I

Lower Manhattan.

In the cusp of night, past the street lit avenue, a single car coasts along. With the heavy rain, the people on the streets have vanished. The city seems abandoned.

Mike stands before the full-length window of his office, watching droplets of water drip down the pane. Behind him comes the soft pad of footsteps, too imposing to be Rachel's.

He turns and finds Harvey passing over the threshold. His suit jacket and tie have been shed, the sleeves of his white-collar shirt are rolled up at the elbows. He's wet from the rain. Still bearded.

Mike nods at the other attorney as he steps up to join him beside the plated glass. Neither says a word. They stare out at the empty city, lost in the darkness.

Finally, in a soft voice, "Did you get the list of shareholders from Mel?"

"Yeah," Mike replies. "Mathew Sanger, grandson of one of the founders, holds the most shares at thirty-five percent. Not enough to sway the board."

"So it's a dead end?"

"Not exactly."

Mike taps the window where a bead of water hangs suspended. He feels the truth hesitate inside of him, like the droplet, refusing to slip from his lips. When it finally falls, sad as tear, he submits.

"Fifty-five percent of the company's shares are divided out amongst multiple small LLCs."

"Shells?"

Mike nods. "We looked into a few. The only information we could find was the name of the registering agent."

Harvey is silent. He doesn't ask, because he already knows. Donna. Donna on every dotted line.

The quiet stretches, becomes an almost tangible tension under which their every opportunity to win this seems to fray more and more.

"Louis is working on finding a source," Mike continues numbly. "But it's like Russian dolls. One LLC owns another which owns five more. The money's been washed so many times it's impossible to locate where it's all going."

Harvey walks to the end of the room. He picks up a glass tumbler from the bar cart. There's a strange slowness to his movements, like he has to think them through. He keeps his back turned. Deliberately, Mike thinks. Dismissive.

"I heard federal has already setup over fifty depositions." Mike delivers the information like a dig, openly and without softness. "They've seized three million documents from Duke-Sanger and have an endless supply of paralegals and federal persecutors building an arsenal of discovery against Donna at this very moment."

The managing partner's only reply is the soft clink of glass as he removes the decanter lid.

Mike loses it. "How are we supposed to win this if you can't even remember to file a fucking motion?"

Harvey turns and Mike braces himself for a tirade. He winces inwardly, preparing for the shattering of glass or the upheaval of a table. But the storm of fury doesn't come. What does is more shocking; the eyes that return his have an astonishing tenderness in them.

"I know," Harvey admits. "I dropped the ball this morning. I keep dropping the ball, and it's you, Rachel and Louis who have to continually pick up my slack. It's inexcusable. I'm supposed to be your managing partner and I'm failing you."

Harvey comes back with the drink and hands it to Mike without a word. The young attorney stares at it, at a loss.

"I had it too easy when Jessica was here," he continues. "And like a spoiled child that's been cut off, her leaving has forced me to realize I'm not half as clever or capable as I thought I was. Instead of stepping up and taking ownership of my inadequacies, I've let them crush me."

The admission seems to soothe Mike's anger. He clears his throat, searching for words.

"We're a team, Harvey. Being managing partner doesn't make you condemned to hold the entire firm on your shoulders. You pass some of the weight to us and we hold it together."

"Yeah," he agrees, "but sometimes what's best for the team is for a player to know when to take the bench."

"What are you saying?" Mike searches Harvey's steady gaze.

"I don't know what I'm going to have to do to win this case – what rules I'll have to bend or deals I'll have to make – and that kind of recklessness isn't something this firm can survive."

Harvey looks off then, toward the ever-changing wall of names.

"Harvey…"

"It's okay." His gaze flicks back to Mike's. Incredibly, he's smiling. At his back, the storm still looms, but against his easy grin, it's authority is gone. Mike realizes what his mentor is expressing isn't defeat, but something else entirely. "Since I came to this city I've been chasing titles – partner, named partner, managing partner. The world is a mountain and I had to scale it, always looking up to find happiness. It's like an illness. But last night, when I was with Donna, I realized something."

