Murdock shot up in bed, his eyes wide, his chest heaving and he felt a scream in his throat that hadn't had a chance to come loose. He saw the lights in the room that colored everything and he saw Jean laying next to him asleep and he knew he was awake. He huffed and puffed a few times as he tried to force himself to calm down, he felt like he'd just been ripped out of a falling dream, his feet had that pins and needles sensation when you actually hit bottom even though they hadn't been touching anything but the sheets.
The dream came back to him, and suddenly he didn't want to be here anymore. He pushed back the sheets and carefully got out of bed, stepping over the foot of the bed so he didn't wake Jean up because the only other way to really get out of the bed on his side would be climbing over her. His feet touched the carpeted floor and he walked around the bed, on the way he caught sight of something on the trunk behind the headboard. Jean could never get into her trunk because the top was always covered in books, candy bars, ammo boxes, amongst other things, and tonight there had been something new added to the menagerie; one of the china bowls from the kitchen filled with chocolate and peanut butter candies wrapped in bright red, green, silver and gold foil that had an extra shine in the multicolored lights from the window. In the back of his head he could hear that 'Silver and Gold' song from the old Rudolph cartoon, but he pushed it aside as he walked to the door, quietly left and stepped into the room next door since it was empty and he could be left in private.
When they were at the grocery store earlier that day, he'd sneaked away from Jean so she wouldn't see what he got; he'd taken a detour down to the candy section and grabbed a few bags of peanut butter cups and kisses and chocolate mints. He paid for them and stuffed them inside his jacket before returning to her. He always kept his pockets full anyway so if his jacket had a new bulge in it, it wasn't very noticeable and Jean hadn't said anything. When they'd gotten home and Jean wasn't looking, he got a bowl out of the dish rack and sneaked upstairs and poured the candy all together in it and left it on the trunk. Jean was sure to see it when she came up that night. Earlier that day, also when Jean was absent, Murdock had made a long distance call back to New York and spoken to her mother. It was still awkward having to address his unbeknownst former mother-in-law as though he was just casually living here until further notice, but they always got along whenever he had to call her up for something.
He'd stressed the fact that with this being Jean's first Christmas away from home, he wanted to make sure she had a good time and inquired about any traditions there had been at home that she hadn't told him about so he could surprise her. That had been one of the first things Mrs. Rhodes had brought up; that every year since Jean was a little girl they put out a little bowl of Christmas candy to last her until Christmas, then she woke up and found a larger bowlful in with the other goodies set out on the coffee table in the morning. That had been an easy enough surprise to pull off, and it didn't surprise Murdock that Jean would've forgotten about it. Living alone off and on and on a struggling actor's salary there were plenty of days that the mice in the yard ate better than she did. Even now, she was doing better but it was understandable how little things like that could be forgotten in her new fast paced life; and she had definitely appreciated the surprise. So what had happened? Everything had been nice when they went to bed, so what was the matter now?
And then it hit him. Jean's mother, nice woman, easy to get along with, albeit as Jean said, not too bright, (all the better for her, knowledge might be power but heavy was the head that had to store it all), but a nice woman, lovely woman, good mother…there was something about her and he couldn't put his finger on what it was, but in a way she reminded him of his own mother. Were it not for pesky moments like these, he could have a very good time at Christmas; but all major holidays took him back to that annoying little fact that he'd grown up spending most of these family-oriented pastimes without her. He'd had a long time to get used to it but it really didn't get much easier.
He felt his eyes sting and burn and it wasn't just because he was tired. It was late, everybody else was asleep, and he doubted he was going to get anyone up. He'd had a lot of experience over the years at being quiet. At the V.A. the staff expected to hear the patients crying in the night, in the daytime, going into and coming out of therapy, and surgery, etc., and why not? Between the post traumatic stress, the medications that made everybody whacked out, and the fact that most of them had been thrown away by their country, their society and their own families, those patients had a lot to cry about. But the doctors expected that, and he never did what anybody expected of them, so he never gave them the satisfaction of hearing him be one of those voices in the night. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and when they refused to stay back he smothered himself with his pillows or his blankets, the mattress, sometimes he just stopped breathing so he wouldn't make any noise, and he did it for so long he passed out and didn't wake up until the next morning when all was forgotten. He slowly sank back against the wall and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as the light started to blur.
