Navy SEALS never surrendered and they never let themselves get taken alive. That wasn't mindless boasting; it was just a fact. Such a thing had never been documented, not in the thirty-plus years since the first official SEAL teams had started carrying out reconnaissance missions in Cuba. Every time Brody had gone out with his team in Iraq or Afghanistan he had been well aware that his options were getting himself back to the base or dying. He had been fine with that. They had all been fine with that.

And yet, not a year after he left Iraq for the final time, he found himself on a quiet, safe mountain in a quiet, safe corner of Pennsylvania letting himself get taken alive.

"Focus on my voice! Drop the weapon!" Instinctively, Brody focused. It was that focus that sent him spinning in a confused circle. He could feel the cool November air of Llantano mountain around him, but when he looked down he saw the dead Iraqi boy.

"I had to do it. I had to shoot him," he heard his own voice say before strong hands seized his numb body and pushed his face into the dry leaves that covered the ground.

No one paid Brody much mind for the next several days. He sat in the jail cell where they put him and repeated the words that had been his mantra ever since he'd left Iraq.

"I did what I had to do. I followed the code."

It didn't make the memory of the dead boy any less haunting.

"I had to do it," he said again, trying to feel the imprint of Wes' voice on the words. Brody didn't much like being alone. He never had. That was what had made him tell an abandoned pregnant teenager that he would marry her and claim her unborn son as his own. That was what had made the SEALS, with their emphasis on teamwork and togetherness, a perfect fit for him. That was what had made him throw himself into an unending string of bar fights and one night stands until Gigi and Shane had unexpectedly reentered his life. That was what had made him desperate to hold onto Shane when Gigi had decided to tell the truth about the boy's parentage ten years after the fact.

Brody by himself wasn't enough.

He spent nights dodging the Iraqi boy, who flitted in and out of his cell pointing a gun at Brody.

He wished the boy would just pull the trigger.

Each morning, he waited for official word of his status. He knew now that he had shot a man that the local police commissioner loved like a son, so his status couldn't possibly be anything good. He doubted that anyone would care that at the time he'd pulled the trigger, he'd been blinded by the light of an exploding caravan and desperate to protect Wes and Abbott and Mike from meeting the same fate as the guys in the truck. No one should care about it, really. It was ridiculous. He wasn't in Iraq, and he had almost killed Shane's father before Shane even got to know him.

When news finally came, Commissioner Buchanan came to see Brody in person. Brody steeled himself to look the man in the eye, and was taken aback when he saw nothing but kindness there. He'd stared down dozens, maybe hundreds, of men who wanted to kill him just for being an American. Here was a powerful man who had every reason to hate Brody but was watching him like a kindly uncle. Or so Brody imagined. He'd never actually had uncles.

"How are you today, Lieutenant Lovett?"

The use of Brody's rank was even weirder than the soft, disarming smile. "Doesn't matter," said Brody. "How's Rex?"

"Stable," said Bo neutrally. "He'll recover."

Relief staggered through Brody. "I'm glad. I'm so sorry that-"

"I know. I didn't come down here to talk about Balsom. I came here to talk about you."

Brody didn't know what to say to that, and he was silent as the Commissioner appropriated a folding chair and seated himself inches from Brody's cell. He gestured that Brody should sit, too. "I don't think you were in a position to pick up a lot the other night, so I'm just going to tell you again that I served in the United States Army. Did a few tours in Vietnam. That's how I happen to know post-traumatic stress disorder when I see it. Did you even know you were shooting at Balsom?"

Brody shook his head, not trusting himself to speak around the lump in his throat.

"What did you think you were shooting at?"

"The insurgents were really bad that month," Brody said hollowly. "The caravan blew up right in front of us, and there was this kid- he had a gun-"

The Commissioner nodded like this wasn't a surprise to him. "I spoke to your buddy Wes Granger the other day. He told me you had a really hard time toward the end."

Brody nodded again. Wes was always protecting him. It was the SEAL way.

"I think- and Gigi thinks- and Balsom thinks too- that you need a doctor a lot more than you need a jail cell. I certainly don't want my prison space wasted on a man who served his country and never had any intention of hurting anyone. So if you are amenable, the district attorney is prepared to accept a deal the sends you to St. Ann's instead of to Statesville."