Understanding breaks across Mike's face. He offers quietly, "You weren't looking up?"

Harvey nods. "Everything I ever wanted was right in front of me."

Mike lets out a long exhale, feeling like they've somehow reached a forgone conclusion. He never would have thought Harvey, inches away from glory, would turn his back to the whole dazzling adventure. He finds himself admiring the older man more than ever. He's even envious. Shed of his designer suit, bearded, renouncing his title and somehow his life seems more honest than Mike's. This alone, the certainty in his mentor's eyes, has him thinking for the first time they could actually win this thing.

"Listen." Mike carefully sets his Scotch glass aside. "Everyone who cared about prestige left with Jessica and half our clients. Those of us that are left, we're here because this is home. You've seen the shrine on Donna's desk. All of us are willing to do what it takes to save her. And I'd rather stick with you, fighting for family than making sure some rich bastard gets his cushy merger."

Mike reaches out and touches the older man's shoulder.

"You're it, Harvey. Reckless and cracked and arrogant as you are, you're our managing partner, and we're going to win this together. Firm or no firm."

II

"The PET scan has raised a few concerns," Dr. Rab says, with an unexpected blunt honesty before Jonathan can even step out into the hospital hallway and away from his daughter's gleeful chatter with the bedside nurse. "We'd like to admit Alice for further testing."

For a very long moment Jonathan doesn't move. Something primitive inside of him whispers threat; his body stiffens unconsciously, already trying to work out how to dodge the shot. But this isn't the Abbas Ghar. There's no enemy hiding on the ridge, firing RPGs. It's just a man in a white coat and posh British accent, speaking to him about his daughter's condition. And yet, somehow bullets and bombs seem less insidious than what Jonathan fears lurks beneath the hesitancy in the doctor's voice.

"Mr. Martell?"

Jonathan straightens his already straight back. "Sorry – what concerns?"

The doctor assumes a well-rehearsed expression of sympathy. "The PET images show extensive abnormal FDG uptake within multiple organs."

This does little to explain anything, but Jonathan acknowledges the doctors words with a curt nod anyway. He's heard it all before, and still the words don't really register. Chemo, radiation, resection, dialysis, intubation, Mediport – it's all just some inconceivable nightmare that's never made much sense to him.

"We're highly concerned for metastatic disease."

"Metastatic disease." Genuine surprise breaks in Jonathan's voice. "Does that mean…" He pauses. There is a sudden, sharp ache between his ribs, as if his heart is clenching. "The cancer's back?"

"I'm afraid this may be the case."

The doctor fishes for something more earnest to say in the face of Jonathan's disbelief. He must draw blank, because he reaches out to deliver an invasive and awkward pat to Jonathan's shoulder instead.

Jonathan wants to strangle him. He wants to scream in his face: you don't understand what we've sacrificed. Alice has fought so hard and has given up so much. She deserves remission. But it doesn't matter. After however many years and however many surgeries, after all the fights and debt and broken laws, it counts for nothing. It is the harsh reality of life – there's no fairness to it.

"She has a hockey game tonight," Jonathan murmurs. His voice sounds slow and numb even to his own ears. "Can we run the tests after?"

"At this stage, I wouldn't recommend that sort of exertion. The sooner we get her in and tested, the sooner we can come up with a plan of action."

"And what does that look like – this plan? Because it sounds like you're saying the cancer's everywhere and if that's the case does it really matter if she exerts herself for one night?"

Dr. Rab shifts uncomfortably. "Perhaps you should discuss this with your wife."

"Right."

"It's difficult news to digest."

"Yeah."

"If you'd like – "

Jonathan spares the doctor from having to drone through his script and takes off down the corridor, past the Oncology reception, and into the nearest men's room.

