Disclaimer: I own nothing, except my own creation of Mia Kingston.

Author's Note: After watching the Season 3, Episode 5 episode where Allie pretends to talk to her daughter Mia on the phone as a way to reassure the prostitute Mahneewan Prem (aka Destiny) at the hospital, my mind went elsewhere and thought about what it would be like if our feisty DSC Allie Kingston did have a young child and how the team would find out about it.

Also, I missed last week's episode, so apologies if some facts or characteristics don't quite gel.

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'... You're a chick, so what would you do?' Detective Senior Constable Allie Kingston snorts as she turns away from her position positioning and labelling photos on the whiteboard to look at the if-I'm-smiling-you-won't-hurt-me Detective Senior Constable Simon Joyner.

'Is this before or after I beat him into a pulp?'

Detective Senior Constable Nick Buchanan lifts his head from his file to flash Allie a look, before he turns thoughtful. 'Hang on – that is a point.' Sitting back in his chair, he tapped his pen against his chin. 'Why didn't Cherry fight back?'

Allie crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the whiteboard edge. 'Maybe she was drugged?'

'And who do we know with a rep for drugs?' Everyone snaps into action as Detective Senior Sergeant Stanley Wolfe gives the orders. 'Nick– get me that search warrant. Duncan and Allie – go pick up our friendly drug dealer will you? And Matt and Simon get on the phones. I want to know every last known contact. Now.'

Nick worked on the warrant paperwork, as Simon and Detective Senior Constable Matt Ryan worked nearby manning the phones furiously. The elevator doors opening at the other end of the room did not register in the minds of the three of them, neither did the brown-haired little girl that stepped out quietly onto the floor holding the hand of a red haired lady. But it was the shout of 'Nicky!' and a then sprinting small figure toward Detective Buchanan that had Detectives Ryan and Joyner's heads flying up.

With such a boisterous welcome, there was no mistaking that clearly this new arrival was somehow connected to Nick, but now the question was how. Simon and Matt looked as Nick swivelled his chair around and stood up quick enough to catch the little girl and throw her up into his arms with a 'Hey Sprout!' before he approached the accompanying lady.

Unabashedly eavesdropping, Simon and Matt are disappointed when the only snippets of information that they can catch are 'Stella' and 'hospital.'

When Nick dropped the girl to the ground and turned to them, Simon and Matt swiftly looked back to their work – Simon to hang up a call long finished and Matt to the paperwork in front of him – as the redhead left and Nick approached them.

He wasn't sure how Allie had planned to introduce Mia to the team – if at all – and standing with his hands on Mia's shoulders in front of his pathetically pretending-to-work teammates he decided to fudge the introductions. 'Matt, Simon. Meet Mia.'

Thankfully, neither of them attempted to look surprised to find him standing there. 'Hi Mia,' both chorused as they turned their eyes to the little body.

'Mia, this is Simon and this is Matt,' said Nick gesturing to either in turn. 'We work together.'

'Hi,' said a small voice from the suddenly shy girl as she pushed herself back into the legs of Nick as if by doing so she could disappear, or at the very least, come out on the other side of his legs and be out of sight.

Ushering Mia away before his nosy teammates can ask any more questions, Nick seats the little girl on the edge of his desk as she happily swings her legs – all signs of shyness gone. Needing to finish one last paragraph to send off the paperwork, he kept one eye on the active movements of the four year old as she randomly picked up various bits and pieces on his desk. He just pressed print when he spotted her reaching for something that she really shouldn't be. Swivelling his chair, he stopped any further action with an 'ah ah' and placed one hand on either side of the desk, effectively trapping her in his embrace. She then took this as an opportunity to play with his tie.

Nick's worry about how Allie would react to having her daughter at work and how she would be introducing Mia in relation to herself is resolved by young Mia herself. When Allie steps off the elevator a short time later, followed closely by Duncan pushing a struggling man out, Mia used his body as a spring board to run to the newest arrival with a call of 'Mummy!'

The room descended into silence – and even the suspect had the momentary courtesy to restrain himself for a few moments – as everyone looked at just who the little girl had called her mother. But then Rob 'Big Mac' McKinley made his presence known once again, and Duncan lead him forcefully to the interview room.

Seeing Allie hugging her daughter to her legs, Nick's apology dies on his lips when he looks up at her face. Blood was pouring from her nose – and possibly from a cut on her mouth – as he took in the sight of a rapidly bruising black eye too.

