It was cold and blustery, though not yet snowing, when Kenshin pulled the rental SUV up in front of the manor house. The skies -- both grey from inclement weather and growing dark with the onset of night -- gave the place a sort of gothic air.
The Marshall house was, for the most part, a happy place for Kenshin. Particularly during the holidays, and it was only a week until Christmas. Though not a Christian, Kenshin adored the spirit of this holiday -- it was a time to meet with family, give gifts, and, in this case, go on an extended vacation with Carrie.
He slid a hand into his pocket. The little box that contained his Christmas gift to Carrie was velvety to the touch and warmed by his body heat. Still, despite what should have been a very good mood, he found himself frowning in response to the gloomy atmosphere. He told himself firmly it was just an illusion, and not an omen.
After parking, he unloaded both his bags and Carrie's from the back of the vehicle and then walked up to the front door thus laden. The door wasn't locked; when nobody answered their knock, at his direction, Carrie grabbed it and held it open for him to follow. Once upon a time, there would have been servants here, but they were long gone -- still, it felt weird to let themselves in.
Inside the door, there was a Christmas tree in the foyer, though it wasn't decorated yet. The air was chilly, and he could hear the asthmatic old boiler in the basement wheezing and gurgling away.
"George! Morgan! We're here!" Carrie shouted.
"Shhh!" he warned, but too late.
From upstairs came the wail of a new baby.
"Damnit!" Morgan's voice came from upstairs. "You woke her!"
"Sorry!" Carrie winced. To Kenshin, she said, "I didn't know the baby was sleeping. Did you ... sense ... that?"
He shook his head. Infants at that age hadn't developed anything approaching a ki that he could read. He could sense them, but there was no aggression, no anger, no focus. "Just guessed, that I did."
It was five PM. For a month old baby, it was an easy guess that the child might be asleep if the house was dead silent and dark. Particularly since George had related that this was a particularly cranky baby, and one who was giving Morgan quite a crash course in parenting.
They climbed the stairs. Kenshin glanced down at the steps, noting the oak was worn from a century of use. He remembered his own children, and their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and on through the generations, running up and down this staircase. George had broken his arm and spent a miserable summer in a cast when he'd tripped off the second landing -- if Kenshin recalled correctly, George had been seven. It had been 1934, a year after he'd returned from Japan.
Returned without Kaoru
, Kenshin recalled. George had meant more to him than perhaps anyone knew. Kaoru dead. Yukio gone. All the rest of my children grown, with grandchildren of their own. I didn't think I mattered anymore ... but one little boy who liked to play chess and go, ride horses, and build forts and read proved me wrong.He glanced over at Carrie. She met his eyes and said, "Am I supposed to have a sense of deja vu here?"
"Do you?"
"Mmm." That was an answer in the affirmative, though a bit hesitant.
"I'm not surprised." They'd reached the landing halfway to the second story. He suddenly caught her arm, pulled her around, threw his arms around her neck, and kissed her.
She returned the kiss with pleasure, but then pulled back and said, "What was that for?"
Low, because he could sense Morgan coming down the hall above them, he said, "For being here. For coming. I know you don't want to speak to Morgan, and I know you miss your parents, but I'm very glad you came with me for Christmas here, that I am."
She hugged him. "I knew you wanted this."
Morgan was waiting at the top of the stairs, her infant in her arms.
"Hello, Morgan," Kenshin said, as he set their suitcases down.
Morgan smiled shyly at him, and hugged her baby close. "Gramps is asleep."
"Sorry about waking your baby," Carrie said, an automatic apology.
Morgan's smile faded away, and she looked down at her feet. "She doesn't sleep for long anyway."
Morgan looked exhausted, Kenshin thought. There were deep circles under her eyes, and when she stopped smiling, her expression was distant, and unfocused. It also didn't appear like she'd had a shower in the last day, or possibly two. Kenshin said knowingly, "Then mama doesn't get to sleep for very long either, yes?"
She sighed. "I don't think I've gotten more than two hours a night in the last month. Nicky cries all the time."
"George said you've been having a bit of trouble with colic." Kenshin nodded.
"A bit." She exhaled raggedly.
Kenshin held his arms out and she willing passed the child over. She almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Well, Kenshin figured she'd been carrying around several pounds of infant in her arms for a month. The physical toll alone was significant. He didn't think George was up to the task of baby-lugging to help her.
It had been a long time since Kenshin had held a baby this small. Unfocused blue eyes stared up at him, and the infant waved her two small fists for a moment. He smelled baby powder and soap and that indefinable new-baby smell. Then the child scrunched his face up and started to experimentally cry.
