AN: This whole ending section, tying up some loose emotional plot threads, basically wrote itself. It wasn't in my notes at all but then—as usual—I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with my brain going, 'psssttt...wanna add in this totally random extra chapter?'

Here is the result!


The next time Sadusky finds himself approaching the Gates house, a little over a week after Eleanor's unexpected entrance into the world, he is relieved to hear nothing but laughter. The loud, obnoxious kind that only comes from the later stages of a giggle fit and what sounds to be an over the top argument about bread making, interjected with barks of laughter and the mouth-full objections of Patrick.

Sadusky stops for a moment, just like he did last time, now wearing a tiny, loose smile that brightens the corners of his mouth. Each breath is train steam in the crisp January air and he's thankful for his old, crushed wool Baskerville cap. He savours the sound of this family's mirth, carefree and without fear, the way a blue jay is chattering on the eave high above him, the joy of two wrapped packages tucked under his arm.

This time, his knocking garners an instant response, no doorbell ringing required. Footsteps pound closer and there's a chorus of surprised exclamations.

It's Ben who swings it open, and his whole face widens in comic levels of shock when he sees who is standing on the doorstep.

Sadusky holds out the presents, rosy cheeked with glee at being able to catch the normally quick witted man off guard. "I heard there was a gift exchange this weekend. Happy new year!"

Ben's mouth works. "You…how…"

"Riley texted me about this little shindig a few days ago." Sadusky squints, his smile faltering, and tries to get a read on the cluster of faces now congregating behind Ben, sans Riley himself. "Am I late?"

"Late?" Ben pants out. "Are you kidding?"

And Ben tugs him into his arms, right then and there. It's a strange feeling, his first ever, real Ben Gates hug. He's not a back slapper like Patrick but his grip is strong and tight and he, like Abigail, has no use for polite embraces. Over the man's shoulder, Peter watches Emily start to sniffle, eyes swimming.

When Ben steps back, he's a tad flushed himself.

"Uh…" Peter looks between them. "Did I miss something? Is everyone okay?"

Abigail rescues him from the moment, as usual. She walks in from the living room to pat Sadusky's arm, looking tired but more relaxed than he's ever seen her. "Peter—this is the first time you've ever come to our house without being explicitly invited. You just…showed up, because you wanted to. We're proud."

Oh. Sadusky wonders at this fact, at the dawning realization that he never checked or asked permission first. You're getting too attached, Peter. It's going to cost you—or worse yet, them—one day.

But Emily takes his hand, squeezing it like an excited schoolgirl, and Peter's whole body melts into the arms they've all snaked around his back without him noticing. It's selfish, but even with the knowledge that Riley's mention of this wasn't technically an invitation, Peter can't bring himself to pull away and leave.

"There's plenty of food left so help yourself." Abigail sweeps him around the mismatched Christmas tree and into an armchair. She stuffs her hands in her pockets with a sly look at Patrick. "Though apparently my brown bread making skills aren't quite up to snuff."

"I never said that!" Patrick restarts his protests. "I was simply pointing out the differences between UK and German bread making techniques."

"Mhmm." Abigail winks at him, then hands a penguin shaped mug of hot cocoa to Peter. He sets his gifts under the tree. "I hear you like chocolate milk in yours?"

It's a question, with the way she's holding out a small carton. Sadusky smiles and takes it, so bowled over by their kindness that he almost has to look away. "Guilty as charged."

"We keep some on hand at all times," says Ben, "thanks to Riley."

Peter takes a sip of the frothy chocolate and glances around. "Where is Riley?"

Abigail and Ben trade a quick look. They're visibly exhausted, sporting the under eye bags chic to most first time parents, but they haven't lost their spark or ability to read each other's minds with a single gaze.

"Checking on Ellie's nap," Ben explains after a beat.

Sadusky catches the careful tone in an instant. "Is this a regular practice?"

Before Ben can answer, there's a distant wail from down the hall. A demonstration of that perfect, presentient ability of babies the world over to time their needs down to the second. Convenience be damned.

They wait it out for a minute, but the sound only mushroom clouds into a crying fit.

"Riley." Abigail darts over to place a hand on Ben's shoulder. "He'll need—"

"I'll go." Sadusky stands, setting his hot chocolate down next to a game of Thirteen Dead End Drive on the coffee table. After how hospitable they're all being, it's the least he can do.

"Thank you." And Ben looks it, his face twisted with concern. "He won't pick her up unless someone else is in the room."

Filing that interesting and worrisome piece of information into an overstuffed cabinet at the back of his mind, Sadusky hustles down the hall faster than he did the last time he was here. Despite this, once his feet go from hardwood to carpet, he stops. It's a habit based on experience, that rushing in never does any good, short of spooking whoever needs him in that moment. If he's honest, he needs that second to process the bizarre sight—

Riley is leaning over Ellie's crib, his own expression contorted in mounting distress, but his hands firmly at his sides. They've long since curled into fists. He won't even touch her, and something about the whole portrait is out of focus, wrong, like a developing photograph ruined by the light.

