Author's Note: I had started this days ago, but work kept me from making much progress. I was just too tired. So while I know I have other updates due, I went back to this first since it was started. It still took me all day to get it done, but I suppose a late update is better than no update.
Plans and More Doubts
Joe woke to a sharp stab in his side, for a moment looking around to see who had stabbed him this time until he realized he was in his own bed. Alone. Grimacing, he forced himself up, needing to get a look at his side. If it was infected, Frank and his mother would freak. Joe didn't want to deal with the hospital again or even just their family doctor. He wasn't going to do that again. It was just a cut, not that deep, and he was fine. He still didn't know how to feel about his aunt doing it to him, but he was going to be fine. The cut would heal and be forgotten, just like so many others. He didn't even think it would be close to the scars he'd gotten before—and not at all like the ones Frank carried from Zollner or even Callie.
Joe winced. He had a few lingering marks from her as well, though they'd mostly faded and he would rather let them go.
He walked over to his dresser, pulled out a shirt, and yanked it over his head. He should have found a looser one, since this one would probably rub against the bandage, but he knew he'd live. He yawned as he descended the stairs, one thought on his mind: the refrigerator. His stomach was rumbling, and he needed to fill it.
He stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. He did not know why he'd thought breakfast would be ready. His mother wasn't up yet. His aunt might have had something waiting for them, but his aunt wasn't here. She was in jail.
That kind of ruined any thought of breakfast. He turned toward the living room, wanting to sit down and take some time just to come to grips with that, something he knew none of them had done yesterday. He hadn't wanted to, and then they were all distracted by the terrible dinner and then the envelope on Frank's bed. Now, Joe wasn't sure what he felt or what he thought about anything.
"Oh, now that's cute," he said. His voice was too loud, and he instantly roused both the sleeping parties on the couch, but at least his mouth was sure enough of an opinion to say it. "Or it was."
Nancy reached up to rub her head, having bumped it on Frank's when Joe woke her up. They'd fallen asleep sitting next to each other, heads resting against the others, and it would have been the kind of moment that needed to be photographed and oh'ed over by his mother, who had always adored those moments between any of the three of them when they were younger. She still did it with him and Frank even though they were fully grown, and she would have wanted to catch one with the other two since Nancy was hardly ever here for them to happen.
"Joe? What are you doing?"
"I'd think you were drinking with the way you sound now," he observed, and Nancy glared at him, looking like she wanted to flip him off. "You sound like you've got a bit of a hangover, in which case I'm hurt. You didn't share."
"The only thing we shared was a couple of nightmares," Frank muttered, putting a hand on his neck, rolling it to make the kinks go away. "We were talking about... Zollner. I didn't think either of us was going to sleep after that conversation. Still not sure how it happened."
"I'm going to bet that your fatigue just got up with you. As it did with me," Nancy said, yawning. "Or maybe a bit of adrenaline and panic mixed with upset... It all combined to make it so that you finally crashed and let yourself get some sleep, which you badly needed."
Frank shook his head. "Not likely. I am still not sure when we ended up sitting next to each other. I'm pretty sure I had the other chair."
Nancy flushed, and Joe figured it had something to do with her. Maybe the conversation had shifted from Zollner to what actually went down between her and Ned. Maybe it was uglier than she'd said before, but she might not have opened up about it—unless she wanted to distract Frank, which was definitely possible.
"There wasn't breakfast," Joe said into the now awkward silence. "It threw me off."
"Right," Frank said. "No Gertrude."
Nancy left the brothers alone, needing some space and a moment to breathe. The atmosphere within the Hardy home was tense, and she felt out of place. She shouldn't be in the middle of it, and she knew that. She hadn't planned on it, but she was here, and she had to fix it somehow. She'd tried helping Frank last night, but she didn't think their conversation had helped anyone. Frank couldn't prove to himself—or anyone—that Zollner was dead, could not have the assurance that he needed, and that was what they were all needing now.
This thing with Gertrude, her programming coming active now, it cast doubt on everything all over again. It was like the game Zollner had played before, the one he'd orchestrated from prison. This time, he could be doing it from the grave. That would be what he wanted everyone to think, even if he was dead. He wanted them believing that they could not ever be free of him.
Nancy looked at the shower, thinking back to how long Frank had spent in there the night before. Truth was, they weren't free. Not her, not Frank, not Callie, not Joe, not Ned, not Gertrude. Not even the ones less directly affected were free. They all carried the memories and the fears, the doubts and the scars. They were all going to have these things with them for the rest of their lives.
She went to the sink, splashing water on her face. She wanted to be the one who had the solution. She was on the outside. It should be easier for her. She could find some way of helping Frank and Joe, but she didn't have it. She couldn't even see a way past her own failure with Ned.
She dried off her face and headed back downstairs. This time, she smelled coffee, and she wasn't sure if Laura was awake now or not, but Nancy could use some coffee herself. She needed to wake up, to think, to make some kind of plan. She couldn't go home—that would be like abandoning Frank and Joe, but she might be in the way as well.
"That smells good," Nancy said as she entered the kitchen. "I hope there's enough for me."
"If you can convince Joe to share it," Frank said, and she smiled at him, glad he'd been the one to make the coffee. Frank's was usually a lot better than Joe's, since the younger Hardy tended to make it whichever haphazard way he felt like at the time, making it an adventure of either super strong or nothing but grounds or even something more water than coffee.
"I think that might be a little too easy," Nancy teased. She smiled at Joe, who frowned at her, but then she had an advantage—she was female, and Joe couldn't resist a pretty girl. She reached around him for a cup, and Frank brought the pot to her, filling the mug. "See?"
Joe wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I think I should hate you."