In the bedroom, Jean had remained asleep until she turned over and realized that the other side of the bed was empty and cold. She woke up and saw that Murdock was gone, after a minute she thought about it and realized that in itself wasn't so strange. But then she heard something. She got out of bed and followed the sound to the west wall; it was coming from the room next door. That wasn't anybody's bedroom, just a small room being used for storage since she'd accumulated more belongings than she currently had fitting space for. Putting her ear to the wall she could hear somebody breathing heavily mixed with small choking sounds, and she felt a blade in her chest when she realized it was Murdock.
Murdock looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He'd washed out his eyes with cold water but they were still red, fortunately it was only a little after 2 in the morning, come tomorrow when everybody got up he'd look normal again and he wouldn't have to explain anything to anybody. There were obvious reasons why he didn't bring problems like this up with Face, being an orphan he wouldn't be able to understand, and B.A., well Murdock knew better than to bother the big guy with his own problems. Hannibal was the only one who ever knew, and even then it was few and far between on those rare times he got to spend the night with Hannibal at his apartment before going back to the V.A. hospital the next day. The Colonel was very understanding about it, Murdock suspected it went back to something in Hannibal's own past but he never pushed the subject; for some reason the Colonel chose not to talk about his past before 'Nam and they'd all learned to accept it, or maybe it was just he who had accepted it and the others hadn't cared in the beginning anyway.
He left the bathroom and quietly made his way back down the hall to Jean's bedroom and slipped in and quietly shut the door behind him. He was surprised to see Jean wasn't in bed and he looked around, and was equally surprised to see her sitting on the floor against the opposite wall with her head hung low and her face in her hands.
"Jean," he said softly as he went over to her and knelt down beside her on the floor, "What's the matter?"
Jean lowered her hands and raised her head, Murdock couldn't hide the shock when he saw her own red eyes and wet face.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, Murdock," she said so quietly he almost couldn't hear her.
"What' you got to be sorry for?" he asked.
"I heard you," Jean told him, "But I didn't come, I didn't do anything."
He didn't get it, and in any case he hadn't been in the mood for company anyway.
"I told you before there was something wrong with me," Jean said as she straightened up, "And there sure as hell is. This only proves what I've told you all along, I'm no good, I can't…"
Whatever it was she couldn't do, she couldn't even bring herself to say what it was. Not that it mattered, Murdock had gotten very good at reading people over the years and he knew what she was trying to say. Jean was a hard person to read, and she trusted very few people, and even among all of them, he wondered just how much she trusted the others. He thought back and it occurred to him that almost every time she suffered an emotional breakdown, he had been the only person present for it, the only one who knew, as if it was something to be ashamed of. All his years in the services, in the jungle, in the hospital had left him with too much understanding on just how much the opposite was true. For some reason, Jean had yet to learn this fact.
Earlier that day he'd joked with her about being able to pass herself off as a guy; she would've done well as one in the generation he grew up in. Jean had had it right, when they were growing up the world was still flat; in just 30 years the world had changed entirely and today people knew and understood so much more than they did when he was a kid. He remembered that idiotic attitude parents had had about boys were supposed to be tough, never weak, and crying was seen as a sign of weakness. As a child it always left him wondering just why it was supposed to be alright for girls to be weak then if that was the case. Of course, he knew better, he'd been raised by two very smart grandparents who knew far better than all those 'progressive' parents of the atomic age. Well, somehow, despite the difference of more than a decade between them, it seemed that Jean had been raised in a similar environment and taken a similar attitude to heart. Maybe she hadn't been raised with it but she'd picked it up somewhere along the way and had applied it to herself.
On one hand it was understandable given her past. Six months hidden in plain sight, six months as a self employed assassin; she'd been too hopped up on raw rage to feel much else and in her mind frame to suddenly get emotional about anything would've been to show her weakness and become incompetent to serve the job at hand. That was part of why he remembered so well shortly after they'd met her, that night in the hotel when he'd woken up and found her crying in the bathroom. He'd never gotten any answers out of her then what was the matter, but they'd found out the next day when they found her journal recording a nightmare involving the four of them captured and facing an execution only to opt for taking their own lives first. Sure, the reason she looked white as an old nightgown was pure fear from the nightmare, but there had been something else in that look on her face that wasn't just the feeling of being petrified; embarrassment, humiliation at being discovered. It went further than that though; if he had to guess he would wager that that other thing he'd seen in her face then that he hadn't been able to get a reading on, was another breed of fear: fear at the reprimand she faced for being weak and letting it show. He couldn't figure it out, he couldn't figure out how a girl who'd been brought up by two normal parents with sound heads on their shoulders, could turn out like she had; something had happened, something had gone wrong somewhere to warp her into what she had become, but what, and who had been responsible? That was something he knew they would never have the answer to, even if Jean knew and was willing to acknowledge it, she'd never tell them, he knew that.
