Sometimes it was easy to forget that occasionally Hunnigan and her team were the only thing standing between now and the end of the world. She'd spent most of her adult life fighting to stop the kinds of people who just wanted to watch the world burn, everything from legitimate mad scientists to terrorists and derailed governments, her job was to stop them, and for the most part, she did a fine job at nipping it in the bud. But when she failed, the consequences were potentially disastrous. But what was worse than failing and immediately seeing the world descend into chaos was knowing she'd fucked up, but not knowing what the consequences would be exactly; or, at least she couldn't tell what the consequences would be for the world, she had a pretty good idea of what would happen to her personally.

When director Shepard called Hunnigan into his office to discuss some discrepancies that had been brought to his attention, she knew where it would end. She was somewhat curious about how exactly her actions had been brought to the attention of Internal affairs; she didn't believe for a moment that it was just a random audit, those were always about as "random" as the "random" checks at airports were if your skin tone happened to be anything but a pale shade of eggshell.

When she noticed the shit-eating grin on agent Skylark's face as she walked through the bullpen toward the director's office, she realized who was behind it. Of course it was Skylark, who else. Question then remained how did she know now would be the worst possible time to do this to Hunnigan. Perhaps that was merely a coincidence, perhaps it was just a matter of Skylark seizing her opportunity to cause trouble, the timing accidentally impeccable from her point of view.

"What is Skylark accusing me of this time?" Hunnigan asked after closing the door behind her. She took a seat at the chair opposite to Shepard's desk and crossed one leg over the other, interlaced her fingers and rested her hands in her lap. She appeared as calm as ever, but underneath the dark purple collared shirt she was wearing she could feel droplets of cold sweat running down her ribs.

"Treason," Shepard replied.
"Go big or go home, huh?"

"Do you think this is funny?"
"No, I think this is ridiculous, and I think it's ridiculous that her personal vendetta against me is being taken seriously."

"Yes, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable lie to explain everything you've been up to recently, but I don't know if I even want to hear it. Your DSO-issued fake ID was used in Dulvey, Louisiana, as was Jeryn Hawke's. Helena Harper's, too, which is incredibly interesting considering she hasn't worked for the DSO for quite some time. And now you've put in a requisition order for a new laptop without running the old one through the tech department to ensure all the data on it is wiped properly, and I asked myself why would you do that. Perhaps your laptop was stolen, but if that were the case, you would've reported it. Yet, you have not done that."

"Shepard, I"—

"You must realize how this looks," he spoke over her, and she was glad he did, because she didn't really have anything to say. And yes, she realized exactly what it looked like, the intricate designs of the inescapable web Ada Wong had woven around her becoming painfully clear when she looked at her actions and her situation from the point of view of anyone else.

On paper, what she'd done looked a lot like treason. She'd met with questionable people, her laptop was now in their possession (and it didn't matter that Hunnigan had made it self-destruct, no one could definitely say the data on it hadn't been accessed with Hunnigan's permission before that), and if anyone were to look into Hunnigan's finances, they would see that she had recently received a total of roughly a quarter of a million dollars in small installments deposited onto her account from various untraceable sources. In other words, on the surface it looked like she'd sold DSO secrets to an outside party. And since she had no means of proving that wasn't what had happened, she was hopelessly stuck.

She had to hand it to Ada, she'd scripted and directed her little play perfectly, and Hunnigan had in her arrogance stupidly presumed she could not be outsmarted by the likes of Ada Wong, and that arrogance had become her downfall as she'd played her part without even stopping to question it. All this also served as a warranty of sorts; if Hunnigan didn't stop snooping around Ada's business, she'd make her life very uncomfortable. Hunnigan supposed it might have been Ada who had somehow planted the idea of directing the Internal affairs agents' attention to Hunnigan into Skylark's head.

"Yes, I do. But you know me, you know I would never."

"Yeah, I trust you, and that is the only reason we're having this conversation. You're one of the original founders of the DSO, I know you wouldn't betray the agency, I know it's your life's work. But I need you to tell me what the hell you were doing in Dulvey, and why," Shepard demanded, and Hunnigan sighed.

"I can't. But I swear to you, if it were something that warranted the DSO's attention, I wouldn't keep it from you. As it stands now, however, we have no jurisdiction and we have no evidence because what I had was stolen, along with my laptop. I fucked up, but it wasn't because I was careless. And it sure as hell wasn't intentional. I was simply outsmarted," Hunnigan admitted reluctantly.

Shepard inhaled deeply through his nose and let the breath out in an agitated sigh. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers and ran his hand over his face, his stubble making a scratching sound as his palm traveled over it.

"The evidence greatly outweighs your testimony."
"I know," Hunnigan agreed in a quiet, defeated tone.

