Author's Note

I absolutely cannot wait to resolve the cliffhanger of 5x11, so this multi-chapter story will be what I would envision for next season. I am a McSwarek supporter 100%, but one of my favorite qualities of Rookie Blue is how they are able to capture the beauty and the hardships of all of the relationships portrayed, so please don't lose faith because I have master plan! I am promising ups and downs and romance along the way as well as a storyline that follows the corruption alluded to in the season finale. I hope you enjoy reading about all the RB characters present in this fic, although Sam and Andy are the focus. Thanks and please review as it fuels my creativity!

Disclaimer

I don't own Rookie Blue, but I love it.

Chapter 1

Dov held the thin waxy sonogram picture between his thumb and forefinger, delicately, with his eyes trained on Marlo. "So, I guess congratulations are in order," he murmured.

Marlo's face remained impassive; however, her quickly diverted eyes told a different story than the rest of her face. He sought to make eye contact, but Marlo stalked over to another corner of the room, shoveling more belongings into her hands, and heaped them into an already overflowing box, eager to remove any trace of herself from 15 division.

"Yeah, I guess, to somebody." Her tone was amiably but evasive, as Dov's ears pricked up at her words.

She's not sure who the father is, Dov thought to himself, as a million other thoughts lapped through his conscious, like waves smashing against a shoreline. Do I tell Andy? Is Marlo going to at least tell Sam there is a possibility he's going to be a father? Is Marlo going to be okay taking care of herself, considering her mental state? Is she able to continue taking her meds to treat her bipolar disorder while pregnant? What's Marlo's plan for taking care of this baby? Are Sam and Andy going to survive this bombshell? Dov shook his head visibly to stop his thoughts. The last one was a pretty poor pun considering the fact that Andy had nearly been blown to bits two hours prior.

Dov carefully placed the picture back down on the desk where Marlo had been constructing a profile on Ted McDonald - the man who had victimized several prominent figures' children with improvised explosive devices and then taken his own life by slitting his wrists in the mayhem that ensued after the evidence room had been blitzkrieged.

As much as he wanted to stay and make sure Marlo was okay, Dov was also worried about the tenuous mental state of his best friend. Chris hadn't even been back ten hours, and he had already been hauled into Staff Sergeant Shaw's office to determine how exactly he'd missed a razor on McDonald during booking. Dov wanted to believe that it was an honest mistake, but he worried that it was too soon for Diaz. He'd had a rough year and then some between his family issues and his addiction.

Dov had been through it before with his brother and he knew the signs of addiction well. He'd hoped that Diaz's short stint in rehab was enough, but in the pit of his stomach he worried that it wasn't - that it was Chris appeasing him by going through the motions.

"Hey, Marlo, I've gotta run, but thanks for letting me help out with tracking McDonald. If you ever need a wingman…" Dov broke off weakly. "Well, you know, someone to run software, bounced theories off…"

"Thanks, Dov. You've been an asset. In fact, you might want to consider a department change. We could use guys like you in intelligence." Marlo took a step closer and squared her shoulders to face him, with a tentative smile starting to curl the ends of her lips. "Hey listen, don't be too hard on her."

Dov stared at her for a beat before she looked at him exasperatedly. "Chloe?! Jeez, Dov, go home and get some sleep. You look exhausted."

For a split second, Dov had thought she was referring to Andy.

An hour later, Chris and Dov sat together at a pub table with a round of beers. And despite having both had a hand in bringing in a deranged lunatic who had tried to target children, one of them being a police officer in 15 division, by setting off improvised explosive devices, neither man was celebrating. Chris had pretty much set himself to take the fall when he acknowledged there was a possibility he had overlooked a razor blade, and he was awarded a 6-week suspension. This case was so high-profile and Chris knew the media was going to be all over it. Oliver looked relieved when Chris push the issue of the suspension. He may be a white-shirt now, but he still had the protective instincts of "big brother" to his rookies, and he knew that if Chris had sought to fight the suspension, Chris's personal and professional struggles to become speculation for the media. But, the damage was done to Chris's hope for a fresh start; he hadn't even been back a full shift and he was already stripped of his gun and badge.

Dov, on the other hand, was still smarting over Chloe's betrayal and totally perplexed about what to do with the Marlo/Sam/Andy trifecta. But as Chris sat in front of him, clenching and unclenching his jaw, Dov decided to deal with the one thing that mattered most to him - his best friend.

