Chapter 7 – Breathe Easy
I don't normally do this, but I'm putting some song lyrics into this chapter, mainly because I feel it really sums up how everyone is feeling about the past in my AU…
Thanks as always to Tinks and Dori, for keeping me sane and encouraging me on with this. I so appreciate you guys for keeping me right on Sammie, because she belongs to one of you and the other loves her so damn much!
Sometimes
is never quite enough
If
you're flawless, then you'll win my love
Don't
forget to win first place
Don't
forget to keep that smile on your faceBe
a good boy
Try
a little harder
You've
got to measure up
And
make me prouderHow
long before you screw it up
How
many times do I have to tell you to hurry up
With
everything I do for you
The
least you can do is keep quietBe
a good girl
You've
gotta try a little harder
That
simply wasn't good enough
To
make us proudI'll
live through you
I'll
make you what I never was
If
you're the best, then maybe so am I
Compared
to him compared to her
I'm
doing this for your own damn good
You'll
make up for what I blew
What's
the problem, why are you cryingBe
a good boy
Push
a little farther now
That
wasn't fast enough
To
make us happy
We'll
love you just the way you are
If
you're perfect
Perfect – Alanis Morisette
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Anna was lying on the bed in the small room she occupied above Malloy's. The bar was closed and the sounds of the customers had long since died away in the streets. She stared up at the ceiling thinking about what had happened; the fight she had had with her brother outside of Sully's.
She had totally freaked out. She knew it. She had said some unforgiveable things. Not that they weren't true, but probably unforgiveable. She had just screwed up the only decent thing to happen to her in a very long time. Well, she reasoned a little, one of the only decent things to happen to her in a very long time. Mind you, some of those decent things were tied to her brother.
Anna's eyes filled with frustrated tears and she rolled over, hiding her head under the pillow to muffle the sound of her crying. The last thing she needed was for Jimmy to hear her and come to see what the problem was…
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Adam let himself back into his apartment after finally getting back from Brooklyn, where he'd dropped off Anna at Malloy's. They'd finally settled on Terminator: Salvation, not, he thought, that Anna had concentrated on the movie at all. She'd refused all refreshment, which had made him feel pretty self conscious slurping on his large coke and munching on his huge box of popcorn. Every time he'd taken a glance in her direction, she'd sat with her eyes firmly fixed on the screen, her jaw set, just like Don's. Her hands had gripped the armrests on her seat. He hadn't dared try to take one of them, let alone slip his arm around her shoulder again. He could sense that she would probably freak out. Or hit him. Or possibly deliver the icy Flack glare that the whole family seemed to have genetically programmed into them.
As the end titles had rolled on the film (not one of the series' best in Adam's humble opinion), Anna had stood swiftly, grabbed her jacket and made a beeline for the door to the theater and Adam had been forced to grab his own and hurry after her.
He'd managed to convince her to let her see her back to the bar, but only just and instead of stopping for a drink to talk, she'd made her way swiftly through the bar, through the door that led to the stairs to the apartment above and disappeared without saying a word.
He'd almost gotten out the door when he'd felt a hand on his shoulder. He'd turned to see the concerned hazel eyes of Jimmy Malloy and without a word had walked back towards the bar and accepted the pint of Guinness that the bar owner had set in front of him, not that it was his drink. He'd barely gotten a mouthful down when the older man had started asking questions.
"What happened son?" Jimmy had asked. Adam had just looked at him and Jimmy had sighed.
"Junior always was gung ho about things," said Jimmy, not even needing to hear about the whole situation.
"I only caught the end of things," admitted Adam, "But from the sound of it, Anna's not dealing well with being dragged into the Flack family kicking and screaming."
He took another sip of the bitter, black liquid, trying not to make a face at the taste. Jimmy sighed and shook his head.
"Anna doesn't do well with others," Jimmy said, "She had no brothers and sisters growing up and a bitter mother. I don't think she had many friends either. She's a loner."
Adam remained silent. Jimmy picked up a glass and began to polish it with a dish towel.
"She's stubborn too," he said, "Just like her brother and father. You can't force her to do anything against her will and if she feels uncomfortable with it, she pushes right back with a temper tantrum. Just like when she was a little girl."