After doing a sweep of the cubicles and finding them empty, he pulls out his cell phone: three missed calls and a voicemail. All from Donna. Normally it'd be her here, dragging Alice to her checkup, but the accountants called an emergency meeting this morning – tax concerns, they moaned, always tax concerns– and with Mel on a business trip to Hong Kong, Donna had to facilitate.

In a way, Jonathan's grateful it was him who received the tired sympathy and awkward shoulder pat. Donna deserves better than a clinical breakdown as a prelude to shoving a knife in her heart. But now it's Jonathan that has to do the stabbing, and even thinking this brings back that deep chested ache.

He dials his voicemail. He has to press the phone hard against his head to keep his hand from shaking as he listens. She sounds drowsy at first – too much facilitating – but he catches an intimate smoothness in the undertone, the sort she reserves for her incessant pillow talk. The sound of her makes the back of Jonathan's eyes burn; his throat goes raw and tight.

'Hi, honey. I'm sorry I keep calling. I don't want you to think it's because I don't trust you with this – you're a wonderful father and I know you're capable. I just get anxious. Things have been so good lately and sometimes it just…I don't know…it feels like a dream, I guess. Anyway. I won't call again, promise. I'll just see the two of you when you get home and load you with kisses.'

The line goes quiet, but he knows she's still there, he can hear her breathing into the phone, hesitating on something.

'I love you, Jon,' she whispers. And then the line goes dead.

For some strange reason, still holding the phone tightly to his ear, Jonathan finds himself thinking of Italy. Camp Darby. Before Afghanistan and the sickness and his discharge. The local grocer had a charity cashbox for pediatric cancer near the register in memory of a local kid who passed away. He only remembers it because Donna would shove in more money than they could afford – those Euros were like monopoly money to her, she never could quite grasp their value. What strikes him now was his obliviousness. A child with cancer seemed so far-fetched it was almost fictitious. He couldn't possibly imagine his carrot-topped one-year-old, wobbling around the shop, touching everything, babbling a ceaseless stream of nonsense, could be that child on display. And yet it is his child. His Alice.

Jonathan folds at the waist as if some invisible fist has punched him in the stomach. He lets out an angry roar and bangs his fist against the tiled wall beside him, once, twice, the third time he throws his whole body into it and end up slummed against the cool ceramic, chocking on air, chocking on tears.

At some point, not long after, the main door opens and Jonathan slowly steadies himself. He rinses the blood from his hand and the snot from his face and walks back down the corridor and past reception, shoulder's back – solid, cold, untouchable. Grieve later.

When he reaches the exam room, the nurse meets him at the door with the admission paperwork and a pen. "I just need signatures," she says before stepping out.

He knows Alice is looking at him, he can feel her calm appraisal from the bed they've already wired her up to, but he finds it impossible to meet her eyes. He wants to protect her more than anything else in the world. He wants to heal her. Give her the future she's been promised. But he can't do any of that, and now he doesn't even know what to say.

"They want to admit you," he tells her, hypnotized by the blood seeping through his paper-towel bandage. "Dr. Rab needs to run more tests."

Alice says nothing.

He clenches his bloodied hand behind his back and peers over at her. She watches him with a discomforting intensity, void of emotion if not for the tears streaking down her cheeks. It scares him sometimes, these moments where looking at her is like looking into a mirror.

"They think the cancer's back."

She shuts her eyes and more tears fall. "I don't care," she whispers.

"Those tears are telling me something different."

She glares at him. "I don't care about this stupid, stupid cancer. The championship game is tonight and Harvey promised he'd be there. I wanna play, Dad. It's not fair."

"Who said you can't play?" Jonathan sets the admission paperwork aside and goes to her. He kneels and reaches out, smudging the wetness on her cheeks away with his thumb. "This is your life, Alice. Tell me you want to go and we'll go."

