Five times Sharon Raydor failed to keep a secret, and one time she didn't. A series of unconnected scenes.

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One.

They fell out of her blazer pocket when she pulled the linings inside out, searching for her phone.

"Pants, Sharon." Rusty commented, eyeing the little notes that fluttered to the ground.

"Oh! That's right." Sharon murmured as she pulled the ringing contraption out of her back pocket. The three slips of paper had escaped her notice, but they hadn't escaped Rusty's. He picked them up; Sharon answered her phone.

"Yes, Lieutenant Tao?" She was saying, drifting away absentmindedly.

Rusty turned them over in his hands, unfolded them. There were names there, one written on each slip in a shaky script. What was —?

"What've you got there?" Sharon asked curiously, touching his shoulder lightly.

Rusty startled; he hadn't heard her end her call, nor had he heard her come up behind him. He folded the papers into his hand like a guilty little boy, and Sharon pulled her hand away from him just as quickly. Sometimes the tactile thing was still a little new.

"I – um," he opened his hand and extended it toward Sharon, who saw at once what was there and plucked them from his palm. "They fell out of your pocket." He mumbled. He didn't think he had crossed some sort of line or anything, but he tried to respect her privacy as much as he could, as a courtesy.

She smiled at him. "Thank you, Rusty."

She smiled more openly around him, these days. He knew that she didn't feel as if she had to put up walls around him anymore, and he appreciated that.

"What are – who are they? The names," he said. He assumed it to be an innocent question, but he felt bad when it made her smile falter. Something akin to pain flickered across her face. He could read her well these days - Captain's mask or no. This was important to her, but it was hurting her, too.

Sharon creased the papers meticulously, thinking about it. "Our . . . victims." She replied carefully. She didn't want to talk about it, he could see.

But he wasn't sure he understood. ". . . There are always victims, Sharon." He replied, not insensitively. "There are always victims, but you get justice for them."

She shook her head a little hesitantly. "Not this time." She said. She held the names lightly between her fingertips. "Rebecca Thomas, and her son and daughter, Liam and Ava. They were eight and six."

"What happened to them?"

She hesitated, but Rusty knew to be patient with her. "They'd been . . . chained to the basement ceiling beams of a meat locker for nearly two weeks. By their father. Bastard just . . . strung them up and left 'em there, and his scumbag lawyer is going to get him off on an insanity plea. 'He didn't know what he was doing. He didn't mean it. He's sorry; he loved them.'" She shook her head in disgust. "It's despicable."

Sharon looked up at him then, startlingly earnest. "We . . . I made a mistake today. Made the wrong call, and because of that, this man will serve maybe a year in a criminal sanatorium before going up in front of the board." She paused, looking away for a second. There were no tears, but Sharon was not one to easily cry. She took a breath. "Lieutenant Flynn told me once that when working homicide, it's important to know the victims by name." She slipped the names back into her pocket again, patting it down. "I don't want to forget."

Two.

"You . . . you knew. You knew this whole time and you never . . ." She inhaled sharply and he could almost see her trying to swallow down the panic.

"Sharon, we used to be friends. I can still read you like a book, sometimes; of course I could tell. I just . . . I wish you would've told me. I would've beaten him to a pulp for you." His hands clenched involuntarily even as he said it – he still hated that bastard.

"I never needed you to fight my battles for me." Sharon snapped, bristling, and he certainly knew this. Sharon Raydor was nothing if not strong, but she had this habit of keeping these things to herself, even when she didn't have to.

"He never should have laid a hand on you."

She refused to meet his eyes, didn't respond to him. Her separation was still a sore spot for her – it humiliated her, maybe. "When did you figure it out?" She murmured instead.

There was a long silence.

". . . You flinched."

She gave him a funny look. "What are you –?"

"We were having an argument, Sharon. I reached out for you, and you flinched, like you thought I was going to strike you. Like . . . like you thought I was capable . . ." He broke off, looking away. His lip curled. "I wanted to kill your husband just for that."

She scoffed; she remembered it too, the argument. "You didn't even like me, then." It had been after their falling out; after her transfer to IA.

"I never stopped caring about you."

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly as she fumbled for a response. ". . . You never said anything to me." She said finally. "You never . . . I never knew that you knew."

"I didn't want to say anything . . . it was after the two of you had separated, so I knew you were taking care of yourself. You were trying to pick yourself back up again, Sharon, and I didn't want to make it harder on you." He shrugged self-deprecatingly. "You could hardly stand to be in the same room with me at the time, anyway."

She hummed noncommittally.

"Sharon."

Flynn waited for her to look at him. "How long did it go on?" He asked, even though he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

She only snorted. "Go on? You think I let that bastard hit me more than once?" But there was that little flicker of panic in her eyes again, a desperate hope that he'd believe her.

If he were anyone else, he might not have caught it.

It hurt him, the notion that maybe she'd suffered more than he was prepared to accept. Perhaps she was only strong because Michael Raydor forced her to be.

She looked away again. "I walked away." She declaimed, avoiding his question. "Maybe I wasn't as strong then as I would have liked to be, but I learned to walk away, and I certainly never needed saving, Andy. Not by you; not by anyone."

"You've never needed it." He agreed. "But . . . didn't you ever think that maybe you'd earned it?"

Sharon raised her eyebrows in surprise. She chuckled. "That's a stupid notion," she informed him.

"You don't have to do everything alone, Sharon." He insisted. "You can let people take care of you sometimes, you know." His lips quirked.

"No I can't," She retorted, "I don't know how." But she wore a little smile of her own, and he had a thought that maybe, after all these years, she might finally let him in.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Did anyone catch the BSG reference? :)

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