A/N: Standard disclaimers apply. See Part I. Spoilers for "Charge of This Post", "Consequences", and "Sweet Sixteen".

Mac almost hoped it was Rebecca who opened the door when he knocked on it, but it was Flack, and he was unsurprised when his arrival was greeted with no enthusiasm. Flack stood in the doorway, forearm braced on the jamb, and stared at him with bland indifference.

"Your thirty messages not bein' returned wasn't enough of a hint? I'm off the clock today, Mac, and I'm keepin' it that way," he said by way of greeting.

"It's not about the job."

"Naw?" A truculent, feigned surprise. "Then to what do I owe the honor?"

Mac didn't answer, torn between irritation at Flack's rudeness and a vague, nettling embarrassment. Now that he was in Flack's hallway, standing in the hinterlands of his private life, the name he'd glimpsed on the cemetery roster no longer held such portent. For all he knew, the Flack buried there had been a relative salted to the earth before Don was even born, an aunt or a grandmother or a cousin. There was no guarantee that they were related at all, and if they were, it proved nothing.

"May I come in?" he asked diffidently.

Flack shifted in the doorway, and it was a measure of how badly things had deteriorated between them since Truby that he didn't back up to let him in right away. Instead, he straightened to his full height and studied him with half-lidded, speculative eyes. Finally, he retreated and nudged the door open with his fingertips.

Mac had set foot inside the Flack apartment only once, on the day he and Danny and Captain Gerrard had come to tell Rebecca that her husband had been injured in the line. She had told Danny that she couldn't feel the floor, and he had stood in the middle of the living room and watched her leave pieces of herself behind her as she lurched into the bedroom for her coat. He could still remember Danny, jumpy and frantic and wide-eyed with anguish, and Captain Gerrard, swallowing his worry and guilt with an audible click. He thought that if he wanted to, he could pinpoint the spot where his dusty, gritty soles had sunk into the carpet in a modern imitation of the pox mark upon the door.

"Keep your voice down," Flack said as Mac shut the door.

Mac opened his mouth to ask why and shut it again when it struck him that the apartment was completely silent. No TV, no radio, not even the crackle of the police scanner. Just the contented, belching hiss of the radiator. The shades were drawn and pinned shut, and the only light came from a battery-operated taplight on the kitchen counter. Darkness blanketed the apartment. It reminded him of a deathroom.

Just like your father's room near the end. Your mother closed the curtains so she would not have to see what her husband had become in his last days. It was bad enough just to hear him, the glottal, rattling wheeze of lungs gone to mud and tar. When he died, none of those ringed around the bed to watch his passing made a sound, afraid that the slightest noise would pull him back from the precipice on which he teetered. It was only after, when the last, rattling breath had exited his wasted body and the hospice nurse had leaned over and calmly switched off the cardiac monitor, that your mother had begun to cry, a mournful, lost keen that had gradually built into hard, wracking wails.

It is just like that. Except that no one has died here.

Maybe not in the strictest sense, no. But there was no denying that the Flack that was in front of him now was not the same one he had pulled from the smoldering wreckage of a building one Sunday morning. The Flack that had gone into the building with him had been exuberant and spry; the one that had come out was cautious, no longer young beneath the skin. The Flack before would gladly have bought him a round at Sullivan's and talked of anything but the empty spaces and ragged seams of badly-healed wounds. The Flack now, when he spoke at all, spoke of nothing else.

That has nothing to do with that May morning and everything to do with an early afternoon in November when you accosted him on the street and implied that his hands were dirty with black-tar heroin. You knew it was bullshit, that he would sooner die than dishonor his badge, but you could not stop yourself, could not allow yourself the luxury of faith. You could not risk the accusation of playing favorites, and so you went after him hard, just like you did with Danny in the Minhas case. You had to bruise him to protect him.

He did not understand, of course, any more than Danny had when you took him off the promotion grid. You could see that in his eyes when you paraded Truby past his desk in bracelets. Hurt, confusion, and an ugly, raw betrayal. You had saved his life only to crush a precious kernel of innocence that had made him who he was. It was ugly and dirty and perverse, and it was hard to look at him when you left. You looked at the door ahead of you and told yourself that one day, he would understand. It was only when you were halfway out the door and up the stairs to central booking that you realized you sounded just like your father, and it was a jarring punch to the gut.