Her lips part and her head cocks curiously to one side. It is the same soft look of surprise Donna gets on her face when he does something unexpectedly tender. His thumb brushes across the scatter of freckles below her eye, freckles as sacred and memorized as the wooded trails he used to hunt when he was a boy.

"What about Mom?" she asks.

"Let me worry about Mom."

She bites down on her lower lip, considering. She's spent her whole life clinging to Donna, and he's been like an outsider, deployed for half her life and then a hollow, shadow of a man when he came back from the war. The idea that they would collude in anything together strikes her as unfathomable.

Then, in one swift tug, she jerks the leads from her chest, grinning despite the weight of it all.

"Okay," she says. "Bust me out of here."

III

Donna and Jonathan walk along a boardwalk-esque bike path, following the Hudson through Tribeca. The air is cool and crisp. The waterfront, deserted. The open spaces along the harbor, the parks, the villages, are vast in their emptiness.

In the distance Donna can see the glass building of the Tribecan Lofts — a place she once called home — standing against the skyline like a warning. It's a landmark scarred into her heart, the sort of wound that aches with a morbid yearning for the war you got it in.

She starts to lag.

Jonathan takes the hint and stops at the harbor railing as if to take in the glamor of the Jersey shore. Donna watches his profile, waiting for a flicker of something she can read in his expression, but he remains closed against her. It's no surprise. She spent their entire marriage trying to discover his hidden depths, but it always felt like there was an invisible layer surrounding him, something hard and cold, she could never quite make contact. Even in the intimacy of their bedroom, when pressed against him she would feel a certain fear, as if he was some uncompromising machine her body shouldn't be involved with.

She can't help but compare him to Harvey, whose emotions have always felt as instinctual to her as breathing. She never felt any sort of cold, inhumanness in Harvey – even when his voice went hard, his eyes were always soft. So soft. Lying next to her last night with that smile on his face and the glow in his eyes. Thinking of it makes her feel guilty. He looked at her like he was finally ready to love her, and all she could think about was how he was too close. And when you get too close, you start to see the cracks, the broken pieces.

Perhaps she understands Jonathan and his detachment more than she realizes.

"I often wondered," Donna says, stepping up to the railing beside Jonathan, "why I never saw the loft go up for sale."

Jonathan's eyes dance over her. They dart from her rain soaked hair to her bare, chapped lips. What does he see? she wonders. Does he see her guilt? Her fear?

"I would've had to contact you if I wanted to sell." He shifts his gaze back to the water. "I figured keeping the place was easier on both of us."

"And here I was thinking you were being sentimental."

He side-eyes her, and says very carefully, as if afraid the statement might be a trigger, "I kept the dog."

She gives him a sad smile. "Good. You're human after all."

"I even let her sleep with me."

"Get out."

"She doesn't smell as good as you," he admits. "But she nags a lot less."

Donna laughs. "It's nice to know I'm remembered so fondly."

A smile creeps across Jonathan's lips, he lets it rise. The flash of teeth, the little dents showing in his cheeks, and the fifteen year old inside of Donna plummets into unbearable love. The sudden emotion makes her uncomfortably aware of how close they're standing. She awkwardly withdraws a few steps.

Jonathan gives her a long look, and then turns and starts back up the bike path. Donna quietly follows.

"When Harvey came by the other day, Molls tried to go home with him," he continues. "I thought, this son of a bitch stole my wife, now he's going to steal the damn dog. Then I realized she probably just smelled you on him. She's been waiting by the door again, like she did when you first left."

Donna bares this statement in silence, pulled inwardly by the memory of the golden retriever clawing and whining at the base of Alice's bedroom door. How long had she gone on listening to the dog's pleas before she finally pulled herself out of bed – hours, days, months? A taste builds at the back of her throat, the taste of shame.

