FanFic100: #024 Family
Good old Andrews AFB. How nice to touch down there after four days at Cheyenne Mountain. It’s in the middle of the night, it’s raining cats and dogs, and he’s still got half an hour’s drive until he’s home. Cursing, he runs through the rain to his car. In times like these he wishes Homeworld Security and the DOD would be settled somewhere else than Washington, D.C. San Francisco, for example. Or maybe Tucson. Somewhere warm and dry… ah hell.
Anyway… no use complaining. Driving home through the rain, another rainy night comes to mind, six years ago. Back in Colorado Springs, a year after he came back from Atlantis. He’d decided to stay with the SGC, at least for another year, after his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel came through finally. Missions, paper work, training… life had been routine, but it had been okay.
And then, suddenly, life had been turned upside down. He’d been at home, watching TV… when someone rang his doorbell. Grumbling a little, because he didn’t expect anyone, and his place hadn’t been exactly tidy, he’d gone to the door… only to find a soaking wet Laura Cadman with a little boy of maybe two on her arm and another one of about four years beside her, and a black eye in her face.
Not knowing what to say, he could only stare at her and after a moment of shocked silence, she’d simply said, “I’m sorry, Evan… but yours was the only place we could have come to.” Without a word, he had let them in, and seeing that her boys were already half asleep, he’d offered to put them in his bed.
Aw, dammit, stupid traffic lights and stupid rain, keeping him from getting home fast. It’s been four days at the Mountain, filled with conferences and meetings and small talk, and the only thing he wants to do now is come home, get into bed and sleep for at least the next ten hours. Huh. Being a desk jockey has made him soft, apparently. Or maybe crossing the 40. Or maybe…
His thoughts return back to that night six years ago. After putting her sons to bed, Laura had collapsed on his couch, like the armor that had kept her upright until this moment had just disappeared and stopped to support her. She’d just sat there, very silent, very still… no crying, just having her face in her hands and trying to keep breathing. For a moment, he’d wondered if that really was Laura Cadman there and not just some woman who happened to look like her. Because that certainly wasn’t the officer he knew from Atlantis and the casual, but steady exchange of calls and letters that followed her leaving the base, until maybe a year before this surprise night visit… when his tour in Atlantis had ended.
He’d never gotten behind why she had simply stopped writing and calling, just when there had been finally a chance when he could have gotten to know the man she’d married and the sons she’d given birth to during the time he had still been on Atlantis. He’d tried e-mail, letters, phoning her at home, at her base, on her cell… even had considered driving all the way down to where she was stationed at, but rejected that thought, because he’d started to get the feeling that for some reason he couldn’t - and at that time didn’t want to - fathom why she simply didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.
And then… when he’d come to accept that he would never hear anything from her again, she had come to his door, all soaked through, with her sons in tow and looking like she just lost a bar fight. After some more minutes passing in silence he’d gotten up the nerve to ask what the hell was going on.
As it had turned out, her husband had always had a jealous tendency and a disposition for a volatile temper - not sparky like hers, but darker and more violent, but had been able to keep it under wraps more or less for the first three years of their marriage. Then, by some stupid accident, that husband had found one of his e-mails to Laura, and obviously he’d… snapped, because until then Laura had kept everything under wraps, knowing her husband would never let her continue this exchange if he knew about it.
What had come then… had been a very painful account of a year in hell for Laura and to a lesser degree for her sons as well. She’d always tried to protect them, shield them away from what was happening between their parents, keep up the façade for them and the neighbors and her boss… and practically everyone around her. Still today he doesn’t really understand why someone like her hadn’t acted a lot earlier.
Gripping the wheel a little tighter because the wish to give that man what he deserves had never really left him, he takes the exit to the suburb where he’s living. Almost home, he thinks and feels the familiar tug of homesickness you only get when coming back. Only four days away and he’s still so very relieved to get back. And yes, there it is. The house he bought four years ago and he’ll hopefully pass on to his kids one day. Everything is dark, but that was to be expected at nearly midnight. He doesn’t bother to park his car properly, simply stops in front of the garage and sprints to the door through the still ongoing rain.