And tonight? Well tonight had exposed the other end of that double edged sword. For her to get emotional was a sign of weakness, but for someone else, that was a sign that something was wrong and they needed help. But she hadn't been able to be of any help to him when it seemed he needed it; which made sense, she didn't know how to be emotional herself without thinking there was something wrong with her for it, so it was understandable she wouldn't know how to try and comfort someone else who was. Thinking back again, he went down the list; the real clincher had come after Jean had been shot, when Brutus left her, that was the most emotionally exhausting experience of her life, and at the time she was so far out of it to even notice someone else was in the room, but after the fact she knew that he had been there with her.
The next one that came to mind was when the five of them and Decker and Crane had trapped some drug runners in a cemetery. One car had lost control and flipped over, and then exploded, four men died instantly in the flames, the money and drugs they'd been transporting blew out the windows and rose up into the billowing clouds of smoke and fire. She had been alright in the cemetery and during the ride out of there, then they'd realized she was turning purple from not breathing. And why? Very simple, if she wasn't breathing then she couldn't make those pesky sounds that drew everybody's attention to the fact that you were near that point of bawling your guts out. If she'd had it her way she would've been content to turn purple and pass out, except they'd noticed the resemblance she was bearing to a grape and they did the only thing they knew to; they had to force the breath back into her body so Face had hit her hard between her shoulder blades, making her scream, and once she inhaled again she collapsed in Murdock's arms with hysteria. Of course she hadn't been the lone wolf on that one; he seemed to recall there hadn't been a dry eye in that entire house until Decker got home several hours later. Brushes with death of those sorts were always capable of ripping your guts out and whether it was grief for those who had died or a wakeup call of the close call of your own mortality, left you bawling like a baby. That was something he already knew too well from serving in a war, when you were surrounded by death you were expected to become numb to it, but most couldn't and that was why they came back with post trauma; those who could become as unaffected by it as was possible didn't deal with trauma because they didn't feel anything anymore, and that was worse.
Jean must've been able to get some idea of what was going through his mind because she looked up at him and said, in something closer to her usual nonchalant tone, "Maybe I'm just a sociopath."
He laughed and said as he gathered her in his arms and lifted her up onto his lap, "No sweetheart, you're not one of those, believe me I know."
"Well then it's something else," she said, "Something's wrong with me." She laughed bitterly and said, "Some wife I was, I can't even make sure you're alright."
Murdock made sure she was looking at him as he told her, "But I am…there wasn't anything you could've done anyway, don't worry about it, darling." And as if to emphasize his words, he leaned over and kissed her.
Jean turned her head and looked at him mournfully and said, "I'm sorry, Murdock, I do love you, I know I've got a horrible way of showing it though."
Murdock smiled and pulled her tighter against him and said, "I know you do, darling, I've always known that, and you have a far easier time of showing it than B.A. does, now if I can see through his act every time he claims I'm not his friend, don't you think I can see through yours? At least you'll admit that you love me."
Jean put her arms high up around his back and hugged him like she was holding on for her life; he hooked one arm around her in return and rubbed her back with his free hand. After a few minutes he felt her relax against him and felt her head drop on his shoulder and he knew she'd be asleep soon. He patted her on the back and moved to get up, pulling her to her feet. "Come on," he said as he put his hands on her shoulders and led her towards the door, "Let's go get you cleaned up."
In the bathroom he ran a washcloth under the cold water and dabbed at her face and around her eyes. Jean brought her hand up to stop him but it was obvious she was too out of it to actually try.
"You know I was only teasing you earlier, don't you?" Murdock asked as he re-wet the cloth and ran it over her cheek again, "I think you're very pretty."
Jean's face scrunched up like she was going to start crying again, instead she got out a small laugh and said, "Yeah, sure…" with no conviction in her voice.
"Sure, you're not that easy on the eyes, I'll give you that," he said, "But really it's all in how you carry yourself, if you have a," he chuckled, "Well rounded personality, or several, that shines forth, and if you're sure of yourself, and you definitely are. When all those things come together," he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the mirror, "Then the finished product is pretty amazing."