"I'm going to open an investigation, but I will handle it personally, in-house, and while I'm pretending to investigate you, you can consider yourself suspended without pay. Don't make me regret this."
"...I won't."

"Good. Now, get the hell out of my office," he said, and Hunnigan stood and left without another word.

Helena had been looking forward to getting home, so much so that she'd been tempted to call the hospital to let them know she wouldn't be able to volunteer later that day -she hadn't made the call, but she'd really wanted to. She was in a hurry to get home because she'd gotten some good news and she could barely wait to share it with Hunnigan.

It wasn't often she had anything good to share, and the past few days she'd been stuck in a depressive state caused by the overwhelming grief and nightmares reading Deborah's letter had triggered. But it was getting better. The weeds of depression hadn't managed to take root, not like they had before. She supposed a more accurate way to describe her emotional state would've been to say she'd been extremely sad, but not depressed.

She'd been on her not-so-merry way there, noticing the lack of interest toward things she knew should've brought her joy but didn't, but it had gotten turned around before it got worse. Some of the credit belonged to Seeley because having him around had provided the perfect distraction. Also, there was something comforting about how he and Hunnigan interacted. Helena didn't know what or why, she didn't want to know, the answer was probably something embarrassingly obvious (like of course she would find comfort in watching a healthy relationship between a mother and her child, uselessly wishing she'd had a mother like that when she'd been growing up) and she didn't care, what made a difference to her was that witnessing it made her feel better. And when Seeley went out of his way to include her in his activities, she felt like she belonged, like she was a part of the family; it made her happier than she would've expected.

When Helena got home, she realized they had guests. She sighed internally, Hunnigan had apparently forgotten to mention it to her. That threw a monkey wrench into Helena's hopes for a quiet evening.

"Can we just take a moment to appreciate the irony of the fact that the bard in a one-man-band-suit is the only one who didn't fail the stealth check?" Nolan laughed heartily.

Helena walked into the living room and looked around to see who was there. Nolan sat next to Marisha (who had apparently either never left for L.A. after the gig or had flown back recently) on the couch, Seeley having taken a seat in his uncle's lap. On the opposite side of the table, Hunnigan sat on the floor, while agent Lace Harding sat at the end of the table behind a decorated wooden screen. The table was covered with a mat that had the texture of molten lava and volcanic rock printed on it, small plastic figures were gathered up behind an actual rock someone had brought in, one of Seeley's toys standing on the opposite side of it. Helena deduced that the small figures were hiding from the giant Rainbow Dash.

Helena waited and watched for a moment as the players rolled colorful dice and Harding dramatically narrated the events of what apparently was an epic battle between the three characters and Rainbow Dash.

"Oh, my God, I have a reaction for that. I am appalled, how dare you? I will retort with a four-D-six force damage," Hunnigan said and rolled the dice.
"Grave clerics get all the best abilities," Harding commented, shaking her head a little.

"Yeah, if I'd just remember to use them," Hunnigan laughed, did some math and gave Harding a number.
"This is not going well," Marisha lamented.

"Oh, come on now, it's okay," Nolan tried to comfort her.
"No, you can't just say things are okay and then they are okay," she argued with a smile.

"Sure you can, that's how being in denial works," Helena commented as she finally entered the room. Hunnigan got up and gave her a quick kiss on the lips, welcoming her home before returning to her spot on the floor.

"What are you guys up to?" Helena asked.
"We're playing Dungeons&Dragons," Harding informed her, and Helena nodded before heading into the kitchen.

"I'd invite you to join but we're almost done here since Harding is gonna kill the entire party," Nolan said.
"Don't worry about it, I can already tell you it's not my kind of a thing," Helena called out over her shoulder as she made herself a couple of sandwiches.

"I'll talk you into trying it one day, mark my words," Hunnigan said.
"Suuure," Helena chuckled and plated her sandwiches. "Okay if I use your office?" she paused to ask from Hunnigan then.

"Of course."

"Have fun, nerds," Helena grinned before heading into Hunnigan's office. She turned on her laptop and browsed for something to watch while eating. She chuckled softly when she heard her wife's voice triumphantly yell "Natural twenty!", whatever that meant; judging from her excitement it was a good thing.

Helena had managed to get about halfway through an episode of The Simpsons and just finished her sandwich when she noticed Charlie sharply turned to look toward the door. Helena took her headphones off and heard the loudly thumping footsteps approaching the room. She frowned, wondering what the hell was going on. She felt herself instinctively switch from relaxed to ready for combat when she realized what was happening was that Seeley was running to her, crying, and Helena couldn't figure out why, what had happened, what had gone wrong so badly in such a short time, what had she missed, how should she react, did she need to protect anyone from something?