Maybe that was why you let Jesse Spencer go. Hurting Danny and Flack to save them was too much like the twisted logic of abusive parents who had broken their children's bones and burned their fingers on the stove to protect them from the evils of the world and drive the demons out. If you could protect Jesse, give him a chance to escape his vicious, bullying stepfather, then you could atone for all the fractures you had left on Flack and Danny, and for Aiden, who you had not just broken, but shattered and buried.

"Power failure?" he asked.

"No." Flack did not elaborate as he stalked into the kitchen. He stopped at a pot on the stove, and when he lifted the lid, Mac smelled the rich, salty aroma of simmering chicken broth. Flack picked up a wooden spoon and stirred. "Soup'll be ready in a minute, doll, and I want you to try to eat for me." He banged the spoon on the pot, set it on the counter, and replaced the lid.

An inarticulate grunt from the living room, and when Mac turned his head, he saw the indistinct hump of Rebecca huddled beneath a mound of blankets on the couch. Her unoccupied wheelchair was parked beside it, desolate and reminiscent of an open casket.

"She feeling all right?"

"She's fine." Flack had left the pot and was filling a glass with water from the sink. He opened the topmost cabinet and produced a bottle of Advil. He tapped two tablets into his palm, replaced the bottle, and closed the cabinet. Then he brushed past him into the living room, where he crouched beside the couch.

"You want some water, doll?" He put the glass to her lips before she could answer, and Mac watched her head bobble wearily on her neck as she struggled to take a drink. Flack offered her the tablets. "I brought you some Advil. If you want, I got some Vicodin left over from rehab."

He knew he should shut up, but the words were out before he could stop them. "Distribution of prescription narcotics is a felony."

Flack spoke without looking at him. He was too busy slipping the pills into Rebecca's mouth. "I don't give a fuck," he said flatly. Then, more sharply and thick with condescension, "Whaddaya gonna do, Mac? Bust me? End my career 'cause I'm takin' care of my wife?" He brought the glass to her lips again with a soft, unintelligible murmur of encouragement.

Mac watched Rebecca struggle to swallow the water and said nothing. He was unaccustomed to this Flack, this tenderness. On the streets, Flack was a wise-cracking hardass not above rubbing a fleeing suspect's face in the pavement when he brought them down. He was a coarse, toughened kid groomed by police discipline and the school of hard knocks, but the hands that could engulf a crackhead's bicep in a vise grip were tracing delicate, fond patterns over fragile cheekbones and fussing over rumpled blankets. He bent and drew his lips over the bridge of her nose.

"The soup'll do you some good, and then you can go back to sleep," he murmured.

The Rebecca sprawled bonelessly on the couch was not the same Rebecca he'd seen in the Trinity Hospital corridors. That Rebecca had been exhausted and grief-ravaged but unbowed, possessed of a wild-eyed dignity over the long hours of waiting. This one was withered and used up, a papier-mache doll who had come apart at the joints. Her eyes were bruised and sunken, and her cheeks were shadowed hollows. She was even smaller than he remembered her, as though the effort of bearing up and being the good police officer's wife had compressed her.

It had happened to Claire, too, that compression, in the months before her death, and sometimes he tortured himself with the thought that in the moments before her death, Claire had realized what had happened and been glad of it, been glad that she wouldn't have to pretend that she didn't spend every moment that he was on the clock in a state of low-grade terror. Maybe her release from life hadn't come on a ball of burning jet fuel but through an act of explosive decompression.

He's been through a lot this year, and he's not the only one.

It's not fair.

"Is she all right?" Mac asked. "Maybe you should take her to the hospital."

Flack stiffened. "Maybe you should fuckin' mind your own damn business," he retorted dully. "What do you want, Mac?"

There was no delicate way to approach the matter, and so he squared his shoulders and said, "Did you know a Diana Elizabeth Flack?"

Flack, who had been in the process of rising from his bended knee, froze, one hand planted on the coffee table and the other on the rounded, squashed edge of the couch cushions. He turned his head, blinked lazily at him, and said in a cold, queerly conversational tone, "What the hell does she have to do with anything?"

