Fic: Of Fear and Longing
Title: Of Fear and Longing
Author: reve_silencieux
Rating: PG
Pairing: Neal/Sara
Spoilers: Season 4
Word Count: 2,562
Beta: sapphire2309
Summary: Even Sara will admit she's not the maternal type, but it's Neal who reminds her that she has nothing to worry about.
Series: A Time and a Place for Everything
Author's Note: This is part of my series that started with An Ocean of Denial.
Sara flipped the pages carefully, fingers ghosting over the neatly written notes, lips trembling. She wiped away a tear that in her mind did not exist. Damn hormones. She told herself she wouldn’t cry over this.
Her eyes stopped at the photo of her mother, exhausted but smiling, holding Sara in her arms, not even an hour old. The next page showed her father beaming as he held her. Sara, on the other hand, looked quite irritated and looked ready to start screaming. Neal would say she was just showing her true personality.
The photo beneath it made her heart stop. There was Emily, just three years old, grinning up at the camera as she was holding her baby sister with her father’s help. She traced the smile on her face and nearly lost it. So young and innocent, knowing nothing of what was to come, and how the happy family would be torn apart. Turning the page quickly, Sara wondered why exactly she was torturing herself. There was nothing to be gleaned from these old photos and memories.
Her baby book did not hold the answers to the universe or how she was supposed to be a nurturing mother to her child.
It wasn’t that she thought herself to be uncaring or completely cold hearted, but she wouldn’t deny that she was lacking the maternal instinct. She was told that when you held your child for the first time, everything changed. Well, she sure hoped that was the case, because she didn’t have anyone to help or guide her. It was partly why she had gone looking for her baby book. A stack of photo albums sat next to her, but she was afraid to open them now. Too many happy memories of a childhood that had started out normal, but had been crushed by something she still had no answers to.
Sara knew she wasn’t alone, but neither she nor Neal had their parents around to help them. Peter and Elizabeth were great friends and would no doubt be very supportive, but they had no children themselves. June was the closest mother figure she could go to, but even that felt a little weird.
Neal tried to put on a good front, always one to keep a smile on his face and his emotions hidden away, but she knew he was scared himself. He was afraid of becoming his father; of somehow screwing it up and losing even more family. Of the two of them though, Sara knew that it would come easiest to him, he was a natural parent. She was just plain clueless. Or at least that’s how it felt.
It hadn’t felt real until that morning when she felt the first flutter in her stomach. She’d paused at work, surprised and a bit confused before she realized that yes, there was a baby growing in her. Sara had been lucky so far, only a few bouts of morning sickness and general tiredness. So it had been hard to believe, even after sitting on the cold bathroom tile with Neal, waiting for the plus sign to appear on the test, or being probed at the doctor’s office.
However, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d be waddling around and a few short months later she’d be holding her own screaming baby. Three a.m. morning feedings and dirty diapers were her future. She just didn’t know how she was going to handle it.
Oh, it wasn’t quite a surprise, the pregnancy. They had talked about it in a general sense before they even got married. Even earlier, if you counted their talk on top of the Empire State Building, but it had been a fairytale then, something that was never going to happen.
Only it had happened. Just maybe a little too soon for her taste.
And now she was flailing. By all means, she had a good life. She had a job that paid well, a lovely house in Brooklyn, which might not be Westchester, but it was nice enough, and a husband who, despite his dubious past, loved her and would do anything for her. It was the life every girl dreamed of, only she wasn’t that little girl anymore. She’d grown up way too soon and unfortunately learned the hard lessons of life, having seen the worst of people and what they were capable of. Neal, himself, had hurt her and there would always be a seed of doubt in the back of her mind wondering if this would last.
Neal had wanted this life with Kate, had seen it as his last big score, but had lost the chance. Was the domestic life really what he wanted? Mozzie still ranted and raved about Neal being a turncoat and tried to tempt him with jobs, but so far Neal had resisted. Personally, Sara thought leaving the loft had been the hardest thing for Neal. And who could blame him? A ten million dollar view of Manhattan was hard to give up. They could have stayed in the city after they married, but agreed to find a house instead.
This had been a good thing, seeing as one year later they were preparing a nursery. They’d had renovations done as soon as they moved in, which hadn’t made for a happy beginning to their marriage, dealing with contractors, dust and lack of plumbing at times. Not to mention Mozzie dropping by nearly every day to sweep the house for bugs that he explained could be planted anywhere amidst the construction and they’d be none the wiser. He’d already done complete background checks on everyone who worked in their house and most likely stalked them to be sure, Sara mused.
