Sarah had called him. Told him. The conversation had been painfully short, though. She sounded worried, but Ty never said more than 'thanks' and 'I've got to go'. He cancelled his appointment the next morning, opting to go up to the house and attempting to do something. Mostly he just stayed clear of Poncho and the rest of the crew as they wired the house.

By the end of first day, nothing felt as if it had changed. He felt calm, but perhaps that was just a mask he wore. When Ollie tried to call him on Skype that night, in those rare moments that the ship was close enough to not rely on satellite exclusively, Ty didn't answer. He just let it ring before he pulled on a hoodie and took off to run the beach in the pitch black of night.

Except all that did was bring back memories he didn't want to deal with right then.

For the next week he kept dodging everyone. Sarah, his Dads, his therapist, group meetings,....Ollie. Especially Ollie. It was easier to sit on the balacony of their rental with a case of beer and cigarettes. Everyone else would just ask the predictable- 'are you okay', 'how are things', and his favorite 'do you need help?'.

Maybe if he had asked for it, though, he wouldn't have written that letter to Ollie. He wouldn't had cleaned the house with an insane determination for the last three days. He would have slept. He wouldn't have been focused on the mechanics of how to best just....let it all end.

Ollie wasn't quite back yet. Another month and the ship was due to roll into the harbor, the flight squadron would fly in hours before the ship itself docked. Still, that was some time off and Ty had come to a rather startling realization that being alone in San Diego was possibly the worse thing for him in that moment.

So he'd told Ollie that he was going home for a while. After Carlos came back from the dead, he...couldn't handle things. And he hadn't wanted Sarah to barge in on him the way she promised to if he didn't do...something. Anything.

He hadn't told her he was going home, though. Not until she called him angrily from his front door demanding to know where the hell he was, and promising that he better not be dead or she'd bring him back and kill him herself. Though, telling her he'd just landed in Chicago did seem to steal a lot of her thunder.

And maybe he should have told his parents he was going to just show up, seeing as neither of them were home when he let himself in and looked around. Neat and orderly as ever, their home seemed still foreign some how. But he moved to his bedroom and put his bags on the bed and looked about for a while. Nothing seemed to ever change in that home, and maybe it never would.

Eventually, though, Ty found himself in the kitchen. It took a bit of searching to find the bottles of liquor, the old habit of hiding them likely to never die for his parents. Pouring himself a glass he sighed a little, before moving to the back porch and sitting heavily. At least he could still drink and smoke in private with no one knowing he was there.