Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Alec, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me. No money is being made off of this fic. I only own the original characters (Becky/X6-405, etc.).

Notes: Spoilers and spoiler-ish stuff for "Cold Comfort," "…And Jesus Brought A Casserole," and "Some Assembly Required."

Zack felt too overwhelmed to do anything but stare at his parents. This is unreal…is this really happening to me? Do they really care for me and Becky? Were they tricked into—am I losing it? The four of them just stayed that way for a few minutes before a voice broke the silence.

"Mom!"

Caroline snapped out of it at the sound of her youngest child's voice. "Jenny!" She met her halfway across the room and hugged her. "Thank goodness that you're alright."

"You heard me on the phone," Jenny said.

"I know," Caroline said. She released Jenny to wipe the tears off of her face. "I know. I still…oh sweetheart." She gave Jenny another hug.

"Mom, you're embarrassing me," Jenny said.

"Sorry," Caroline said. She released Jenny and smiled. "Have you been behaving yourself?"

"Yes, Mom," Jenny said. She grinned and pointed to Jeff, who with Krit had followed Jenny downstairs. "He's really cute!"

Becky didn't know whether to groan or laugh. I barely meet my younger sister and she already wants my boyfriend! "I'm sorry, Jenny. Jeff's my boyfriend."

"Oh, man," Jenny said.

"Don't worry, Jenny," Caroline said. She heard a noise behind her and stiffened, realizing that Lydecker was still with them. She tried to keep the tension off of her face for Jenny's sake. "Listen, will you be a good girl and go back upstairs? I need to talk about some grown-up things with everybody else."

"Okay," Jenny said. "Can I go home tonight?"

"That's one of the things that we might talk about," Caroline said. "Either way, I'll see you when we're done talking."

"I'll take her upstairs," Krit offered. "Come on."

"Okay," Jenny said. She followed Krit back up the stairs.

Caroline stood up and as soon as she believed that Jenny was out of earshot, turned around and walked over to Lydecker and punched him hard in the face. "You fucking bastard!"

Everybody stared in shock as Lydecker calmly picked himself up off the floor and wiped the blood from his nose. "I should have known that you were faking your amnesia after the accident."

"Accident? Even after all of these years you still won't call it what it really was?" Caroline started to swing at Lydecker again, but Dennis grabbed her arm.

"Caroline, calm down," he said. "What is going on here?"

"I'm sorry," Caroline said. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. She glared murderously at Lydecker. "Dennis, remember the first day at work here in Seattle when we met up again and I mentioned that I had been in an accident about eight years ago?"

"Yeah. I had a feeling that there was a story behind it and you didn't want to tell it to me," Dennis said.

Caroline nodded. "You're going to hear it now."

Max found a chair, set it down, and walked over to Lydecker and shoved him down onto it. "You're going to sit still for story time like a good little boy."

"I'm getting tired of this treatment," Lydecker said.

"And I'm getting tired of you using my back as target practice for your knife," Caroline hissed.

Both Zack and Becky looked at each other. "What do you mean?" Zack asked.

"I'll tell you," Caroline said. "I guess I'll start from the very beginning. Bear with me and trust me." She took a deep breath. "My dad was in the army. He graduated from West Point in May of 1963 and he ended up being one of the first soldiers sent over to Vietnam. After he did his year over there, he came back to the United States and married my mom. My oldest brother, Chris, was born in April of 1968. My brother Danny was born about a year after Chris and my other brother, Pete, was born about a year after Danny. They moved around a few times over the course of the first seven or eight years of my parents' marriage. In the winter of 1973, my dad and his unit had been sent over to Europe to deal with some terrorist activity at one of our bases. He hurt his leg in the fighting and it was bad enough for him to be permanently taken out of active duty. He didn't lose his leg and he recovered as well as he could, but it was still enough for him not to be able to serve in active combat again. After he had recovered months later, he was offered a position as a teacher at a military school near Columbus so my family moved there that summer. Eventually, my dad became a congressman and spent at least half of his time in Washington. Anyway, Chris started kindergarten that September and guess who happened to be in his class?"