She swallows, trying to dislodge the acrid lump, and turns her attention to the Hudson. Now that the rain has stopped the river is like glass. A single yacht coasts quietly through the night. There are people on the yacht's upper deck, young girls in fancy dresses. For an instant Donna allows herself to imagine one of those girls as Alice. That somehow, in some alternate universe, she had beat cancer and is now on this boat, celebrating the last month of summer before heading back to university. She sees her with sun-bleached hair, not exactly orange, nor red, but something perfectly in-between. It'd be long, longer than Donna remembers and tangled by the wind. She would be talking to anyone who would listen, to everyone, letting loose a lively stream of chatter. Sometimes she'd say the wrong things, but she would never be embarrassed by it. She's probably already had her heart broken and has carried on.

Then the yacht would dock, and Donna would be there, watching as she walks out of the shadows with her lips parted in that teasing smile of hers. Jonathan's smile. The silence would break with her greeting.

'Hi, Mom.'

Donna shuts her eyes. Jonathan is saying something into her ear but the heaviness of her thoughts drowns it out. Right now, all she wants is to go home. She wants to open her front door and find the dog barking and Alice giggling and Jonathan hollering at them to settle down. She wants to wake up to little feet thumping into the bedroom at two AM, cold toes pressing into her skin and her husband whispering about how she's too old for this as he drapes a strong arm around them and pulls them both close. She wants her life back.

When Donna finally opens her eyes again she finds the yacht has disappeared. The Hudson ripples under the beginnings of a light rain.

"Hey." Jonathan gives a squeeze to Donna's hand, that she didn't realize he was holding. "I shouldn't have…" He sighs. "Look, it's not your fault."

"It is," she starts, suddenly desperate to take ownership of the blame. "I left you."

"It's what I deserved."

"You don't have to—"

"When I think of everything I kept from you – my own grief, the anger, the emptiness – I thought I was being strong for you, but it must have made you feel so alone. Leaving me is what you had to do to survive, Donna. I get that."

Donna stares at him a long moment. It is everything she's ever wanted to hear him say, words she imagined and ridiculously longed for so many times. She always resented his ability to get past the loss. Had she known he was struggling too perhaps things could have been different.

She tries to imagine another path, a route that would have prevented their fate, and realizes, despite his admission, she can't.

"I couldn't live our life without her," she confesses. "Even if you had opened up, I would have found another reason to leave."

"I know." Jonathan smiles. Soft, beautiful, and unexpected. Without an ounce of disdain. "Still. I'm sorry I couldn't get you through it. For whatever that's worth."

Donna returns the smile, remembering for the first time in a long time why she fell in love with him.

"I'm sorry too," she whispers.

A moment of tender silence passes, a precious stillness, as they watch each other. Then Donna steps in close and hugs him, pressing her face hard into his chest. He strokes her hair and holds her as if none of this is a surprise, as if they've been together all this time without separation.

"You don't have to apologize," he murmurs, pulling back to meet her gaze. "Not to me."

Donna can only nod, transfixed by the melancholy gray of his eyes, those high sculpted cheekbones, and the fact that his mouth is very close to hers.

"Jonathan…" She pauses, feeling his thumb brush gently across her cheek, and fights the impulse to lean into the touch. "I should probably —"

"Come home with me."

Donna's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "What?"

"See the dog."

She pictures their home as it was. The chalkboard in foyer with reminders of birthday parties and hockey practices they'd never make it to. Tiny fingerprints smudged on the stainless steel refrigerator door. All the pictures on the wall of happier times.

She grimaces, shaking her head. "That's not a good idea."

"You've had worse ideas."

True, she thinks. And really, what is her alternative? A lonely cab ride home. Her silent one bedroom apartment with its empty kitchen canisters and creaking ceiling fan. Bed sheets with the smell of last night's mistake still clinging to them…

She can't decide what is worse.

"Just come to the door," he says. "If it's too much we'll go to Sonny's and share a pint of Yuengling like the good old days."

"I told you I was off the alcohol."

"You'll have plenty of time to get sober in prison."

Donna laughs despite herself. "How am I supposed to argue with that?"