Rebecca, who had begun to doze under Don's ministrations, snapped to full wakefulness at the sudden shift in her husband's demeanor, and her gaze fixed on him with bright, feverish intensity.

Mac fought the urge avert his eyes from either of them. Being an occasional bastard was part of his job description; being a coward was not. "Don, I just need to know who she is. The name came up over the course of an investigation."

Flack offered him a twisted, humorless smile. "Now I know you're fuckin' with me," he said quietly. "And you can get the fuck out of my apartment."

"Don, I'm not-,"

"My sister's been dead since 1993, you fuckin' prick," he snarled. "I was sixteen years old when they put her in the ground, so don't you fuckin' dare come into my house with my sick wife and tell me that she came up. What is it, Mac? Is this your idea of a joke, or are you just pissed 'cause you couldn't pin me as the leader of a dirty-cop drug cartel?"

Be careful, Mac, Stella cautioned inside his head.

"Don," he said helplessly, momentarily unmanned by his fury. He was still processing the revelation that he had had a sister. In all the years he and Flack had worked together, it had never been mentioned.

Of course not. It is a family secret, and you know how deeply those run-all the way down to the blood and bone. You know how it is because you do not tell anyone about where you come from, not even Stella, who has been your partner for twelve years. No one knows about the suicides and the disinheritance and the summers wearing spats and riding thoroughbreds, and you would like to keep it that way. And they certainly know nothing of the father you could not bring yourself to kill.

"Get out of here, Mac. Right now." Flack's eyes blazed, and his hands had curled into fists.

"Three nights ago, Lessing escaped from his cell and was found wandering in front of the psychiatric hospital a few hours later. When we processed him, we found dirt from the cemetery where your sister was buried all over him."

Flack blinked at him in mute in comprehension. It was Rebecca who understood first. Suddenly, the blankets that covered her were a tangled, thrashing mess as she struggled to sit up.

"That son of a bitch got loose?" she shrieked, and Mac heard the reedy intake of breath.

Flack's head snapped in her direction, and hands that had been taut and thrumming with the need to inflict hurt cupped her bony shoulders. "Take it easy, doll," he urged, and pressed her back into the pillows. "Ssshhhh. Just…relax."

But she did not relax. She began to cry, a strengthless, gasping moan, and her hands came up to grip his shoulders. "I told you. I told you," she choked. "I told you that it wasn't…that, that he…" A frantic gulp of air.

Flack circled her bony wrists in his hands and leaned forward until they were nose to nose. "Rebecca, stop. Stop, doll. Please." Soft, pleading. "It's gonna be all right. If they processed him, that means they got him back into his cage. He's not gonna hurt you. Or me. Stop."

She ceased thrashing and stilled, and her small chest heaved with exertion. Flack dipped his lips to the quivering hollow of her throat.

"That's it. That's my girl," he crooned, and Mac was reminded of Saturdays spent in sweltering stables, soothing spooked horses with mindless cadence of the human voice. "Deep breaths."

He let go of her hands, and they came down to stroke his hair in a gesture of mutual comfort and reassurance. He closed his eyes. "Me an' Taylor here are gonna step outside, and when I come back, we're gonna have some dinner, all right? If you can get through the soup, there's butterscotch puddin' in it for you."

"Okay."

Me an Taylor. Irrefutable proof that the bridge between him and Flack was beyond repair. Any hope of that had disintegrated the instant he had stepped over the threshold as the harbinger of bad news for the second time in less than a year.

Flack kissed her and rose from his knees. "Mac." He brusquely jerked his head in the direction of the front door, and Mac knew better than to argue. He inclined his head in wordless goodbye to Rebecca and followed him into the hall.

He had gone three steps outside the apartment when Flack seized him by the lapels of his coat and pinned him against the wall opposite the door. His first instinct was to counteract the weight and throw him off, but he willed himself to relax. It would look bad if uniforms were called to break up a fistfight between senior detectives, and while pride told him he would come out on top in a physical altercation, he was acutely aware of the deceptive strength beneath that lean frame.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Mac?" Flack hissed, and shook him for emphasis. "Comin' here and scarin' the fuck outta my wife? Christ, I just got her settled down. Asshole." He gave him one last disgusted shake and retreated, nostrils flaring and fingers flexing aimlessly. "Fuck," he snarled bitterly, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I understand how-," Mac began patiently.

