So I was never going to post two ongoing multi-chapters at once, but then Rosabelle and I seem to be in this wonderful pattern of mutual terrible influence-ing ;) so due to her dedicated enabling of my lack of self control, this story is seeing the light of day about five months before it really should!

Note: This is going to be primarily a story of Sharon's background, starting with when she met Jack and working its way up to many years later when she finally found her footing and mostly-figured-out her life. It's framed as a series of flashbacks, with bits of present-day incorporated as a backdrop for all the present-day bits will explain the reason why Sharon is telling Rusty (parts of) her story in the first place.

Prologue

The phone dialed, each monotonous ring echoing loudly in her ear. After the third one, she realized she was holding her breath.

After the fifth one she began to change her mind. This was a mistake. Nothing was going to come of it. Things were…fine, as they were. Why stir up the waters for everyone?

Her fingers gripped the phone tight enough to cut off circulation.

She was within a hair's breath of hanging up when there was a telltale click on the other end. If it had been the voicemail, she'd have ended the call without a message and been grateful to her core. But it wasn't.

"Hello." The tone was part-greeting, part-expectant, part-amused. None of those things she was capable of feeling at the moment.

"Hellooo…" A few seconds had passed, and she couldn't find words.

Sharon swallowed dryly.

"Dear, when you use our highly exclusive work-hours phone call policy, and then don't say anything, I get very bad thoughts. Just so you know, I'm about thirty seconds from calling in the Special Forces."

She let out a soft breath.

"…Did you ever clean out that bottom drawer of your desk…?"

Her own voice was unrecognizable, hollow to her ears.

There was a silence on the other end, then…

"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Where are you, work?"

Her throat became, if possible, even drier.

"Yes. No." She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. "I – I'll meet you… at… Teresa's."

"Excellent. I'll try to make it over before you can change your mind."

Oh, God.

She paused in her tracks and nearly turned back three times on the walk over. This was a terrible, terrible idea. But she was also very, very angry and so she let that anger carry her, drowning out a chorus of concerns and doubts.

Fifteen minutes later, outside the door to a small Italian coffee shop, Gavin Q. Baker III marched up to her, and Sharon's gaze immediately zeroed in on the worn, dog-eared folder in his hands, which looked exactly as though it had been resting at the bottom of a drawer for the better part of two decades.

Days Like These, pt. 1

Rusty stood up straighter on the sofa when she walked through the door.

"Sharon, you're home." He sounded relieved, and she felt her lips curl into a slight smile with a minimum amount of effort.

"Of course I'm home. Didn't you get my text?" She'd let him know, earlier, that she'd be a little late. But it was still just past six, well in time for dinner…

"No, I did, it's just that uhm…" He was standing now, watching her alertly as she took off her shoes. "I didn't know if… I mean, like, if you wanted to…" He swallowed. "Sharon, are you…okay…?"

She looked up from pulling on her Uggs, one hand against the wall for balance. "Of course," she said again.

But he wasn't ready to drop it. "It's just that... when you left the station earlier you looked uh… upset, and… is … everything… okay?" The wary look he gave her made her smile again.

"Don't worry about me, Rusty. I'm fine. I'm not upset," she assured him, and it was almost the truth.

He joined her at the kitchen counter when she went to pour herself a glass of water.

"Listen, about today…"

"Hm…?"

"Sharon… I don't… look, I don't care what Jack says, okay? I'm not like, angry or anything."

This time, she let the serene expression slip a little, tilting her head to give him that soft look of hers. "Good," she said seriously, "because Jack has no idea what he's talking about, and it was neither his place nor his right to talk at all. And frankly, nothing he said has anything to do with you, anyway," she added. "So I'd hate for your feelings to get hurt over any of it."

Rusty swallowed hard. "Yeah. I mean, they're not. I don't…" He looked down at the counter, scratching at an imaginary spot, until from the corner of his eye he noticed Sharon stepping closer.

"Rusty, if you want to talk about what Jack said…"

The way he looked up, almost desperately, made her heart break a little.

"It's…" Sharon shook her head, hands curling around the cool water glass. "He was completely out of line. And wrong," she added when the boy failed to look reassured, "he was wrong. Rusty…" she shook her head again, the anger rearing in her chest once more. "Jack is very good at pushing buttons, and he's particularly good at pushing my buttons, and that's all he was trying to do today. You just got caught in the crossfire, and I am tremendously sorry about that."