"Diaz, talk to me. What's going on? You're wound tighter than a yoyo."

"Dov," Chris breathed in deeply through his nose before expelling it slowly. "I need you to believe me."

"Go on," Epstein encouraged.

"I searched that guy. I searched him thoroughly. I knew what kind of scum we had coming in. The type that plants bombs in the bookbags of children-" Chris spat out the last word, pausing to compose himself and lower his voice. "I had just gotten back from rehab, which is not exactly a secret to anyone at 15 division, by the way. Don't you think I wanted to prove myself, man?"

Dov looked at Diaz and knew instantly his best friend was telling the truth. Something was definitely not right with the entire situation. Ted McDonald...the bombing of the hard drives...a suicide with a razor blade that seemed to materialize out of thin air...Something was all wrong about this.

"I do believe you. One hundred percent."

"That's loyalty, brother. And I know I haven't said it nearly enough, especially this past year, but you're a damn good friend." Chris said, slugging the rest of his beer down.

"You'd do the same for me, man."

A few beers and shots later, Gail Peck sauntered into the Black Penny, a perpetual chip on her shoulder.

"My two favorite bozos," Gail greeted with false enthusiasm.

"That sounded extra bitter, even for you," Dov noted.

"Well, you might be bitter too if you told the love of your life that you were planning to put on your big girl pants on and adopt a child, and then said "love of your life" tells you that's awesome but she's moving out of the country in two weeks?"

"Holly's moving?"

"You're adopting a child?"

Dov and Chris's questions overlapped while Gail cut them off, flagging down the bartender, "We're gonna need another round over here, Angus." She slipped a twenty into his hand discreetly as she muttered, "Keep them coming...On Dov's tab."

"I gotta ask you guys a hypo-ethical, hypothetical question," Dov announced, some of his words getting smushed together while others came out stilted and unnaturally. Fortunately neither Chris nor Gail seemed to notice. The alcohol was working its way into their bones, healing the hurt and making them bolder, hopefully strong enough to confront the shit storm of emotions that would surely come hailing down on them tomorrow when the implications of tonight were less hazy.

"Do you think a person has a right to know if he potentially could have fathered a child?"

Chris slugged back his drinking, the subject clearly stinging an exposed nerve while Gail's glassy eyes studied him thoughtfully. They were having a Peckstein moment; their mouths didn't need to move at all but they seemed to be having a conversation all with their eyes.

"Interesting question to pose after the drinks have been flowing, Dov. Maybe Nash has a fresh perspective on the matter?" Gail finally said as Traci made her way to their table, looking exhausted and rumpled. "Hey detective, Dov has a riddle that needs solving." Gail said with a lopsided grin.

Shit, Dov cursed himself for ever bringing the topic up at all. He'd managed to isolate Chris, get Gail's inner gears working, and now raise red flags to Andy's best friend.

"I just wondered if a person has a right to know if he potentially could have fathered a child. I mean, Trace, let's be honest. Dex hasn't exactly made your life easy by fighting you for custody of Leo. Do you ever think you might have been better off to go it alone?"

Chris broke the silence after a moment. "I think, at least in my case, it was better to know. I mean, Denise went about it all wrong. She kept Christian a secret for the first couple years of his life and then tried to pass him off as my kid. But, I don't have any regrets. I just wish she'd told me sooner. I wish I had questioned the timeline, or her commitment, and asked for a paternity test. But I don't regret it for a second because it brought that little boy into my life if only for a fleeting time."

Traci reached over to rest a hand on Chris's arm. "I agree with Chris, even though our situations are a little different. As much as Dex makes me crazy, he is an amazing father. And even though we don't work as a couple and we're struggling with the co-parenting thing, I think it would have been wrong to short-change Leo the experience of having a father - having two parents that love him."

"The way I look at it is that the more people there are to love a child, the better, right? I mean, Sophie is going to know where she came from. She knows that I can never replace the mother she had, but I think she also knows that I love her like a daughter and she's opened her heart to me. It's pretty damn miraculous considering what that kid has been though." Gail broke off into a reverie of replaying the events of the death of Sophie Shand's mother.

"Look who's waxing philosophical," Nick remarked as he reached the rookies' table, throwing down his keys and signaling Angus for a drink. "Looks like I have some catching up to do."