No, Neal seemed content so far. He was happy working with the FBI, off-anklet and she trusted him to be open with her. He would always be a conman, she knew, and somehow she was okay with that. For the most part, he got it out of his system working undercover with the FBI. He also got to play thief doing security consultations for Sterling Bosch. It’d been her idea to add another service line to the insurance company when she’d come back to the States. They usually suggested security companies to their clients, but even then, they weren’t perfect and sometimes they had very fastidious clients. It wasn’t a big business yet, but it gave her something else to do and went to show the company that her time in London had not been a mistake.
Now that had been a hard call to make. She didn’t regret it, but for a while she hadn’t known if she’d ruined her career. Sara suspected she had done well with the company because of her lack of social life. It was a sad testament to society that women with children often did not climb the corporate ladder, but it was the truth. She’d seen the faint look of disappointment in Mr. Bosch’s face when she’d announced her pregnancy only a few weeks ago.
A part of her was disappointed too, but she was disgusted with herself for even feeling that way. Sara never wanted to resent her own child. She may not be mommy material right now, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t love and do whatever necessary to raise her child happy and safe. If that meant never becoming VP or climbing the ladder, then so be it. She didn’t want to go back to an empty and work obsessed life.
The noise of a door slamming startled her and she looked up to see that Neal was home, his hands full of groceries.
“Hey,” she called out.
“Hey there,” he replied, with a smile on his face as he walked through to the kitchen.
She heard the fridge open and close and after a few minutes he returned. “I have a roasted vegetable and chicken pasta salad planned for tonight and butternut squash risotto for tomorrow. We are going to expose her to every vegetable out there and she is going to come out screaming for them, if it’s the last thing I do.”
He bent over to kiss her, then pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. “What do we have here?” he asked, waving his hand towards the baby book.
Sara straightened and trailed a finger over the page in front of her. “This would be my baby book.”
Neal raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Does that mean I get to see some cute baby photos of you? Because I am dying to see whether or not Sara Ellis was born wearing six inch heels.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed. He pulled the book closer to him and flipped through a couple of pages.
“Awww… you were adorable.”
Sara brushed some hair out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair, watching him. He stopped at the page with the birth announcement in the newspaper and his smile faltered. His eyes seemed to fade and she could tell he was thinking, remembering something. As he continued to look through the pages, reading all about her first few days, she realized that he probably didn’t have anything from his childhood, and most likely had never even seen his own baby photos.
“Have you,” she started and he glanced up at her and she hesitated. “Do you ever want to find your mother?”
Neal sat back, his eyes moving back towards the book. He touched the hospital wrist band that was taped onto a page and sighed.
“I’ve thought about it, but after James… it’s probably best to leave things alone.”
She reached out and laid her hand on top of his. “It’s not the same, Neal. She had nothing to do with any of it.”
He jerked his hand away and stood up. Walking a few steps away before turning back, she could see the pain in his eyes, the young boy in him who had lost everything and run away from it all.
“She lied to me. All those years…” He shook his head and braced himself on the chair. “No, it’s better this way. A mother doesn’t do that. Ellen was the strong one, she told me the truth. She was my real mother.”
Sara didn't quite know how to respond, but as she glanced down at the photo of her own mother and felt a flutter in her stomach, she knew it was important. Neal dropped his head, eyes glassy and unfocused. She knew his past was painful, another reason why he was looking forward to starting his own family, but he would always be left with questions.
"That may be, but have you ever thought that she might want to know about you?" she asked softly. "My mom never got any answers. Emily ran and she was left wondering every day whether she was even alive."
Neal closed his eyes and his voice shook. "She knows why. It's her fault I even ran."
"But is that fair to her now?"
He sighed and looked back up at her. "Maybe not, but right now all I care about is you and the baby. I don't want to do anything to jeopardize this life. It might not include any biological family, but I'm happy and that's all that matters."
Sara nodded numbly. "Okay."
He took a deep breath and pushed himself up then backed up a couple of steps. "I need to get dinner going."
She watched as he took off his suit coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He walked back into the kitchen and she heard the sounds of a cutting board and knife clatter. Sara let out her own shaky breath and stood up. She'd had enough of memory lane too.