Flack rounded on him. "Do you? The dreams? The nightmares? Sittin' for hours on the couch without talkin' 'cause you don't know what to say? I can deal with what it does to me, Mac, 'cause that's the risk I signed up for when I took on the badge, but not her, Mac. Not fuckin' her."

"You askin' who's buried there 'cause you think I sprung Lessing just to kick his sorry ass and put him back?" A bitter laugh. "I got news for you. If I'da gotten my hands on him, I'da done a lot more than rough him up. I'da splattered his brains all over Central goddamn Park. I don't give a shit about Lessing or what happens to him now. What I give a shit about is in there on the couch." He jabbed a finger in the direction of the front door.

"The job says I gotta work with you, and I'll fuckin' do my job, but do me a favor and forget my personal number. Forget how to get here. I'm through explainin' myself and apologizin' for nothin'. Just 'cause you saved my life doesn't mean you get to play God with it. Go away or go fuck yourself. I don't care which."

He turned and went back into the apartment. Mac expected him to slam the door in an audible exclamation point to the argument, but he didn't. He closed it with a final snick that was somehow worse.

It feels good, doesn't it, Mac? The powertrip, Claire said inside his head, and he could offer no reproof. He considered knocking again, offering reasons and apologies, but he suspected Flack had heard enough of both, and so, for once, he left well enough alone and walked away.

On the other side of the door, Flack let his throbbing forehead rest against the cool wood. His heart was still a fluttering knot in his throat, and he smothered the urge to punch the wall. The resultant bang would startle Rebecca, and he'd spend another hour talking her frazzled muscles out of another spastic seizure.

God, but the last one had been bad, the worst he'd ever seen. She'd screamed and cried and writhed on the floor for almost thirty minutes, and all he could do was cradle her and promise her it would be all right while her body contorted itself into angles and positions God never intended. She'd vomited on his shirt and pissed on his bare leg, and then she'd turned her face in shame. Her bowels had failed five minutes later, and he'd sat in the mess while her fingers clawed in his shirt and tugged at the fabric in a frantic bid to escape the agony of a nervous system that had slipped its tether. He'd done the only thing he could for her, which was to cup the back of her head and press her nose into the hollow of his throat so she could smell him over the rancid stink of puke and piss and shit.

"It's okay, doll," he'd crooned as he'd rocked and the wet carpet had squelched underneath his ass. "Just breathe. I'm right here."

She hadn't tried to talk until it was over and the wracking spasms had subsided into the shuddering tremors of exhausted muscles in search of their shattered equilibrium. She'd apologized through chattering teeth, voice slurred with confusion and feverish shame.

"'M sorrry, babe," she'd croaked, and her fingers had twitched on the carpet, had telegraphed faint signals to her logy brain.

As if she had anything to apologize for. He would never accept her seizures-acceptance to him meant making peace, and that he would never do-but he had learned to cope with them. He had bought a steam vac to clean the carpet and kept extra laundry detergent in the linen closet, and when they came, he unplugged the phones, turned out the lights, and shut the world out so it could not watch her indignity. He had learned what she could eat afterward and what she could not, and he held her against him for reassurance while she slept.

She had never lied to him about the seizures. She had told him about them as soon as they had gotten serious. She had been quiet, embarrassed, but she had spared him no detail, and she'd had the balls to look him in the eye when she did it. He could tell it had pained her, though, because the knuckles of her interlaced fingers had been white and bloodless on her lap.

She had given him a graceful out if he had wanted it, a way to walk away from her and what was blossoming between them without looking like a complete asshole, but he hadn't wanted it, and he had told her so with a kiss over the cheap, laminate diner table. Her honesty in the face of possible rejection had been refreshing after years of pretty women who played mind games and left him with nothing to show for them but another layer of cynicism. He'd had no idea what he was in for then, but when she had laughed at his tie dipping into his lukewarm coffee, he hadn't cared.

He had seen a seizure for the first time a few weeks after she had pissed herself in the precinct bathroom. That time it had been a mild one, and she had talked him through it until the cramps locked her diaphragm, and then she had mouthed helplessly at him, eyes wide and bulging as her feet kicked arrhythmically on the wooden floor of her apartment. She had vomited and pissed then, too, and later, when he was on his hands and knees, mopping up the latter with a towel, she had cried.

