The months passed slowly, marked mostly by the gradual opening of Haeun's eyes to the grim reality of her situation.

She felt like she was being watched every second. Every arrest, every debriefing, she could feel the eyes of some looming shadow on her. Some nights, she found herself sitting up in bed, gasping for breath and shaking, searching the dark room frantically for...she was never sure what, or who. The dreams always left her feeling guilty and paranoid, but there would never be anything there when she woke up.

Four children stared at her in her dreams, accusing, angry, until she wanted to scream I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

If possible, the days were worse. She dreaded going in to work - what would she have to do today to stay safe? Whose wellbeing would she exchange for her own? She began to hate herself more and more every time she didn't speak up when she felt something unjust was going on.

Something unjust always seemed to be going on.

There was the occasional bright spot - her squadmates, for instance. she'd gotten to know them over the last few months, and they were well on their way to being...well, somewhat friends. She understood them better now, in a way. Their quirky, laid-back manner made more sense with her new experience redefining it. The jokes were now a distraction for her, the little moments of offbeat goofing or casual conversation making her feel more human than anything else did. She felt a strange sort of gratitude when they snuck up on her or or used her pens to make miniature crossbows for epic office supply battles.

At the back of her mind was a worry, always. Trust no one, no one at all, ever. Not even her squadmates. Especially her squadmates.

Seungri made good on his promise that day, that horrible day. He treated Haeun to dinner with the understanding that she'd treat him next time. She didn't think there would be a next time at first. She was almost sure that she'd go home, not sleep, and turn in her badge in the morning. She didn't want to be a part of this, didn't ever want to look the other way while others suffered because of the government, because of the Peacekeepers...because of her.

Seungri's words echoed in her head. 'The ones that they believe are the only ones I ever see again.'

She went into work the next day. She smiled, she greeted everyone, she checked her email. When Senior Officer Choi hid under her desk, she nudged him in the stomach with her foot and told the chief she hadn't seen him. She had lunch with Jiyong and Daesung, and they laughed at her story about Seungri failing entirely at picking up the waitress the night before. She snuck up on Youngbae twice, because he'd really almost given her a heart attack that first day, and he deserved it. The shift ended, and she invited Seungri out for Mexican. He was terrible at picking up that waitress, too, and Haeun decided to keep up a tally, just to annoy him.

As time wore on, she pretended that she didn't notice the way they only started to warm up to her once it became apparent that she was going to stick around, as though they'd expected everything that had gone down that first day, and they hadn't expected her to come out the other side intact. She also pretended she didn't notice that they only warmed up to a point. There was never any open talk about what had happened, but there was a feeling of being among allies, with a heavy overtone of 'don't trust anyone'.

Haeun got it, because she still didn't trust them, either.

The chief knew something. It felt like he tested her sometimes. He sent her to pick up more "rebels", some children even younger than the first ones, some homeless people, many wounded in some way. Once, notable, an elderly man who was quite insane. She was tasked with confiscating books and music and movies, pamphlets and artwork and all manner of things. She broke up peaceful demonstrations, arrested students sitting quietly on a diner floor. Every time, she came back to the squad room after giving her report, and the chief would ask how it went.

"Fine," she said each time. "I'm learning a lot."

She didn't know if he understood what she was trying to say, but he'd smiled and nodded and she thought he might. Once, she answered, "it gets easier every day," and he flinched a little.

She should've felt bad, but she didn't.

Seungri was her greatest ally now. The two of them never discuss anything that was said in that closet on her first day, and in the beginning she was nearly convinced he was going to pretend that day had never happened at all.

Slowly, though, she began to be able to decipher his expressions and the meanings behind his words. The way he grinned at her over a perp's head, and how it meant "I don't want to do this, either." Or when he shoved at her shoulder before a debriefing, as if to encourage her. It always calmed her, like it had that first day, but now she held on to that calm, used it as a shield against the fear and uncertainty.

Every day, Haeun looked around at the suspects she brought in, the paraphernalia she confiscated, the rallies she broke up, and she thought, "none of this is right, someone should do something - why doesn't someone do something?" But no one did anything, and the days melted together into a long succession of fear and self-loathing, until finally, something changed.

Haeun's probationary period ended.

She turned down the option of a formal pinning ceremony, citing not wanting to waste government funds and people's time on something she could do herself. In reality, she wasn't sure should could have stomached it. Either way, the chief nodded, handing her the box with her new badge in it, and clasped her shoulder warmly.

Youngbae came to her with a different box - this one full of cupcakes - and a grin.

"We heard you didn't want a fuss," he said, "so we decided to make a fuss."

Haeun laughed, because that sounded like Seungri's kind of reasoning - there was nothing her partner liked more than creating a fuss, even if it wasn't centered around him.

Said partner beamed proudly at her over his cupcake as soon as she sat down at her desk across from him. "You feeling all official now, New Girl?"

Haeun glanced up at him briefly before her gaze returned to the shiny new badge in her hand. "No more official than yesterday."