Walking upstairs, she found herself heading to the nursery and sitting down on the floor. The walls were covered with Neal's sketches, in preparation for a mural. She picked up a pillow she'd left a few days ago when she'd just sat there watching him and clutched it to her chest. She tried to tell herself that this was what was important. The future. Where they tried to correct the mistakes of their pasts and lived a normal life. Or as normal as one could have considering who they were.
Looking at the sketches on the walls, she couldn't help but smile. Neal was trying so hard. Mozzie might give him a hard time about settling down and Peter teased him about needing the white picket fence and dog to round out the American dream, but Neal was loving it. The mural might only be pretty colors to their baby, but it was an expression of Neal's love. Of everything he wanted to give his own child that he hadn't had growing up. It was a collection of snapshots from his travels, and places he'd never been, all for her to dream about and look forward to, he'd explained.
An hour later as the sounds in the kitchen had died down and the smell of roasted vegetable wafted through the house, Neal stood in the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets. She glanced up and gave him a small smile. He walked in and sat down beside her, wrapping his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. It was a few minutes before he finally spoke.
"I'm not sure I could even see her again. She's still in Witness Protection. They would have moved her when I left. I know Ellen hadn't seen her in years." He sighed, and Sara said nothing, letting him find the right words on his own. She’d learned when not to push him and this was one of those times.
Several seconds of silence passed before he continued. "I could have Peter contact the US Marshals and they might be able to set up something, but it'd probably be a one-time thing. This won't be a fairytale ending where suddenly she becomes part of our lives, Sara, you have to understand that."
"I do," she whispered. She tangled her fingers through his and squeezed. "I just think everybody needs some closure."
He turned to look at her and she straightened up. "And you? We could look for Emily."
“Maybe after the baby’s born. If she’s de-” she stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can handle that right now. I’m stressed and hormonal as it is, and I don’t think it’d be fair to anyone, especially you, if we throw more family drama into the mix. And I’m not saying we have to see your mom right away either. I just want you to think about it.”
Neal cupped her cheek and kissed her softly. "You are going to be a great mother, Sara, don't ever doubt that."
A tear escaped, running down her cheek and Sara knew that no matter what happened he was right. She rested her hand on her stomach, and smiled. Motherhood might not be that bad after all, especially with Neal beside her. They probably wouldn't be typical parents, but that was okay. As long as their child was happy and they were open and honest with each other, they wouldn't be left with questions like their parents.
Author: reve_silencieux
Rating: PG
Pairing: Neal/Sara
Spoilers: Season 4
Word Count: 2,562
Beta: sapphire2309
Summary: Even Sara will admit she's not the maternal type, but it's Neal who reminds her that she has nothing to worry about.
Series: A Time and a Place for Everything
Author's Note: This is part of my series that started with An Ocean of Denial.
Sara flipped the pages carefully, fingers ghosting over the neatly written notes, lips trembling. She wiped away a tear that in her mind did not exist. Damn hormones. She told herself she wouldn’t cry over this.
Her eyes stopped at the photo of her mother, exhausted but smiling, holding Sara in her arms, not even an hour old. The next page showed her father beaming as he held her. Sara, on the other hand, looked quite irritated and looked ready to start screaming. Neal would say she was just showing her true personality.
The photo beneath it made her heart stop. There was Emily, just three years old, grinning up at the camera as she was holding her baby sister with her father’s help. She traced the smile on her face and nearly lost it. So young and innocent, knowing nothing of what was to come, and how the happy family would be torn apart. Turning the page quickly, Sara wondered why exactly she was torturing herself. There was nothing to be gleaned from these old photos and memories.
Her baby book did not hold the answers to the universe or how she was supposed to be a nurturing mother to her child.
It wasn’t that she thought herself to be uncaring or completely cold hearted, but she wouldn’t deny that she was lacking the maternal instinct. She was told that when you held your child for the first time, everything changed. Well, she sure hoped that was the case, because she didn’t have anyone to help or guide her. It was partly why she had gone looking for her baby book. A stack of photo albums sat next to her, but she was afraid to open them now. Too many happy memories of a childhood that had started out normal, but had been crushed by something she still had no answers to.
Sara knew she wasn’t alone, but neither she nor Neal had their parents around to help them. Peter and Elizabeth were great friends and would no doubt be very supportive, but they had no children themselves. June was the closest mother figure she could go to, but even that felt a little weird.
Neal tried to put on a good front, always one to keep a smile on his face and his emotions hidden away, but she knew he was scared himself. He was afraid of becoming his father; of somehow screwing it up and losing even more family. Of the two of them though, Sara knew that it would come easiest to him, he was a natural parent. She was just plain clueless. Or at least that’s how it felt.