He had seen the first monstrous one a week before the wedding. He should have seen it coming; his mother had been relentless for months, micromanaging and nitpicking, and Rebecca had been growing smaller and paler and more rounded in the shoulders. But he had been blinded by happiness and the prospect of a lifetime with his girl, and he hadn't noticed until she had slumped from her chair in a fluttering scatter of placecards for table settings at the reception and begun to writhe. The placecards had reminded him of snow as he had rocked and crooned her through the spasms, and he had thought ridiculously of Snow White, and of kissing her back to herself. He hadn't, of course, though there had been plenty of soothing kisses afterwards, and never mind the sour aftertaste of vomit beneath the minty coolness of toothpaste and mouthwash. He had kissed her to sleep instead, and in the morning, she had been sore and contrite but herself.

He should have seen it coming today, too, and if he were honest with himself, he had been waiting for it to happen since June, when he had snapped at her to leave him alone, had broken her heart with his blindly-gnashing teeth. He had spent the next few days in a constant state of high alert, watching for the signs from the corners of his eyes. Unconscious grimaces, rubbing of biceps, forearms or calves, frequent rolling of her shoulders and neck in an effort to reduce tension and forestall the inevitable, distraction, and constant shifting in her seat. But nothing had come. Maybe she had willed them away like she willed her feet onto the floor every morning, and when June had faded into the sweltering heat of August and the sweet reconciliation of September, he had allowed himself to relax.

Then this morning, it had taken her twenty minutes longer than usual to get out of bed, and she had dropped her toothbrush twice. He should have known, should have chivvied her back to bed and given her a massage to relax coiling muscles, but he had been distracted by thoughts of the backlog of DD-5s waiting for him at the precinct. He had actually been considering a run to the precinct when she had simply screamed at him from the toilet to come right now. By the time he had gotten there, she had been facedown on the tile floor, blood from her nose bright and wet against the clean, white squares. It was the grace of God that she hadn't broken it. He'd just gotten her cleaned up and snugged into the couch when Mac had arrived.

Mac. Fucking prick. He'd respected him once upon a time, but he'd been stupid, then, convinced he and Mac were on the same thin, blue line. He'd thought the respect was mutual, but he'd been wrong. Mac respected three things-the flag, the Corps, and the badge-and he saw himself reflected in all of them. The people around him had no face but his own, and he expected the whole fucking world to toe his line.

He wished he could say the epiphany had come as a result of the bombing. The blast that had torn a hole in his gut had also done a thorough job of clearing out the bullshit, but the truth was, the bombing had nothing to do with it. Just the opposite, in fact. Mac had saved his life, used his own fingers to clamp his spurting abdominal artery. He'd given him the gift of time, returned him to his girl, and for that, he would've gladly followed him to the ends of the earth.

And then that morning in the middle of a busy street, and a harsh lesson learned.

You'd just finished up the prelim on a double-tap in the West End and were grabbin' coffee and a dog in front of the precinct. You didn't think anythin' of him comin' up to you. He was always strollin' up to ask how things were goin' on a case. You thought he was comin' up to ask if there were any new leads on the alley murder and were just about to tell him you were comin' up dry when he asked about an old drug bust.

You remembered that bust, all right. The damn heroin was a happy accident. You'd just gone in there to grab a guy wanted in a gang-style shootup of a bodega, but when you got there, your guest of honor was gone and his buddy was dead as shit, with a dirty needle stickin' outta his arm, and there were fifty kilos of black-tar in a box underneath the TV stand. At least, you thought it was fifty, because that's what your boys told you, and you trusted them with your life. You never bothered to double-check because they were as good as their word.

A drug bust that big was good for all your careers, so you and the boys went out that night for beers and shootin' the shit, and you distinctly recall congratulatin' Truby on the promotion that was probably comin' his way. Then you went home with beer and happiness on your mouth and fucked Rebecca hard and sloppy and earnest in your bed. A good end to an honest day's work.