Jimmy put down the glass and looked Adam straight in the eye.
"You like my grand-niece, don't you boy?" he said bluntly. Adam colored a little, but he nodded. Jimmy looked at him warily, hesitating slightly before he spoke again.
"Then you need to know Anna behaves the way she does, because of things that happened a long time ago," he said, "It's not my story to tell, she'll tell you in her own good time."
Jimmy nodded to himself, as though he was satisfied with what had passed unsaid.
Adam had a pretty good idea of what he meant though. He had been there. So had Sammie. And sometimes you could just see it in other people too, before anything was said. It was an unspoken bond between strangers. Or in this case, family.
And he made up his mind right there and then that he was always going to be there for Anna. Because he knew exactly what it was like to be thrust into the bosom of the loud, boisterous Flack family. And what hiding things was like.
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The bedroom was dark, the only light from the streetlight beam that she could see through the gap in the curtains. Both of their bodies were slick with sweat from making love, one arm across his stomach, the other under her neck. She was curled into his side as he lay on his back, the only sound in the room his ragged breathing. She suddenly winced as the baby within her gave a particularly vicious kick in the direction of her kidneys.
"Sammie?" Don said, raising his head to look at her.
"Nothing," she said, rubbing the sore spot, "Just your demon spawn making his or her presence known."
He grinned and covered the spot with his own hand, gently rubbing and soothing the pain away. She sighed.
"Better?" he asked.
"Much," she replied, reaching up a little to kiss him on the underside of his jaw, "Now are you going to tell me what went down between you and Anna, cause I have to tell you Donnie, it didn't look pretty from where I was standing."
His hand on her stomach stilled. He let out a heavy sigh.
"We had a fight," he said finally, "She said I was pushing way too hard."
Sam pushed herself up onto one arm to look down at her husband.
"Are you trying to tell me that's all it was about?" she asked.
He pulled her down into his arms, his hands rubbing her back.
"Anna's got it into her head that everyone's talking about her, because of Dad and because of me," he said.
"Somehow I don't think that's all there is to it Donald," Sam said drily. Don sighed.
"She also seems to have got it into her head that I'm trying to pretend that none of the last 30 years happened," he continued, "That she's been around the whole time," he said, "I'm not Sam, I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to include her is all."
Sam rubbed her small hand in circles on his chest. He covered it with his own.
"Baby, you really don't know that much about her yet," she said, "There's probably a lot more about her and her past that you don't know yet. I mean, imagine this was you, having a whole family dropped on you on top of moving to a different city, hell a different country!"
"I didn't think about it like that," Don admitted. He curled his fingers around hers.
"No baby," Sam sighed, "Sometimes you don't think at all. You just bulldoze on in there and forget that other people sometime have ideas, opinions and feelings of their own."
Her husband stilled the movement of his other hand on her back.
"Don?" she asked, concerned, "Is there something else you're not telling me?"
"She told me a few other things," he confessed, "That you're right, that I didn't know shit about her. She had a helluva bad time with her mom I think. She also told me I wasn't ready to be a father."
Sam took a sharp intake of breath.
"Baby, it's not like that," he said, "But I think she might be right. Takes a Flack…"
"…To know a Flack," finished Sam, "You going to explain what you mean by that?"
Don took a deep intake of breath.
"It's this whole thing with Dad," he explained, "About how he was with Mom, about how I am with you sometimes. Sometimes I think I'm just like him."
Sam stroked his stomach.
"Baby, you are not your father," she said.
"I don't know about that," Don replied a little bitterly, "I mean, let's face it Sammie, I love the job just as much as him, you complain a lot about how I like to control your every move, just like he did Mom."
Sam was silent. She couldn't really argue with that.
"We all know Dad likes a drink," continued Don, "He used to like it a little too much to be honest and he used to come home and beat on Mom. He used to hit me pretty hard too, when I got in his way."
Sam squeezed his fingers. She knew things hadn't been great between her husband and his father, but he'd never really opened up like this to her before.
"It's not that I don't want the baby Sammie," he said, "I really, really want the baby. I want us to be a family more than anything. I'm just….." his voice tailed off, as he tried to find the right word.
