A/N:I suggest you rewatch episode 2x07 Black Friday before reading as I make a lot of reference to the episode without explaining very much. My effort instead went into making connections and extrapolating ideas. I hope you enjoy! Bolded italics are quotes from the show.
"He left you to live with the pain"
She says the words to Mr. Donnelly when she learns that his baby boy was taken from him. But when she speaks, she can hear her own pain echoed, her own melancholic memories rising up in her. She can feel her face expressing the agony she felt inside. She's surprised as hell that Cal doesn't turn to look at her, to be concerned about her. He surely knows enough to hear the strangled nature of her voice. But he doesn't even look.
It reminds her of Alec, actually, when Sophie was taken. She was shattering all over and he didn't even see it. He was turned completely inward, looking only at himself, feeling only his own loss, not hers, not theirs. He had let her feel it all alone, instead of feeling it with her. He had ignored her pain. And that only made it hurt worse.
She can remember the last time she'd asked to talk about Sophie and he had just looked at her, intense sadness written in the scrunching of his eyebrows, the turn of his lips. There was even a little bit of anger at her question, tensing his jaw.
"I just cant," he had said.
They had cut her, those words. Maybe talking would be painful for him, maybe it was selfish of her to ask, but it was what she needed. Wasn't that what spouses were for?
She had withdrawn, anyway, apologised. And she held all of her hurt inside of her.
She saw Sophie in every place she went and everything she did. She felt the raw sorrow creeping up her throat and forming a lump as she tried to keep from crying, so often.
She remembers the first night Alec had left her to find comfort himself, which she knew he'd look for in the very drug he had been addicted to in the past, the one he promised her he'd never do again. She had turned to her side on a choked sob, stuffing the comforter into her mouth. He hadn't even gotten all the way out of the room, he had surely heard. But, he took the last few steps regardless. He turned his back on her pain.
She can't explain why it hurts worse from Cal. She wasn't married to this man, he wasn't obligated to her in that way. It wasn't his job to comfort her, it wasn't his job to address it every time he saw sadness on her. They had rules against it, really. He was supposed to ignore what he saw unless she brought it up. He was supposed to do this. So why did it feel like he was driving a knife between her shoulder blades with his ignorance of her anguish? Why did it feel like a betrayal?
"He should have let me keep her. I begged him."
He was a criminal and he had done a despicable thing in retaliation, but her heart wrenched for the man anyway. She knew just what it felt like to beg to keep a child, to beg away her dignity and still not get what she wanted. She had done it with Sophie.
She had gotten the call from the adoption agency, telling her there was an important matter to attend to and they should come in. But, she heard more than the words implied. She heard the sadness and regret and she just knew. And despite her best efforts, her eyes had filled with tears and her voice took on a husky quality.
"Just tell me," she insisted.
She needed to hear it. To get any sense of the matter, she needed to hear it. If she didn't know for sure, she wasn't sure she could put on her shoes and coat and go. She wasn't sure she could do anything with such intense fear gripping at her insides.
"I'm really not supposed to..." the woman on the phone began.
"Please," she said, begged really. The desperation of her tone not lost on the other party.
"The birth mother has changed her mind," she said, her voice soft and sweet, apologetic, a sharp contrast to the words she had spoken.
Gill drew in a breath, keeping her tears at bay.
"How long?" Gill asked.
"They'll be coming by tomorrow night. I'm sorry," she replied.
Sophie began to cry in the other room and Gillian's heart seized.
"I have to go," she sniffed in goodbye, her words running together in her urgency.
She hung up the phone and went to get her daughter, well the baby girl who was no longer going to be her daughter.
She crushed Sophie close to her, but not too tightly and rocked her gently as the tears cascaded down her cheeks.
In her hands was all she'd ever wanted and by tomorrow, it would all be taken away. Why did it happen that everything she wanted eluded her?
She found her cell phone and dialled blindly, knowing this number like the back of her hand.
"Hello?" she heard.
"Please don't take her," she begged, eyes pressed tightly together.
"Dr. Foster!" the young girl exclaimed, surprise and shame lingering in the quick syllables.
"I love her. I love Sophie. And I promise I'll take care of her. I'll... I'll do anything you want. Just please don't take her."
"I'm sorry," the young mother said. "But I have to do this. I didn't mean... For this to happen. I'm so sorry."
Gillian sniffed once, but couldn't control the sobs that left her mouth. She clamped her hand over it, not wanting to wake Sophie who had fallen asleep in her arms, but it took all of her effort just to stay standing, and her cries weren't quiet at all.
"Please don't do this," she begged again, not wanting to resign to the idea of losing her baby.
"I'm sorry," she heard once more, then the line clicked dead.
She hung her head as she surrended to the wracking sobs that left her body, simultaneously relishing in the warmth of the little girl against her chest and wondering how it was possible for the world to be so cruel.