"Lydecker? Are you kidding me?" Max said. She's known Lydecker for her entire life?

"The one and only," Caroline said. "He and Chris became best friends pretty quickly. Anyway, life went on and I was born about two years after my family moved to Columbus. My life was pretty normal. I was and still am really close to my brothers. I looked up to them, even though I didn't like most of their friends, particularly with Chris. I don't know why, but most of Chris' friends just annoyed me, Lydecker here included. One of the few friends that I got along with all of the time and I actually considered a good friend of mine was Lisa."

"Who was Lisa?" Becky asked.

"Lisa was Lydecker's late wife," Caroline said. She grinned. "She used to baby-sit for me sometimes before I got too old for a babysitter. She told me everything and I would tell her everything and we were great friends. She even taught me how to ride a motorcycle."

"Lydecker told me that she was mine and Krit's biological mother," Max said.

Caroline turned and looked at her and it finally clicked. That's why she and that young man looked familiar. They both have Lisa's eyes! "I knew you looked familiar to me."

"I'm just happy that Lydecker didn't turn out to be my father," Max said. "He said that he didn't want to contaminate the gene pool."

Caroline smirked cruelly. "He couldn't even if he wanted to. The only thing ol' Don's gun is shooting is blanks."

Becky snickered. "You're kidding me."

"Nope," Caroline said. "I bet you didn't know that Lisa told me why you guys couldn't have kids of your own, did you?" She shook her head. "What did you do, did you trick Lisa into having some of her eggs taken so they could be frozen until that day in the future when maybe you actually found a way to give you a sperm count but were going to use them for Manticore all along?"

"No, Lisa wanted to have her eggs frozen in case we found a way to have kids of our own," Lydecker said. "I wasn't going to use her eggs for Manticore!"

"Bullshit," Caroline said angrily. She shook her head. "Anyway, like I was saying, I idolized my brothers. They all went into the military. Both Chris and Pete went to West Point and Danny went to the naval academy over in Annapolis. I decided to go to West Point. My mother wasn't thrilled, but I stuck to my decision and I got in. I was thrilled. Then…" She had to pause for a moment. "Then my brother Chris died on January 16th, 1993. I got home from school and my dad was back from Washington early and my parents were both in the living room and they told me that there was an accident on Chris' base and then we waited until we got that call…"

"I'm sorry," Zack said softly.

"Thank you," Caroline said. She wiped her eyes. "So we picked up the pieces and I started West Point late that summer and I was happy there. Things went smoothly until that October when my mom called me and told me that somebody hit the back of my car when she was in the supermarket. My parents occasionally used my car while I was at school. The back of my car was totaled and she said that she and my dad weren't going to get me another one because I was at school full-time and I didn't need one. I was annoyed but I agreed with the logic. The next day, I got a call from Donny-boy here. He said that he was in Columbus for a conference and that he'd talked to my mom and had gotten my number from her and had heard about what had happened." Her blue eyes turned icy. "You set it up, didn't you? Hell, I bet you were lying about even being in Columbus when you called me."

"I did," Lydecker admitted. "I had somebody watching your house and the accident was staged. I wasn't in Columbus, either. I was in my office in Gillette when I called you. I did get your number from your mother, though. I'd called her the night before I called you presumably to say hello and after she told me what had happened, I mentioned that I wanted to help you and she gave me your number at school."

"Staged? Why?" Max wondered.

"Why else?" Caroline said bitterly. "Lydecker told me that he wanted to help me get the money to get a new car. He had mentioned the Thanksgiving before Chris died that he was being transferred to Casper, Wyoming to be put in charge of the military units that were guarding a government medical research facility there. He told me that the facility was testing a new medication that promoted cell regeneration and they needed a variety of different cells to test it on and they needed somebody to donate reproductive cells. I didn't want to do it. It sounded like it could be dangerous for me, but Lydecker assured me that it would be safe and when I still was unsure…" Her expression darkened. "He said that Chris would have wanted him to help me out if there was a way."

