A/N- I apologize for having the chapters coming so slowly. I thought summer would be better, but between my jobs, I'm working 9-14 hours a day, and it's hard to fit this in. I'm trying. It'll keep coming, because I'm really having fun with this. Thank you thank you thank you for your patience (: There's a lot of Flynn in this one. Let me know what you think, okay? Thank you also to everyone who's reviewed or followed, it means a lot!

It doesn't matter who's wrong or right/

Just beat it, beat it.

-Michael Jackson, Beat It

"Howdy, Cap'n. Sorry to wake you." It was Hawkins' gravelly tones on the other end of the phone.

"It's quite alright." Sharon rolled over in bed and stretched. "What's going on?"

"OIS with Robbery-Homicide on Mullholland Way. Hold on just a second." There was a crackling noise, like paper, and then he read off the address.

She thought for a moment. It was across the other side of town from her apartment. "I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll leave here in ten minutes and get going."

"Sounds good. I'm on my way. No one from our crew is out there, yet. See you soon." He hung up as she rolled out of bed. It was dark, still a good hour before sunrise, and she wondered what RHD had been doing that would lead them to a shoot-out at four in the morning.

She knew she likely wouldn't be back home before her official workday started, so she dressed in one of her now multiple suits and slapped on a little bit of make-up. The nicest thing about cropping her hair, she decided, was that she just had to run a brush through it, and it would look alright.

She threw everything she'd need in her purse and grabbed a pair of sensible flats before creeping into the kids' room.

"Ricky." She rubbed his shoulder lightly. "Ricky, wake up."

He stirred slightly. "Whaa-?"

"Ricky, you've got to get up. I'm sorry, but we've got to go."

"'Kayyy." He slowly edged out of bed and began shuffling around for his clothes.

"Everything's in your backpack, and you can get lunch at school. I'll have breakfast in a minute." She turned to Cat and lifted the baby up and into her carrier. In the several months since she'd began working in FID and taking on-call shifts, she'd mastered the art of moving Cat around without waking her. Ricky was good about being woken at all hours of the night, and Sharon had fixed the trunk of her car with pillows and blankets so he could sleep while she worked. The backseat folded down in two sections, so she'd keep Cat's carrier on one and fold the other down so the trunk was open to the main body of the cruiser.

In the kitchen, she pulled peanut-butter and banana sandwiches and yogurt out of the fridge and packed it into a lunchbox with a juicebox for Ricky's breakfast. She wasn't hungry, and she never was after dealing with all the angst and exasperation that came with an OIS call. She handed Ricky his food when he came out, and lead the way out into the darkness of early morning.

Sharon drove under the yellow tape that was still wrapped around the crime scene and parked along the side of the road. She unbuckled and twisted around to look in the back seat. Cat was asleep, and Ricky was already pulling his seat down to climb into the trunk, to use it to sleep in, with one of the seats folded down. Her heart twisted slightly as she watched. Little kids shouldn't have to be dragged out to crime scenes, she thought. But there was no alternative. She didn't know any of her neighbors well enough to ask them to babysit in the middle of the night, and none of her family lived anywhere nearby.

She sighed and swung the door open, then walked around to the trunk and popped it open.

"Mom..." Ricky moaned slightly as the early light hit his face.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I just need my tape." She reached under the piled-up blankets and felt around for her red scene tape. "Get some sleep." She dropped the trunk lid as softly as she could, then walked across the road to where her officers and Robbery-Homicide were awaiting her.

"Is this bring-your-kid-to-work day, Captain?" There was a tall detective leaning back against a cruiser. His gun missing from its holster. He was clearly the one she would be interviewing. He looked more than annoyed as he emphasized her rank.

"No, it is not," she said as she pulled her notebook out of her purse. "It's simply a situation that cannot be avoided." She ignored him and turned to Davies. "Can you find Lieutenant Ray and get our tape up, please?"

"Yes, ma'am." He turned away smartly, all too glad to get out of the combat zone.

She turned to Hawkins, who was still waiting for her to direct him. "Mick, could you start interviewing the other witnesses?"

He nodded and left to join the gaggle of detectives waiting to lambast their perceived enemies as soon as the interviews began. They were all older men, all in dark suits, all watching as Cecil Davies tore down the yellow scene tape and replaced it with FID's red.