"I know, I'm not-the-mama," Kenshin said, with a smile. But he shifted his hold on the baby, cradling her to his shoulder, hugging firmly, and swaying gently in place. After a moment, the hiccupping sobs stopped. Kenshin patted the baby on the back and said to Morgan, "She's a doll."
She beamed proudly.
Carrie peered over Kenshin's shoulder, and Kenshin turned to offer her the child. She backed up so quickly she nearly tripped over their luggage. "I don't know anything about babies."
"Well," Morgan said, with a roll of her eyes, "I can tell you the basics in three sentences. They eat, cry, and poop. When they cry, you feed them or you wipe their butts, and sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn't. And don't expect to sleep at night if you have one."
Kenshin tickled the baby's cheeks with his finger and peered into her eyes. He was rewarded with a smile. "I love babies," he said, "they're innocent."
"Try owning one." She held her arms out to claim the baby back.
Kenshin passed the child to her, and said with a smile, "I have. I miss it."
Yukio
, he thought, fondly. Yukio had been a toddler, not a newborn, but he still remembered the visceral joy of carrying a small child that was his in a sling on his back. Of cuddling his son, and playing with him, and watching him grow and discover the world. He missed that.Morgan offered, "Do you want to hold her?" to Carrie.
Carrie said, with some considerable wariness, "Not really."
And Kenshin was pretty sure he wasn't imagining the hostility that vibrated between the two. Well, he understood where it was coming from. Things needed to be addressed. Just -- not now. Later, when the time was right.
--
George woke from his nap an hour later, as Kenshin and Carrie were unpacking their suitcases. He knocked on the open door's frame. "Hey, gramps."
Kenshin turned around, and grinned. "Hello, Georgie-kun."
It had been three months since he'd seen George last. George looked smaller, thinner, but somehow more alert. When they'd parted, his great-grandson had been notably unsteady on his feet. He was almost ninety years old and Kenshin had been expecting a steady decline. However, George looked good; thin, but alert and agile.
He is too skinny,
Kenshin thought, critically. He had thought George underweight before, but now the man was beyond gaunt, with translucent skin stretched tautly over knobby bones."Hello, Mr. Trevor," Carrie said, with a smile.
"It's Viscount Trevor," George said, crossly. "Don't you Americans know anything?"
"S... sorry!" Carrie stammered, eyes widening.
Kenshin hid a smile behind his hand. George was legally entitled to claim the title, but generally didn't -- unless he was teasing a pretty young American girl.
"But call me George." George stepped into the room. "Figure it's okay, since you're also my great-gramma and all."
She giggled, a little uncertainly. Kenshin, no longer bothering to conceal his grin, folded George into a hug, squeezing him tight.
"So you're the girl that has gramps blushing like a schoolboy." George nodded happily. "I can see why. She's a pretty 'un, Ken-nii. Really grew up since the last time I saw her."
Kenshin blushed, much to his annoyance. George cackled with good humor. Carrie's eyes narrowed; Kenshin could tell that she was wavering between irritation and amusement.
He said, with a smile, "George, it is good to see you."
"It is." George agreed, gravely. "Sorry about your room being a mess. Morgan's got her hands full with that little one. We thought it would be done by Christmas, but I'm afraid she hasn't had time."
He usually stayed in the room closest to the stairs; habit, that, protecting the others. He'd discovered that the room was a mess, however, piled high with boxes of Christmas decorations pulled down from the attic and assorted clutter. Given it was next to the stairs, that made a sort of sense. They'd stowed everything there for convenience.
"It's okay." Kenshin glanced around the room they were standing in. "This was Kaoru's room, a century ago. There are good memories, here. I spent more nights in this room than in my own -- I used to sneak across on the ledge, outside, after the servants were in bed."
George cackled. "Byron used to say that one of the requirements of being a servant here was the ability to be selectively blind and deaf, yes?"
"Well, that, too." Kenshin nodded agreement. He'd often wondered what the servants had thought of him.
"Face it, old man, you just liked the drama of entering via the window." George was in fine form. And he was also right.
"Well, that, and it was easier. I didn't have to worry about waking anyone with creaking doors and floorboards." Kenshin grinned, willing to concede George's point.
Carrie raised both eyebrows. "Only you, Kenshin, would call walking along a six inch wide ledge on the second story of a building easier than opening a bedroom door."
--
Later, downstairs, George bustled about the kitchen. "Coffee, Ken-nii?"
"Tea is fine." It would be dark tea, made palatable only by sweetening with sugar and cream, but Kenshin didn't want to make George do any extra work. He knew from experience that George wouldn't have green. The man always forgot.