"No. I mean it's fine… you don't have to…" He suddenly gave her a pleading look. "Sharon, it's not like what Jack said, you know that right?" But he didn't even allow her time to reply. "That's not why… I swear, it wasn't like that, Sharon. I'm not like that, I'm –"

"Honey, I know." Her eyes closed painfully for a second. "I know. Don't – just don't give it another thought. Jack says a lot of things," she sighed, "and over the years I've learned it's best to ignore most of them."

"It's just that…"

Rusty trailed off, but he didn't have to finish, she understood perfectly. It's just that Jack was so good at saying precisely those things that were hardest to ignore.

"I know," Sharon acknowledged. After a moment she met his eyes again, the anxiety she saw reflected in them making her twice as determined. "Rusty, I mean it," she said softly. "Don't give any of that a second thought. Whatever Jack said doesn't mean anything to me, and it certainly shouldn't mean anything to you."

The boy nodded, but it was so half-hearted that it didn't reassure her at all, and then he was still giving her this tormented look and ... oh, she'd been so angry with him, so hurt and lost as to how to handle things. So how come all of a sudden she no longer found it difficult at all to reach across the space between them?

Maybe she did owe Jack some gratitude after all.

"Come here," she murmured, and with one step around the counter she came to stand right by Rusty's chair, and she pulled him close as his arms reached to circle her body. His head pressed against her shoulder and he said something into her hair, the words too muffled to make out. She thought she caught the gist of it, though.

"Honey, it's going be okay," she promised. "We're going to be just fine…"

He pulled back after a moment, his expression uncertain and so, so young. "Are you still mad at me?"

Sharon smiled a little. "Not nearly as mad as I am at Jack." She winced almost as soon as the words were out, because wow was that the wrong thing to say, considering. "Rusty," she hurried to add, "those two are not the same thing at all. I'm mad at you, yes, because what you did was … " There were no words.

"Stupid," he provided, "yeah, I know, trust me."

"It was," she agreed. "And thoughtless. Dangerous. You could've…"

But she stopped, because they'd already had this discussion before, and rehashing it for the tenth time wasn't going to do any good. Not now, when she'd finally found the ability to talk to him about it without fighting the urge to shout or burst into tears.

"But Rusty… that's one thing, and... everything that Jack said is another, and that's what I don't want you to worry about. Okay?" She squeezed his shoulders lightly, and he nodded a little more convincingly this time. "Good."

They took another step back from each other, Sharon retrieving her water glass and taking another sip.

"I really don't care, you know," Rusty told her after a few seconds. "About what he said. I just didn't want you to think –"

"I don't."

He dropped his gaze. But the residual wariness seemed to be gone, even as he fidgeted a little awkwardly.

"Okay…uh, good."

Sharon gave him another warm look, carrying her glass to the sink. "What would you like for dinner?"

"Pizza…?" he said hopefully, and she huffed in amusement.

"As long as you're willing to actually make it, in this kitchen, I don't have a problem with that." His grimace elicited another light chuckle. "We may have some pre-made dough in the freezer," she relented.

Rusty grinned, and went to open the fridge door.

Pulling out the two packages of frozen pizza dough he could find, he weighed them with an undecided look. One seemed too little. Both seemed too much. He was hungry, sure, but Sharon would probably have a slice or two at most and two whole pizzas was a lot for just them… "Is Jack gonna…"

He trailed off his question as soon as his brain caught up with his mouth, but not soon enough.

Sharon glanced over her shoulder.

"Never mind," he backpedaled.

After a short hesitation, she placed the now-clean glass on the dish rack, and turned to face him again.

"Rusty…" She bit her lips, then joined her hands and met his eyes with a serious gaze. "The reason I was a little late tonight was because I went to meet a friend." When he started to open his mouth, she held up a hand to signal that she wasn't finished. "A friend who also happens to be an attorney. You've met him once or twice – Gavin."

Rusty still looked confused.

Sharon let out a long breath. "I asked Gavin to help me file for a divorce."

The first few chapters mostly deal with present-day stuff – originally, it was going to be one chapter of set-up and then all background flashbacks, but you can't hand me not one, but two Sharon-angst plot points and expect them to not run away from me. So now we're getting a liiittle more detail on Jack's latest drive-by, and what he said, and what Rusty did that had him and Sharon in uncertain waters, and how the stars aligned until Sharon finally picked up that phone at the beginning of this story ;).

You know I love hearing from you, so if you have thoughts on Sharon's divorce, or her life with Jack many years ago, or anything, please feel free to throw them at me! (Don't be concerned if I burst into spontaneous ranting on the topic of how Jackson Raydor should spend each episode being chased and repeatedly clobbered over the head with a lamp.)

Thank you for reading.