AN: Hello again! Thank you to everyone who's reading along with the series. :)

This whole subplot/rabbit trail off the main series is based on that split second, blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment in the second film where Riley dives down to pull Ben free of the door. Then, when he comes up spitting and coughing all over the place, Ben flings an arm across his chest. That instinctive moment is never discussed again but it got me thinking…

"I seize upon that, for it is at least something to hold onto. This man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything, in order to save myself."

~ Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

"This is, easily, the stupidest idea you've ever had."

Ben folds his arms in a perfect mirror of Riley. "Don't forget about that time she thought working with Ian was a good idea."

"Nope." Riley shakes his head. "This tops that. I can't believe you tricked us into coming here."

Neither can Sadusky, but he has the good sense to stay silent. They've noticed him, of course, walking towards them in a trim panama hat, board shorts, and his usual collared shirt, but he doesn't make a sound in his approach to Abigail's beach chair, where she lounges with Ellie on her chest. The seven month old spots Peter and clams a wave with the hand not in her mouth.

Chuckling, he waves back. He'll never tire of the greeting for her 'Papa Peter.'

Because Riley has gone shirtless on this scorching, cloudless July afternoon, his bullet scar is on display in all its grotesque glory, a mangled wad of scrambled egg tissue. It strains when he tenses at the look on Abigail's face.

Determination.

Nobody wins when she looks like that.

Dive trained as he is, Ben is wearing a rash guard shirt and pool shorts, though he too stands marbleized like a shark might jump out of the lake water at any minute. His eyes narrow at Abigail.

"Well played," he says.

Abigail nods in acquiescence of the victory.

Ben sniffs. "But we're still not getting in."

"Right." Riley points at his friend. "What he said."

"You told us this was a surprise 'stay-cation,' you know, because we've been so stressed and busy lately." Ben hasn't even finished this protest before his frown reaches epic depths.

"And it is." Abigail gestures to a group of children playing a ways down the man-made beach, burying their cackling friend up to his shoulders in a mound of sand. "I get to sun bathe—"

Riley flings up a spray of powder with his foot. "I thought we were here to sun bathe."

"No." Abigail lowers her sunglasses to stare them head on with intense eyes. "You are going swimming."

"But—"

"Nope!" She leans back, snapping open a magazine to read over Ellie's head. "I refuse to move from this spot until you boys take a dip in the water."

Riley splutters a few moments longer but Ben has a worried look on his face now. Because he knows he's lost. They knew they lost ages ago, evidenced by the fact that they changed once they got here.

Though Peter is late and can't know for sure, he has a feeling they thought this would be a sand-only outing.

Water on the other hand…

Ben turns his frustration onto Sadusky. "Let me guess—she strong armed you into this too."

"As a matter of fact…" Peter straightens his shoulders and promptly toes off his sandals. "It was my idea."

Riley and Ben's jaws drop.

Two weeks earlier…

You'd think, after having been shot at so many times he can't even remember them all and finding a priceless American document after it was stolen and fielding the investigation of a kidnapped president, that nothing could possibly render surprise in him anymore.

You'd be wrong.

Sadusky finds himself stunned at just how wrong he is.

The door to the Gates house has been left ajar, just a few inches of opening visible, and Peter reaches for a gun that isn't there. Because it's his day off—a Saturday—and he was personally invited here.

Right.

"Abigail?" His other hand tightens around a reusable grocery bag. "Anybody home?"

The house is dim, though the curtains aren't drawn quite far enough to shut out petals of sunlight blossoming over the floor. Peter squints, following these strategically shut windows to the living room. Riley is curled up on the couch and Ben has stretched out on a battered Lazy boy recliner drawn close to him.

Both dead to the world.

Someone has thrown a comforter over Riley at some point, probably Ben, judging by how it's tucked in around the hacker's frame and even under his feet. They don't stir at the sound of Sadusky's steps or calls. Even the TV is off and Riley's face puts the white comforter cover to shame, coupled with dark circles under his eyes.

Is this why Abigail called me? Because he's sick—?

"Peter!" Abigail comes flurrying in, hand buried in the lapel of Sadusky's coat, before he takes the next breath. "We can't wake them up!"

Despite her careful whisper, her grip is like reinforced iron. Flustered, she tugs him out of the living room, through the entryway, and straight on out the door. Her hand smooths through a loose ponytail, coming out on one side, and she blows out a rushed breath while shutting the door.

