Kim flinched at the gentle question and ducked her head, as if searching for the answer in places inside herself shrouded from Kerry's glance. "I... I don't know. Maybe."

"You're still so angry with me."

"I understand what you did. And why."

"Doesn't mean you're not still mad."

The golden head lifted, eyes closed, and arched back as if in contemplation of the weight of the world. Not for the first time since she had first known Kim, Kerry felt the breath shoveled from her body-- an exhale, part gasping sigh of incredulity, part sucker-punch of need. That this magnificent creature could look at her, misshapen and warped though she was, and say "I love you..." was something beyond her ken.

Looking at the surrendered arc of Kim's elegant body now, Kerry wondered if that wasn't part of the problem.

"You love me," she said into the void between them.

The head leveled. Eyes opened. "Yes."

"Then start acting like it."

"Odd imperative considering you have difficulty doing the same."

Kerry's head snapped back abruptly at the harshness in Kim's tone. "I'm not the one..."

"No, Kerry. You asked if we had to tear it down. So, yes... let's tear it down."

"Kim..."

Let's take the I that is you. And the one that is me and talk about what makes the us so impossible."

"That what you think?"

"I can't go on this way, Kerry." Kim shrugged helplessly. "I thought I could... but I just can't."

"Because you want Abby."

"Because I can't live this way," the psychiatrist contradicted. "I've become about nothing but you. Everywhere I go. Everything I see. Since the first time I heard Shannon Wallace's name. You say that I'm still angry with you over everything that happened. Kerry, you have no idea how angry I still am. But you've already shrouded yourself in a hairshirt of guilt so heavy that I can't  bear to put one more ounce on you. How am I supposed to move on? What the hell am I supposed to do, Kerry? I still love you, more than I think you'll ever let yourself realize, but every day I just get angrier and angrier. It's choking the life out of me, Kerry and I can't breathe anymore."

"And here I thought you were fucking the rage away fairly successfully," Kerry retorted acidly.

Kim's eyes paled suddenly and contrasted dramatically to the darkening flush of her cheeks. She went absolutely still, the moment becoming a horrifically frozen tableau to Kerry's disbelieving eyes.

And that's when it hit her, the realization of everything that had gone on between them since that terrible day at the elevator.

"You came back just so you could leave, didn't you?" Kerry asked quietly. "Leave the right way. Leave for good."