"You don't," he says and turns, walking briskly down the bike path as if he fully expects her to follow.

She does, mostly because she has no idea of what else to do.

IV

By the time Anita Gibbs makes it out of the lobby of Pearson Specter Litt and into her apartment complex, the New York Attorney General is already standing in her doorway.

"I heard you're trying to access sealed military files," he says by way of greeting.

Despite the unease a surprise late night visit from her boss spikes in her bloodstream, Anita merely shrugs. "We're trying to tie up some loose ends on the Paulsen case before handing it off to the DoJ."

"So you beat at the door of the Defense Department?" Evan O'Loughlin's brows draw together in a fearsome expression. "Are you out of your mind?"

"We discovered some discrepancies in Jonathan's education timeline when compared to his deployment record. I'm simply fact checking."

"No, you're meddling. In a case the state of New York no longer has jurisdiction on."

"As of midnight, yes, but according to the clock," — Anita glances offhandedly at her wrist watch— "I'm prosecutor on this case for another three hours and eleven minutes."

The Attorney General frowns. "What are you trying to prove, Anita?"

"They're threatening to charge this woman with treason, Evan. Given the ultimate penalty for such a charge it's our duty as public servants to make damn sure we have all the facts. And I'm not convinced we do."

A flicker of something — is it uncertainty? — shoots through the attorney general's eyes before his face becomes a cool mask again. "I'll pass your concerns on to the Justice Department," he says, stepping out of the doorway. "In regard to this remaining three hours, I suggest you use it to withdraw your requests for Jonathan's records. There's nothing JAG hates more than unwarranted intrusion into their legal processes."

O'Loughlin turns abruptly and makes for the elevators.

"And if I refuse to withdraw my requests?" Anita calls after him.

The Attorney General addresses her only after calling for the lift, an expression of apparent weariness playing on his face.

"You're smart, Miss Gibbs. It's an election year. Rattling these cages may just cost you your job."

V

From: Jhudd

Sent: Tuesday, May 07 2:31 PM

To: DMartell

Subject: Asset Query

Hello Donna,

I noticed that the reported gross margin for company 03078 (Cyderkon) Trading was just under $1 million. This number struck me as quite low. I took it upon myself to look over the account in detail. I see $200 million from trading efforts and about $50 in middle/market services. I'm finding it hard to understand such a drastic discrepancy. Perhaps this is a reporting error?

Kind Regards,

Jerry Hudd, Director of Accounting

On Tue, May 07 at 4:54 PM Donna Martell DMartell wrote:

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.

Attached to this email is a draft of the individuals responsible for the asset in question.

I do not see your name among those listed and must deem your investigation into this affair a misappropriation of proprietary information. This is a direct breach of your confidentiality agreement.

I, therefore, am obliged to inform you formally that your employment with Duke-Sanger has been terminated with immediate effect. Please note Duke-Sanger is entitled to take legal action if it is revealed that you disclosed trade secrets during or after your employment.

If you have any questions about the termination process, please contact HR to arrange a meeting.

All the best in your future endeavors,

Donna Martell, COO

"Damn it," Rachel mutters, tossing the email string aside. She's spent the past fourteen hours sifting through evidence, reading email after email and transcript after transcript, and this Donna Martell is killing her efforts. She wonders how she can defend someone so obviously guilty, so obviously tyrannical, and then she remembers. This is her best friend. Her kind, compassionate friend who went through things she will never understand, from her marriage to a complete sociopath to the loss of her seven year old daughter. How can she judge her?

Rachel shakes her head, trying to dislodge the pang of dread building in her chest, and picks up her cell phone. No missed calls. No texts. She opens up her messenger app and adds to the growing queue:

Rachel: Ok. I get it. You don't want to talk about your feelings. But right now I'm not texting you as your friend, I'm texting as your attorney. I've gone through 3 of the 600 boxes of evidence and its bad, Donna. It's very, very bad. I need you to talk to me. I need to understand you so I can defend you.