He sat down at the kitchen table, where a mass of Christmas lights roughly the size of a bushel basket spilled across the worn wood. Snarled tendrils of lights trailed off to the floor, and there was a box of replacement bulbs as well. A half dozen detangled strings of lights were neatly coiled on a chair.
George gave him a look. "You hate black tea and I forgot to pick up anything for you."
"Never have figured out why a man who drinks his coffee black hates black tea," Carrie said.
"It is not the same thing," Kenshin shook his head. He spotted a plug in the mass of lights and began pulling out the attached wires. "I will drink your tea, George."
"Nonsense." George dumped several spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a percolator. He lit two burners on the ancient gas stove with a match, then set a kettle on one and the percolator on the other. Then he opened a cabinet and produced a fruitcake, which he offered to them.
Carrie eyed the moist, sticky fruitcake dubiously, but Kenshin recognized the recipe. It was an old family dessert; he remembered Jessica's mother making it, over a century ago. "I'm not sure Carrie's old enough to eat that," he said, a bit teasingly.
"Huh?" She gave him a suspicious look.
He returned it with a completely innocent, "Oro?"
"Ah, it's Christmas," George said, with a cackle. "Let her imbibe."
Kenshin paused from Christmas-light wrangling to cut slices for the three of them, and Carrie's eyebrows went up after the first cautious bite. "About how much alcohol is in this?"
"Most of a bottle of good brandy," George said, grinning. He licked icing from the dull knife that Kenshin had used to cut the cake, then deposited it in the sink. "Good, yes?"
"Yes," she agreed. "Though, umm, I think I'll limit it to one slice."
One of the things he'd done with Carrie after the whole debacle with Shannon was to sit her down and get her thoroughly drunk on multiple occasions, and then make her fight drunk to both learn how, insomuch as anyone could, and to determine what her limits were. In the process, she had also learned to more accurately judge how much alcohol was in a drink. Or, in this case, one very thoroughly brandy-soaked piece of cake. If Kenshin had to guess, there was at least an ounce of booze per slice, and it was a fairly high proof brandy that George had used.
Kenshin grinned approvingly at her, then said to George, "Remember the time Atsuko got drunk on this?"
George snickered. "I believe that was your payback for the brownies."
"Brownies?" Carrie said, confused.
"Special brownies." George emphasized.
"Special?" She was still confused.
"Oh, how the slang changes." George chuckled.
"Oh, special!" Carrie finally got it, and her eyes grew wide. "I'd never do something like that. What if a headhunter had found you?"
Kenshin shook his head, however, and corrected mildly, "The cake came first, and I didn't deliberately get her drunk. I wouldn't do that. I also didn't speak to her for quite awhile after the brownies; I didn't exactly find it funny. And Carrie's right that it could have gotten me killed."
George sobered. "Yet you forgave her."
Kenshin nodded. "She was part of my family. Of course I forgave her. It was simply an ill-advised prank."
"Kenshin's ability to forgive leaves me in awe, sometimes," Carrie said, softly.
George was quiet, for a moment, uncharacteristically so. Then, very softly, he said, "I have cancer, Grandpa. They're giving me several months. Maybe a year. Maybe two, but I'm old anyway."
Kenshin was unsurprised by this. He'd seen George's loss of weight, and given that George was on his second slice of cake now, he didn't think that a lack of calories had anything to do with the weight loss. His heart hurt, but he had been expecting to hear something of this nature. He simply said, "How can I help?"
George's eyes flickered upwards. "That one. She needs someone to look out for her. Not her mother, for love of God."
Kenshin met Carrie's eyes. Her lips settled into a thin, angry line. Kenshin didn't want to say no, but he hesitated before answering -- he was very reluctant to make any commitments that would cause him to chose between them. Carrie said, in an unhappy tone of voice, "Kenshin ..."
"She's not a bad kid." George glanced upwards for a second time. "A little self-centered at times, but she cooks and she cleans -- all sorts of chores -- without complaint and she's getting good grades in school. And she's doing okay with the baby. She's a pretty cranky one, too."
"Boarding school?" Kenshin offered, then shook his head quickly. "Not with the baby."
"College, soon enough. She'll graduate early, the way she's working through classes on that cyber school. She's maybe six months away at this rate. She could get an apartment and find a babysitter." George frowned. "She could join you, maybe, at that university in Canada, for the summer semester. You did say you two were planning on going to school through the summer, yes?"
Carrie had her arms folded and a distinctly unhappy expression on her face. Kenshin glanced over at her, wondering if she was going to explode -- though Carrie had been a lot better about her temper since he'd started demanding she be politer to him when angry.