"Don't tell me," she said cynically as she tilted her head back to look up at him, "That's why you fell in love with me."
"I fell in love with you because I've never seen anyone like you before in my life," he stroked through the hair on the back of her head as he looked down at her, "You've got enough of your own charming personality to make all of Face's girlfriends look like wallpaper."
"I've got news for you, Murdock," Jean told him, "It doesn't take much to do that. Anybody can come up with a dumb blonde but Face is the only guy I know who can get dumb blondes, brunettes and redheads."
Murdock chuckled and said, "Jean, that's not nice."
"I know, that's my brilliant personality shining through that you love so much," she replied.
"Yes it is," he kissed her and said, "Come on, let's go back to bed."
They went back into the bedroom, Murdock closed the door behind them, then he stopped right by the bed, picked two candies up out of the bowl and gave one to Jean and unwrapped his own.
"Thanks, Murdock," Jean whispered.
He hugged her and kissed the top of her head and replied, "You're welcome, hon, anytime you need me you know where I am."
Hannibal gave up on trying to sleep and picked up the clock on the nightstand and saw it was 2:30 in the morning, and he still couldn't sleep. At first he hadn't been sure why that was, but after he lay in bed for a while he realized it was because he could hear somebody talking down the hall. Probably Murdock, he decided and turned over, but time went on and it hadn't stopped. He tried covering his head with the pillows but the sound still got through, so finally Hannibal decided to go see what the commotion was about. He knew that Murdock was on occasion given to fits of insomnia and would stay up all night talking or watching TV, but this was getting ridiculous, it was late and he wanted to sleep.
The door was closed to the bedroom and Hannibal decided to listen to what was being said before he went charging in. Now that he had his ear to the door he could hear the pilot a lot more coherently, and he was glad he decided to hold off on entering the room unannounced. It sounded like Murdock was telling Jean a story, and most likely she was already dead to the world and he was just telling it for something to do until he fell asleep too.
"And let's see," he heard the pilot say "The reindeer's names were Racer, Pacer, Fearless, Peerless, Ready, Steady, Feckless, Speckless, and Flossie and Glossie. So how they went from that to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen is beyond me."
Hannibal almost laughed, and he did a double take when he thought he'd heard a sound escape his throat. But Murdock hadn't heard him. Now there was something he hadn't heard in a long time. Murdock must've been telling that story from memory, but Hannibal knew those names anywhere; that was L. Frank Baum's story of Santa Claus, his mother had read that book to him every year when he was a kid, and it had already been an old story when he was born, nevertheless a good one.
Quietly, he backed away from the door and went down the hall back to his own room. Knowing what Murdock's antics were was always better than not knowing, and that in itself could let him sleep more often than not, when he didn't have to wonder what the Captain was up to. Oh, it wasn't that he was worried that Murdock would do something actually psychotic, unless threatened Murdock was harmless; but his pranks and incidents could get tiresome and sometimes downright annoying. Of course he was sure he had the same effect on his men from time to time, they all certainly complained about his antics enough that it seemed so anyway.
In the dark confines of his room, left to his own thoughts and memories, he recalled several times when Murdock would be on leave from the V.A. and staying with him for the night; and he remembered how many times they resulted in Murdock waking up in the night screaming. He never went into details about the nightmares but they all went back to the V.A. It didn't make any sense, but Hannibal counted his blessings that one of them could come back from Vietnam without being plagued by nightmares of that every night; but somehow the effect that the V.A. was having on him seemed to be worse. The trouble was Murdock was a very secretive person and even though he was usually very open with them, there was never any telling just when he was telling the truth, and when he was holding something back, and when he avoided something altogether, it was all anybody's guess. So maybe more had happened back there than he was aware of, than any of them would ever know about, he didn't know.
In the back of his mind there was a nagging little voice that sounded suspiciously like Jean; throwing around accusations of leaving Murdock in the hospital to rot. He remembered she had said that to him, right after she'd helped Face sneak him back in when Decker came to pay a surprise visit. Ooh she had been furious when she found out they weren't going to go back and get him for several days. And he also thought back and remembered that it was around that time that she had broken into the V.A. to see him, and it was the morning after that that they got the ball rolling on his release. The nurse on wakeup call duty had found them in bed together and got the whole hospital in an uproar about it, leaving Jean to come up with a story about being Murdock's girlfriend and the rest had been history. Obviously if that kid thought something wasn't being looked into or dealt with quickly enough, she'd come up with her own plan to fix that.