"Go ahead and ask Nick your question because he doesn't have parents. Unique perspective."

"Jesus, Gail, your tact seems to evaporate even faster when you have alcohol in your system." Dov laughed nervously, but he was ready to move on from the subject. It was getting too big; too many people were involved and he was too drunk to keep a lid on this for much longer. But four sets of eyes stared at him, boring holes in him, and words poured out his mouth faster than beer poured out of the tap. "We were just talking about - hypothetically-speaking, of course - if you'd want to know if there was a possibility you'd fathered a child, especially if both parties had moved on and one was in a happy, committed relationship now with another person that he was totally crazy about."

His group of friends was looking at him curiously, as this silly hypothetical question grew a deeper backstory.

Nick shook his head, confused as to what he'd walked into. "We're not talking about Chloe, here, are we? Dov, man, there's nothing going on with her and Wes. Dude, you've gotta let that go, or you're going to drive a wedge between the two of you."

"What? No, we're not talking about anyone. It's just a "for instance" sort of question. Like, if you found a sonogram on the desk of your partner and knew she had been with …"

Shit, that last part was only supposed to be said in my mind not out loud…

"Wait a minute!"

"Hold up!"

"Come again?"

"You worked with Marlo today!"

"...Marlo's pregnant?"

The incredulous and shocked interjections continued and overlapped with one another as Dov glanced around the half-empty bar and then gestured like a school teacher trying to quiet an unruly class.

"Listen, you guys can't say anything to anyone. I was helping Marlo tie up loose ends with the case and pack her stuff. Intelligence is sending her to follow a lead in Vancouver, and she seemed all too pleased to get the heck out of 15. That's when I noticed a sonogram picture on her desk. It wasn't like she was hiding it, but when I asked her about it, she clammed up. Was really vague about whether the baby was Sam's. She almost made it sound like she really wasn't sure who it belonged to and didn't care. Marlo's pretty independent…"

"But if that baby is Sam's, he has a right to know. And if she'd planning to up and leave for an undetermined length of time, someone needs to clue Sam in, and Andy, for that matter. She is our friend, and if she finds out we knew, it's going to be like the rug was pulled out from under her," Traci reasoned.

"I don't know if we need to tell her right away," Gail bristled. "It's not like she came straight to me when she decided to start sleeping with my former fiancee," she added giving a pointed look at Nick. "But, I guess Sam has a right to know," she conceded.

"I'm really not sure what to say, guys. Maybe we should just stay out of it and let Marlo figure things out on her own," Nick said.

"Yeah, except the thing with that is, Marlo might not figure things out right away. She may not realize how difficult it is going to be raising a child alone, with the demands of her job on top of her fragile mental state. I think it would really suck if we kept our mouths shut and something bad happened. Or, if she decides to pop back into Sam's life when the kid is three or four, like Denise did to me," Chris reasoned. "Listen, let me talk to Sam. I'll be discreet, stick to the facts, and he can handle it from there. Whether he chooses to confront Marlo, tell Andy, that's on him."

Dov nodded. It was the right thing to do, and he was proud of Chris for having the clarity to know that, man up, and tell Swarek. He didn't envy the task; it wasn't going to end pretty for anyone.

As he looked around the table at each of his friends, sharing side conversations, laughing, hugging goodbye, and pulling their coats on, he felt like he was really seeing them for the first time. Gail, Traci, Chris, and Nick...They had been rookies without a care in the world except for proving themselves as coppers just a few short years ago. What had happened in that span of those few years had defined them as people. But each one of them had navigated through the tumult within their lives and had reached the other side stronger, better. He had to hope that his friends would also weather this storm in the same manner.

"Angus, we're ready to square up our tab."

"You're all set, man."

"Nah, man, we appreciate it, especially after the shift we just had, but we must have gone through half your liquor inventory. There's no way this one's 'on the house'."

"I'm always grateful for your service and pretty generous, but not that damn generous! Your tab was picked up by that rookie."

"W-which rookie?" Dov sputtered.

"The one who was sitting behind you at the bar, looking like the last kid picked to be on the team. I think he was angling for an invitation, but you guys were pretty wrapped up in yourselves. What's his name, again?" Angus mused. "Dwight? Devon?"

"Duncan. His name is Duncan."