You couldn't figure why he'd be sniffin' around that, of all things, and true to Mac fashion, he never bothered to tell you. He just demanded your memo book in the middle of the street like you were a common hood. And my, wasn't that a slap in the face? The same guy who'd saved your life and sworn up, down, and sideways to see you through the bombin' was tellin' you your word wasn't good enough. He was practically accusin' you of ochestratin' a drug ring.

It was a fuckin' knife in your newly-mended gut. You wanted to grab him and shake him, get right up in his face and scream that in case he'd forgotten, you hadn't had time to mastermind any goddamn drug ring because two days after that bust, you had a date with Mac's fingers in a blown-to-shit apartment building. You were too busy fightin' to breathe and go on livin' to be coordinatin' drug buys. Even after that, you were too busy pukin' and cryin' through the pain of rehab to give two shits about devil dust in dimebags. The only things on your mind that summer were getting your job back and coaxin' your gunshy girl back into your arms after the oustandin' efforts of your vicious mouth to drive her out.

You stalled for time to gather your equilibrium and figure out what the hell was goin' on. You weren't about to let Mac screw a good cop's career just so he could preserve his precious lab's winning percentage and sweep another case file off his desk, and you couldn't believe that a guy you'd gone to war with would sell out to the money of the street. Truby'd had a gun pointed at the back of your head countless times when you were kickin' in doors and servin' warrants, and he could'a blown your brains out any time he wanted.

So you sniffed around for the evidence that'd clear your man and get Mac off his ass. Except that ain't what you found. Accordin' to the dirtbag the bust had put away, there were fifty-three kilos, not fifty, and he had no reason to lie. Those three kilos wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to his stretch. You tried to tell yourself that he was full of shit, jerkin' your chain to get back at the cops who'd put him away, but you'd see too many liars to believe that. Your little caged canary was singin' an honest song.

You couldn't get your head around it, how you could be so wrong. How you could manage to miss the monster right in front of you. You'd shared arrests and beers with him and never noticed a damn thing. Ever since you were a kid, you've prided yourself on your knack for readin' people and spottin' trouble. You used to be able to tell when Diana was about to start screamin' before the first whimper, and you could point out strange men to your old man when they started hangin 'round the schoolyard. You saw the treasure hidden in Rebecca's sharp, funny angles, and you jumped on it and made her yours before anybody else could sweep her out from under you.

It drove you crazy, made you wonder if you weren't a sham, a subpar cop with shitty instincts who'd only gotten his shield because of who your father was and what he'd accomplished. The possibility burned in your gut like dirty shrapnel, and you couldn't fuckin' stand it, so you stopped by the liquor store on the way home with the memo book in your pocket like a pressing stone. You sat on the couch and drank yourself blind, and when Rebecca asked what was wrong, you wouldn't tell her. You couldn't admit to her that you were even stupider than she'd settled for. Instead, you fucked your hurt into her in short, angry thrusts.

You're ashamed to say that you didn't remember fuckin' her when you woke up the next mornin' with a throbbin' head and a slalomin' gut. Not until she was slidin' outta bed to take a shower and you saw traces of yourself on her thigh. The blank space where that moment shoulda been scared the fuck outta you. You'd tied one on before, sure, but you'd never been so shit-faced that you couldn't remember havin' sex. The shower was already runnin' when you scrambled in to heave your guts in the toilet, and the steam helped clear your head.

You crept into the shower with her once the pukin' stopped, scared to death that you'd done somethin' you couldn't take back in those hours you couldn't remember. But there were no bruises or scratches, no signs that sex had turned to something darker, and she didn't flinch when you reached out with a tentative hand to touch her shoulder. In fact, she leaned into you and looked into the spray, water beadin' and splashin' on her nose and chin.

Well, hello, sweetie, she said softly, mindful of your achin' head. Boy, do you look like shit.

You'd'a laughed if you hadn't been worried about pukin' in her upturned face. You just turned your own face into the hot spray and let it wash over you in tandem with a monumental relief. Whatever had passed between you the night before, she'd wanted it to happen. She gave you the lion's share of the hot water even though she'd been there first, and then she got out with the promise of making you her special hangover tea.

You couldn't help askin' her anyway. You had to be sure. You stood at the kitchen counter with half a mug of hangover tea in your belly and the dull crush of the headache already beginnin' to lift. The tea tasted of mint and ginger, and between sips, she rolled up and drizzled honey into your mug. The steam warmed your nose and cleared your sinuses.