She stood up and pulled the door open and knelt down, Seeley ran into her and buried his face into the spot between her neck and shoulder.

"What's wrong, little dude?" Helena asked him, relaxing a little when she saw Hunnigan follow him, a slightly exasperated look on her face. Apparently, whatever had happened wouldn't require Helena to react as seriously as she might have a few seconds ago.

"We really shouldn't have used Rainbow Dash in the game," Hunnigan sighed and explained that Seeley had become upset when his favorite pony had fallen in battle. Seeley let go of Helena and turned around, reached his arms forward and shoved at Hunnigan furiously, making that angry, almost indescribable noise that wasn't exactly a grunt or a growl, and it wasn't exactly a scream or a cry either, just a "frustrated and furious child"-noise.

"You're stupid! Go away!" he told his mother, and Helena found herself once again marveling at Hunnigan's calmness when comparing this to what Helena's childhood had been like; had she spoken like that to Frances, she would've gotten put through a wall.

"It's okay, I got it," Helena said as Seeley went back to her after having made it clear what he thought of his mother right now.
"You sure?" Hunnigan asked, and Helena nodded.
"Yes, go on, you have a princess to rescue from a tower, or whatever it is you nerds do," Helena smirked. Hunnigan scoffed amusedly, didn't comment, and headed back into the living room.

Frankly, Helena was a bit flattered Seeley had come to her with this, he'd been upset with his mother before and he had tantrums over the dumbest things like any other kid, but usually he just threw himself on the floor and banged his forehead to it while screaming that he wanted his father. Hunnigan typically reacted by sitting next to him and placing her hand between his head and the floor, softening the blows with her palm, her presence either ignored by Seeley or distracting him enough to focus his energy on trying to get rid of his mother's protective hand rather than potentially injuring himself. He'd never ran to Helena before.

"We're siblings, twins, actually, so we met at home," Hunnigan answered Harding's question about how she and Nolan knew each other.
"I'm the pretty one," Nolan interjected.

"And I'm the one with the big dick," Hunnigan teased.
"Yeah, well, I don't make love to a woman with my penis, I make love with my heart and soul, and I have a large heart."

"And a medium penis," Marisha said, her words followed by hearty laughter from the group.
"You are all terrible, and I love it," Harding commented in-between wheezing laughter.

Helena pushed the door to the office shut as she sat on the floor, Seeley's angry sobs slowly beginning to fade away into tiny, watery hiccups. Charlie plopped himself down on the floor next to the boy, gently reaching his head toward him as if to let him know that he was there if the boy needed him, but that he'd give him space if he preferred that.

"Oh, hey, what do you say we check on your drawing from earlier?" Helena then remembered.

Seeley had gotten upset last evening after accidentally spilling black paint over his colorful drawing. After making sure he trusted her with his work, Helena had proceeded to coat the entire drawing with the paint, and after his initial shock, he'd accepted her explanation that it could still be salvaged after the paint dried.

He immediately perked up, apparently having forgotten about the drawing completely until now. He sniffled and nodded his head. Helena went to pick up the drawing from the shelf where she'd put it to dry and brought it over to Hunnigan's desk (which was still rather empty thanks to being recently flipped by Hunnigan who hadn't replaced most of the items that had cluttered the surface).

Helena unrolled the leather pouch where she kept her pencils, erasers, sharpeners, pens, and ink (the tools and the pouch had been a Christmas gift from Hunnigan, and Helena regretted she still didn't spend much time practicing her artistic skills, but occasionally drawing with Seeley was putting her talents to some use at least). She pulled out an empty fountain pen, and put her right arm around Seeley's midsection to keep him from falling off her lap as she leaned closer to the desk.

Pen in left hand, she began to gently scratch the black acrylic paint off the paper, the scratches revealing Seeley's colorful oil pastel drawing underneath. Instead of drawing one of the ponies, Helena focused on trying to scratch an outline of an actual horse onto the paper. Drawing anything more complicated than quick sketches from memory was not something Helena excelled at, and the proportions of the animal ended up being a little off, making it look a bit chubby, but Seeley didn't seem to mind, on the contrary; he appeared rather impressed.

"You wanna try?" Helena asked, offering him the pen. He grabbed it enthusiastically and began scratching odd creatures only a kid's imagination could conjure up.

Or maybe that's meant to be SpongeBob, Helena mused as she stared at what appeared to be a box that had long narrow arms and legs, big eyes, and a huge toothy mouth; the sight of the odd mouth reminded Helena of the strange dream she'd had a while back, specifically Jane eating herself alive.

Itchy, tasty.

Helena shuddered a little and blinked repeatedly to expel the unpleasant memory. Seeley said something Helena couldn't quite make out.

