A/N: Yo. Y'all are fabulous. I know there's a lot of potential plot fics floating around out there and that anyone even cares about mine reassures me that my lack of note-taking (in favor of story-plotting) in class isn't a total loss. Anyways...
A/N 2.0: Accidentally deleted this chapter while trying to fix a typo. Of fucking course. Sorry. Update will either be later tonight or tomorrow at the latest, though.
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Before Letty's taillights are even completely lost in the darkness, another set of lights are shining in Dom's eyes. A sleek BMW comes to a stop only a few yards from where the Interceptor had been parked, and a man Dom instantly recognizes steps out from behind the wheel.
Immediately, a chill runs down his spine.
Something that couldn't be conveyed by images was the presence this man had. He was smaller than himself in stature, but there was a threatening, deadly confidence that sent fear tingling down his back. And Dominic Toretto prided himself in never being one to scare easily.
The man approaches slowly, calculating. A smile, a carefully construed mix of friendly and dangerous, on his lips as he casually introduces himself. "Owen Shaw. We've never met, but-"
He can't keep the contempt from his voice as he interrupts Shaw. "I know exactly who you are."
The smile widens as he pulls an envelope from his back pocket, hands it to Dom without taking his eyes from his face. "Ah, that makes this easy then, Mr. Toretto."
His fingers stumble over opening it, get stuck in the flap in his haste. He feels the sharp sting of a paper cut, smudges blood on the manila and and only refrains from cursing as he recognizes the smoothness of photo paper. He pulls the first 4x6 out and his breath catches. Letty. In her team's garage, he can only assume, working on the car he'd seen only moments before. Clad in coveralls unsnapped down to her waist, a black sports bra visible through the opening. And a tiny girl on her hip, most of her face obscured as she looked away from the camera, up at Letty's face grinning face.
But he can see the corner of a smile, the same wicked little twist he remembers peeking around the garage as he and his father worked on the Charger so many years ago. Dark, curly hair and skin the warm color of Letty's. Her mother's. His-
His heart stops just a little bit, and he looks up to see a menacing smirk on Shaw's face. He wonders how much this stranger knows about him, how much he's heard. And he can't stop himself from voicing it aloud for the first time.
"My daughter-"
"I suppose you could say that." Shaw nods calmly. "Sweet kid. Loves her Hot Wheels and Dora. Wants to be a dragon when she grows up." Dom is hardly able to tear his gaze from the pictures to meet Shaw's cold gaze. "So you see, she was right, you know. You must stay away."
He's seething now. This photographic evidence, this proof that there's a child out there, a child he and Letty created together, a child that has been existing without his knowledge and in the company of this scum before him, it all builds up before he can stop what's happening. He punches the nearest thing he can reach, shatters the back window of his car. "There's no way in hell-"
"What you're forgetting, Mr. Toretto, is that I can reach out and break you whenever I want." The threat clear in his voice, a smirk still playing on his lips. He knows he has the upper hand. Dom's weak spot had been exposed. This man, the man that so many were hunting, now held immeasurable power over him. Because Shaw knew Dom regarded family above all else, knew he would do anything to keep his family safe. "This code you live by makes you predictable. And in our line of work, predictable means vulnerable"
Dom ignores the blood running down his hand, refuses to break away from his enemy's gaze as he growls lowly. "If you hurt-"
"Hurt?" Shaw chuckles, gives him an incredulous look. "Forget not, Mr. Toretto, that I was the one who carried her out of that ditch. If I wanted harm to come to her, I would have left her there for Braga to find. No, you are the one who left her behind. Her and your child. Besides," He smirks. "She has her uses."
Dom stays silent despite Shaw's goading, seeing the very real danger in his eyes. He tilts his head, nods at Dom and gives him an almost-friendly wink. "Well, I suppose I shall see you soon, then. Good luck." He spins around casually, unafraid of turning his back exposed to a man that so obviously wanted to rip him to shreds. Dom feels his anger manifest into something more. Hatred.
And he does the only thing he can think of. Gets back in his car and sits back in his seat as he pulls out his phone, still ignoring the throbbing of his hand as his sister mumbles into her phone. "Mia."
"Hey, big brother. What's up? Did something happen?" She sounds half asleep, and he almost feels bad for waking her. Almost. He knew she resented being left behind with her and Brian's son, wanted to be neck-deep in the action with the rest of them, but it just wasn't safe. He'd also promised to update her if anything big happened, and well, he's pretty sure this qualifies as big.
"No, no. We're all fine." He reassures her, hears her relieved sigh almost instantaneously.
"Did you find her?" He pauses, wondering what he should say, but his silence confirms it for her. He hadn't called after his first sighting of Letty, he figured that informing her that he'd indeed seen his presumed dead lover and that she had immediately put a bullet in his shoulder wouldn't have exactly been comforting news. And between getting patched up and tracking her down once more, Mia, safe at home, hadn't been high on his list of priorities. He hears a muffled noise through the slight static, a stifled sob. She must pull herself together quickly, though, because her voice hardly wavers as she speaks again. "I didn't want to believe until-until you were sure."
"I saw her, Mi. Letty's alive." The words feel almost foreign on his tongue, the concept so foreign in his brain he himself doesn't quite believe that he'd actually been in her presence only an hour earlier.
He can hear her sit up in bed, can hear the hitch in her voice. The only person who could possibly understand how monumental this was to him, who had been there from the very beginning of Dom and Letty and all the way to their presumed end. "God, was…is she okay?"
He closes his eyes, trying once again to not imagine what could have happened to make the most fearless woman he'd ever known so thoroughly terrified. "Physically, yeah. She looked fine."