"Sorry about that." She returns to her usual grace and decorum through clumsy starts and stops, like her mind is so filled up that it has no room for such things. "Did you bring the pickles?"

"I did." Sadusky recovers from the episode and sits on the top step of the front stoop. "Though I thought pregnancy cravings came before the baby."

"This is an emergency snack situation."

"Ah. Of course."

Abigail sees the grocery bag and sits beside him, admiring the homemade dill pickles, courtesy of a secretary in their Bureau office. "Danke sehr, Peter. I hope it wasn't too much of an imposition."

Peter shrugs. "It's my day off and my daughter is at a conference, so I was already free with little to do when you called this 'crisis meeting.' But I have to ask…what is going on?"

In Abigail's other hand she carries a container of natural creamy peanut butter. Popping the cap off, she wastes no time in opening the jar of pickles and dipping one in. It crunches between Abigail's teeth and she closes her eyes with a rapturous expression.

Sadusky shows no judgement or skepticism on his face, thanks to years of listening to criminals behind two way glass. "Does that actually taste good?"

Abigail remembers to swallow before opening her mouth. "People don't know what they're missing. Peanut butter and pickles are the best. Do you want to try one?"

Peter doesn't, but he's also dying with the curiosity of it all. "Why not?"

Abigail dips a smaller one in and hands it to Sadusky, where it promptly oozes down his fingers. He holds it up like a wine glass. "To stress snacking."

"I'll toast to that." Abigail taps it with her own and watches while Peter takes his first bite. "What do you think?"

The salty crunch and oak, nutty flavours rumble around on his tongue, like prisoners shackled together. It's at once one of the most bizarre things Peter has ever eaten and so surprising that it can't taste anything but delicious.

His astonishment must show for Abigail laughs. "Told you. I can't get Ben to eat it, though I think I've convinced Riley—who will eat just about anything for sake of not wasting it—that it's a delicacy."

Sadusky watches Abigail scarf down another pickle in just four chomping bites. Each finger is licked clean and she doesn't look one iota self conscious about it. He says nothing, by now much used to being in the dark when it comes to this family.

After a few more minutes, Abigail gets her frazzled breathing under control enough to lean back. She gazes out over the lawn, her home-tended flowerbeds and a strange, lopsided birdhouse nailed on the nearest apple tree that looks gauche enough to be Riley's handiwork. A child sized Micky Mouse ball has rolled underneath it, clearly from an earlier playtime.

"Ellie is at Emily and Patrick's house," say Abigail, reading his thoughts. "Since Riley has a stomach bug."

Peter sits straighter, legs tensed in preparation of marching right back inside. "Is he alright? Because he looked miserable."

Shaking her head, Abigail smiles. "He's fine now. We got some antibiotics and his fever broke last night. We're out of the woods, though he'll be exhausted for a while yet—along with Ben. He's better than a nurse, that one. Ellie is whining for them both."

"I hear there's a competition going for whose name she'll say first."

Abigail groans, slippered toes wiggling, but she ends it with a laugh. "Don't remind me. We've only got a few months to go before that milestone and it's fuelling their frantic baby conversations at the dinner table."

Seeing Sadusky's narrowed eyes, Abigail gives his arm a quick rub. "Peter, Riley moved in ages ago, after the shooting. Heaven knows the house is big enough and has so many rooms that you'd barely know he's here. He's a courteous tenant and he bakes better than Ben and I put together."

Sadusky pats her hand and together they watch a robin enter the birdhouse, worm squirming from his beak. The knowledge that Riley doesn't live in his old apartment, sketchy neighbourhood and all, actually floods Peter with immense relief. He finds himself leaning back too.

He's spent a night or two awake, worrying about them all. Every time he thinks he's found a cool distance or a mental drawer to stuff them in, some new fact or possibility for danger comes creeping into the recesses of his mind and he'll lie there, heart pounding. Usually a morning call from Ben or Emily visiting with yet another book for him to read—she's on a quest to become a one woman book club—helps him rest, a temporary fix.

Until something like this happens. It's a private war, one he never expected and one whose pieces he can't quite fit smoothly together. The safety of these people and potential lack thereof haunts him.

"So you didn't call me because anybody's deathly ill?" he asks, to slough that thought away.

Abigail picks at her nails, glancing at a funny stain on her sweatpants—the garment already an odd sight on the normally sharp woman. "No, not exactly. Peter…do you have any experience with triggers?"

Automatically, Sadusky's brain flashes to guns before he clues in. "What, as in trauma flashbacks? Sensations that cause panic?"