He speaks in a hushed, placating tone to Ellie, wriggling around in her crib, his voice edged with puddles of anxiety. Her arms flail in Riley's direction. Sadusky is baffled that he doesn't just reach in and pick her up, which surely would end this. Shifting on his feet, the hallway floorboards creak.

Riley's head whips up and he spots Sadusky, nearly crying with relief. Then he gingerly slides his hands over the railing to scoop Ellie out.

Finally.

"Hey, Sadusky," he spares a moment to greet over the racket, as if there's nothing unusual about refusing to pick up a baby without supervision.

"Hello, Riley." Peter waits for the little chin flick of permission and enters the room. Riley bounces the infant while she rests against his good shoulder. "Is she hungry? I can let Abigail know."

"Nah." Riley goes for nonchalant, but his words are shaky. "This isn't a hungry cry. She just had a bad dream or was lonely."

"Lonely, huh?"

Right as this leaves Sadusky's mouth, patronizing and skeptical, he's proven wrong. Sure enough, Ellie's minikin fists bunch up in Riley's oversized MIT sweater—the exact remedy to stop her crying in a flash. Her eyes are mostly closed, meaning it's her button nose that tells her who this is, buried against Riley's neck.

For a few minutes, there is only Riley dipping his knees and Sadusky by the door so Riley feels safe enough to keep doing it. Ellie hums her feelings on the matter but is soon lulled back into dream land, whatever that must look like for someone who's only had nine days breathing life on earth.

Something about this situation's sudden decrescendo sucks the wind straight out of Riley's sails. The quiet rushes back in and he lowers himself—also a shaky execution—into the rocking chair. He looks more fatigued than Ben.

"How are you doing with all this?" Sadusky asks softly. He leans his side against the changing table, the best angle for him to study Riley's face. "Must feel strange to have a baby in the house again."

"So far, Ellie has eighteen different cries or vocalizations," says Riley, like that's an acceptable answer to the question. It's a factual statement, no emotion whatsoever except perhaps a hint of personal pride. "And I can tell them all apart."

"That's…" Sadusky hesitates, a rare occurrence in his world. "Great. Some parents can barely manage it."

Riley is modest enough that he doesn't nod along but he eyes Sadusky with something appreciative.

"Does the sound of her crying bother you?"

Riley shrugs. "Crying babies bother everyone. And I don't mind helping out with her."

A presentient instinct of Sadusky's own keeps his lips closed, though he has a lot he'd like to say, mostly on the subject of therapy and traumatic memories and how history won't repeat itself, how all of those things tie together in a messy little bow. But something stops him.

It is then that he notices what he should have from the beginning—his eyes land on the scanner over Ellie's crib. Completely dark.

"I turned it off." Riley answers the unspoken question, and Sadusky's accompanying look of disbelief, with a smile. It's a longed for sight and it supercharges Sadusky, every last joint.

"What prompted you?"

Riley shifts Ellie down so she's on her back in his arms. "Ben and I had a talk about this kid, about…other stuff. As long as we're present, in the house, I'm not going to worry about her security. Once Ellie is old enough for a babysitter and we leave her for a few hours, then I'll turn it on."

Peter looks at the device, no lights blinking, to this young man who grew up far too fast and remained an innocent all in one.

He has the sudden vision of a cream pie, one piece stolen out of it but the whipped cream smoothed so it looks whole to the outside observer. Quaint and quantifiable to anyone who didn't scrape back the layers to see the hole underneath. How long would Riley have gone, aching inside, until he broke? How long before Ben took that clumsy knife of his unflagging hope and honour, digging down deep until he found the missing piece—and filled it? Sadusky is thankful that he'll never have to find out.

Just like they have filled his own heart, the chasm left by the loss of Katherine.

That messy bow takes shape in Sadusky's mind. He watches Riley peck Ellie's forehead and understands. "This scanner…it was never about an intruder, was it?"

Riley starts to rock, more for his own benefit than Ellie's. He doesn't look Sadusky in the eye, but he shakes his head in confirmation.

"Not just that, anyway."

Peter burns again, with the need to be a lock combination of safety for them all. He is the first line of defense for them, this gaggle of misfits and academics, and somehow Riley has come to believe in that enough to place his trust in them. Peter leans just a little bit more on the change table, dizzy when he puts it all together. "This is about her not having a fever spike like Layla did: the biometric scanner is for her."

Riley glances up at Sadusky from under his lashes. "Took Ben all of three days to figure that one out."