"St. Ann's is a mental institution?" Brody guessed. Part of him would have preferred prison. The other part of him knew that he would never be safe around Shane again if he didn't take the deal.

"It's a hospital where people who are hurt go to get better."

"Thank you," whispered Brody.


Jessica was intimately familiar with St. Ann's and the services it provided. Check-in was easy. Only the goodbyes were hard.

"If you think this is too soon, you can stay in the hospital for a few more days," Viki offered. "It's not too late to turn around."

"No. I'm ready," Jessica said. She didn't feel ready. She didn't feel ready to be anywhere without Nash and Chloe, though, so it didn't matter.

"We're with you every step of the way," promised Clint.

"And me too. If you'll let me," added Natalie, who gave every impression of having come to wish Jessica well rather than make sure she was under lock and key. Kevin and Joey sent flowers.

Bree, though, seemed indifferent to the whole thing. Tess' attitude toward Bree had been one of benign neglect, Jessica's newly recovered memories told her. It could have been much worse, but it still pained Jessica to see Bree unconcerned as to whether Jessica held her or not. Jessica could have been any stranger off the street.

Two of her daughters were dead; the third barely knew her.

Jessica was not exactly lighting the world on fire when it came to parenting.

"I don't know how I'm gonna leave you," Jessica told Bree. Bree would have forgotten Jessica completely by the time St. Ann's released her. Jessica would lose more and more ground with her daughter. The task before her when the doctors let her go home would be almost impossible.

Bree didn't care.


Blair wasn't entirely sure that Starr had thought her decision through, but nothing she said convinced Starr to reconsider. Starr didn't want to hold Hope; Starr didn't want to discuss her reasons for giving Hope to Marcie; Starr didn't even want to look at Hope for more than a few seconds.

Half a dozen times, Blair almost explicitly asked Starr to let her raise Hope. Half a dozen times, Blair bit her tongue just in time, reminding herself that this was Starr's decision.

Blair hated to agree with Todd about anything, but in this case, it was unavoidable: the idea of Marcie McBain raising her first grandchild made her sick. Blair had spent her own childhood in foster care and orphanages; the whole experience had been miserable. It wasn't that she thought Marcie would treat Hope the way the State of Florida had treated Blair, but something deep inside of her would always rebel against the idea of giving away her own flesh and blood when there was another option.

The part of Blair that always wanted to seek revenge for an injustice certainly didn't appreciate the irony of Starr rewarding Marcie's kidnapping of Sam by handing over Sam's little niece. Marcie had schemed and manipulated and broken the law, and everyone had coddled her. When Blair had schemed and manipulated and broken the law, she'd been pushed to the fringes of society. That was how she had ended up forging a life with Todd Manning, the infamous convicted gang rapist, in the first place. Blair had grown up and learned to toe the line for her children's sake; Todd was right back where he started, in jail for raping Marty.

All of that ran through her mind when she opened the front door of La Boulaie to Elijah Clarke.

"Starr!" she shouted up the stairs. "Eli's here."

"I'll be there in a minute," Starr called back.

"Sorry," Blair told Eli. "She'll be right down."

"No rush," said Eli, and he flicked his eyes up and down Blair's body so subtly that she wasn't entirely sure that she'd seen him do it. Starr hadn't been wrong about the signals Eli was sending. It was just too bad that Starr was devoting her brainpower to that instead of to admitting why she wanted to hand her daughter over to a sanctimonious bitch.

"You have the papers?"

Eli nodded. "All she has to do is sign them and I'll file them officially today. She hasn't changed her mind, has she?"

Blair couldn't quite swallow her sigh. "No. I thought she might when she found out that her father was going to be out of the picture completely, but she's sticking to her decision."

"And you haven't told her that you disagree."

Blair was taken aback. "Who says I disagree?"

"You haven't said. But I can tell." Eli smiled sadly. "I really admire how much you've kept your own opinion out of it. You've really let it be your daughter's decision."

"It was her body. Her baby."

"And she's your baby."

"Always," Blair agreed. The conversation was getting far too personal for her. "Starr!" she tried again.

"I'm on my way," called Starr, and Blair caught the undertone that suggested that Starr was quite deliberately taking her time.

"Do you want me to leave the papers and bring them by my office when she's signed them?" Eli asked.