"What?"
"Drawoccopuss!" he yelled, thinking volume had been the problem, not his pronunciation.

"Oh, you want me to draw an octopus?" Helena finally caught up and Seeley nodded. "Should I draw Squidward?" Helena then asked.
"Yah!" Seeley confirmed.

"Okay," Helena chuckled and got to work.

After another half an hour of drawing things with Seeley and things he requested, they were interrupted by Hunnigan who knocked on the door. The game was finished for tonight, and the guests had gone home.

"You still upset with me, buddy?" Hunnigan asked and Seeley slowly shook his head. He climbed down from Helena's lap and went to her, reaching his arms up. Hunnigan picked him up and hugged him to herself, peppering the side of his face with a quick series of tiny kisses.

"Do you want to put your pajamas on now or after you've brushed your teeth?" Hunnigan then asked him, and Helena smiled at the subtle and clever manipulation; the boy would end up with his teeth brushed and in his pajamas either way, but giving him the illusion of choice made him less likely to want to rebel. Helena wondered how long it would work on him.

Seeley said he'd brush his teeth first and Hunnigan went with him to assist with it while Helena began to put her pencils and papers away. She then returned her sandwich plate to the kitchen and took a seat on the couch, Charlie following behind and settling to lay down at her feet.

"Oof," Hunnigan exhaled deeply as she sat down next to her after managing to get Seeley to sleep.
"How was your day?" Helena asked and put her arm around Hunnigan's shoulders, pulling her close.

"I got suspended," Hunnigan replied as she rested her head on Helena's shoulder.
"What? Why?"

"Well...it's partly thanks to Skylark for siccing Internal affairs on me, but mostly it's Ada's way of putting me in my place for having the audacity to investigate her," Hunnigan muttered and told Helena what had happened.
"I just...when I think about Ada and everything she does, I can't just...she can't keep getting away with it," Hunnigan muttered angrily.

"...has it occurred to you that there are people saying the same thing about you?"
"What?" Hunnigan scoffed and sat up straight.

"Well...I just mean that I bet Skylark's thinking 'she can't keep getting away with it' about you which is why"—
"I can't believe you're defending her of all people."

"I'm not, I'm just saying I can kind of see where she's coming from, if she genuinely is as clean as you said she is, maybe the way you handle things irks her. That, and the fact that she's a mean person," Helena smirked, and Hunnigan snorted.

"I guess I see what you mean."
"Then...leave it alone. Ada's already demonstrated what she's capable of, and it sounds to me like the only thing keeping you from being charged with treason is the fact that director Shepard trusts you, for now. Is chasing her worth risking everything?" Helena asked, and Hunnigan let out a defeated exhale.

"No, of course it's not," she whispered, cupped Helena's cheek with her hand and leaned her forehead against Helena's.
"Then leave it," Helena said, pressing a kiss onto Hunnigan's palm. "Please. I can handle a lot of things but I don't think I could ever recover from losing you."

"You're not going to lose anything," Hunnigan promised and kissed Helena's lips gently. "So, how was your day?" she then asked.
"Well, as it happens, I had a great day."

"Tell me," Hunnigan smiled, leaning her elbow onto the backrest of the couch, resting her head against her knuckles.
"My classes are going great, and I finished my cuddler-training"—

"Your what?"
"Cuddler-training. I told you about that. Didn't I?"

"I wanna say no you didn't so that I won't come across as an asshole who doesn't listen, but it could be I forgot," Hunnigan said.

"Or I forgot to tell you. Either way, some volunteers cuddle babies whose parents can't be there all the time, and I was like I wanna do that, so I signed up, and I actually got to cuddle a baby today! Usually there's a really long waiting list but there was a new baby brought in today and I was conveniently there when she arrived, so I got to cuddle her."

"That sounds really nice."

"It is. Well, at least if you don't think about why the babies are there. The baby I got to cuddle was born prematurely and her mom's in prison, so that's...sad, but cuddling the baby was nice, for me," Helena said. "But wait, there's more! Who has two thumbs, is acing her classes, got to cuddle babies, and landed herself a job? This gal! You are looking at GW hospital's newest security guard," she then announced, pointing her thumbs at herself.

"Wow, you weren't joking, you had a great day, and I'm happy to hear that," Hunnigan said tenderly, and leaned to kiss Helena gently.

Helena smiled into the kiss and wrapped her arms around Hunnigan, settling to lay on the couch with her, moving to rest her head on Hunnigan's chest. She closed her eyes, listening to Hunnigan's heartbeat, for once simply allowing herself the happiness, no intrusive dark thoughts overshadowing it and insisting she didn't deserve happiness; right now it was just her, and she was happy.

It was a good day.