In the beginning she had been most venomous towards him but every time he knew they weren't seeing a fraction of her real potential of what she could do when pushed, and he knew he didn't want to get on her nasty side; obviously any woman who could kill 20 men including Navy SEALs, wasn't anyone to try messing with. And he was smart, he was quick, he knew every move, he was always the man with a plan, but during that 6 month period that she lived and worked and existed as an assassin, she had taken it upon herself to rewrite the rules, and he was so thankful that she had been willing to cooperate with them and work with them rather than trying to take them on as well. He liked to think of them all as invincible, that the good guys always won and could never be stopped, or killed, but he knew the truth was they were damn lucky; every job they took they were putting their necks on the line, all it would take would be one lucky shot, one carefully aimed bullet, and it could be over for any one of them. That was something he preferred not thinking about, but with all of them taking their share of lead over the years, it was something that he'd had to think about more than once and consider all the what if's and what could be's. And of course, he remembered, that Jean had been in that exact boat as well; two shots to the chest, eight hours in surgery, she knew the score just as well as the rest of them.
The more Hannibal thought about it, that above everything else was why their being married had worked. Murdock could insist all he wanted that something hadn't been right, something wasn't working out, but Hannibal knew better; for the brief time those two had been married it had worked very well for them, and he knew it worked, most of all because Jean got it, she knew how the Team worked and how things went where they were involved. He had to admit if one of his men had to get involved with a woman he was glad that it was someone like Jean who knew how it worked, who knew the risks and accepted them, and even took them on herself.
The father figure in him wanted so much to yell at her until he busted her down to a gnat for all the stupid risks she took in trying to help them; but he knew it wouldn't do any good because for one he wasn't her father, and for another he knew she'd never listen to him anyway. Even if other women they had encountered over the years would have entertained a notion of being a shred as crazy as Jean had proved to be, he knew that it wouldn't take much from any of them to bring it to a quick end. While it was true they didn't make a general rule of hitting women and in fact avoided it whenever possible, they were still able to intimidate any uncooperative people into suddenly becoming very compliant. Usually one look at B.A. was enough to scare anybody into cooperating with them, but Jean had proven she was too smart for that since the beginning when she called him on it; had egged him on to hit her, and even when he had, accidentally of course, she still didn't back off.
Apparently somebody else had beaten all sense out of her a long time ago because she hadn't had any left by the time they found her. That was the downside to having someone around who wasn't part of the Team, when he spoke his men listened to him, but because Jean belonged to nothing and owed her allegiance to nobody, she also answered to nobody but herself; a habit that wouldn't die until she did, and he knew it. Too much time spent on her own without anybody to help or anyone to rely on; maybe it wasn't too late for that to change in her but even if it did, it would take a long time and he knew that too. In the meantime he knew he would just have to accept her as she was, just as she had to accept all of them for what they were. Well, there were certainly worse ways to live, he thought to himself.
The next day, Hannibal and B.A. had gone back to their own apartments, but Murdock twisted Face's arm into staying around for the day to help them cook. He'd insisted that they needed to try a crash course in the recipes Jean's mother had sent her for Christmas, because if they weren't going to be any good it was important to find out now before the party. Face hadn't been too eager, but he'd managed to get Amy to come over and help and with the four of them working it took a lot less time than originally planned, but by the time it was over, Face dropped on the couch from exhaustion and didn't want to move.
"Man!" he said, "Those old time candy makers must've had arms like Gorgeous George before the industrial mixers were made. I never knew it took that much work to make chocolate fudge."
"That's why the stuff sells for six dollars a pound," Jean told him as she sat down beside him, and Murdock beside her, and Amy on the other side next to Face, "That's why nobody ever makes it either."
"It sure is good though," Murdock said.
"I should hope so, Murdock," Amy told him, "You ate six pieces of it."
"I had to make sure it was good," he insisted.
"Murdock," Jean held her fingers up as she explained, "One is testing, six is the whole dessert platter."
"Well it's still good," he said, "Though a word of warning, hide those gingerbread cookies, next time B.A. comes over you'll find them all with their heads bitten off…and I want to do that. Say…" he picked his head up and looked at Amy and asked, "I wonder why they call it gingerbread, you hardly put any of it into the dough."
"I'll tell you why," Jean answered, "Because nobody has ever been hungry enough to knowingly eat molasses men."
