a/n: set in and around the final two episodes. Some dialogue excerpted from the final scene of "Legacies."
A Legacy Given
"Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As she addressed the envelope with a simple letter V, Diana could hear in her mind the words spoken during a ceremony not many days past... "We welcome the child with love, that he may be able to love. We welcome the child with gifts, that he may know generosity. We welcome the child with a name..."
Her note was delivered through a series of helpers. It had been decided that a bike messenger arriving at Diana's loft would arouse no one's suspicions, so she had been given Jimmy's pager number in case she needed to make contact with the world below. He picked up the message late one afternoon and, with a grin and a wave disappeared back into the traffic-filled Manhattan streets. The note was slipped to a waitress with his tip when he stopped for dinner. The diner waitress passed it to a man who stopped by after midnight for some coffee on his way to his job at a bakery. The baker put the message in a paper sack with a selection of day old bread and pastries which were destined to be thrown out. Finding a bearded homeless man in the alley outside the bakery during his pre-dawn smoke break, the baker gave him the sack. The homeless man was, in reality, not homeless, but appeared to be as he took the sack and said with a gentle southern drawl and a tip of his hat, "Thanks kindly, friend."
Unlocking one of the few locked doors in the tunnel community, the bearded man, William, took his sacks into the pantry chamber and set them on the trestle table in the center of the room to unpack them. He found the note underneath a slightly crushed pie at the bottom of the bag given to him at the bakery. He handed the note to Kipper and asked him to deliver it to Vincent before breakfast. The pie went on the pantry shelves for later use, and the bread was sliced and toasted on the racks of William's ancient reliable black cast iron kitchen range. He would serve it as part of the tunnel community's breakfast. Vincent, who was in Father's library chamber, paused from going over some tunnel maps and read the note which read, "Vincent, Could I come below? Your generosity must be repaid. Diana."
Several days after her surprise introduction to the world below, Diana had slipped back into Catherine Chandler's apartment. Throughout the active investigation of Catherine's murder, her apartment had sat empty, its contents trapped in limbo. Diana, with swift purpose, headed directly into the bedroom. From the floor of the closet she pulled out a battered chest. She had gone through this chest many times in her attempts to understand Catherine's life. She thought back to the early days of her investigation, to the first time she had gone through the treasures contained there -- running her fingers over the soft feathers of a white bird mask, setting aside some worn ballet shoes, books, photograph albums, trinkets and souvenirs from a well-traveled past. She remembered a conversation with a doll, a doll with a small bright face, wrapped in a soft white blanket. It was this blanket that had drawn Diana back. The blanket, and her conviction that Catherine's son should have some things from his mother's life.
Diana should not have been there. What lay in that box was, at least tangentially, evidence in a murder case. But Diana knew that what she was doing was just, if not quite legal. The crime scene report, long ago memorized, read, in part: "One doll, wrapped in a white knit blanket" ; "one silver spoon, engraved with the letter C" ; "one battered child's book, The Velveteen Rabbit." When Diana left, all those things would still be in the trunk. That they would not be Catherine's possessions was a detail only Diana would know. She had scoured the second-hand stores in her neighborhood and had found a blanket and a copy of the book fairly easily. The engraved spoon had taken a bit more work and the assistance of a local silversmith. She had swapped out the items quickly, and repacked the trunk. Pausing on impulse, Diana pulled out one of the photo albums, and flipping through it, removed several photos which she hoped would not be missed. Tucking the photos into the book, she left the apartment quickly, replacing the crime scene tape on the door as she went. With Gabriel dead, this apartment would not sit quiet and alone much longer.
She had packed Catherine's belongings in a basket she had found while searching through the second-hand stores. With a few additions of her own, and a bright blue gingham bow tied to the handle, it sat on her dining table, and she sat waiting for a reply to her note. What form a reply might take she knew not, but she knew that it would come in its own way, and in its own time. Diana's imagination and intuition were critical in her role as a criminal profiler, but nothing she had ever dreamed of had prepared her for the fact of Vincent... or his world. Vincent belonged to the realms of fantasy, but she could not deny his entry into her work-a-day world. They had formed a bond during the search for his son, and the fact that she could have such a friend was an astonishment to her.
It was her habit to give her loft a grand clearing out between cases. The cases she worked often took over her life, and a step in restoring her life after they were solved was to clean. She dusted, and mopped, and vacuumed, and moved around some furniture. She tossed moldy leftovers into the trash, and scrubbed her refrigerator clean. She worked late into the night and fell into her bed, exhausted and half-asleep before her head even hit the pillow.
