Fic: The Maelstrom-A Family Chronicle, Prologue
The Maelstrom - A Family Chronicle
By PaBurke
Distribution: ff.net and crossover bigbang
Rating: PG
Warnings: Characters that died long before, language
Pairing: Canon Alec/Rachael Berrisford, tiny bit Logan/Max UST and Ben B/Gem, Sam Carr/OC
Summary: The Berrisford Agenda could have ended a very different way.
Prologue: Family Matters
She sat in the chair normally reserved for privileged clients and friends and drank his port. Even being on the lam, his money bought certain creature comforts. She had made it easier and now she wanted something, something which he hadn’t known had interested her. “It has too much of him for you to keep and too much of her for you to use it to buy your freedom,” she said.
Robert Berrisford stared at the strange woman who had appeared knowing so much. She had known about the Manticore agent that had hurt his little girl. She had known all that they had done, both Robert and the agent. She had always known when Manticore had found his latest hideout and how to slip out of their grasp again. She talked him through the negotiations so that Manticore would walk away and he and his daughter would live. He wasn’t sure if he would still be alive without her. Rachael would be dead without her assistance. Robert was pretty sure that both his daughter and he would be in a much worse place if not for her help.
But he wasn’t sure that he trusted her with what his daughter would treasure. He knew how Manticore worked. It was entirely within the realm of possibilities that Manticore had sent another agent so that he would willingly surrender the baby without bloodshed, without killing it to keep it away from them. They would be interested in his daughter’s child because it was also a Manticore monster.
“I know the best place for the baby.”
The baby had survived Rachael’s coma. The Cesarean surgery had been completed this morning. If he opened his ears, he could hear the baby crying. The baby and the hormones had not woken his daughter, as the doctors had hoped. Robert knew that he could never keep the child. He was already thinking that the child had been as unreliable and untrustworthy as his father. That the child didn’t hold up its side of the bargain. Robert had only permitted the baby to stay in Rachael’s womb on the faint hope that she would awake. The child was born now and Rachael was still in a coma.
The child hadn’t helped Rachael.
Its father had hurt Rachael.
“You could consider it as payment for your debt to me,” the woman wheedled.
He did owe her, but why did this feel like it was too good to be true? “I want to see the back of your neck.”
The woman was surprised, but pleased. She knew what he was expecting to see. She promptly turned around and lifted her hair. Robert couldn’t see a barcode, not a hint of one. Could Manticore have sent a regular human to gain his trust? That wasn’t quite their style.
Then he decided that he didn’t care. “Take the boy,” he ordered the woman. It was part monster after all. If it had been a girl he might have considered raising it, but there was too much of its father in it for that.
She didn’t hesitate. She walked up the stairs to the guest room that was temporarily the nursery. Robert followed. She wrapped up the hours-old, unnamed boy and walked out the door, never looking back. Robert didn’t know how to contact her if he desired. Somehow he knew he would never see her again and he didn’t care to see the boy again. He was free of Manticore and now free of his debt to her. He had enough regrets centering around his precious daughter, he had no feeling left for the scrap of (human?) life in the girl’s arms.
spndaspndaspnda
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