"Hey," Murdock poked her, "What about that fruitcake? When're you going to make that?"
"Oh Murdock that has to wait until tomorrow, the fruit has to soak overnight or else it's going to be hard as a brick," Jean said, and added quickly, "Shut up, Face."
Amy giggled as she watched him snap his mouth shut.
"Well come on, Jean, there's a reason all those jokes about fruitcake exist," he said.
"Sure, but this is a different recipe," she told him, "No nuts, no rum, no brandy, no spices, and no raisins."
"Why not raisins?" Murdock asked.
"I don't like them," she answered, "All that's left is the fruit and the orange juice they soak in, it's a good recipe."
"A good fruitcake, now there's an oxymoron," Face said.
"Well I don't know about that," Jean said as she reached over and grabbed Murdock's T-shirt and balled it up in her hand to pull him over to her.
"Well," Amy said, "I definitely think there'll be plenty of dessert for the party, but what about the main course?"
"Oh that's just going to be a bunch of appetizers and finger food," Jean said, "You know, finger sandwiches, Vienna sausages, cocktail pickles…"
"I've got a few ideas for the menu," Murdock said.
"Don't tell me we're going to have to go to the store again," Jean groaned.
"Well that depends," he said, "Do we have any canned crab or jalapeno peppers here?"
"No," Jean told him, "I'll get it tomorrow, after three hours in that kitchen I don't want to do anything but just stay here and rest."
"Sounds good to me too," Face lulled as he put his feet up on the coffee table and closed his eyes.
Murdock and Jean watched and waited until Face and Amy had both tilted their heads back and fallen asleep, then they got off of the couch and quietly headed out the front door. Murdock still wanted to get some Christmas shopping done and they decided to get out of the house and get it taken care of before anybody could come up with any other ideas of anything they needed to do first. Murdock was still trying to come up with something to get for Hannibal, and along the way to that he found some things to get for the others as well.
"Hey Murdock, it's too bad Amy's not currently seeing anybody," Jean said as they made a detour through the women's lingerie department, "Just imagine giving her a present and saying it's to keep her boyfriend warm on the cold nights," and she picked up a black see-through nightgown.
Murdock decided to test just how see-through it was and put his hand up the bottom of it, and he whistled when he saw how much of it showed through.
"That gift will keep any man warm at any time of the year," he told her.
Jean laughed and put it back on the rack and they got out of there, each feeling like they'd caught some germ just from being in the department. En route to another section of the department store, they passed by the toy department and Murdock stopped in his tracks and his jaw dropped and he squealed like a pig.
"What is it?" Jean asked.
"Do you see what I see?" he asked.
Clearly not. "What?"
He grabbed her by the arm and jerked her along, Jean had to be fast because he about dislocated her shoulder entirely. They were in an aisle full of large and miniature toy cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc. But the one Murdock had set his sights on, and ran over to the shelf to pick one up, was a large black van that was roughly the size of a toolbox.
"So what?" Jean didn't get it.
Murdock went over to the next shelf and picked up paint kits being sold for the little model cars and picked up one container of gray paint and one of bright red paint.
"I get it now," Jean said, "You're gonna paint it to look like B.A.'s van."
"Yeah, he'll love it," Murdock said.
"Him?" Jean repeated, "You mean you're actually gonna give it to B.A.?"
"Well naturally," he told her.
"Well," she shrugged, "It's definitely something he doesn't already have."
"Yeah," Murdock agreed, then he became more solemn and said, "But I still wish I knew what to get for Hannibal."
"Yeah, you'd think he'd be an easier person to shop for than the mudsucker," Jean said, then an idea hit her and she asked him, "Hey Murdock, I want your honest answer on this...do you really want to be married again?"
"Well of course," he answered, "I'd marry you again in a heartbeat."
"Right," she said, "And you want kids?"
"Sure I want kids," he told her, "I want a lot of them."
"Alright," Jean said, "Then I think I know what we can get him, it'll be more like a placeholder for a future present."
"What's that?" he asked.
Once Murdock got the van and paint paid for, Jean had him follow her into the store next door which was a smoke shop, and they came back out with a box full of blue and pink labeled 'It's a Boy/Girl' cigars.
"He can smoke them now and keep the sentiment in mind for later on," Jean explained.
"I guess Face was right," Murdock said, "He said to get Hannibal more cigars because it's something he always needs…we just had to get the right ones."
"There you go," she agreed.