might be compared to the grumbling of a grumpy, sleeping tiger.

"That sounds promising," said Noelle, returning to Henry's side.

"The doctor says he's going to be okay?" Neal asked.

"'nificent," Henry muttered.

Noelle took his hand and squeezed it. "That's right." She smiled at Neal and Peter. "My mother likes to say we shouldn't settle for fine or okay. We should be magnificent instead."

A/N: When Julia was introduced, I said she looked like Julie Andrews, thus the Mary Poppins references. Neal's childhood experience with food poisoning was first mentioned in the story Caffrey Conversation.