"Let's save that for later," Nancy suggested. She sipped from her coffee and then continued, "we have to start doing more than reacting. We've been put on the defensive. We're reeling from the blows that were struck, both metaphorical and real. We need to find a way to fight back."
"Oh, I like that idea," Joe said. "I like it a lot."
"Except when you consider that the person you'd be fighting back against is our aunt who had no idea what she was doing," Frank countered. He shook his head. "We can't fight her. She didn't—she's more or less innocent. She may later remember attacking you, but if we were able to talk to her now and she was lucid, she would have no memory of it, no explanation for it. She'd think we were all crazy even knowing what she does about Zollner."
"I didn't mean we would fight Gertrude."
"And Zollner is supposed to be dead. Vallin, too," Frank added. "There's no one to fight. No one but ourselves. And having fought that one for over a year now, I have to say, I'm sick of that one. It's a losing battle."
"I'm not saying we need to fight them or ourselves," Nancy said, noting how Frank had not entirely covered over the fact that he wasn't sure about Zollner's death. He was too honest to try and lie and say he believed it, but he knew what he had to do for Joe's sake—for his family's sake—in pretending he did. "But the woman who brought those papers to Frank, the one who is likely behind the break-in, she can be found. She can be caught."
"And when we learn she knows nothing about Zollner or any of this, that she's just another pawn?" Frank asked, arms folded over his chest again. "It's not going to help. Or change anything."
"Except... if this is the game that Zollner has started, the one he wants to play—and I'm not saying he's alive to do it, just that he's already set it in motion—then the best way of ending it is—"
"Refusing to play?" Joe asked. "Because I kind of like that idea. He doesn't need to screw with us again. Ever."
"Only he can without even trying," Frank said, his hand on the place where the Z shaped scar hid under his shirt.
"Which is why we need to pursue every lead we have to make sure we can stop it for good this time. If Zollner did manage to set up an inheritance for Frank, then we need to know how. We need to find out where he managed to hide those assets and maybe use them to find the last remnants of his organization, and when those are gone—"
"So is Zollner," Joe finished. "For good this time."
"Exactly."
Joe grinned. "I like the sound of that. Where do we start?"
"Come on, Frank. You saw her. You can do better than that with a description. I know you can," Joe said, and Frank leaned back against the wall, glaring at his brother. He hadn't wanted to do this from the start, not when trying to talk about his uninvited guest yesterday was dragging up not only the memories from that upsetting encounter but so many others, but all Joe could do was push, push, push. Frank understood why—none of them liked being helpless, and they all needed something after what happened to Gertrude.
That didn't make it less frustrating or even less tempting to hit his brother right in the face.
"Look, I have given you a description. I've actually given you ten, but you don't seem willing to let me use any of them. What am I supposed to do? You know me. I am not an artist. I can't draw her myself. I didn't think far enough ahead yesterday to where I grabbed my phone and took a picture of her to use against facial recognition," Frank said, almost losing control of his temper. "I have no idea who she is. I have never seen her before. All I remember is the damned hair, and I'm sorry I wasn't more help than that, but she blindsided the hell out of me. I admit that. I didn't notice much past her words about my inheritance. I was seeing Zollner by then, not her."
Joe looked like he was about to hit the wall himself. "I don't—I just want to find this woman. I want to find her and make her pay for doing this to you."
"And if she had no idea what she was doing just like Aunt Gertrude?" Frank asked. He shook his head. "Maybe somewhere out there is a woman staring at the mirror and trying to understand why her hair is such a funky color when it wasn't yesterday, but she's not going to have any answers for us."
"We don't know that," Nancy said, still calmer than both of them. "And while finding her is the logical step, I don't know that we're going to do it like this. Let Frank have some time to recall more details. Or leave him alone to play with his programs later. The familiarity of his computer and technology might help relax more details from him. In the meantime, there is the actual will to consider. None of us did much more than read Zollner's note, which is more of a mind game than anything, but there could be forensics on it as well as whatever we can gain from the actual legal papers. The law firm, the notary, any of that. Those are still leads that we can use."
"You have a point," Joe said, shaking his head in frustration. "Still, it's easier to fight a woman—a person—than it is a piece of paper."
Frank snorted, and Joe flipped him off, just making Frank laugh. He didn't know that he was all that capable of fighting either option, which made him more or less pathetic, but he'd like to take a break from trying to identify the strange blonde and go with something more substantial, something that wasn't from such a questionable source—his mind.
"I'll go get the papers," Joe said, and before they could stop him, he was running up the stairs. Fine with Frank. He wasn't going to go after them, and he could use the space from his brother for as long as it would last.
"It's possible that she'll be an employee of the law firm. That might be all we need to find her," Nancy said, and Frank looked over at her. She gave him a slight smile. "Though I am not sure that's as much of a relief to you as it should be."
Frank shook his head. "I don't know. The papers came back, which means she wasn't a figment of my imagination, but at the same time... I'm not sure..."
"You doubt yourself because you weren't able to give Joe the description," Nancy finished for him. "You're still not sure she's real."
"Stupid, isn't it? If the papers are real—"
"—and I heard the doorbell—"
"Then she should be real, right?" Frank asked, rubbing his forehead. "I don't understand, though. She's not clear. Not at all, and it's not like she shouldn't be. I saw her before she said she wanted me, that it was about my inheritance. I thought she must be a potential client. I don't—how can that moment be gone when I have so many others that won't leave? And if she's—she spoke like she'd seen Zollner in person, which does make her more valuable than the papers, Joe is right about that, but I can't think about her without wanting to puke because I hear him. I hate this so much..."
Nancy put a hand on his arm. "I know. And so does Joe. You're not alone in this. Even if you have doubts, if you think you can't trust your memories—trust Joe. Trust us."
"And if... if none of you are real?"