Abigail nods and suddenly her eyes fill with a fat line of tears. Sucking in a jilted breath, Peter fishes in his pocket for a handkerchief, a brand new monogrammed one he hasn't used yet.

She huffs while wiping her nose with it. "Thank you."

Her lips tremble for a hot second, and then she firms them with a serrated, agonized flicker in her eyes. A few tears still manage to escape. She wipes these away too, clutching at Peter's hand. Sadusky hesitates only a moment before smoothing his thumb over her pearl-like knuckles.

"To be honest," he begins, in that low tone reserved for terrorized victims of a crime, "I'm shocked you haven't struggled with more issues related to how much you've all lived through, the guns and car chases and being held hostage, to name just a few."

But Abigail shakes her head again with a rueful look, heightened by the smudged mascara. "Believe me: I've had more than my share of therapy and make it a point to work through anything and everything that might be a problem. I was raised in a house where such things were talked about freely and needing help was nothing to be ashamed of."

Not Abigail, then. Sadusky runs the gamut in his mind, of how a flu could possibly tie into traumatic memories. "Is this about seeing Riley sick? Does his lethargy remind Ben of when he was shot?"

There's a strange pause while Abigail swallows. "It's both of them."

"I'm guessing neither was raised in such a mentally healthy environment."

Abigail just snorts bitterly. Sadusky struggles with a familiar, vicious lurch of helplessness, and he realizes that in his fear over their safety he has neglected to consider the danger that might lurk purely in their memories. Really, they should have seen this coming months ago.

"I just don't know what to do." Abigail twists the handkerchief between her thumbs. "After yesterday, I called you, because I figured if anybody had experience with this…"

Peter latches onto the key point at once. "What happened yesterday?"

"Early yesterday morning, Riley's fever—and Ben's, as he's a touch sick too but won't admit it—spiked without warning. It was well into the dangerous zone and we knew he wouldn't make it to the ER in time, so I ran him a tepid bath in my soaker tub upstairs."

"The water," says Sadusky, understanding before she even finishes.

Abigail nods. "He was boiling, Peter. I could have cooked an egg on his forehead and his breathing was laboured. He…he could barely stand up. We were ready to drop him in, T-shirt, pajamas, and all."

Two tears chase each other, one after the other, down Abigail's cheeks before she can stop them. Sadusky massages at her fingers once and they relax their grip on his.

"It's silly," she whispers.

"It's not silly, not at all." Peter slants slightly to better look her in the eye. "If it's causing this kind of strain on them, then it needs to be addressed. The sooner the better. I just…I wished you'd called me then, instead of just now. I'd have been happy to help."

Her lips curve down. "We didn't even get him into the bathroom, Peter. Ben heard the running water and balked. He was shaking, so much, and I couldn't coax him within five feet of the door."

Peter whispers too. "I'm so sorry. So sorry that happened and you had to work through it by yourself."

"I wasn't strong enough to carry Riley without Ben, not to mention that Riley fed off the panic, thrashing." Abigail blows her nose, eyes roiling with remembered pain and pinched at the edges. "I ended up having to use a sponge instead, right there in the hallway. He could have died, but luckily his fever went down enough to move him."

Peter closes his eyes, trying to imagine the scene. Ben and his track record with running water already being as shoddy as it is, he knows Riley is sensitive to when his friend struggles. Feverish, incapacitated, he can read between the lines of Abigail's story to the alarm the young man must have felt. Perhaps confused about where he was, he would have been scared of the water too.

Again, his mind drifts to how they seemed after the Cibola fiasco, watching them all emerge from the tunnel. Riley's choke hold on the back of Ben's jacket. The way they all trembled and refused to let each other out of sight. The mix of tears on water—and the subsequent inability to tell the difference.

Sadusky's eyes pop open with sudden, comforting realization.

"I knew an agent once who got chased by a dog while out on the job. Just a routine call. It wasn't even a big dog, an English Terrier that was nearly blind and half crazed with mistreatment."

Abigail eyes him with a counterweight ballast of trust. "What happened to the agent?"

Sadusky's brows lift. "He was fine—jumped a fence before the dog could so much as lick at him. But for months after that, just the barking of a dog would leave him quaking and breaking down in the office bathroom."

Abigail doesn't berate this fear or belittle how it isn't as bad as a 'some people' have it. She just releases the twist in her fingers and asks, "Did he make it?"