Peter can no longer deny the verdant, tender place in his heart with these peoples' names on it. An oasis that they have both given him and that he protects for them.

"I'll be right back. I have a special gift for you."

Riley half rises from his seat in alarm. He holds out Ellie. "Do you want to take her with you? Should I…?"

"No, Riley." Sadusky clasps his knee. "I trust you with her. You should too, alright?"

Riley doesn't verbally agree, though he does ease back down. Nervous, he keeps looking from the doorway to sleeping Ellie. When his eyes flit back to her, Peter sneakily takes his leave.

To no one's surprise, least of all Sadusky's, Ben is hovering out in the hallway. Just far enough that Riley won't hear or see him, close enough to eavesdrop. He's not quite wringing his hands like a nosy spinster but it's a near thing.

Peter ribs him fondly. "He's okay, Ben."

Ben is almost skittish with excitement, somehow managing to match Peter's low murmur. "Is he holding her?"

"All by himself."

Ben stares at Sadusky with awe, like he just handed him the cure for cancer free of charge. "I haven't been able to get him to do that yet and we've tried everything. Thank you, Peter!"

So saying, he immediately hugs Peter again for good measure, a hastier and lighter one this time around. When they part, Sadusky looks down to see the gift he brought for Riley in Ben's other hand. Something in his spirit shivers, the pieces of an optical illusion aligned perfectly to create a bigger picture.

"Thank the bullet proof glass."

Ben looks away from the nursery door to him, brow furrowed. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

Sadusky shakes himself. "Sorry, it's just…that moment was the first time I started rooting for you, when I saw the document casing full of bullet holes. You left it in the elevator."

Ben's confusion lasts a beat longer and then he flushes again. "Not my finest moment. The whole thing was supposed to go smoothly, you know."

"That doesn't reassure me," says Sadusky, drop dead serious. A cold sweat breaks out along his hairline. "If you hadn't gotten caught on tape, with the credit card, you'd all probably be dead by now."

The thought petrifies Sadusky more than he expects. He has a violent, unwelcome image of Ben on the floor of that elevator in a body bag, or worse yet he and Riley crashing in the van. A crumpled piece of wreckage on the side of the road.

Ben misses this moment of inner turmoil. "How do you figure that? If we'd left earlier, as planned, we'd have gotten away smoothly and back to my apartment in time. Much easier than you being involved."

A quick shadow passes over the man's face at this last bit and Peter's stomach winches. "Oh no, Ben. I would have gotten involved either way. And imagine if we hadn't discovered you were responsible for the theft. We would have had no reason to track you specifically."

The words are a fresh breeze to Sadusky's spirit, a conversation that has hounded at his steps, one he's put off for years. Ben's face ripples as he thinks this over.

"I never told you this." Peter breathes in through his nose to keep his heart rate down. "But we found out that some of Ian's people had hunted down where you were living and waited in ambush for you. When we showed up at your apartment, they promptly high tailed it. Though we may never know for sure—I suspect our involvement, so soon, is what kept them from shooting you and Riley that night."

"Not for lack of trying," Ben counters, bitterly.

"No," says Sadusky. "They certainly didn't make it easy for any of us."

Ben loses his colouring once it sinks in, that being caught on camera saved his life. Kept them from going back to the apartment where they would've been executed in cold blood. Caused him to meet Sadusky. Kept them all alive because Abigail was forced to make a deal with Ian and therefore gave them value until the end.

"I was a different person then," is all Ben says. He turns the present around in his hands.

"Yes, you were. You care more now about them in ways I'm just starting to scratch the surface of."

"It's like when we first met, I didn't see him, you know?" Ben's awe turns into something sacred, husky sounding. "Now he…he's…I love him more than I ever thought it was possible to love a person."

Peter accepts the gift, seeing the peeled strips of tape where he did a less than stellar job of wrapping it.

"And that," he says, "is why Riley is okay. Just don't stop telling him or you'll be getting stern phone calls from me."

Ben laughs, remembering at the last moment to keep quiet. "Deal."

When Sadusky returns, Riley is exactly where he left him, though his eyelids are heavy. He's in danger of following Eleanor's trek into sleep, the fingers of his left hand as dexterous in caressing her hair as they are with a keyboard. Peter drags over a toddler sized stool, intended for when Ellie gets older, and sits so he's a little below Riley's eye level.

Riley sees what's in his hand at once, naturally. "Is this present for me?"

"Of course." Peter smiles. "Just don't tell the others that you got a personal one."

"What else did you bring?" Riley starts the usual ritual of surgically peeling off the wrapping, using only his left since Ellie fits perfectly in the cradle of his right elbow. "Don't tell me it's more sweaters."

Sadusky shakes his head. "I gave them our old copy of Risk. Emily told me about how much you all love board games."

