[i][b]"NO!"[/i][/b]

That single word shocked from her lips as Ethan fell... He just fell backward, arms outstretched like a dark angel, as if the winds of the Windy City would simply bear him up.

But they didn't, and he fell through the air with something very like a shout of joy. Instantly nauseous, Bree still ran to the ledge where he stood, nothing but cold, numb shock running through her now as she peered over the edge. Too numb with horror even to feel the natural twisting in her gut that would have come from the sight, fifteen stories up, over the ledge. 

He should have been a bloody Rorschach's blot on the cement below, twisted all unnaturally, broken and still - and silent. No more questions - certainly no answers...

For several long moments, Bree simply couldn't grasp... No, there was just no comprehension of what she was seeing, any more than if a window to heaven or hell had suddenly been lifted before her eyes. This wasn't something possible, something merely human eyes were meant to see, a thing beyond the artist's brush or the novelist's words.

Because a man had just fallen from a 15-story ledge and, as if he had known where all the precarious handholds would be? He'd been carried - however painfully - to the cement below.

Ethan wasn't crushed or broken, even if the landing looked far from light. He stood up.

Then? Then he simply... He... He ran away.

Her fingers ran incredulously over her eyes once, twice - and then the green-eyed man simply disappeared into the shadows of Chicago. Bree turned away, stunned, gaping in horror and shock, and she slid down the wall of the ledge, all the strength she ever had in her legs and body seeping into the tar of the roof. The gun slipped from her fingers as she wrapped her arms around her legs, drawing them to her chest, her forehead falling to her knees.

The tears slid down her cheeks silently, her grey eyes wide with shock and seeing nothing at all. No one would ever believe her, she knew. Bree didn't even believe what she'd just witnessed.

And she was tired. Oh God... God, she was just so... Tired. But that small, relentless voice was already chiming in the back of her head. She had no right to fall apart now, no right to shed these useless tears... Not here. Not now.

Bree's shaking hand reached for her Glock and, finding its grip, shaking fingers holstered it once more as, by sheer force of will, she somehow found her feet again and gracelessly stumbled toward the men she'd left some stories below.