It hadn’t felt real until that morning when she felt the first flutter in her stomach. She’d paused at work, surprised and a bit confused before she realized that yes, there was a baby growing in her. Sara had been lucky so far, only a few bouts of morning sickness and general tiredness. So it had been hard to believe, even after sitting on the cold bathroom tile with Neal, waiting for the plus sign to appear on the test, or being probed at the doctor’s office.
However, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d be waddling around and a few short months later she’d be holding her own screaming baby. Three a.m. morning feedings and dirty diapers were her future. She just didn’t know how she was going to handle it.
Oh, it wasn’t quite a surprise, the pregnancy. They had talked about it in a general sense before they even got married. Even earlier, if you counted their talk on top of the Empire State Building, but it had been a fairytale then, something that was never going to happen.
Only it had happened. Just maybe a little too soon for her taste.
And now she was flailing. By all means, she had a good life. She had a job that paid well, a lovely house in Brooklyn, which might not be Westchester, but it was nice enough, and a husband who, despite his dubious past, loved her and would do anything for her. It was the life every girl dreamed of, only she wasn’t that little girl anymore. She’d grown up way too soon and unfortunately learned the hard lessons of life, having seen the worst of people and what they were capable of. Neal, himself, had hurt her and there would always be a seed of doubt in the back of her mind wondering if this would last.
Neal had wanted this life with Kate, had seen it as his last big score, but had lost the chance. Was the domestic life really what he wanted? Mozzie still ranted and raved about Neal being a turncoat and tried to tempt him with jobs, but so far Neal had resisted. Personally, Sara thought leaving the loft had been the hardest thing for Neal. And who could blame him? A ten million dollar view of Manhattan was hard to give up. They could have stayed in the city after they married, but agreed to find a house instead.
This had been a good thing, seeing as one year later they were preparing a nursery. They’d had renovations done as soon as they moved in, which hadn’t made for a happy beginning to their marriage, dealing with contractors, dust and lack of plumbing at times. Not to mention Mozzie dropping by nearly every day to sweep the house for bugs that he explained could be planted anywhere amidst the construction and they’d be none the wiser. He’d already done complete background checks on everyone who worked in their house and most likely stalked them to be sure, Sara mused.
No, Neal seemed content so far. He was happy working with the FBI, off-anklet and she trusted him to be open with her. He would always be a conman, she knew, and somehow she was okay with that. For the most part, he got it out of his system working undercover with the FBI. He also got to play thief doing security consultations for Sterling Bosch. It’d been her idea to add another service line to the insurance company when she’d come back to the States. They usually suggested security companies to their clients, but even then, they weren’t perfect and sometimes they had very fastidious clients. It wasn’t a big business yet, but it gave her something else to do and went to show the company that her time in London had not been a mistake.
Now that had been a hard call to make. She didn’t regret it, but for a while she hadn’t known if she’d ruined her career. Sara suspected she had done well with the company because of her lack of social life. It was a sad testament to society that women with children often did not climb the corporate ladder, but it was the truth. She’d seen the faint look of disappointment in Mr. Bosch’s face when she’d announced her pregnancy only a few weeks ago.
A part of her was disappointed too, but she was disgusted with herself for even feeling that way. Sara never wanted to resent her own child. She may not be mommy material right now, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t love and do whatever necessary to raise her child happy and safe. If that meant never becoming VP or climbing the ladder, then so be it. She didn’t want to go back to an empty and work obsessed life.
The noise of a door slamming startled her and she looked up to see that Neal was home, his hands full of groceries.
“Hey,” she called out.
“Hey there,” he replied, with a smile on his face as he walked through to the kitchen.
She heard the fridge open and close and after a few minutes he returned. “I have a roasted vegetable and chicken pasta salad planned for tonight and butternut squash risotto for tomorrow. We are going to expose her to every vegetable out there and she is going to come out screaming for them, if it’s the last thing I do.”
He bent over to kiss her, then pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. “What do we have here?” he asked, waving his hand towards the baby book.
Sara straightened and trailed a finger over the page in front of her. “This would be my baby book.”
Neal raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Does that mean I get to see some cute baby photos of you? Because I am dying to see whether or not Sara Ellis was born wearing six inch heels.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed. He pulled the book closer to him and flipped through a couple of pages.
“Awww… you were adorable.”
