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Fate full of rust

When the earthquake hit LA, John, Sarah and Derek holed up in the house and waited it out. Cameron sat in a corner and went into standby mode, or something. Derek paced and muttered and couldn't seem to sit still, no matter what movie was playing on John's laptop, no matter if Sarah was dealing Canasta or Texas hold 'em, and there was an odd look in his eyes the whole time: a kind of resignation, an awful sense of familiarity and hopelessness.

John hated that look. Hated it almost as much as he loved his uncle, cynical sarcastic opinionated son-of-a-bitch that Derek Reese was. And so the first thing he did when the phones were back up and the TV was working again and the announcements had come that everything was over for now, was get a handful of Derek's shirt and drag him out of the house.

"I'm going crazy in there, and you know what Mom'll do if I take off by myself," he said.

Derek knew perfectly well that John was perfectly fine, but he fell into step with John easily, and they headed out into the city. Everyone in LA drove everywhere, but John figured the confined space of a car was just going to make it all worse, so for once, they walked.

The streets weren't exactly chaos, but they were a mess. Cars were abandoned, street lights and electrical poles toppled, the roofs of houses had sunk in, walls and sidewalks were cracked. Smoke was still rising from front yard barbecues and heaps of wreckage all over the city, and the noise of sirens in the distance never let up.

Everywhere they went, people had hauled the contents of their houses out onto the front lawn while they did the repairs, whole lives stacked in the grass. John lost track of how many people he saw sporting bandages or walking with limps, and suddenly there were children all over, taking advantage of the relative chaos to escape from parental supervision.

"That's pretty much what we're doin'," Derek said, gesturing at a group of kids running through a yard while the owner of the house waddled out of his front door and yelled at them from the porch, waving a beer bottle, bright red in the face.

"It's probably the most exercise he's had in years," John said cheerfully.

Derek chuckled. That was a good sign.

"So everyone's gonna be claustrophobic in the future?" John said casually.

Heartbeat's silence. John wondered if he'd gone too far.

"Pretty much, yeah," Derek said then. "I mean. This. This is nothing. You know?"

John nodded. "It makes me wonder," he said slowly, "how Dad. I mean, how Dad dealt with it."

"He had a mission," Derek answered. "He had a purpose. And he completed it. That's how he dealt. That's how Sarah dealt. That's how you'll deal, later on."

They wandered in silence for a while after that.

John hadn't had a destination in mind when he'd decided on this plan, but when he realised where their feet had managed to lead them, he guessed it had been inevitable from the start. They'd been walking for the better part of two hours, round and about, and finally, they wound up in a park they'd come to once before, together, and without telling Sarah.

Kyle was sitting on the low wall surrounding the Reese' front yard, wearing shorts and a grubby t-shirt. His bare heels were scraping the brick, and his hair was falling into his eyes in lank, dusty hanks. Derek and John stood looking at him for a moment. Everything seemed to be OK; they could hear Derek's high, young voice in the house, and a woman answering, hurried and concerned. It didn't sound as if anyone had been hurt. A knot in John's stomach loosened and came undone that he hadn't even known was there in the first place.

He was about to move away again, wary of being caught gaping at the Reese family like some creepy stalker (and wasn't there a part of him that could watch this house all day? Wasn't there a part of him that wanted to run up that path and walk through that door and meet his grandparents?), but Derek, who had been standing beside him still as a statue, broke away from him suddenly and crossed the street, footsteps loud on the tarmac. There was a car pulling up a few meters away.

"Hey, kiddo," he said to Kyle. "How you doin'? That was some earthquake, huh?"

Kyle raised his head, looking gloomy. "My monster truck is wrecked," he said. "And I can't find our baseball."

"Damn," Derek said. "That's a shame."

"Earthquakes suck," Kyle said earnestly.

"So do nephews," a woman's voice called to him. "Why aren't you inside?"

Derek jumped; a dark-haired woman in a pantsuit was climbing out of the car that had just arrived. Kyle slithered off the wall and ran to meet her with a delighted cry of "Aunt Dani!"

"Hey, Kyle," Dani said cheerfully, settling him on her hip. "What'd I tell you about talking to strangers?" She was looking at Derek as she spoke, and the tilt of her head meant nothing good, John was sure. Standing like that with Kyle on her hip and her jacket pulled back, he could see the gun and badge on her belt quite clearly.

He'd crossed the road to Derek's side before he'd stopped to think, and watched Dani's eyebrows climb in the exact same way Derek's did when he was about to say something particularly sarcastic.

"My nephew and I were just - shaking off the claustrophobia," Derek said easily.

Dani studied John for a long moment, taking in everything from his combat boots to his wristwatch, and he grinned at her. "My Mom locked us up in the basement till it was all over."

Dani barked a laugh. "I like her already," she said. John drew a breath and grinned; Mom would like Dani. Smart, sharp, protective...

So this was who he was. This was what he'd come from.

"What are you doing here, Aunt Dani?" Kyle demanded, irritated that everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. Dani looked down at him and smiled. "Here to babysit you and Derek while your Dad fixes up the house," she said.

"Who says we need babysitting?" Kyle wanted to know.

"Everyone," Dani said wryly. And then, to Derek, "I hope he's not as much trouble as this one," jerking her head at John as she spoke. It was a dismissal, plain as day. Mom would love her.

Derek caught John's eye and grinned. "Oh," he said to his aunt, "I'll bet he's even worse."