Blair laughed. "Wouldn't that just deflate Starr's little balloon."

"I don't follow."

What the hell, Blair thought. Her dealings with Eli were coming to an end. "Starr is of the opinion that you and I should continue to spend time together when there is no longer a professional reason to do so."

This time, Eli didn't bother to mask the fact that he was looking at Blair's legs, and her hips, and her waist, and her breasts. "No wonder you put so much faith in Starr's ability to make her own decisions. She's a very smart girl." He took a step closer to Blair, his breath hot on her cheek.

"I'm not in the market for that. Not with anyone. I spent most of my life in a relationship with Starr's father even when we weren't together, and that was a disaster."

"Doesn't have to be a relationship," Eli said, low and guttural. "If all you want to do is take your mind off your daughter putting your granddaughter up for adoption and your ex-husband going to jail for rape… I've got nothing against providing that distraction."

"I don't know you well enough to get distracted with you in that way." Blair's heart fluttered. Eli was handsome, and just enough younger to make this whole thing very flattering. "Not without protection," she added.

Eli's smile could have melted her clothes right there. As if by magic, he made a condom appear in his hand; it disappeared into his suit pocket when Starr's careful footsteps finally echoed on the stairs.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," said Starr. "Everything's still slower than I expect it to be. It's hard to imagine how sore everything can get until it happens, you know?" She winced theatrically. Blair hadn't seen such a performance since Starr had fainted into Todd's arms, insisting that she'd fought off a kidnapper and shouldn't Jack's christening be canceled and the day made all about Starr?

"The papers are the same as they were before, but you can read them again if you'd like," Eli told her.

Starr beamed winningly at Eli. "It's okay. I trust you. Where do I sign?"

"On the X. You need to initial the bottom of the first two pages as well."

Starr did as she was told with lightening speed. "And they'll be filed today? Marcie will officially be Hope's mother?"

"You will have officially renounced your rights. It will take a few more months for Marcie, but there won't be anything standing in her way."

"Thank you so much, Eli." She shook Eli's hand solemnly.

"My pleasure."

"Is there anything else you need from me?"

"You have somewhere to go?" Blair injected.

"Now that I'm starting to get my body back, I wanted to go to the mall and get some new clothes for winter, you know? Isn't that okay?"

"Fine," Blair told her. "Have fun."


Starr laughed all the way to the police station. She might well go to the mall later in the day- she did need to augment her wardrobe, since neither her maternity clothes nor her regular clothes fit her properly at the moment- but first she had something much more fun in mind.

Starr had been visiting her parents in jail (usually her father, but occasionally her mother) for as long as she remembered. The police officers reacted almost as if they had been waiting for her and escorted her to the holding cells without incident.

She smirked to see her father behind bars where he belonged.

"Hi, Shorty," he said when he saw her.

"Don't call me that. You haven't called me that for years."

"You've grown up. I've had a hard time seeing that sometimes, but…" he trailed off.

"Really." Starr clapped her hands to her face in mock surprise. "I hadn't notice between you almost killing my boyfriend, and then almost killing my baby and me, and then almost killing my boyfriend again."

"Starr."

"Is it better or worse that you've gone back to torturing Marty instead of torturing me?"

"I love you, Starr. I never meant to hurt you or my granddaughter."

Starr beamed. "She's not your granddaughter any more. I signed the papers today. Marcie and Michael are so thrilled to have a new baby to love as much as they loved Tommy."

His face darkened threateningly, but it didn't scare her. She was far beyond being scared of this man. "I could have stopped that from happening. I didn't do it because I love you."

"What do you mean, you could have stopped it? What you should stop doing is deluding yourself."

"You'll find out anyway. I told Marty that my daughter was having a baby she wasn't ready to raise. I told Marty that she and I would take the baby and keep her until you were ready. Months, years, forever."

"And I was going to agree with this?"

"You were going to think that your baby was dead. But I didn't do it. I didn't go through with it, because I loved you so much. I would never let you go through what Jessica is going through, losing her baby. How's Jessica doing?"

"Like I'd tell you," said Starr. In truth, she didn't even know. She'd been so caught up in her own world that she'd forgotten to ask. "But I'll tell you how I'm doing. I'm mad at God for letting that innocent little baby die and letting someone like you live."

TBC