Sara brushed some hair out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair, watching him. He stopped at the page with the birth announcement in the newspaper and his smile faltered. His eyes seemed to fade and she could tell he was thinking, remembering something. As he continued to look through the pages, reading all about her first few days, she realized that he probably didn’t have anything from his childhood, and most likely had never even seen his own baby photos.
“Have you,” she started and he glanced up at her and she hesitated. “Do you ever want to find your mother?”
Neal sat back, his eyes moving back towards the book. He touched the hospital wrist band that was taped onto a page and sighed.
“I’ve thought about it, but after James… it’s probably best to leave things alone.”
She reached out and laid her hand on top of his. “It’s not the same, Neal. She had nothing to do with any of it.”
He jerked his hand away and stood up. Walking a few steps away before turning back, she could see the pain in his eyes, the young boy in him who had lost everything and run away from it all.
“She lied to me. All those years…” He shook his head and braced himself on the chair. “No, it’s better this way. A mother doesn’t do that. Ellen was the strong one, she told me the truth. She was my real mother.”
Sara didn't quite know how to respond, but as she glanced down at the photo of her own mother and felt a flutter in her stomach, she knew it was important. Neal dropped his head, eyes glassy and unfocused. She knew his past was painful, another reason why he was looking forward to starting his own family, but he would always be left with questions.
"That may be, but have you ever thought that she might want to know about you?" she asked softly. "My mom never got any answers. Emily ran and she was left wondering every day whether she was even alive."
Neal closed his eyes and his voice shook. "She knows why. It's her fault I even ran."
"But is that fair to her now?"
He sighed and looked back up at her. "Maybe not, but right now all I care about is you and the baby. I don't want to do anything to jeopardize this life. It might not include any biological family, but I'm happy and that's all that matters."
Sara nodded numbly. "Okay."
He took a deep breath and pushed himself up then backed up a couple of steps. "I need to get dinner going."
She watched as he took off his suit coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He walked back into the kitchen and she heard the sounds of a cutting board and knife clatter. Sara let out her own shaky breath and stood up. She'd had enough of memory lane too.
Walking upstairs, she found herself heading to the nursery and sitting down on the floor. The walls were covered with Neal's sketches, in preparation for a mural. She picked up a pillow she'd left a few days ago when she'd just sat there watching him and clutched it to her chest. She tried to tell herself that this was what was important. The future. Where they tried to correct the mistakes of their pasts and lived a normal life. Or as normal as one could have considering who they were.
Looking at the sketches on the walls, she couldn't help but smile. Neal was trying so hard. Mozzie might give him a hard time about settling down and Peter teased him about needing the white picket fence and dog to round out the American dream, but Neal was loving it. The mural might only be pretty colors to their baby, but it was an expression of Neal's love. Of everything he wanted to give his own child that he hadn't had growing up. It was a collection of snapshots from his travels, and places he'd never been, all for her to dream about and look forward to, he'd explained.
An hour later as the sounds in the kitchen had died down and the smell of roasted vegetable wafted through the house, Neal stood in the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets. She glanced up and gave him a small smile. He walked in and sat down beside her, wrapping his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. It was a few minutes before he finally spoke.
"I'm not sure I could even see her again. She's still in Witness Protection. They would have moved her when I left. I know Ellen hadn't seen her in years." He sighed, and Sara said nothing, letting him find the right words on his own. She’d learned when not to push him and this was one of those times.
Several seconds of silence passed before he continued. "I could have Peter contact the US Marshals and they might be able to set up something, but it'd probably be a one-time thing. This won't be a fairytale ending where suddenly she becomes part of our lives, Sara, you have to understand that."
"I do," she whispered. She tangled her fingers through his and squeezed. "I just think everybody needs some closure."
He turned to look at her and she straightened up. "And you? We could look for Emily."
“Maybe after the baby’s born. If she’s de-” she stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can handle that right now. I’m stressed and hormonal as it is, and I don’t think it’d be fair to anyone, especially you, if we throw more family drama into the mix. And I’m not saying we have to see your mom right away either. I just want you to think about it.”
Neal cupped her cheek and kissed her softly. "You are going to be a great mother, Sara, don't ever doubt that."
A tear escaped, running down her cheek and Sara knew that no matter what happened he was right. She rested her hand on her stomach, and smiled. Motherhood might not be that bad after all, especially with Neal beside her. They probably wouldn't be typical parents, but that was okay. As long as their child was happy and they were open and honest with each other, they wouldn't be left with questions like their parents.