Diana slept late the next morning, finally wakened by the wail of sirens going past her building. She had been a police officer too long not to be alert to sounds like these. Her bedroom door was open, and as she lay in bed she could see the mid-morning sunlight glinting off the copper-bottomed pots hanging over her kitchen island. She stretched, and enjoyed a few more minutes snuggled under her down comforter. Finally feeling ready to face the day, she showered and dressed and fixed herself some oatmeal for breakfast. She ran errands, re-stocked her fridge, and hauled the trash from last night's cleaning session around to the dumpster behind her building. She did all the things she normally did, but now she was alert for any sign from the world below. She found herself looking at every person she encountered and thinking, "Do they know?" It was such an enigma, this new world. She had solved the mystery of its existence, and yet the fact of its reality remained shrouded in unknowns. For a puzzle solver like Diana this was simultaneously frustrating and exciting. It felt to her like finally putting the pieces of an all white jigsaw together. The pieces were all there, but there was no image to see.
"She must be allowed to return, Father," Vincent replied to the protestations of the older man who sat behind the cluttered desk. "She has given me, all of us, so much. How can we deny her this simple request? How can we ignore a hand stretched out in faith and friendship? That is not who we are."
The older man held up his hands in resignation, and with a slight smile, replied "I seem to win fewer and fewer of these arguments. Perhaps I taught you too well..."
Laying his hand on his father's shoulder, Vincent replied, "No child ever had a better teacher, Father. You taught me to think not only with my head, but with my heart, and that is what I am asking you to do."
"Well, it is our way to make welcome those who have need of us, so let us put our heads together and see how we can make this newest member of our community welcome."
Diana had just heated herself some soup and was carrying the bowl, nestled in a tea towel, towards the couch when her intercom buzzed. "Package for Bennett," came the voice. Setting the bowl down on the counter, she pressed the buzzer, replying "I'll be right down." She rode down in the elevator hoping this was not the start of a new case. She didn't feel ready to wrap herself in a new obsession. She didn't recognize the messenger who greeted her by asking, "Diana Bennett?" At her "Yes," the messenger handed her a thin envelope and with a cheery, "Have a nice day," and was off to his next delivery.
There were no markings on the envelope Diana noted, as the elevator took her back to her loft. It gave no clue about its sender, save her name written in block letters on the manila envelope. When she arrived back at her apartment she crossed to her desk, picked up a letter opener, and slit open the envelope.
A piece of stiff, cream-colored paper, which was folded in half, fell out. She picked it up, turned it over, and on the front was a drawing of a microscope, done in markers and crayons, and in a childish smudged hand were printed the words "Your invited." Diana flashed back to finding a similar invitation on the desk in Catherine Chandler's apartment. An invitation that even now was included in her private case file on Cathy's death. A case file that she had put in a safe deposit box until she figured out what to do with the information she had gathered that she could not turn over to the D.A.'s office.
When she opened the card, she recognized the bold black writing inside, which read: "The children are presenting their science reports to Father on Saturday afternoon. Perhaps you would join us for their investigations and stay to dinner. Someone will meet your outside your loft at noon. I look forward to seeing you. Vincent. P.S. I have already taken care of giving Eric, who made this card, a lesson in grammar."
She smiled broadly at the post-script, imagining the lecture that must have resulted from the inadvertent misspelling of the word "you're."
Jamie met her outside her loft Saturday at noon, took her north and east several blocks, and then led Diana through several nondescript unmarked doors until they reached a grate at the end of a dead-end hallway. Finding the concealed catch, the two women made their way into the tunnel world below where Vincent waited.
He took Diana, at her request, to his chamber to see his son.
As Diana knelt next to Jacob's cradle, Vincent confessed, "Every time I look at him the miracle fills me anew."
"Oh he is beautiful," she said, breathless and awestruck by the child before her.
"I've looked in his eyes a thousand times ... why does his power never diminish?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
Full of certainty, she replied, "You can never run out of hope for a newborn child."
"Sometimes in my nightmares, I relive what happened... the loss... the... violence... all the pain... all that I put us both through... but then in an instant it vanishes, carried off by his waking cries."
"He can make it all right."
"Nothing can make all of it right." Finally finding the will to ask her, he ventured, "Diana, you've done so much for both of us, why?"
She thought for a moment, faintly amused that he'd asked her a question she'd been asking of herself. "It's funny, I... when it was happening, I never even questioned it. I don't know Vincent, you make everything so possible, I ... I couldn't help but want to help you."
Gratitude welling up in him for all that she had done, he told her, holding her eyes with a steady gaze, "Jacob was not my only blessing."
Lost in her own thoughts, she missed the meaning shining in his eyes, and said, "You're thinking of Catherine."
Knowing that this woman would find the truth of his words, he replied quietly, "Always. And I'm thinking of you."
They held each other's gaze then, each seeking to find the truth of this new relationship.
Finally, she broke through the tension, almost impulsively. "Sometimes I wonder," she said to him with an awkward laugh and smile, "how all this can be happening and whether I even belong here or not." Shaking her head in disbelief, she stumbled over her next words, "Your... your world is ..." Sighing almost in despair, her words tinged with a hopelessness he didn't like to hear in her voice, she continued, "I don't know where I'm going any more. I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow."
Attempting to provide what hope he could, he told her, "Tomorrow will come, Diana. We can only live each day as it comes to us, with its pains and joys and all of its gifts."