Rachel: Please call me when you get this.

There's music playing somewhere in the firm, a choir singing in another language, Latin maybe, a requiem. Rachel think she knows it, but she'd be damned if she could remember the name. She stands up, deciding to follow the sound and winds up in Jessica's old office. Harvey is sitting on the sofa with his laptop in his lap and evidence boxes stacked all around him.

The first thought that crosses her mind is he's back, and she almost smiles, seeing this as the glimmer of hope they've so desperately needed these last few days. But there is something in Harvey's eyes — something hard and dark — that keeps her face set. He doesn't acknowledge her, so she waits.

"Lacrimosa," he murmurs after a while. His voice is low and soft. Slowly he lifts his gaze from his computer screen. "It means —"

"Full of tears," she says, mimicking his hushed and somber tone. A distinct memory touches her; she's middle school aged, sitting on a cold pew at the front St. Patrick's Cathedral. "They sung the entire Dies Irae at my grandmother's funeral."

Harvey meets her eyes, his expression focused and calculating and so different from his usual dismissive manner. He seems for a moment to see her – not as a paralegal or fellow attorney or Donna's friend, but her as a person. Strangely the moment frightens her, like she's not entirely sure she likes what he sees.

"I didn't realize you were Catholic."

Rachel shrugs. "You never asked."

He nods, relieving her of the pressure of his gaze. "Yeah," he says. "I can be asshole like that."

"I wasn't saying –" she starts. "I mean, it doesn't – Really, you're not –"

Harvey lifts his brow, looking more and more disturbed by each fractured sentence.

Rachel lets out a frustrated breath and gestures at the evidence boxes. "Weren't you supposed to be meeting with Donna tonight?"

For a moment, she thinks he's going to ignore her – he glances at clock, appearing restless and bit agitated – but eventually he answers in that toneless, mind-is-elsewhere sort of way that is his trademark (at least with her). "It didn't work out."

"Is she ignoring you too?"

Harvey's jaw flexes. "It's really none of your business."

Rachel frowns, but isn't really surprised. Whatever kinship formed between the two of them in the break room yesterday is apparently long forgotten on his end. She makes for the door, deciding to leave him to his bad mood, but hesitates at the threshold, thinking about Donna's face after the exposé aired. How she seem to just…break.

"It is actually," she says, turning back around to face him. "It is my business. Donna's my best friend, and if you hurt her –"

"Hurt her?" Harvey's eyes narrow. He rises to his feet, seeming to suddenly fill the entire room. "She lied to me. About everything. I get to be angry about that."

"Not everything Donna does is about you," she says, trying to keep her voice mild. "She wasn't honest with any of us."

"So you're telling me you're completely okay with everything? The lies, the avoidance…"

Rachel's entire body stiffens at the accusation. "I'm not mad at her, if that's what you're getting at."

"Bullshit. She's your best friend but you had no idea. So either your relationship is not what you thought it was, or –"

"Or what?" she steps toward him, feeling like some last delicate thread inside of her is about to snap. "I'm a selfish piece of shit, same as you?"

Harvey blinks, pulling back slightly. He doesn't deny it though. How could he?

"When you love someone, you don't choose your own self-pity over your relationship," she says, her eyes riveted on his. "You let her explain herself. You talk things through. You make things right again."

"I –"

"No. You don't get to talk," she continues, helpless, and she knows he hears it, that note of hysteria in her voice. "You shoved every stupid problem in your life at her like she was meant to fix you. You showed up at her door unannounced, you called her in the middle of the night, you asked for more than you deserved and way more than you were ever willing to give yourself. And the worst part is she gave it to you, when most people wouldn't have anything left to give, she somehow found a way to give it." An unexpected burn of shame cascades through her, and she's not quite sure what to make of it. "Did you ever ask if she was okay? Did you even think to?"