"You used the memory of her brother in that way?" Zack hissed. "You sick bastard."

"I've heard of the expression 'dancing on somebody's grave,' but you don't do that, much less throw a party on it," Becky said. Her voice was as cold as her mother's and her brother's. Dennis and Max didn't say anything to Lydecker, but the furious looks in their eyes got their message across more than clearly enough.

"So I agreed to it," Caroline said. "The next month, the day after Thanksgiving, I flew out to Casper. The day after I got there, I went to the facility that Lydecker told me to go to so I could make the donation." She smiled. "That's actually where I met Dennis for the first time. I think I saw him on campus before once or twice or something like that and I'd heard his name mentioned by some professors of mine. We got along pretty well and I told him why I was there and he said that he was there for the same reason and he gave me a ride back to the motel that we both were staying at in town. He came back hours after he was done as soon as the doctors at the place said I could go and we picked up our checks from the office and we left." She frowned. "As soon as I got that check, I got a bad feeling. I didn't know why, but all of a sudden, things didn't seem to add up. I understood why I might have been the only woman in the waiting room because my procedure was slightly time-intensive, but Dennis' wasn't. There should have at least been more men in there with us. I told Dennis this and he agreed with me and when we got back to the motel, the first thing we did was to throw those checks into the fireplace in the lobby and to watch them burn into two nice piles of ash." She smiled again. "It's still absolutely one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life."

Dennis also smiled and he nodded. "Mine too. I've never regretted it."

Becky felt relief flow through her, surprising her. They didn't sell us out. Maybe…

"I went back to New York to West Point a few days later," Caroline said. "Dennis and I stayed friends. He graduated that May and we kept in touch for awhile but then we lost contact. It wasn't because we fought or anything, we just lost contact. I guess it was one of those things. Anyway, life was life. I continued to do well at West Point. One afternoon, I got a call from Lisa. I was having a little bit of a rough day so it really cheered me up. She mentioned that she'd gotten a call from Lydecker and he'd sounded really happy about something and she told me that she was going to try to take advantage of that good mood and try to convince him about adopting a kid." The almost happy expression on her face faded to anger as she looked Lydecker in the eye again. "That day was September 25th, 1995."

"My birthday," Zack said quietly.

"Yeah," Caroline said. Her expression changed from anger to grief. "Late the next night, my mom called me and told me that Lisa had been killed earlier that night."

"How exactly did she die?" Max asked. She knew about Lydecker's wife being killed, but it hadn't mention how she'd died.

"Botched robbery," Lydecker said softly. "That's what the police said."

"I didn't see Lydecker again after Lisa's funeral until the party at my house that my parents threw for me to celebrate me graduating from West Point in May of 1997," Caroline said. "He was looking much better than he had been at the funeral. I think he'd been clean and sober for a year at that point. He congratulated me and then he introduced me to a friend of his whom he said had been working for him at the facility in Casper. Patrick Nelson."

"Patrick Nelson? As in your ex-husband Patrick Nelson?" Dennis said.

"The same man," Caroline said. "Patrick seemed like a great guy. We apparently had a lot in common, he was funny, he was just a great guy and we got married about two years later. He was reluctant to have children for a long time, but I finally got him to agree to have at least one and we had Jenny. I was happy. I loved my work, I had a great husband, and I had a beautiful healthy daughter. I was enjoying my life."

"But then something happened," Max guessed.

Caroline nodded. "February 25th, 2013. I was off-duty that entire day and Patrick wasn't. I had just checked in on Jenny to see if she was still sleeping and I'd left her room and I saw that Patrick had left his home office door ajar. He was normally almost paranoid about keeping that door close so I couldn't resist going into the office. I did and at first I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I sat down at his desk and I found a CD case that said something about escapee information. I was still curious so I put the CD in. The first file was pretty much something to tell Patrick what the CD was for. What stuck with me was the fact that it explicitly told Patrick not to tell me about it and the fact that it was signed 'Don.' I looked around on Patrick's computer and I found some information about Manticore." She turned back to Lydecker. "You bastard. How could you have put those poor kids through that hell? They didn't deserve it!"

