Notes: This one is going to be on the shorter side, and will show Sharon just having the bestest, funnest week ever. This one was born out of discussions with SChimes and Force Unbroken, who shared my frustration that Sharon's threatening letters went nowhere last season and agreed that it was past time someone tried to kill her. :D

Chapter I

Friday

"Do you think we should move?"

Sharon turned her head towards him. He could tell from the way her lips were pressed into a thin, flat line that she was still uncomfortable and still in some pain, but she looked more puzzled than anything else. Rusty hoped that meant that the ice was helping. Or that the drugs had started working.

"Move?"

"Yeah," he said. "Like, live somewhere else?"

"Ah." Sharon lifted her hand. Rusty wasn't sure what stopped her, the sight of the brace on her wrist or the memory of the bandage on her forehead, but she grimaced as she became conscious of the unconscious gesture and slowly lowered her hand back to her lap. She was quiet a moment, then: "No."

"Are you sure?"

"Very."

"But, I—I mean..." He looked away, his hands clenching in his lap. He forced then to relax when his fingertips pressed into the tender skin on his palms, and tried not to wince. He didn't want her to worry about him, either. "That Wade guy, he tried to kill me here, okay? And now, this guy, he could've..."

Fear tasted sour and stale in his mouth, and he swallowed hard.

"Rusty." Sharon's voice was gentle. "Wade Weller knew where we lived because he followed you. David Gardner knew where I lived because I told him. We're as safe here as we would be anywhere."

"I know." He swallowed again. "I—I mean, I knew that."

It was just that... this guy had been seriously scary and he'd really hated her, and then there had been the gun... All of the fear that he hadn't had time to feel earlier was coiled around in his gut now. Part of it was pure selfishness—he needed Sharon. Like, he really needed her, and if he'd lost her... he didn't know what he would've done, but it made him shift anxiously just thinking about it.

"As soon as I'm allowed to hold a pen again," Sharon went on, "I'll make another donation to the building association. That should help smooth over any complaints the neighbors might make. We'll be fine."

She smiled a little as she said it, but Rusty shifted uncomfortably in his chair, guilt weighing down his stomach. No matter what she said, that part was his fault.

He wasn't sorry, either, but he hadn't meant for her to get hurt.

But he guessed that hurt was better than dead. Sharon hadn't let him look afterwards, but there had still been blood on the sidewalk when they'd finally left the police station, after they'd each had the world's longest talk with some guy named Elliot. Rusty was pretty sure that neither of them had been sure what to make of the other. Elliot was quiet, serious, kind of boring, and really into the rules. Rusty could see why Sharon liked him.

But he guessed that Sharon hadn't taken in any orphans while she worked with Elliot, because Elliot had seemed more incredulous than anything else. He'd asked three times if Rusty was Captain Raydor's foster son. The third time, Rusty had spelled out that he was Captain Raydor's former foster son who she was in the process of adopting and that had finally shut Elliot up, probably more out of surprise than anything else.

"Hey, Sharon?" Something else occurred to him then, and Rusty tried not to fidget. "I told that Elliot guy that you were getting a divorce. Was that supposed to be a secret?"

"No," she said. She pursed her lips. "Well... I would have preferred to keep it quiet until it was finalized, but word would have gotten around eventually, and I told several detectives myself."

"You did?"

She nodded. "After the break in. It came up."

Rusty tried not to shudder. As bad as today had been, that had been worse.

Sharon must've known what he was thinking, because her look turned soft. "Honey."

"I'm... it's fine, Sharon," he said. He couldn't help looking to where the TV used to stand. The top of the entertainment cabinet was bare now. His eyes strayed a little to the left. So was the wall behind Sharon's desk.

"I'm sorry I—"

"No." Her voice turned sharp, and she sat up a little straighter. "You absolutely did the right thing."

"He trashed the place."

"But he didn't kill you," Sharon said. "Which is what would've happened if you had tried to intervene. Are we clear?"

Throat tight, Rusty nodded.

Sharon gave him another searching look but relaxed, settling into the pillows at her back. She shifted her legs a moment later, wincing, and then she sat forward again, stretching to rub her knee. One of the ice packs—the blue one, the one she'd pressed to his face the night his father had hit him—slipped and fell to the floor. Rusty stood and picked it up, because he saw her legs move again like she was going to do it herself and that was, like, the opposite of resting.

She shook her head when he started to drape it across her knee again. With her good hand, she carefully worked free the one below her knee. "They're too warm now."

Rusty took the second ice pack from her hands. They weren't frozen anymore but they were still cool to the touch, and felt soothing against his torn hands. He held onto them for a few moments before he took them back to the freezer. "What do you want instead?" he asked, studying the contents of the freezer. "There's, like... peas?"

"That's enough for now."

He frowned. "I thought you were supposed to be icing it."