"Dom, what aren't you telling me." Of course Mia could tell when he was skirting around an issue, felt no shame at trying to bully it out of him. While Letty had always possessed the knack for understanding him and what he needed at any given time, his shared genetic code with Mia made them uniquely able to force each other into spilling their guts about any given subject. It was no less annoying now than when they were kids, and he debates for a long moment. Knows that telling her would probably send her looking for a direct flight to London, but knows he'd also never get away with omitting the truth with her. Especially after Brian found out. So he buckles down, rolls the words over in his head a few more times before saying them outright. "I have a daughter."
Mia sucks in a long breath, holds it like she is waiting for the punchline. She doesn't get one. "You're serious."
"Yeah." He remembers her face as she said the words, the relief he swore he saw in her eyes as she told him. Tries not to replay every single moment in his brain, tries not to think about how warm and alive she felt.
"She had-Jesus, Dom." Her voice fades before raising and getting stronger. "You can't beat yourself up over what could've-Dom, just focus on bringing them home, okay? I'm coming out there."
"No, Mia. No."
He can practically hear her eyes narrow and her jaw set. "Dominic, if you think I'm gonna sit here watching cartoons and wait for you to bring my sister and niece back to me on a silver platter, you must really underestimate my Toretto genes."
Rubbing his forehead, he lets out a sigh. He knows she'll show up with or without his permission, and it was only a matter of time before she was barging through the doors and demanding to be included. "Damn it, Mia, just wait, okay? Let me talk to Brian."
She grudgingly agrees, and is cut off by her son's hungry cries. Makes him promise to call her back soon and hangs up to tend to the baby, and a whole new pain blossoms in Dom's chest. If Letty had been pregnant the last time they'd seen each other, that would make their child, their daughter, over two years old. He'd missed Letty's changing body, the birth of their child, all of those landmark firsts that took place in a child's first years of life. Just a few months before Mia had called him, babbling effusively about how her genius baby had rolled over for the first time. He didn't get any of that. Hell, he didn't even know his own kid's name. He punches the dashboard, kicks open the door and stands, stalks around his car with increasing anger.
When Hobbs had first suggested that Letty could be alive, it was almost too much for him to hope for. Finding out that she was alive was just about enough to bring him to his proverbial knees.
But now? Now he was desperate.
It's not until the early hours of the morning when he finally arrives back at the warehouse they had set up shop in. Brian is the only one awake, pouring through one of the files Hobbs had left out, and greets him with a beer.
"What the hell happened to your hand?"
Dom flexes his fingers, winces at his aching knuckles and the twinging of his shoulder. He shrugs at his brother-in-law and sinks down into the chair opposite him, ignoring the curious look Brian is giving him.
"Get any answers?"
He tosses the envelope at him, his face set into a grim expression. "I'm getting her back." He says lowly, "Both of them."
Brian's opened the envelope by then, the shock clearly on his face as he takes in the contents. A dozen or so photos in all, more than likely taken while Letty was completely unaware. She'd always loathed pictures, and these looked more like surveillance shots than warm family moments that included the photographer. Only the one image included their child, and in most Letty looked downright pissed or exhausted, always in the company of several other faces they both recognize from the photos Hobbs had laid on on the table in front of them.
Dom has to ask, needs to know the truth from him. He'd posed the same question not two weeks before, if he'd known that there was a very real possibility Fenix hadn't murdered Letty, and he was hoping for a similar answer. "Did you know?"
Brian's head snaps up, his brow furrows deeply with regret. "Hell, Dom. If I'd known, I'd never have even considered putting her out there like that."
He nods in return, seeing the truth in his eyes. He knew the man across from him had felt almost as much to blame for Letty's supposed death as he himself had, even if he hadn't let it show at first. Months earlier, while Mia had been on bed rest, Brian had told him of how he'd stumbled - literally - into Letty one night and hadn't been able to run quite fast enough for his balls to escape unscathed. How she'd tracked him down a week later and practically ordered him to come up with a way to fix the mess he'd inadvertently created. He'd seen an opportunity and he'd used it, used Letty even, and he'd regretted it more than any other decision he'd made as a fed. But she was nothing if not stubbornly determined and Dom knew it. Knew if Brian hadn't helped her, she'd just have gone to even more drastic measures. And she and Brian had shared a few beers, she'd kicked his ass at every racing game there was, had developed some sort of weird mutual respect before it had all went straight to hell, and Dom couldn't help but feel grateful that at least Brian had cared about her life. He couldn't say the same for the rest of feds involved, knew that to them, Letty had just been another pawn, another means to an end.
He couldn't help but wonder how much they knew. That the body they'd sent to the morgue wasn't the same body that went into the desert for them that night, that Leticia Ortiz was alive and well in godforsaken England. Traipsing around Europe pulling jobs with guys that made Braga and his crew look like choirboys.
Brian clears his throat, sets the envelope of pictures onto the table in between them before speaking again. "How are you doing, man?"
He snorts, pressing his head into his hands. Her face flashes through his mind once more, the familiar lines of her that he'd thought he'd forgotten until he'd seen them again. "How the fuck you think I'm doing?"
"Stupid question, right." Brian has the good sense to look slightly embarrassed, and even slightly more bitterly determined. "We'll get them out of there safely, Dom."
He shoots Brian - and his unwavering confidence - a tight smile as he twists the cap off the beer, takes a long drag from the bottle. He turns serious again after he swallows, looking down at his shaking hands. "They've been out there this whole time and I didn't even-"
Brian smiles without humor, shaking his head at him. "Come on, man. You turn psychic or something without us knowing? There's no way you, or any of us, could have known."
He looks away, takes another long drink and tries not to wonder what they're doing at that very moment.
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