"What did he have to do with Manticore?" Dennis asked.

"He was involved with Manticore from 1989 on," Caroline said. "He was promoted to Major and they decided to have him be in charge of the facility in Wyoming in the fall of 1992 and he was promoted to Colonel just before Zack was born." She shook her head. "I was shocked. Not only did this place where they did all these horrible things to innocent babies and children exist, but my husband was a knowing participant. He was involved with Manticore and had been for years. I looked through some of the files that had been saved on the hard drive and then I went back to the CD and I opened a folder and I opened a file and…" She couldn't continue. Even after more than eight years, the emotion still overwhelmed her.

"Caroline?" Dennis said softly. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Caroline nodded and cried silently for another minute or two before she wiped the tears from her face. "I just knew it from the instant I saw the picture." The emotion was clear in her voice. "There wasn't a single part of me that didn't know that I was looking at a picture of my own son. I read the file. It was some basic information. Zack's name, the day he was born, what had happened to lead to the escape…" She answered the unspoken question. "There wasn't anything in the file or anywhere on the CD that mentioned Becky."

"What happened next?" Becky asked.

"After the shock of finding out that I had a son that I'd never know faded, I got so angry," Caroline said. She felt that same rage come back to her and Max blinked. The look in her eyes was so much like the one she had seen in Zack's eyes before that it almost scared her. Caroline clenched her fists as she looked at Lydecker. "He knew what would have happened if I had found out about Zack. That must have been why he introduced Patrick to me after I'd graduated from college. He wanted somebody to keep an eye on me so that I wouldn't try to take back my kid, or kids as I later found out."

"He was a soldier, not your son," Lydecker said.

"He is my son!" Caroline screamed. "Zack is mine and Dennis' son and Becky is mine and Dennis' daughter and you kidnapped them! You fucking stole my children from me—from us—and the fact that you did it before they were conceived doesn't change the fact!"

"What happened next?" Max asked.

"I made the decision the next chance that I got that I was going to take Jenny and file for divorce," Caroline said. She laughed bitterly. "I'm normally so good and so careful, but did I think that Patrick would have hidden cameras around his office? I didn't. Two days after I found out about Zack, I was driving home from the base when my left rear tire blew out on me and I lost control of the car. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital. Patrick was there and the doctor started to ask me questions, I guess to see if I lost my memory. He asked me some basic questions and then he asked me what the last thing that I remembered was. I happened to look at Patrick before I answered and something told me to lie and I told him that the last thing that I'd remembered was this one night about a month before the 'accident.' I knew that I'd fooled Patrick. Then the doctor told me that I'd been in a coma for four months and that I'd nearly died." She bit her lip. "Then he and the nurse and Patrick all left and I heard someone else coming towards me door and I thought I'd heard Lydecker's voice so I got out of bed and went to the door to listen." She looked even angrier than she'd been before. "It wasn't an accident. He'd sent somebody, I guess one of those soldiers, to take me out because I'd found out about Zack. Patrick was wondering what the point was since Zack had already escaped and Lydecker here was going to say when somebody went past them in the hall and they moved their conversation."

"I'm a good point, aren't I?" Becky said quietly.

"I was…it was the lowest point in my life," Caroline said. "I knew that I was stuck in the marriage. Even if I divorced Patrick, Lydecker would make sure that I'd be with somebody from Manticore who could keep an eye on me. I was trapped. At least I had Jenny." She sighed. "As for how I eventually found out about Becky, years went by and both Patrick and I were transferred to Georgia and a few years after that, I overheard a conversation between Patrick and one of his superiors on the phone." She smirked. "Manticore had burned down and apparently the transgenics had gotten free. I called my lawyer only a minute or two later and asked him to start working on those divorce papers."

"You don't waste any time, do you?" Dennis said.

"Damn right I don't," Caroline said. "Then back in March, I was home by myself. Patrick had moved out after he'd been served with the divorce papers months before and Jenny was sleeping over at a friend's house. I was recording a program for Jenny when it was interrupted and they gave a special report about four people who'd been identified as transgenics."