"You want a kid? Go have one of your own!"
The words come so harshly, so hurriedly out of his mouth that it jars her. She stands shocked, staring at the boy as she thinks of the duplicity of the meaning. She's sure he hasn't meant for the words to be so hurtful, but for her, they truly are.
She doesn't even have the time to process the thought, let alone form a reply before Cal is there, redirecting the anger towards himself, protecting her. She feels an almost-peace in it as she adjusts to the situation, realising that her fears earlier were unprecedented.
Cal did care what she was feeling. He actually did something about it.
Her heart catches in her throat as they go to blows. She doesn't want to see him hurt. But even as her hands unconsciously lift and her body shifts into defending him, he gives her one withering look and she immediately steps back. She just helplessly watches as Max throws punches at Cal's midsection before breaking down into tears.
It surprises her how quickly Cal's gentle, plying aggression turns to empathy as he holds the boy, encouraging his catharsis with his words.
Even though the exact words are somewhere along the lines of "attaboy", she knows he means them for her, too.
She wants to say something, but the moment is fragile and doesn't belong to her. She feels like a terrified shopper hearing "you break it, you buy it", even though everything is flimsy and thin and falling to pieces anyway. She thinks it would cost too much, perhaps everything she had, to deserve him letting himself get hurt to keep from seeing her that way.
It was more valuable to her than anything she had ever been given.
"I know a little bit about how crazy families can be."
She's quiet as they drive towards Cal's house, all three of them. They had felt like family these last few days, eating a lunch of thanksgiving leftovers on black friday, which had become a tradition. Even her lying to Emily, despite the guilt she felt in doing so, made them more like family. It made her more human and less perfect, more fitting. It made it clear to Emily that Gillian would do nearly anything for her father, for her.
They feel like family even now, as she sits in the passenger seat of his car, Emily singing along to the radio from the backseat and Cal laughing and making jokes about her singing voice. It's beautiful to Gill. But she realises with a sharp bit of pain blooming in her chest that this is not her family, that she doesn't have a family of her own, even though it feels like she does at times like these. She doesn't mean to think of Sophie or Alec or all that she was never able to have, but she can't get it out of her mind.
"Gill," Cal says, waving his arms wildly in front of her vacant eyes.
"We're home," he says softly.
It stops Gill's heart still. Home. Had he even realised he used the word? Had he even realised that just being near this sense of family, of just the idea of her being part of it, was breaking her heart?
She smiles at him, but of course he can see right through it. But he lets her step out of the car and away from his scrutiny, following Emily with seemingly boundless cheer. How had she mustered it so quickly?
"Gill," he tries to stop her, resting his hand on her arm as he catches up to her.
She confronts his concern with comfort.
"I'm fine, I promise," she says, stepping away from him and into the house.
By just her physical evasions, he knows there is so much more she isn't saying, but acknowledging that she doesn't want to address it, he shuts his mouth.
"I'm starving," Emily is saying.
And Gillian is walking into the kitchen with the promise of helping to make dinner before Cal even gets out of his coat.
He sheds his outerwear and joins her and they prepare a meal in tense silence. Cal's worried and Gillian clearly doesn't want to talk about it or even admit that she's bothered in the slightest.
He's looking at her with all this concern and trying to read her expression as she focuses on peeling the potatoes to go with their meal.
"Don't do that," she's whispering desperately.
"Okay," he promises. "I won't."
"We'll talk later," she reassures him.
He nods at her, going back to cooking the meat.
The three of them eat together, and while Gillian isn't her usual self, she still manages to talk animatedly and cheerfully, for Emily he presumes. But after dinner, when Emily excuses herself to her room with a pointed look at her father (saying "fix this" most likely), Gillian promptly deflates.
"Are you alright, darling?" he asks.
She sighs and looks up at him.
"Yes," she says. "And thank you...for earlier."
"Not a problem."
"And thank you for the past few days. It feels like family, sometimes and I appreciate it," she says.
"You're always welcome here, you know," he answers, not quite sure where Gillian was going with all of this.
"I know," she smiles and he can tell it's genuine by the crow's feet that adorn her eyes.
"It's just, this case was a little close to me. You know, a lost baby and all and I was just... In that place. But I'm okay," she explains.
"Yeah?" he asks.
She nods, but he catches the tiniest of shrug fragments at her forearm. She must have been trying to conceal it.
"Gillian," he warns.
"Fine," she acquiesces. "I will be okay. That better?"
He reaches to bring her into his arms, squeezing her in his embrace. When they part, he speaks.
"You know we consider you family here, right Gill?"
"Yes," she says, nearly choking on the word and the emotions that rise with it.
"Thank you, Cal. I never thought I would get to have one."
At this, he smiles and to his relief, she does, too. And, it's genuine. Their smiles are nearly always genuine when they're together.