Hey, doll? Diffident. How did you ask your girl if your love had hurt her? Was everythin' okay last night? When we-did I-was it okay for you?

She blinked at you over the rim of her own mug. She took a thoughtful, measured sip and cupped it in both hands before she answered. It wasn't your best performance, but then again, you were plowed. At least you got it in the right hole, and besides, you looked like you needed it.

You had needed it. You knew that even if you couldn't remember anything else. You swallowed the last of your tea and set your empty mug in the sink. 'M sorry, you said without knowin' why.

She slowly turned the mug in her hands and gazed at you in fond consternation. Nothing to apologize for, babe. Nobody bats a thousand. Another slow, wobbly turn of the cup. You want to talk about it?

You shook your head, and she let it go with a kiss and a cup of coffee. She's always been good about lettin' you be. You suspect it's 'cause she's spent so much of her life with her secrets and her body exposed to anyone who wanted a look. Anyway, by the time you left the apartment half an hour later, the tea'd done the trick and the hammerspike of too much Beam was gone. You never did tell her why you'd come home that night with the devil in your belly, but three days after your blackout date, you made up for your lackluster performance by takin' it soft and slow and easy, lettin' her guide your lips and hands to where they'd do the most good. You worked until she cried uncle, and you made sure you were stone sober for all of it.

The memory of her was still on your mouth when Mac marched into the precinct like some goddamned holy crusader. You were shootin' the shit with Scagnetti over the Rangers game when you caught sight of him over Scagnetti's shoulder. You knew what he wanted, and so did Scagnetti, judgin' by the way he sidled off like he'd loaded his pants. Everybody knew. Gossip circulates like air around the stationhouse, and they were all watchin', waitin' to see which side you were gonna take: the streets or the lab suits who took all the fuckin' credit for your grunt work.

You knew they were watchin', and you knew there was only one choice you could make. Like it or not, Truby was dirty; all the evidence said he'd pissed on the badge you'd almost died for. He was a piece of shit, and you had to bring him down, but that didn't make it any easier. Mac only saw the case in front of him, but all you could think of was all the cases behind you, all the perps that were gonna be sprung because of this. Murderers and cop-killers, rapists and child molesters. You kept seein' the wide, frightened eyes of a seven-year-old girl who'd once asked you to promise her that the man who'd raped her would never get her again. You promised her, and she believed you because you were the nice, strong policeman who'd carried her out of the closet into which she'd been stuffed. That had been one of Truby's collars, and you knew it'd been clean, just like you knew it wouldn't matter. Every pile of puke Truby'd ever flushed into the New York penal system was gonna come spillin' outta the sewer again. Your only hope was that that particular asshole lost interest in little girls once they developed breasts. Or maybe, God willin', some enterprisin' con had hacked off his dick with a homemade shiv.

Mac was such a smug fuckin' bastard when he took your memo book, gave you some arrogant, dick-beatin' lecture about legacies and sacrifice and respectin' the badge. As if you needed a fuckin' primer on that subject. You'd been rocked to sleep under the shadow of the shield, and it was second only to the Bible in terms of household reverence. You'd fuckin' teethed on your old man's badge wallet, and there Mac stood, big as Billy-be-frigged, with the nerve, the fuckin' gall, to lecture you on what it meant to be a cop.

He was even worse when he came back two days later with a pair of bracelets for Truby and paraded him past your desk like it was a morality play for your benefit. You were so disgusted that you couldn't even look at him. You were afraid that if you did, you'd punch him square in his swannin', superior face. Fuckin' asshole. You supposed that his pageantry was his way of showin' that he didn't play favorites, but it was also careless in that it left no doubt who'd delivered the smokin' gun. If Truby ever got off on a technicality, he'd know who to blame. And he knew about Rebecca. All your boys did. Hell, everybody in the stationhouse did.