"Feel it or not, the PPD really owns your now," Seunghyun remarked from his desk, where he was meticulously arranging his cupcake hoard into the shape of a microphone. As he held one up to inspect it, Haeun suddenly realized that cupcakes looked a bit like little mushroom clouds. Cringing, she pulled the bottom off hers, stuck it on top, and bit into it like a sandwich.

"What about the rest of me?" she asked mildly, used to bantering with the Senior Officer by now.

"The individual shares of the rest of you were all bought up by an anonymous collective of woodland animals," he replied nonsensically, the icing off of one cupcake. "You'd better take care of it, or you'll lose your investors."

"Oh," Jiyong said snidely, snatching away two of Seunghyun's treats, "like you take care of yours?"

"I," Seunghyun replied, unperturbed, "am a privately owned business." He moved the rest of his collection out of Jiyong's reach and into his top drawer for safekeeping. "I am not subject to the demands of investors."

Haeun watched Jiyong's nose wrinkle a bit and stuffed the rest of her cucake into to avoid laughing.

"But hyung," Daesung piped up, "even privately owned businesses have to maintain standards of health and safety!"

"Let me worry about my health," Seunghyun picked up his partner's handoff, "or you'll need to start worrying about your safety."

"Hyuuung!" Daesung whined, bottom lip sticking out. "If you say things like that too often, I might start to believe them!"

"Good," Seunghyun said tartly.

Daesung's widened his eyes dramatically. "But hyuuuuuung!"

Jiyong cut in then, probably because he knew as well as the rest of them that if he let it continue, those two would end up actually making him laugh, thus ruining any chances he had at being stern and commanding. He smiled in an extremely pleasant manner, and Haeun scooted a bit further away in self-defense.

"Hyung," he said, his smile never once dimming, "if you aren't careful, you'll and up on dietary restriction again."

Seunghyun scowled. "Which of us is the hyung here, Jiyong-ah?"

"Sometimes," the younger man replied, still smiling, "it's really hard to tell, isn't it, hyung?"

Seunghyun stuck out his icing-coated tongue, and Jiyong rolled his eyes.

Later, Haeun would look back on this fondly, if not a little bittersweetly, wishing she'd appreciated it more. In the moment, though, she simply sighed, finished her second cupcake, and pinned her shiny new badge to her uniform. It felt heavy with the weight of her transgressions already. What would she be made to do in the name of the Greater Good because of that badge, she wondered...

As if on cue, the chief stuck his head out of his office. "All cars at Central Primary School - there's been an explosion. You're all on crowd control and dispersement."

As everyone all leapt up to head for the door, the chief called out again. "Wait! Seungri-ya, Haeun-ah, you two help forensics process the scene!"

The two of them paused, looking back at Dongwook in bewilderment. The PPD was mostly tasked with dealing directly with the public...so why on earth would they be needed to help forensics? Neither of them was even trained for anything beyond basic crime scene preservation.

"Okay, Chief," Seungri said slowly. He exchanged a glance with Jiyong, who gave him a little one-shouldered shrug, then looked to Haeun with an eyebrow raised. "Shall we?"

She nodded, anxiety and paranoia bubbling up once again.

What the hell was going on?

The scene was utter chaos.

Parents and spectators crowded the school gates, clamoring with questions and shouting names, looking for this student or that. Several officers were already setting up barricades - PPD officers from other precincts - and talking the crowd down. They pointed across the gym field, and when Haeun squinted in that direction, she could see where the teachers had gathered their students per the evacuation plan. It was hard to see them clearly through the smoke, but surely there should've been more than those few classes...

The building itself had once been a lovely, three-story building of brick and wrought iron, picturesque as could be with its white-framed windows and climbing vines. It was still smoldering when they'd arrived, a good half of it reduced to rubble, strewn out across the bus lot a ridiculous distance away. From where she stood, Haeun could already see a small body, half-buried, the singed and tattered hem of a uniform skirt fluttering in the breeze.

"Breathe," Seungri cautioned as her head began to spin, his hand at her elbow. "Just remember to breathe."

Breathing wasn't the problem, she wanted to say. At the moment, she was more worried about being sick. She swallowed back the bile, though, accepting a mask to protect herself from the smoke, and squared her shoulders. Her new badge glinted in the sunlight. She ignored it and began to pick her way through the wreckage after her partner.

"-an accident caused by a leaking gas main," the Peacekeepers PR people are chiming as they pass by.

Icy fingers of dread crawled up her spine, and she shuddered.

The forensics officer snapping pictures of the body Haeun had spotted paused when the pair approached. Minzy, she thought the other woman's name was. She had started the same week Haeun had, and the team she was on was the best, or so they claimed. The younger woman looked tired, and Haeun couldn't blame her.

"We're supposed to assist forensics," Seungri said. "What do you need?"

"Paper retrieval," she answered distractedly, waving at her unit leader across the lot and signalling something. "Collect from the point of origin and spiral outward. Photos first, number each bag and flag the spot."