The question might seem a strange one to anyone listening. But Peter understands, especially after years of feeling what she is right now. "Yes, he did. His team came alongside of him and supported him through that pain, much as he tried to hide it. That rookie agent overcame the fear, with their help and a therapist."

"What did they do? How did the team help?"

"Oh." Sadusky blinks fast. "Well…they took him to an animal shelter, if you can believe that."

"An animal shelter?" Abigail's eyes cloud before she starts to nod. "They were trying to acclimatize him to the stimulus that caused his fear in the first place."

"Exactly." Sadusky can't help but smile at the memory of five agents holding out that tiny chocolate Labrador puppy. "His therapist recommended immersion based on the type of symptoms he was displaying and it worked. Took about two months of visiting the animal shelter, every day after shift, but it worked."

A slurred moment of quiet follows, in which Peter can almost sense Abigail's spirit and mind working in tandem, trying to mitigate her own fear far away from the olive branch of hope he is offering through this story. Trying to keep it untainted. Ben and Riley can learn what it means to be okay again, but only if they face it, only if they understand that they won't be reproached for suffering in the first place.

A brand new thought strikes Sadusky, making it unique from his own experiences. "Have Ben and Riley at least talked about it with each other?"

Abigail's lips coil to one side, then smooth. "Very few trauma textbooks cover that, when two people have been through the exact same thing. A little, I think, based on some nightmares Ben has, when he comes and sits on the floor beside Riley's bed."

"But it doesn't affect their daily life otherwise?"

Rather than answering this right away, Abigail tilts her head with a scrunched expression. "Actually…now that you mention it, yes. They're fine with things like the kitchen sink tap or rain, obviously, but something about the sound of gushing water paralyzes them. Ben…he goes downstairs whenever I run a bath and he never helps with Ellie in that regard. I never noticed until you pointed it out."

Peter knows, by some external wisdom and detached understanding of the situation, that this is his cue for a moment of pride. To take satisfaction in the way his presence has helped even in this small way.

But in reality, all Sadusky feels is that the mystery surrounding his life sunk just that little bit deeper. He wants to ask the ever-nattering, profound question, like he has from the very minute Abigail hugged him in that hospital room over a year ago, the one that haunts him in the wee hours of the morning with sharpened edges that he is slowly falling upon:

Why—why do they all care so much what he thinks? Why did Riley show up on his doorstep instead of going home that night? Why is his presence so important to them? Why does Ben insist on telling Ellie that he is Papa Peter?

Why? Whywhywhywhy—

"Peter? Are you okay?"

Sadusky comes back to the present with a start. "Sorry about that. I was just…mulling over what you told me."

"I know it's your day off and you must be tired." Abigail looks worried, her hand moving up to his bicep. "Thank you for coming all the way here. I think…I think I can handle it and your advice has been an incredible comfort."

Her efforts to let him off the hook, on any other day, would be sweet. Endearing. One of those 'oh you' moments that makes human beings see the best in each other.

Not this time.

This time a searing lick of flame chars the back of Peter's throat and sinuses. He actually stops breathing, so overwhelmed by the sensation, the sudden burn of heat, that he forgets to inhale. It clogs his throat, makes everything taste ashy. He is a composed man by nature, fluid in will and able to change plans on the fly because the insanity of his job necessitates it sometimes.

So it takes him a beat longer than it should to realize that he is fighting tears. That he is trying—very hard—not to cry.

"It isn't a duty," he whispers, because if he talks any louder he'll need the handkerchief back. "You are never an obligation, Abigail. None of you. It's my pleasure and I only wish I could do more."

"You've done plenty." Abigail reaches over, kissing his cheek lightly, and this one simple action is almost Sadusky's entire undoing.

Then his eyes again land on the child's ball and a zap of inspiration electrifies his bones. "Actually…I might have one more ace up my sleeve, if you're willing to be in on the deception."

That fire must be contagious, for now it lights up Abigail's eyes in a wolfish smile. "Are you kidding? I've been known to pull off a heist or two in my day."

Sadusky laughs along with her and feels the scalding white light swell up inside his heart, driving it to beat faster. And he finds that's it's equal parts awe and fear. For he knows now what that fire is. He understands, in one fell swoop, what it's all been growing into.

It's not fondness or professional interest or investment now. It can't be called that exasperated, paternal concern anymore, not like it was in the beginning.

No, it's love.

He…he loves the Gates family.

And what, Sadusky wonders while he and Abigail whip up a hurried plan, is he supposed to do with that?