Inside, he doesn’t even take off his soaked uniform jacket, but walks up the stairs. The first door he opens is that of Marcus, his eldest. The ten-year old has fallen asleep secretly reading again and gently he takes the book and the flashlight away from under his son’s head. The boy stirs a little and he runs his hand over his son’s hair. Softly he closes the door again and walks over to Andrew’s room.
The eight-year old is sleeping soundly, and that’s a relief to him. Over the last six years the boy has had bad spells of nightmares and spending the night awake again and again, being the most sensitive of his three children. They have lessened with growing older, but they never really disappeared and he’s still glad for every night his son doesn’t have to pass with being reminded of what happened six years ago. Very softly, he caresses Andrew’s cheek and is delighted to see a small unconscious smile appear on his face.
The next room he shortly pays a visit to is Kate’s room. With a smile he enters to see his almost five year old daughter clutching her favorite stuffed penguin. He loves his sons very much, but his little girl… will always be special to him. Not because she’s his biological daughter and not adopted like her two brothers, but because… she’s simply daddy’s little girl. Already they can see that she’s very much like him, although she looks like her mother, and he knows he’ll always share a special bond with her. He bends down to give her a kiss on her forehead and leaves the room again as not to wake her up - she shares Andrew’s sensitiveness to a certain degree, but one of the rare feats she inherited from her mother is the tendency to hide it with a tough attitude.
Before he enters the bedroom he shares with his wife, he gets rid of the stiff Dress Blues and changes into his usual night attire. And then, finally, it’s time to go to bed. As he lays down beside her, she stirs and after a moment of disorientation, she recognizes who just came home. He’s sure that she’s displaying a little sleepy smile in the dark, as she says, “How was the Mountain, Colonel?”
He smiles back and puts his arms around her to draw her closer. “Busy as always. How was the DOD, Major?”
He feels her settle down her head on his chest and the feeling of being home is now so strong that it’s constricting his throat for a few moments. “Bureaucratic as always. By the way, Marcus passed his math test and Kate wants to show you her newest picture. Andrew… had a little trouble sleeping through the night the first two days you were away. Oh, and he was really nervous you wouldn’t make it back for his birthday.”
“Would I ever do that?” Of course he wouldn’t. He makes a point of never missing neither Laura’s nor his children’s birthdays, no matter how busy things are at Homeworld Security, just like Laura makes a point of not letting her posting at the DOD dictate her life so much she doesn’t do anything else than working.
“Well, there was this one year where you…” She squeals and sounds a lot younger than her actual 35 as he lightly tickles her sides.
“Careful, Major.” he playfully admonishes her, and he’s sure that she’s sticking out her tongue to him the dark.
“Ain’t I always?” He wants to say something, but her lips land lightly on his mouth to shut him up. “Not a word from you.” Instead of answering her with words, he reaches up to thread his hand into her hair and kisses her back. Ah, he really missed that… missed her. Even after all those years he isn’t fully over his fear that one day, her ex-husband will catch up with them and take away everything from him that has come into his life back on that rainy night in Colorado Springs six years ago.
He shares a nice, long welcome-back-kiss with Laura that leaves both of them satisfied when they break it up. After a few moments of companionable silence, she simply drops a light kiss on his chest and says, “You can still brood tomorrow. Sleep, Evan.” His only response is hugging her a little tighter to him and closing his eyes.
But he doesn’t fall asleep right away, as his thoughts keep coming back on how everything has turned out for him… for them. Yes, they have had their troubles. Marcus had taken his time with warming up to him… and not to mention that Laura had needed quite some time to open up to him and be ready for something more with him. And then there had been the time when they had been expecting Kate. Marcus had just become accustomed to the idea that this new man in his mother’s life could be a father to him, even if he didn’t share his blood when suddenly a new child was about to become a part of their family.
Although still very young back then, Marcus had sensed that there was a difference between him and Andrew and the little half-sister they were about to get. It had taken him nearly a year before coming to terms with the existence of Kate and realizing that to his adoptive father, it would never make a difference who of his children only share his name and who shares his blood.
The whole ordeal - and all the other major and minor ones about all the little things families like his could stumble upon - had taught him a few things he never thought he’d have to learn. The most important one, he thinks as he finally drifts off to sleep, is that family isn’t about names or even about blood. It’s about belonging and accepting and ultimately… loving. And love they have enough.
~*~
TBC in You Don't Know a Thing.