"And that's when you found out about Becky," Max said.

"Right," Caroline said. "Four pictures came up on the screen. Yours was one of them, that young man's was another, Zack's was another, and Becky's was the fourth. Just like I had felt when I first saw that picture of Zack, I just knew that Becky was my daughter and I knew that she was the reason why Lydecker and whoever decided to have somebody kill me after I'd found out about Zack." She turned to Becky. "I never resented you at all for that. Not the slightest bit."

"Thank you," Becky said.

Caroline nodded, not knowing quite what to say back to her, and turned to Dennis. "It was after I'd calmed down after realizing that Becky was why they'd tried to kill me that I went back and looked at that again and I realized that you were their father. I wanted to let you know then, but I didn't have any current address or phone number of yours"

"I know," Dennis said.

"It wouldn't have done any good," Lydecker said.

"Gee, that sounds really fucking familiar," Becky snapped. Caroline and Dennis turned to her and Becky explained. "My sister Felicia was supposedly killed after she was falsely accused of accidentally killing a trainer when our unit and another one were running a training exercise together. Just after Thanksgiving, my sister Maggie spotted Felicia and we found out that she'd survived and had been used as a guinea pig for this computer chip that not only jumped up her abilities, but pretty much turned her into a living robot. Not only that, the mission that she'd been given just before Manticore burned down was to hunt down all of the '09 escapees and to either bring them back to Manticore or if she couldn't contact base, to kill them. Guess who also happened to be in Seattle at the time."

"Oh my God," Dennis said when he followed what Becky was saying.

"I stopped Felicia before she could hurt Zack or Max or anybody else and shorted out the chip and she's fine and back to normal," Becky assured them. "But before I did, I found Lydecker here in the city and he confirmed everything for us and I asked him why he didn't tell me that Felicia had lived and guess what his answer was?"

"You lied to me, you lied to my children…" Caroline said angrily.

"Caroline, that's enough—" Lydecker started to say.

"You're right! That is enough!" Caroline exploded. "Let's stop talking about what you did or had done to me and let's talk about what you did to my kids! What you did to all of those poor kids! I've read all of the files that I was sent when I got the Terminal City assignment, not just what I found in Patrick's office. You killed an innocent girl right in front of Zack, somebody that he considered to be a sister to him! You had them whipped and beaten when they didn't perform up to your precious standards! You held them under water and you wouldn't release them until you wanted to let them go! You put my daughter when she was only six years old through six full months of the worst physical and mental torture that anybody could conceive of? She was just a small child! They were both only kids!"

"She was a soldier! We had to put her in Psychological Operations!" Lydecker protested angrily.

"Why? To make sure that she wouldn't do the right thing, like her brother did?" Caroline yelled. "Did you stop to think about what you were doing, Donald? Did it ever occur to you when you looked at them what your best friend would think if he knew what you were doing to his nephew and his niece? Did it ever occur to you what Lisa would think if she knew that you took some of her eggs and made two children and tortured them?"

"I tried not to think about that," Lydecker admitted.

"But you couldn't completely not think about it, could you?" Caroline screamed. "You couldn't! You just went on and put those kids through hell! You pushed them and you pushed them and you beat them and tortured them and when Zack and his family left, you went on torturing Becky and all of the others? Why did you do it, Lydecker? Why did you fucking do it!" All of the pain she felt at the thought of what her older children had gone through, all of the emotion finally overwhelmed her and she collapsed to the ground, sobbing fiercely. She didn't notice Max make a quick hand gesture to Kyle and Jeff and the two of them taking Lydecker out of the room and out of the safehouse. She didn't notice Max and Alec leaving the room themselves. All she was aware of was her sobbing and Dennis pulling her into his arms and holding her while she cried and then, tentatively at first, Zack and Becky each putting a hand on one of her shoulders to comfort her.

TBC

More notes: angelofdarkness78, thank you so much again for your reviews and support. As for your suggestion, it may not be exactly how Dennis and Caroline properly meet Max, but as to the scenario itself, never say never… :)