Surrenderin' your memo book might've been the only decision you coulda made, but that didn't make it all right with the rest of the boys. A lot of them labeled you a lousy snitch, more dickless suit than cop. There were whispers in the locker rooms and the showers, and even Scagnetti, who you'd gotten along with since Adam, wasn't so hot to be seen with you anymore. The invitations to grab a beer after shift dried up, and nobody wanted your money for the hockey and baseball bettin' pools. A few guys even wondered what your old man would say if he knew his only boy was attached to Mac Taylor's dick.

You pretended not to give a shit, swaggered through your shifts with teeth and balls out, but it hurt. These were guys you'd run with since you were twenty-one, and before that, you'd been a sticky-faced kid peekin' over the sides of bullpen desks. They should've known you were no snitch, and if they couldn't figure that out, they shoulda at least understood that your father raised no rats or pussies.

They might've blackballed you, but most of them still treated Rebecca with respect on the rare occasion she turned up at the stationhouse. It's understood in cop circles that bein' a cop's wife takes just as big as set of balls as takin' on a badge. Maybe more, since they're required to make all of the same sacrifices without benefit of the same reverence. They cook the dinners and bear the children and change the dirty diapers while their husbands are off playin' hero, and they wear the shadow of death beside their weddin' rings.

So, Rebecca was spared. Scagnetti might not have been speakin' to you, but he always gave his pants a respectful hitch whenever she rolled by, and Fletcher, the fat desk sergeant who perked up for no one, includin' the fuckin' mayor, doffed his hat, and when some snot-nosed rookie bumped her chair and asked her how it felt to blow a limp-dick, ass-kissin' snitch, O'Bannion, another rookie whose sister had spina bifida, attempted to part his hair with his police-issue nightstick. Rebecca stayed away from the precinct after that to spare you further trouble. She asked you what the hell was goin' on when you got home that night, and she deserved an answer, but you could only grunt that you did what you had to do. And like that mornin' in the kitchen when you asked if love had wounded her, she let it go.

She still doesn't know what happened. She just knows that the landscape has shifted, and that Mac is no longer a part of your pantheon of good people. She's followed your lead on him step for step, and you're grateful for her loyalty because these days, you suspect it's the only kind you got left.

Now Mac comes in here, wavin' your greatest failure in your face, expectin' you to let him see the secret face you've worn beneath your skin for all these years. Your baby sister is your business, and you've never told anyone about her, not even Danny, and the poky little bastard his been sniffin' around the Flack Family Mysteries for years. He probably thinks you grew up with the goddamn Brady Bunch. Little does he know that your family is just as fucked up as his ever was, startin' with you.

He lurched into the kitchen on stiff legs, and his hands were shaking so badly that he almost dropped the cup he had picked up for Rebecca's soup. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, flexed and closed his trembling fingers, and willed himself to relax.

"Rebecca?" he called as he ladled the soup into the ceramic mug.

"Yeah?" Slurred and muzzy.

He went into the living room, and after a few minutes of careful rearrangement, he'd settled behind her on the couch. He gently tugged until her head was just below his chin, and then he picked up the mug.

"C'mere, doll. Eat a little of this for me."

"'M tired," she protested feebly, and tried to turn onto his chest.

"I know, but c'mon. It'll warm you up, and 'sides, I've been Martha Stewart over it all day."

That earned him a weak chuckle, and she raised her head. His heart ached as he watched the drunken wobble of her neck and the desperate, spasmodic working of her throat as she took sloppy, gulping sips. After a few swallows, she let her head flop onto his chest, and he used the edge of a blanket to wipe excess soup from her chin.

"Good," she murmured sleepily.

"Told you." He kissed the top of her head. "You warm enough?" He fussed with the blankets, tucked them more firmly around her.

"Mmm. I am now." She curled into him. "You stay with me?"

"As long as you want me to."

"Forever," she said, and raised her head for another sip.

"Absolutely."

"Don' go away. Don' leave me. Don' wanna hear the music in my head. Bagpipes."

She fell asleep on his chest, and it occurred him as he watched her breathe that she was the only thing he truly understood anymore. What she wanted from him was brutal in its simplicity. She wanted him to promise her that he would never die in the line, never leave her alone in the world. She wanted him to cheat death. It was ridiculous and impossible and beautiful. He couldn't give it to her, but it meant the world to him that she thought he could, that his word would be good enough to hold back the darkness. He buried his face in her hair and prayed the heaving of his chest wouldn't wake her.