It didn't feel right to leave now, but after he'd essentially made it clear that he did not trust Danielle in the least, Thomas didn't think he had any right to refuse her request. So he made his way to the door, the tools to destroy her life heavy in his hands.

"Wait a second," Danielle said just as he reached for the door handle.

He turned around immediately. "Yes?"

"What… what are we going to do about Viktor?"

Thomas' shoulder slumped. "There's nothing we can do for now."

"I'm sorry. I really am," she said.

He wanted to tell her that he knew, and that he believed that part at least, but he didn't see the point. She wouldn't believe him. "I'll see you on set, Miss Allen."

And with that, he opened the door and left her apartment.

The second the door closed behind Hunt, Danielle threw herself onto her bed and buried her head in a pillow. She couldn't believe what she had just done. She'd given him – Thomas fucking Hunt, the man she was convinced hated her guts, even more so now than ever before – evidence of the worst thing she had ever done.

He'd known of it all along, of course, and though he hadn't had anything to do with covering it up, he'd certainly never shown any inclination of wanting to go public with it. But he'd also never had any proof before. Now that he did, who knew what he'd do with it?

Of course, the deal they'd struck was clear – if he did release it, she'd release what she had on him. But what she had on him would potentially cost him his job at the university, and perhaps mean he'd no longer be respected by most people in the industry. What he had on her now, however, would most certainly land her in prison.

But what was much worse than this fear – because, realistically, Danielle knew Hunt wasn't half as much of an asshole as he wanted people to believe he was – was the sting of realising just how much he mistrusted her. She'd thought he'd believed her when she told him she never wanted this to happen, but then he'd gone and accused her of being the type of person who would resort to blackmail and extortion.

It shouldn't have surprised her, really. She knew how it didn't look good for her that she'd kept all these photos of events that, for the most part, weren't even important memories. She took the flash drive out of her pocket and stared at it with contempt. God, if only she wasn't such a wimp. She should have never kept any of the photos. She should have just destroyed every single one of them.

Well, maybe not every one. She let out a long sigh, then got up to grab her laptop from the coffee table. She plugged the flash drive back in and opened up the folder she'd shown Thomas before. He hadn't even got to see all of the photos before she'd made him leave. There was one more in that folder, and it was her absolute favourite.

It wasn't anything special, really, and it was definitely not one Viktor could have used against them in any way. It was simply the two of them, acting out a scene to figure out just how they wanted it to feel. They'd had a disagreement about it earlier that day – which had, surprisingly, not turned into a shouting match – and decided they would just have to see which version felt right. Danielle had to concede, in the end, that Hunt had been right. But, for once, he hadn't ridiculed her but instead commended her for the idea to see which version was the right one rather than just talk in circles.

She sighed again. There had been a time, albeit short-lived, when she and Hunt had almost had something like a friendship. And then, all of a sudden, everything had gone wrong again. She'd often wondered what she had done to lose his respect, and sometimes she had almost started to believe that he'd only been nice for the sake of the film, but she knew that couldn't have been it. Or, at least, she hoped.

Not that it mattered now. Whatever could have been salvaged of that almost-friendship had been destroyed now, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Not yet, anyway. She would find a way to fix things. But, first, there was something else she had to do. For herself as much as everyone else whose pictures were on that flash drive.

She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she could really do it. She thought of the two rooms in the basement that held dozens of boxes filled with things she knew she'd never need again, but could never bring herself to throw away. She thought of the wooden chest back at her parents' house that still stood in her old room, holding all her diaries from when she first started keeping one at five to when she moved out. If she did this, maybe those could be next.

Her mind made up, she closed the photo of her and Hunt, and looked for the software Dean had installed on the flash drive for her, in case she ever wanted to get rid of everything. To wipe the entire thing, permanently, with no way of ever recovering the files. Once she found it, she hesitated for another moment, then went back to the Centaurus Lost folder. She made a copy of the last image she'd looked at, her favourite one, then considered making copies of all the other photos she had of Hunt – the ones that could actually be used against him. After all, he did have something to use against her, too.

But she decided not to. Hunt may not have trusted her, and probably for good reason, but she knew that she would have never used it anyway. So she wiped the entire drive, keeping only that one photo, and when it was done, she was surprised to find she didn't feel any different.