'Allie?' he queried as both he and Simon stood up and Matt posed the question. 'You okay?'

She laughed harshly in response. 'Apparently Mr. McKinley didn't take too well to a woman in law enforcement.'

'That's all?' Nick said with a smirk as he approached the injured woman. 'You sure you didn't open that lovely mouth of yours and provoke him or anything?'

'Ha ha,' she said sarcastically as she accepted the tissue he offered her. By this time, young Mia was fed up with being so far down and out of the action that she pulled on Nick's pant legs. Out of habit, he reached down and swung her up into his arms without a second thought as he also grabbed the bin for Allie to dispose of her bloody tissue and place another to her nose.

Simon and Matt watched dumbly as the three of them passed them by and Nick lead Allie to the break room as Mia put on her doctor hat and diagnosed what was wrong with her mother. This was not something they had seen coming. 'I never saw her as a mother,' muttered Matt as his eyes turned to Simon. 'Yeah,' he agreed. 'Didn't think she had enough common sense in her head to be responsible for one of her.'

First aid kit in hand, Nick obtained the essentials as Allie took a seat on a high chair and threw her head back, the blood flow starting to thin out a little. Mia was determined to help, and so he gave her some bandaids and bandages for her to unravel as he then turns his attention to Allie's injuries. She winces in pain as he dabs at her wounds. 'Sorry.'

The blood is almost cleaned up and Allie was holding a bag of ice to her eye as Nick disposed of the bloody materials in a bin nearby when a new voice entered the fray. Mia was out of sight behind the table, currently rifling through the bandaids that she had dropped when Wolfe stepped into the room. 'I hear there was an incident on the way up?'

Allie's eyes shot open as she removed the ice pack from her eye and turned quickly to the new voice, her head protesting at the sudden movement. 'Nothing I can't handle.'

Mia then decides to make her presence known when she appears around the table with her hand held high, a sticky bandaid free of its plastic protection coverings grasped in her hand as she gleefully declares 'I got it!' Seeing the new arrival, she swiftly heads for Nick's legs – her mother's currently being out of reach – as she peeks out from behind her barrier as the man begins to talk. 'I see... and just who is this?'

Wolfe was looking to Nick for the answer, who then turned to Allie as she bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes in pain. She'd hoped to put this day off for some time. Maybe forever?

She had lied to her boss about having a daughter. The picture she had shown to Destiny at the hospital a few weeks ago on the case had been a picture of her daughter. The phone call that Claudia Leigh saw her make wasn't real – but she had made a similar call just minutes earlier to check that her daughter was okay for the night. She hadn't lied about the name either: her little girl was Mia Whitney Drake Kingston.

Working three years in Violent Crimes had made her paranoid about what people could do with personal knowledge of her circumstances – particularly if they were aware of the fact that she had a daughter – and would use that against her, or worse put her baby girl in danger, and so the force had agreed to keep her daughter's existence off the file. Their willingness to do so was also probably helped along by the fact that the pregnancy had resulted from an undercover op gone bad in the first place.

Whilst addressing the existence of her daughter – an existence that she'd vehemently denied to her boss earlier no less – was something she now had to do, explaining the nature of her relationship was Nick was going to be a whole other ball game. The level of comfort that Mia was displaying with the man prevented her from using several potential explanations.

Nick Buchanan had been part of the taskforce assigned to assess what had gone wrong with that undercover op five years ago. She wasn't sure how she'd define her relationship with him, but she knew that he was a vital part of Mia's life – and had weaved himself into hers as a friend. Mia had known Nick from the day she was born, and in fact, he'd been the first person to visit her at the hospital soon after her birth. He was a babysitter when required and whenever she came home, she'd always find him – without fail – watching some mindless television with Mia asleep on his chest.

Her comment to her boss had been true in a sense – 'Could you imagine me with an anklebiter?' – but it was a comment that was just over four years too late. Abortion had only crossed her mind for a fleeting few seconds, but it had filled her with such revulsion. Adoption was another possibility, but carrying the baby to term put an end to that: this was her child - no matter what the circumstances - and she was going to have it.

She was drawn from her thoughts when the pain to her head came back with a vengeance. She found three faces looking at her intently, waiting for an answer. Placing the ice to her eye once again, she quickly flicked her eyes to Nick's before she let out a sigh.

'Boss, meet my daughter Mia.'