"Scared?" Sam suggested. His fingers tightened around her almost painfully.
"Yeah," he said roughly, "But that's not all Sammie, you don't know what I did, to Dad."
Don shifted so that he was lying with his head below hers in the bed. She reached up to stroke the back of his head, playing with his short hair.
"What did you do baby?" she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
"It was right before I joined the Academy," he said, "Dad came home late after a shift one night. He'd had way too much to drink again, a bad day on patrol I guess. Mom was in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner and he just went for her. I was in my room, I heard her screaming and I came down the stairs. She only screamed that way when Dad was off on one."
He took a deep breath.
"I came down and he'd already hit her a couple of times and she was on the floor, by the kitchen units, with her arm up to stop any more blows, but he still had a fist raised, like he was going to hit her again and…and…and I just saw red Sammie, I just lost it."
"I hit him and kept on hitting him and you know what? I still remember how excited it made me feel. To be beating the crap out of him. And to feel that good about something like that? It makes me feel sick Sammie, sick."
Sam gently shushed him, hearing the raw emotion building in his voice.
"It's OK Donnie," she said, "It was a long time ago."
"You don't understand!" he shouted, "I'm just like him – because of that, the way doing that made me feel. Every day I feel like I'm becoming more like him, like Dad. I like my drinks with the boys too much, I like taking the perps down too much and I still remember what it was like to do that to my Dad!"
"But he's changed right?" Sam asked, "You told me a long time ago that he changed. Was it because of that night?"
"Yeah," Don said roughly, "I know for a fact that he never raised a hand to my mother again and he has never got that drunk again. Jimmy sorted him out a lot."
He took a deep breath.
"I walked out of the house the next day and went to stay with my grandpa," Don finished, "I haven't spent the night at their house since. Then I joined the Academy a few weeks later and you know the rest."
Sam closed her arms around him as he turned and buried his face into her shoulder, holding onto her with a vice like grip. Don had never opened up to her like this before. And she could feel wetness on her shoulder and she realized her husband was crying.
"It's OK baby," she said, "You're not your father and you'll never be him, OK? You're going to be a great dad to our baby, to all our babies."
And they lay there like that, in the darkness, until they both fell asleep.
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"I hated them," said Anna, pulling the collar of her jacket up higher, even though it wasn't cold.
She and Adam were on Far Rockaway Beach, where he was proving to her that New York City did, in fact, have everything you could ever want within spitting distance, including beaches. It was the latest in a long line of day trips. They'd ridden the Staten Island Ferry, played chopsticks on the giant piano board at FAO Schwartz, been on the rollercoaster at Coney Island. He was getting to know her a whole lot better.
He went to put an arm around her shoulders.
"Don't touch me!" she said, pushing him away, before burying her hands in her face,
"I'm sorry," she said, "I just don't really do physical contact that well."
"What do you mean, you hated them?" asked Adam, "Who did you hate?"
Anna took a deep breath.
"I hated my father and Jimmy," she said, "Because every time I came here, I thought they would never send me back to her, to my mother, but they always did."
The wind blew the hair away from her neck, revealing the Chinese symbol of the snake tattooed on the nape, as she'd told Adam, it represented the year of her birth. 1977.
"That's understandable," said Adam, "I know I feel the same about the cops that always took me and Sam back to our parents."
Anna laughed, a cold little laugh.
"I hated my brothers and sister too," she said, "Because they were happy and they had Dad. He loved them more. They had him all the time and I just got to see him on borrowed time, during the summer."
Adam was silent. He didn't know much about his brother-in-law's childhood, but he knew enough that it hadn't been pretty. Out of the three Flack kids, Don was the one that was most together.
"My mother was an evil bitch," declared Anna, "She told me over and over how useless I was, how I'd ruined her life and she hated me for it. The whole time I was this reminder of how stupid she had been that summer and how I had wrecked her future."
"What about your grandparents?" Adam asked.
"They didn't care," said Anna, "They were always quiet and disapproving. I was this dirty secret they tried to pretend didn't exist." Anna shrugged her shoulders.
