A piercing wail came suddenly from the playpen, breaking the morning silence.

"Holly?" said Flynn, jumping up and taking the screaming child into his arms, but she only wailed louder. Marie ran to his side and the two of them rocked and patted her. "It's OK, Holly," said Flynn, "You're OK." But she wasn't. He could see she wasn't. Her eyes were darting around the room with an expression that could only be described as horror, and he'd never heard her make that noise before.

Skyler jumped up and sprinted to the dining room door, just as Holly began to scream, "MAMA! MAMAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Skyler fairly fell into the room and rushed to her son's side, taking the baby from him and holding her close to her chest.

"It's OK, it's OK, baby, Mama's here." Holly's tiny arms latched onto Skyler's neck again and held on, just as they had when the police had brought her back from the fire station. She continued to scream and wail, her legs kicking up and down and her arms gripping her mother as if her life depended on it. Flynn continued to pat her back and made faces behind their mother's shoulder, something Holly usually liked a lot, she used to laugh and clap when he did that, but this time it had no effect as the child continued to wail.

"Skyler, what's going on?"

It was the first time Marie had spoken in several hours. She was looking at her niece with an expression of deep concern. "Skyler, why is she doing that? She's never done that before, why is she doing that?"

Skyler continued to make soothing noises and rub her daughter's back. Holly's volume fell as she burrowed in, burying her face in her mother's neck.

"She…must have…had a nightmare," said Flynn.

"No, I've seen Holly have nightmares, she does not do that when she has a nightmare. Sky?"

Skyler looked at Marie, tears streaming down her face.

"What did Walt do to her? Yesterday, when… when he took her, what did he do, how did he…"

Skyler's body tensed as she collapsed onto the sofa, trying to hide her own sobs from her distraught daughter. "Shhhshhhshhh," she murmured, making the awful realisation that not only had she failed to protect her children from their father's crimes, she had now actively made it worse, not only for Flynn, who had had to suffer the horror of learning the truth about his father, learning his uncle had been murdered and witnessing his parents wrestling with a knife on the same afternoon, but also for the tiny baby who had sat on her father's lap and watched her mother scream in terror and bang on the glass of the car window before it sped away from her.

"He gr…grabbed her from here, from the playpen, and ran out," Flynn explained to his aunt.

"Where did he put her, he was in some stolen old truck, it can't have had a baby seat, how did he even - ?"

"He had her on his lap, he'd locked the door, and…" Skyler sighed. "I was banging on the glass and screaming, and she saw, and heard, all of that." She looked up at her sister, making eye contact with her for the first time since her eyes had told her her husband was dead.

"Wonderful parents you are," spat Marie. "I was going to offer to take her while you go to the DEA, but it looks like she won't let you go!"

"I'll take her with me," said Skyler. "Is that, do they… If I take her, will they let me keep her with me?"

"They'll have to, if they don't want her screaming the house down! But you'll have to give her back if they take you into custody – you have them call me, if that happens, Skyler, I am not having her looked after by some social worker – you have them call me, so you can give her direct to me, nobody else."

"What…what do you mean?" Flynn looked at his aunt, his eyes wide.

The two women were silent.

"Is M-Mom going to jail?"

"Not now, they won't do it now. They're waiting for him to contact her – the phones are tapped, like the guy said. It'll probably be a few days before they can figure out what to charge her with, anyway, not until they've stopped chasing their tails and eating their hats and shaking their heads in disbelief about it because none of them had a clue, none of them, their small little brains would never have figured it out, just like they never would have figured out what Gus Fring was doing if Hank hadn't told them, so now, they -" Her voice broke briefly. "…they won't have a clue what to do right now, but they will figure it out eventually, and…then yeah."

"Y-yeah what?"

"Well, you know, she -"

"Marie."

"You wanna weigh in here, Skyler?"

"Leave Flynn out of it."

"He asked a question."

Skyler looked at her son. Her daughter continued to cling to her.

"Mom?" said Flynn.

"Yes," she said, and then gasped, only just now realising that it would truly happen. "Yes is the answer to your question."

Flynn's face contorted in horror and confusion. "Why? W…what did you do?" he said quietly.

Skyler looked at him. Her precious son that she had worked so hard to protect, and had so spectacularly failed. "I'm sorry," she said again, her voice breaking.

Flynn stepped back. "You're s...sorry? W...wow, yeah, thanks Mom," he said sarcastically, beginning to pace around the room. "Th…that's all you can say? You're telling me that both my parents are cr...criminal murderers, and n...now Uncle Hank is dead, and all you can say is s...sorry?"

Marie stepped to his side, putting her arm around him. They stood together, looking back at Skyler, their eyes full of confusion and pain.

Skyler looked up at them for a long time. Guilt almost made her look away, but she wanted to hold their gaze for as long as possible, aware that this might be the last time they were together as a family, the last time she could ever hold them as her own. For the first time, she understood what her husband had felt yesterday when two people he loved had stared at him in horror, fear and defiant rejection, and he had realised the only one left he could still relate to was the tiny baby now in Skyler's arms.

"You… you did it together, didn't you?" said Marie quietly. "That's why you wouldn't talk to Hank, that's why you…"

Skyler stood, shaking her head vehemently. "No," she gulped. "I didn't want this, not any of it, I -"

She cut herself off as she looked at her son. From now on, to defend herself meant blackening his father. Blaming him for everything. Saying he forced her.

"Then why did you let it happen?" yelled Marie, erupting into tears again.

Skyler stood speechless, her eyes conveying a thousand emotions completely unintelligible to Flynn and Marie.

I was trying to limit the damage, Skyler kept thinking. That was the only thought that would formulate in her head. But it made no sense, she knew. How did this happen? Why did I do this? I was trying to limit the damage. I was trying to protect my family from the man who protects this family. "I failed," she whimpered.

"WHY?" Marie screamed. "Why did this happen? Why didn't you just help him when he asked you? At ANY TIME you could have stopped this, you could have fixed everything, but instead you left him out there on his own and now he's dead!" Marie's pitch rose as she stomped around the room to the front door. "YOU WOULDN'T HELP HIM, AND NOW HE'S DEAD!" She ripped open the front door and fell through it, her grief echoing down the street.

"Aunt Marie!" Without another look at his mother, Flynn followed, the door slamming behind him.

Skyler stood, her child still clinging to her neck, trying to stop her entire body from shaking.