Rather than being put off by her madness, Harvey presses closer. "No," he says. "I didn't." She feels his fingertips at her elbow, soft and comforting, and sees in his eyes not anger or surprise but horrible understanding. "Did you?"

Rachel freezes, feeling like he just kicked her in the chest. Slowly she shakes her head back and forth, the threat of tears pressing behind her eyes.

Harvey regards her for a moment, and then his grip on her arm tightens and he is pulling her into a hug.

"I know you think you should have done more," he says. "I know you feel guilty and inadequate. But you're right, when you love someone you don't give up because things are hard." He pulls back to look at her. "You fight with all you've got to make it right again."

Rachel nods, swiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Solidarity is the last things she expected from him, but somehow exactly what she needed. She looks into Harvey's face and feels a strange bond, as if their failure to Donna has become a silent thread fixing them to each other.

She doesn't know how to put this into words though, so instead she finds herself saying, "Thank you."

Harvey nods and for a long moment they just stand there, his body warm and steady next to hers, listening to the last, fervent verse of Mozart's requiem, and for the first time since being swept up into all this chaos Rachel feels like she's finally found some form of solid ground.

"Can I get your opinion on something?" Harvey asks after a while.

Rachel nods. "Of course."

He picks a folder up from the coffee table and offers it to her. U.S. Marine Corps is stamped to the top is large black letters. Typed below that is Officer Service Records, for official use only. Rachel opens the folder and sees a request for Jonathan's records under the Freedom of Information Act submitted by Assistant U.S. Attorney, Anita Gibbs. "Harvey…" she says warily.

"I know."

"How did you get this?"

He smiles at her. "I didn't steal it, if that's what you're thinking."

Rachel frowns, but decides not to press the subject. She sifts through the paperwork, finding that most of Jonathan's records are stamped 'classified'. Really, the only useful information is a chronological timeline of his deployment schedule. He spent a lot of time in the Middle East. She wonders how Donna coped, raising a child without her husband around all those years.

At the end of the file is Jonathan's course transcript from MIT. It's nothing she didn't already know. She's about to ask what the big reveal is, but stops suddenly when she sees his dates of attendance. "That can't be right," she says, glancing up at Harvey.

He doesn't make any comment, just seems to be waiting for her to work it out.

"Unless he didn't go to MIT…."

"That's what Anita thinks. But I checked the alumni database. He's on it."

"And Mike was in Harvard's database. That doesn't mean anything."

"There are pictures." He turns his laptop around and on it is an image of a group of people standing in front of a MIT conference banner. Jonathan is easy to find. He looks out of place among his suited colleagues – too tall, too serious, too handsome to partake in something as pedestrian as a group photograph.

Rachel shakes her head, perplexed. "He couldn't have been in two places at once."

"So what, then? His military records are forged? He can't have hacked into the Department of Defense. And what about this dishonorable discharge? What happened there?" Harvey runs a hand through his hair, clearly at a loss. "Who the fuck is this guy?"

Rachel can't help but wince.

His shoulders drop, his expression softening. "I'm sorry. It's just frustrating."

"No," she says, "you're right. We need answers and we're not going to find them in any of these boxes."

He seems to quietly recoil at the implication. "I can't keep pushing Donna."

"Donna's not the only one with answers."

Harvey straightens, immediately realizing where Rachel's going with this. "Jonathan?"

Rachel shrugs. "Why not?"

"Because I've tried that. Twice. It got me nowhere."

"No offense, but I can't see you and Jonathan having a genuine conversation without your burning desire to punch him in the face clouding your judgment."

For all Harvey tries to keep his face neutral, Rachel can see it. How much it hurts him that Donna had this other man in her life.

"You need someone to mediate," she continues. "Someone that can help you keep a level head."

"Mike won't go for it."

"Who said anything about Mike?"

Harvey considers her for a long moment, and she tries her best not to squirm under his scrutiny. Then finally, he nods. "I'll call for a car and meet you in the lobby in ten."