"I used to spend a lot of time reading. The first time anyone actually said anything nice to me was when Jimmy and Marie collected me at JFK and Marie gave me this huge hug and told me how happy she was I'd come to visit them. I had more fun coloring in coloring books perched on a bar stool than I ever had with the rest of the family. And I loved spending time with DD. It's just that," she threw her hands up, "A part-time dad is hard for a kid to understand, you know?"
Adam nodded. Until he and Sam had been swept into Clint Chambers, aka The Sarge, family, they'd had a similar experience. The only respite before that had been occasional visits to family members, which Sam remembered more than he did.
"I mean, I understand now," said Anna, "I do. They thought that what they were doing was for the best and I guess they didn't really know the whole of it. Otherwise there's no way in hell that Jimmy and Marie would ever have put me back on a plane to Ireland."
She took a deep breath and unbuttoned her jacket, swiftly removing her t-shirt next, revealing the vest underneath. But it wasn't the vest he was looking at.
Anna had tattoos – a biohazard sign on her upper arm, more Chinese symbols on her back, but here and there, in several different places, were the scars of old cigarette burns. Someone had used Anna as an ashtray. On more than one occasion.
Adam took a deep breath and rolled up one pant leg to reveal the scars he'd got at the hands of his father; the burns he'd received being dunked into boiling water. The burns that had taken forever to heal.
Anna gasped. The scars were horrific.
"That's not all," he said, lifting the back of his t-shirt to reveal faint lines, the scars from another beating. Ones that Sammie had carefully tended to over the course of several days that she had cleaned and bandaged. Sam had taken good care of her Peanut.
Adam put his large hand on the back of Anna's neck.
"It's OK Anna," he said, "I know."
And she'd cried then, on the isolated beach, letting Adam see the scared and hurt little girl behind all the Flack bravado: The angry and frustrated child who had been too scared to scream, to tell other people about what was going on at home.
He stood and held out his hand, helping her to her feet, before pulling her to him, holding her against his comforting bulk, his arms around her. He held her for a long time, in a close embrace, until her shaking subsided. He kissed her forehead, before she rested her head on his shoulder. And they stood there, the two of them, on the isolated beach, for what seemed like the longest time.
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Sam bent over some DNA evidence she was processing in Trace, occasionally straightening up and rubbing the small of her back, where her advancing pregnancy was putting stress on the vertebrae and causing some pain now that she was into her sixth month.
She was taken aback by the sudden appearance of Adam. He grabbed her upper arm and steered her towards the break area.
"Peanut!" she shrieked, "What the hell are you doing!"
"We need to talk," he said firmly, "About Anna."
They came to a stop and Sam turned, folding her arms and glaring at her younger brother.
"What about Anna?" she asked, "What do you know Adam?"
Adam dropped his head, suddenly finding his feet very interesting.
"I know some stuff," he admitted, "About what happened to her as a kid. She…she… stuff happened to her Sammie."
Sam looked her brother in the eye.
"Stuff?" she asked, "What kind of stuff? Childhood accidents or…"
"…Or being used as an ashtray?" finished Adam, "the broken bones from falling off a bike she never owned? The black eyes from walking into doors? The bruises from "falling"? Yeah Sam, that kind of stuff."
Sam staggered backwards and sat down heavily on a chair by the kitchen counter. There was no way in hell any of them could ever have imagined this. And she had no idea how Don was going to react when he found out. Or his father for that matter. Not that it would do any good now Anna was an adult and her mother was dead. She looked up at Adam, standing there running his hand through his unruly hair, as he often did when he was nervous.
"I'm guessing she didn't just spill all of this out after your trip to the cinema a few weeks ago?" she said.
Adam looked a little sheepish.
"I've, uh, well that is, er I've been seeing a bit of Anna," he said, "Showing her NYC from a resident's perspective.
Sam smiled, one that widened rapidly as she considered her baby brother, all grown up in front of her.
"Has anyone told you you're an amazing man Adam Ross?" she asked.
Adam blushed a little before walking to her and throwing an arm around her shoulder.
"It's just how I roll," he affirmed.
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That last line is especially for a couple of friends of mine, one in particular, who've been having a hard time recently. Thanks for dropping by and looking this up. I hope I've done the characters justice! It was a really, really hard chapter to write without going overboard…
Please R&R folks! Thank you please.