CL, Minzy's unit leader, sidled up to the two PPD officers with two thin rectangles - cameras, like the ones they trained people in using at the academy - and two duffle bags ostensibly full of flags and evidence bags.

Seungri nodded and gestured for Haeun to follow him.

Paper was scattered everywhere, starting at the point of origin and moving outward. They were scraps, really - most of whatever they'd been had been burned away - and Haeun dutifully began to snap pictures, collect the crumbling pages, and flag the spots the'd been found in.

"This wasn't the library," Seungri said after a quiet moment.

She nodded. It looked, to her, like someone had set off the explosion from beneath a stack of books, but she couldn't imagine why anyone would do something like...

Haeun stared at what she'd just picked up.

It was a page from a book, mostly incinerated, like all the others. This caught her eye, though. This, unlike the others, was still legible, and in the middle of the remains of the page was an underlined section of text, glaring up at her like a message from God.

The phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider 'and that someone is me'.

Oh, she thought. Oh, no.

It couldn't be what she was thinking, though. It just couldn't. There was no way.

"You doing okay, New Girl?" Seungri was watching her with a false smile and warning eyes.

"Yeah," she replied, her voice seeming to come from a long way away, too nonchalant to be believed. A habit, she realized, because being unhappy or upset about something means being suspicious. She had to protect herself first, right? She couldn't let on that she knew everything was ed up, or they'd strap her down and light her up again. She had to look out for herself.

'Someone ought to do something....and that someone is me....'

Haeun looked back to where the little girl's corpse was finally being unearthed to the screams of one of the parents, devestated and beyong grief, and something inside her snapped. Deftly, she folded the page up and, instead of bagging it, slid it under the bag and up her sleeve. Heart pounding, she held her breath for a second, waiting for the moment that faceless shadow leapt out to drag her away, never to be seen again.

Nothing happened, and she breathed again.

"It's just very unfortunate," she continued, looking over at Seungri. His eyes were on the empty evidence bag that Haeun didn't number, but stuffed in the duffle. "All these children, I mean. It's a terrible mistake."

"Mistake?" She couldn't tell what he was feeling from his voice (they were recording, always recording, for the safety of the public, of course, not ever because they were being watched, that would be ridiculous), but she thought she saw his eyes flick to where the parents were shoving at the barricade, trying desparately to reach their children.

"Accident," she pretended to correct. "A terrible accident."

"Right." He went back to his own tasks, slower, distracted, and Haeun sighed.

As she went about collecting the rest of the papers, she wondered why. Why so flashy, so obvious? Why so much overkill? Why had this been handled with such lethal force? She felt the illicit page rustle a bit against her arm as she spotted a piece of a book cover. Illegal, she filed away. Cause for search and seizure, of course. But this hadn't been a confiscation. It hadn't been an accident. It hadn't been a gas main or a rebel strike or whatever they were going to try to sell it as.

This was an execution, Haeun thought. She didn't know why, but she knew that's what had happened.

This was murder.

"Have you lost your mind?"

Haeun sighed, gazing at the shelves of cleaning supplies. "This closet is a dead zone, isn't it? They can't monitor us in here."

Seungri threw his hands up. "Are you really concerned about that right now? Or do you wanna talk about how you retained evidence that was supposed to be bagged?"

"I don't know what you mean," you replied easily.

"Stress," Seungri groaned, his face in his hands. "I just...I'm...stress. So many stress."

"...what?"

"You're trouble," he continued as though he hadn't heard you. "You're instant trouble. I should've known."

"Seungri-ya..."

"You're like a black hole of reason. You think too much."

"That doesn't even make sense-"

"Why can't I ever get a partner that doesn't start thinking?"

You frown. "How many partners have you had?"

"You're going to do something ridiculous and idealistic and brave and then I'll never see you again and I'll have to break in a new partner and you'd just learned how I like my coffee..."

"Yeah, no more of that for you," Haeun muttered, leaning back against the wall beside the mops and crossing her arms.

He looked up at her finally, grim and sad. "Don't do it. Whatever it is you're thinking of doing. Just don't, okay?"

Again, she replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You can talk here," Seungri pointed out irritably. "No need to-" He stopped, staring at her, then let the corner of his mouth twitch into a self-depricating grin. "You don't trust me."

It wasn't a question, and she didn't answer it.

"Good," he said softly. "That's good."

The pair stared at each other for a long moment. Then he nodded, stretched, and went to open the door.

"Why did you warn me?" Haeun asked suddenly. "Before, that first day?"

Seungri stopped, hand on the doorknob, and tilted his head as he considered the question.

"Because," he said finally, not giving her so much as a glance, "you looked like someone who knew how to make good coffee."

He left her there amongst the buckets and brooms with words that sounded too much like a goodbye, her fingers pressed against the dry crinkle of the illegal paper in her sleeve.

She still didn't know exactly what she was going to do, but no matter how many warning Seungri gave her, she knew that someone had to do something, and at the moment, it seemed as though there was no one to do it but her.

(A/N - The quote is from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. I highly recommend it!)