Riley's eyes dance with memory. "Did I ever tell you about the time me, Abigail, and Ben played an eight hour game of Monopoly in one sitting that ended in a hallway barricade and a handful of popcorn down Ben's shirt?"

Sadusky's mind blanks at the sheer chaos of that mental scene. Riley sees his expression and laughs.

"I want to say I'm surprised but…"

"But it's us," Riley finishes.

He lifts away the last chunk of polar bear wrapping paper to reveal a little booklet, with clear sleeves instead of pages. There's a simple tulip embossed on the leather cover, its leaves curling around the spine. It's not very thick, small enough to fit in a back pocket or that messenger bag Riley totes everywhere.

"Not very original," Peter offers, when Riley goes terribly quiet and won't look up. "And I know you keep albums on your phone nowadays, but I thought maybe this could be a way to take Eleanor with you, even when you're apart. There's lots of room for you to add new memories. A reminder that not every new life ends badly, that she's not going anywhere."

Riley flips open to the first page, where Sadusky has already inserted two photos back to back—one that Ben helped him track down amid Riley's meager possessions, a dog eared Polaroid of Layla taking her first steps. There's a blob of yellow in the top left corner, a finger, meaning Riley probably took it himself. The other depicts Riley sandwiched in between Ben and Abigail, worn and dirty outside Trinity Church right after they found the Templar treasure, but mid-laugh at something Ben said.

Riley swallows, louder even than Ellie's snuffled breathing. He's long since stopped rocking.

"Riley?" Peter fears suddenly that he overstepped. "If you don't like it or this is too painful, I apologize. Ben and I shouldn't have gone through your things. I can take it back—"

"That's what Ben said."

Sadusky halts his backpedaling. "I'm sorry?"

"Ben, he uh…" Riley touches Layla's face with his fingertips. "He told me that he's not going anywhere. Like it was a solemn oath or something, the white knight in department store jeans."

His snark lacks heat, all weak-kneed gratitude, a perfect echo of Peter's when he first arrived. He relates to the sentiment.

"I've never had anyone keep that promise, before Ben." At last, Riley looks at Sadusky, really looks at him, and just like that Sadusky can breathe properly again.

Forget attached. He knows in this moment, with such clarity it's like pure oxygen pumped straight into his bloodstream, that he would die for them. At the drop of a hat. No questions asked. It is a terrifying feeling but still Peter can't help but smile. These insane, soft people, with their bleeding hearts and lightning fast banter, have twined themselves around the fleshy parapets of his heart like the tulip leaves.

"It's amazing, Peter. Thank you."

Riley doesn't ask for a hug, not like Ben, but his left arm shifts forward, an opportunity for Peter to refuse it if he wants. An awful, familiar readiness to be rejected that Sadusky dispels at once, as soon as he gets his breath back from being sucker punched by this display of trust and initiative.

Sadusky shifts forward to gather Riley's bony torso to his chest. He cups the precious, tousled head just like Riley is cupping Ellie's. A timid hand buries itself in the back of his pullover. Riley carries the unique, second hand scent of baby and cinnamon rolls, probably from the ones he baked earlier.

"For you?" Peter whispers, releasing him shortly thereafter, knowing that this is a test and he can't hang on long. "Anything."

And he means it. He is cowed down to his marrow by how strongly he means it.

Ben 'conveniently' enters a few minutes later. They migrate to the living room, for the magi-like procession of gifts being passed around. Riley doesn't seem ready to let go of Ellie yet and they don't push it.

Peter is astonished that there are gifts for him too—the promised bundt cake mold (in the shape of a hand bell), a pair of slippers (Emily), a loaf of bannock bread (Patrick), and a free day pass to the Smithsonian archives for he and his granddaughter. Sadusky isn't sure how Ben and Abigail swung this last one, with all the red tape surrounding certain sensitive materials, but he's learned better by now and just accepts it.

As predicted, they all end up seated on the floor around the coffee table, arguing over the Risk board barely an hour in. Ben accuses Abigail of cheating and Emily throws her soldiers at Patrick after she catches him stealing game pieces.

Sadusky can't wait for his girls to meet them in person, to share this new world that has filled the void of his empty life.

And if Riley holds the baby for so long that they both doze off, Ellie on his chest, right there in the living room, and if Sadusky snaps a quick photo of it for the album when they're not looking, well.

Nobody has to know.


AN: Two fun facts: the hand bell bundt cake mold is a nod to the fact that I used to play hand bells, competitively. Our bell choir won most years, I'm proud to say.

Secondly, the Monopoly thing is actually based on a true story of a friend and I in fourth grade. We had an eight hour game that turned into a free-for-all when I stuffed some popcorn down his shirt and he barricaded me in the dining room. Good times...though I still have no idea who won!

Thanks for reading along. :)