"On and off, Rusty," she said. "Every couple of hours."

"Are you sure?"

"This isn't the first time I've done this."

That made his stomach do an anxious little flip, because... nothing could happen to Sharon, okay? He couldn't deal with that.

Slowly, Rusty shut the freezer door. "Do you need anything else?"

"I'm all right, thank you."

Reluctantly, he returned to the living room and settled himself in his chair facing her. She gave him a wan smile that he thought was supposed to reassure him. It didn't really.

Her expression turned slowly more thoughtful as they sat there in silence. "Rusty," she said quietly. "Do you feel unsafe here?"

"What?"

"Was that what you were asking before?" she said. "When you brought up the idea of moving?"

He shook his head before she could get the wrong idea. "No. It wasn't that."

She sized him up, trying to decide if he was telling her the whole truth or not.

"I don't want to move, Sharon."

That was the last thing that he wanted. This place had become home, and though he knew that he would have to leave eventually—he hadn't decided yet, whether he wanted to stay in LA for college or not, but even if he did, he couldn't live with Sharon forever—but he like knowing that she would always let him come back here. He liked knowing that she would always be here.

"It's just that..." Rusty looked away. "He almost killed you."

His voice almost broke at the end there, but he bit down hard on the inside of his lip and held himself together.

"He didn't," she said firmly. "And now he's dead and I am fine." She paused. "Relatively speaking."

"I—I know."

"I'm sorry to ask," she said. "But I'm not supposed to drive for a few days, so if you wouldn't mind..."

"It's fine," he said. "I can take you to work again. I don't care."

"FID has until Monday night to finish their investigation so it might be Tuesday before I get back to work." She gave him an apologetic look. "I know this wasn't how you planned on spending your first few weeks of vacation."

"I don't care, Sharon," he repeated. "Really. I don't."

"And... my car is supposed to be ready to pick up tomorrow." Her hand made it only halfway to her forehead this time before she caught herself.

"I can go get it." He'd given her a hard time about the car earlier. He wouldn't have, if he'd known. At her look, he added, "I'll take the bus there. I'll be careful, Sharon, I swear."

She pursed her lips, head tilting in thought, and then she shook her head. "Lieutenant Flynn owes me a favor," she said. "I'll see what he's doing tomorrow. The two of you can go together. Drive carefully."

She added the last with an extremely pointed look, and Rusty tried not to sigh. "Sharon... I really don't mind, okay? I'm just... glad you're all right."

"So am I." She looked at him, her head tilting. "I never thanked you, did I?"

Rusty shook his head. It had been more unhappy lecturing than thanking, really, but between the ringing in his ears from standing so close to the gunfire and being distracted by the fact that Sharon's face had been half covered in blood, he hadn't heard most of it.

"I stand by what I said earlier," she told him, her face settling into the same unhappy expression she'd worn earlier.

"I know."

"But... thank you." More sternly, she added, "Never do anything like that again. Ever. I mean it, Rusty."

He shrugged. Joking about the papers she'd had him fill out probably wouldn't go over well, so he went with, "It was my turn."

"That's not how this works." Sharon was unimpressed. "You don't get a turn. Let me see your hands."

Okay, Sharon.

But he didn't want to argue with her, not now. Right now, not ever. Dutifully, he went and held up his hands. Sharon cradled one between both of hers, the fingertips of her uninjured hand gentle as she rubbed his fingers between hers, carefully avoiding the abrasions on his palms. "You should put something on that."

"I will," he promised her. "Later. Soon."

It wasn't like he'd never skinned his palms and knees before, but he was starting to realize that she felt guilty too.

Which was ridiculous because it wasn't like she'd wanted some psycho to try and kill her, and it wasn't like he'd actually gotten hurt, and it had been all her stuff that had been destroyed. And maybe he'd been more terrified than he was willing to admit to her, but that wasn't her fault, either.

It wasn't like he was real bloodthirsty, either, but Rusty wasn't too sorry that the guy was dead.

"I don't know about you." Sharon's voice broke into his thoughts. "But I'm getting hungry. What do you say we order some dinner?"

They settled on pizza in the end. Sharon didn't feel up to leaving the house, and Rusty was either unwilling to leave her, afraid to go out alone, or some combination of both. They would talk about that tomorrow, maybe, or the day after, but she wasn't keen on letting him out of her sight at the moment, either.

She asked for extra cheese, then extra sauce, then, a moment later, extra pepperoni for Rusty's half and extra mushrooms for herself, and inquired if they had any desserts. She cringed inwardly at the price the employee quoted at her from the other end of the phone. It was more than she usually would've spent on pizza of all things, especially when she factored in the tip, especially when she thought of all the things that she was going to have to repair or replace, but she thanked the person on the other end of the phone and hung up without changing her mind.