Looking down at Jacob and back at Vincent she choked back the tears in her voice, but couldn't quite keep her fear of rejection out of her voice as she asked of him, "Could I hold him?"
Vincent picked up his son and placed him in Diana's arms, and without even realizing he was doing it, tweaked Jacob's small foot fondly as he kicked inside his blanket.
"Did you know, Vincent, when you named him, the meaning of his name?" Diana asked quietly, still in awe of the child she held in her arms.
"His name came from my heart, not my head."
"It's ironic, then…" she started to reply, when Jacob began to fuss, and almost without thought, Diana shifted him to her shoulder, and then paused, awed by the ease with which she handled this small child. She had never considered herself particularly maternal, but this child touched some long buried nerve in her. He brought forth in her abilities and sensitivities she hadn't known she possessed. She smoothed the reddish-gold curls just starting to be apparent, and hummed to him for a few moments as he fussed, and then finding some comfort in sucking on his fist, he settled down and closed his eyes. Diana took comfort in him, and from him, as she thought to herself, "Jacob, he who supplants." This little one had taken the place of others in ways that were only beginning to be understood.
Vincent watched her as she comforted his son, his blue eyes deepening with emotion. Full of longing for what should have been, he turned away from the picture before him.
Wishing only to change the subject, to defuse the emotions roiling in his chamber, he finally thought to ask the question that had been before him since he met her at the tunnel juncture several blocks from her loft. "Your note spoke of a debt? I do not think there could be anything you could possibly owe me. You have given me so much..."
Diana, turned and sitting carefully in the carved chair next to Vincent's writing table, she answered him. "Between us there have been many gifts, given and received. But as I was lately asked to a ceremony which required a gift, and I had none to give, I thought it was time I remedied that situation." She pointed towards the basket that she had set aside when they entered his chamber.
"What I brought with me is the repayment I spoke of. Please, go ahead and open it. The gifts are for Jacob, but I fear this little one is not yet up to the task," she said with a smile for the child held cradled in her arms.
Vincent picked up the basket and sat, opposite Diana on his bed. "But there was no need," he began.
"I know. But I also know what this child has already lost. There are legacies that must continue."
Puzzled, Vincent lifted the lid of the basket and smiled to see the small gifts tucked inside.
"The stuffed lamb and the rattle are from me," Diana continued. The other things... Vincent... the other things were Catherine's. Now they belong to her son."
Gasping, Vincent lifted from the basket Catherine's well-worn copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. He ran the soft pads of his fingers over the cover, and opening it saw the hand-written inscription on the flyleaf, "To Cathy on her 7th birthday. With our best love from your Mommy and Daddy."
He looked up at the woman across from him, tears brimming in his eyes. "She read from this at her Father's funeral. How could you know?"
"I didn't know that. I just sensed that it was special to Catherine. It was in a small chest in her closet with other things she clearly treasured. I couldn't remove them all without someone noticing... but I removed a few things I thought you and Jacob would like and replaced them with close substitutes. I hope no one will notice the switch."
Never quite letting go of the book he held in his lap, Vincent unpacked the rest of the basket, as Diana explained each item to him.
"A baby needs a blanket, and this one was wrapped around a doll."
"Molly," Vincent added. "Catherine told me once that they were inseparable when she was small."
"I knew she had a name..." Diana mused to herself, as if confirming her thoughts during the former discovery of the doll. "I tried to select things which were not only useful, but beautiful. The spoon is both."
"And it will be well loved, and well used, as is our custom in these tunnels."
"And lastly, in the bottom of the basket are few photos I grabbed on a whim when I was going through the chest to get the other things. It didn't seem right for Jacob to grow up not knowing what his mother looked like."
"Diana, truly, I have no words. How you could have thought to do such a thing..."
"It's what I do. I think," she smiled at him. If these things bring you and Jacob some joy then I have fulfilled my obligation as a witness at his naming. I know I cannot expect to be a part of your world, but I wanted to give your son something of meaning from his mother's world."
"Diana, you are already a part of our world. Perhaps we have not shown this to you clearly enough, but I feel it every time I look at my son. Catherine gave birth to him, but truly, you gave him life. Without you, I fear neither of us would have survived. I do not know what the future holds, but I hope that you and I and Jacob can find a way forward with each other's help."
Vincent paused and tipped his head to the side, as if listening to something. He stood and offered his hand to Diana. "A message on the pipes. Father is on his way back from his walk in the park with Jessica. It's almost time for the children's Science Exhibition."
Diana started to hand Jacob back to his father, but Vincent saw the regret she tried to keep hidden in her eyes. "Please, hold him for as long as you like." He gently reached out with his mind and touched the small boy's emotions. Smiling, he told her, "He is happy to be in his godmother's arms. And now it is time to go to Father's chambers. We mustn't keep the children waiting. Eric has made a model of a germ he is eager to explain. I am looking forward to knowing why he painted it purple..."