She sighed and looked at the detective before her. He looked familiar, but she couldn't pin the reason down until he gave her his name.

"Andy Flynn," He said when she asked. "Detective First Lieutenant Andy Flynn. Make sure you get the whole thing; it wouldn't do for you to get the ranks all screwed up." He paused, then an expression of false surprise washed over his face. "Oh wait, you already did. You see, Captain, there's this rank called 'lieutenant' that comes between 'sergeant' and 'captain.' In fact, there're two lieutenant ranks."

She stared at her notebook, where she had just written 'Andrew Flynn,' and tried to will away the hot flush that was creeping up her neck. "Could you tell me what happened here?" she asked him neutrally.

"Yeah, I can," he said aggressively. "We were up all night trying to figure our case out, and we finally locate the dirtbag, and then he goes and pulls a runner. So we come after him and he pulls a gun on me and my partner." Flynn looked past her and shouted."Hey! Asshole! You got what was coming for you!"

Sharon spun and caught a glimpse of a man being loaded into the back of an ambulance.

"Yeah, scumbag! We're going to nail you so hard-"

"Lieutenant Flynn! That's enough!" He towered over her in her flats, and she wished she'd chosen heels, despite their impracticality. She grabbed his tie and jerked it downwards, pulling Flynn's attention back to her.

"What the hell did you do that for?" He looked truly furious now.

"Do not antagonize your suspects. You are completely out-of-bounds, Lieutenant."

"You wanna know what's out-of-bounds? That guy-"

"I don't care!" She took a deep breath before she went out-of-bounds. "Look, Flynn-"

"Lieutenant Flynn, if you don't mind." If he couldn't take his anger out on a suspect, he'd take it out on her.

She pursed her lips, but nodded. "I just need to take your statement. You already handed over your service weapon. You'll be on paid leave for the seventy-two hours it takes me to complete my investigation. Is that truly such an inconvenience for you?"

"Yeah, actually. I'd love to sit around my house for the next three days and twiddle my thumbs. I'd rather not be doing our fair city some good and catching dirtbags like him." It was said with barely restrained anger and thick sarcasm.

"I'm sorry, but those are the rules. You know them as well as I do."

"Yeah? I doubt that. I heard you spent your leave memorizing every damn rule."

She didn't look up. "If we could just-"

"You know what? Let's have a pop quiz. Don't be worried, I'm pretty sure you'll ace it."

"Lieutenant-"

"On second thought, if you get everything right, it wouldn't be any fun to quiz you."

"Lieutenant Flynn!" she yelled at him again, finally stopping his tirade. "It's going to take me another hour to drive back across town, and I'd like to get my kids to school on time, so I'd thank you if you would please just help me."

He leaned back against the car and raised an eyebrow. "What? Jack can't take them?"

She had almost forgotten that he had known Jack. Knew Jack? She wasn't sure what the term would be, seeing as Jack had simply vanished from her life. Who knew if Flynn still talked to him. "No," she said calmly. "He can't." She could feel Flynn's gaze on her face, and knew he could see her every expression.

There was a brief silence, and she hoped he would let the subject go.

"You run him off with all your rules?" He knew the comment had drawn blood when she took a sharp breath in.

"Lieutenant, I highly suggest you stop your commentary on my personal life." She got the words out in a calm manner, but the tone they carried was so cold it nearly frosted her lips.

He stared at her, but couldn't resist one last judgment. "Rulebook Raydor."

She looked up at him sharply, slapping her notebook closed. "That is it." She threw her papers back into her purse and yanked her citation book out, with its alternating pages of pink tickets and yellow carbon copies.

"Oh, come on!"

"I gave you multiple opportunities to stop," she ground out as she inked his name across the top of the page. "You chose not to." She marked a box, scrawled a comment across the blank lines, and signed her name with a flourish. "A month of sensitivity seminars." She slapped the ticket to his chest and walked away. Someone else could take his statement.

Flynn stared at the yellow paper in his hand. Six hours a week, for an entire month. He sighed. There were two ways to look at a ticket, he thought. As a punishment, or as a trophy. He wasn't usually an optimist, but he decided that the latter would be the better choice. He'd heard somewhere the optimism was healthy or something.

"Hey, guys!" He turned to his squad and waved the ticket over his head. "What's the record for most hours spent in sensitivity? I bet I can beat it!"