Rusty's expression was priceless, and she felt a real smile on her face for the first time in hours. Pizza wasn't her first choice when she was looking to indulge in something, but it was something that they could both agree on and it was a bad idea to mix her painkillers with alcohol.

She needed Rusty to help her to the table. She'd been given a cane instead of crutches because of her wrist and though she could stand without the leg buckling beneath her, it hurt less to let Rusty support her with an arm beneath her shoulders. She propped her leg up on the chair beside her, and Rusty brought her a pillow to slide beneath it.

He asked her at least half a dozen times before the pizza arrived if she needed anything else.

Once the table was set and the pizza had come, Sharon was grateful for the splurge. Sitting down to eat dinner with her son was the sort of normalcy that she had been missing from her life this past week, and doing so tonight would make her feel better than anything else.

At least the disruption of their normal routine had only lasted for a week this time, she told herself, and helped herself to a slice. "We can watch a movie after dinner, if you'd like."

Rusty gave her a sideways glance as he took two slices. "Uh..."

He was probably worrying that she'd hit her head hard enough to forget they no longer had a TV. Fantastic.

"You still have your laptop, don't you?"

"Uh... yeah," he said. "But, like... it's really your laptop, and if you need it back now that you, uh... don't have one anymore?"

She hummed. "So that way you get the new one, you mean?" She thought she saw him try not to smile, and it lightened her heart a little. "I suppose we could call it a graduation present."

"What?" Rusty's head came up. "No, that's not why I—Sharon..."

"Pick out the one you want," she said. "We'll order it tomorrow. The TV, too, if you don't mind sitting around the house next week waiting for the delivery. I know I promised you we'd go buy a new one tomorrow, but it'll be awhile before I feel up to walking around the mall, I think."

Rusty gave her an unmistakably guilty look. Sharon tried not to sigh. She wasn't sure whether he was apologizing for not defending her property, an idea that gave her heart palpitations if she thought on it too long because Gardner's only aim had been to hurt her. He wouldn't have hesitated to kill anyone he found in her home.

She would replace the TV and have her posters re-framed. She would buy new curtains. She didn't care about any of that, as long as she wouldn't be burying him. Those few minutes, when she hadn't known... She was trying not to think about that.

Or he was upset that she'd been hurt. Sharon reached down to rub her knee. It ached, and it would ache more in the morning, but there was nothing to forgive there, either.

She lay down on the couch after dinner, making herself as comfortable as she could be while flat on her back with one pillow beneath her legs and the stupid bag of peas held between her knees while she waited for Rusty to haul his laptop and speakers and all their assorted cords into the living room.

He set the laptop on the coffee table and stood there for a moment, watching her. When she lifted an eyebrow, he rocked forward on his feet, his mouth opening. Then he thought better of whatever he'd been about to say and turned around, taking one of the cords with him as he went towards the wall. Sharon tried not to roll her eyes.

"Hey, Sharon?"

She strained to lift her neck enough to see over the coffee table, watching Rusty as he crouched down near the outlet. "Yes?"

"Who's Ally?"

Someone she didn't want to think about at the moment. Sharon let her head drop down onto the pillow and closed her eyes.

"Sharon?" When she opened her eyes, it was to find Rusty staring at her worriedly. "I—I'm sorry, I just heard you talking you talking to that guy. Elliot. You seemed kind of... upset."

"Yes," she said, and sighed. "It's a very long story."

"And it's none of my business?" he finished, already sounding resigned to it. He came and settled himself on the floor in front of her, his back pressed up against the couch. It was the easiest way for them to both see the smaller screen.

Sharon tried to resist the urge to reach out and smooth his hair. "Not tonight, it's not," she agreed. "Ask me again tomorrow."

"Really?" He craned his neck backwards. "You're actually going to tell me?"

"This time." She figured he had the right to know why he'd been put in danger twice in a week. She felt a little guilty too.

He noticed when she shivered. "Do you want a blanket or something?"

"You don't—" But he was already standing. "Thank you," she said instead, and carefully pushed herself up.

She needed his help in the end to get the blanket tucked around her legs. She couldn't lean forward all the way without feeling the muscles in her knee pull and for all that she knew she was lucky to have limped away with relatively minor injuries, that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

"Do you need... anything?"

"I'm fine," she said, and motioned him back around. "If you'd pick something we'll both enjoy, I'd appreciate that."

She thought he was turning around. When he turned towards her instead and bent down, he caught her by surprise, and his arms were already around her neck before hers started moving. It wasn't a comfortable way to hug, with him standing over her and her not able to move quite as much as she would have liked, but it was a hug, and they didn't do that as often as she would have liked.

Usually, only when something had scared him.

"I'm okay," she murmured, slowly tightening her arms around his shoulders. "Rusty... I'm okay."

He mumbled something into her hair and held on a little tighter.

Closing her eyes, Sharon smiled. "I love you too."