Plus, George had just said he was dying. It wouldn't exactly be ... tactful ... to blow up right now.
Kenshin said quietly, "We'll discuss it, when and if it comes down to that. Have you asked Morgan what she wants to do?"
"She wants to be a lawyer." George grinned. "She's good with facts and figures, and I think she'd do well."
"Seacouver U doesn't offer much in the way of degrees in law." Kenshin found it was a relief to say this. "However, with the inheritance, she should be able to afford any university in the world. -- How's she handling the money, by the way?"
George's smile turned positively amused. "Ken, she wants to be an lawyer," he said, with emphasis. "Her family and her friends keep coming at her with hands outstretched for a bit of cash. They generally go away when she starts talking about repayment periods and produces contracts for them to sign. I think she completely pissed Toby off when she said he'd have to repay the trust with interest."
He paused, then added, a little more seriously, "She said something about learning how expensive the world was when she ran away, too, in Seacouver."
Kenshin snorted. Well, it sounded as if Morgan's ability to handle her daughter's money was one less thing he needed to worry about. "If she can keep her finances in order, she's most of the way there as far as being able to live on her own."
"It's not the money I worry about with her." George shook his head. "It's that she has no one in the world she can rely on except you and me. Her parents are, frankly, idiots, and her uncle is worse! There's some more distant relatives around, of course, but they don't know her or she's already burned her bridges there. She has a pretty bad reputation in the family -- at least partly deserved -- because of her behavior with her boyfriend. Bluntly, he was retarded, Ken-nii, and way older than she was, and it looked bad and it has ruined her reputation. That she won't give all her daughter's money away to family she barely knows means they all have their noses out of joint and, well, that she was promiscuous with a guy who was mentally handicapped is a perfect excuse for vicious gossip. Some say she did it just for the money."
Kenshin sighed. "Did we ever find out what was wrong with him?"
George shrugged. "Garrett told me to fuck off when I asked. Your solicitor -- and the man's a genius, I might add -- dug up some old gossip rags that had his mother dying of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and apparently the rumor in their circles is that she managed to pickle her son's brains as well, before she drank herself into a grave."
Kenshin pinched the bridge of his nose. There had to be a way to get those medical records so they could either set their concerns to rest or know what they might be dealing with. Jeffrey's problems could have truly been anything from fetal alcohol to one of the nasty genetic disorders that required a special diet to prevent fatal brain damage.
Damage from his mother's drinking was tragic but not hereditary; if the kid had a chance at having a genetic issue, Kenshin wanted to know so they could provide the appropriate medical care as soon as possible.
He turned the discussion back to Morgan, for now. "I'll ... see what we can do. I agree that she needs family to support her. It's hard enough to raise a child, without doing it totally on her own -- there's not a chance of finding her a good husband, is there?"
"Kenshin!" Carrie said, truly shocked.
"Well," George said, much less surprised, "she certainly has a nice dowry. We could definitely arrange something, if she were willing."
"I can't believe you'd even consider ... oooh ..." Carrie sputtered to a halt and stared at them.
Both men gave her tired looks. Kenshin said, with a wry smile, "Sometimes I forget what century I'm living in."
The girl was young, a mother with a newborn, with her fiancé dead. And she -- or rather, her baby, but mom had control of the money -- was worth high eight figures in pounds sterling. In the time of Kenshin's birth, the solution would be obvious -- find her a good man who'd treat her and his new stepdaughter well and make the family they all agreed she needed, with her. With the sort of money she had, she could have landed nobility.
Even now, she could probably find no shortage of aristocrats. George had daughters, but no sons, so his title would go to his grandson, Morgan's father. Morgan could truthfully call herself Lady Trevor.
Yes, finding her a husband, Kenshin thought, was a very practical, efficient, and reasonable solution to the problem.
George shook his head, however, "I've actually suggested that to her, you know. She'd have no shortage of suitors if we put the word out. She says, however, that she wants to go to school first."
"Good for her," Carrie responded, instantly. "I can't believe you'd consider an arranged marriage!"
Kenshin scratched his jaw, discovering he needed to shave in the process. He had an outcrop of peach fuzz on his chin. "Why not?"
He was hassling Carrie because it amused him to see her so angry over something that was entirely reasonable. Hers was a totally illogical reaction, very Carrie.
Carrie realized this, too, and said, "You are the biggest meddling fool ... I swear, Kenshin."
He suggested, mischievously, to George, "We could always ... meddle."
"Not a bad idea. One of my friends has a grandson -- he's a working man, but he'd treat her right ..." George's eyes were twinkling with merriment.
Carrie said stiffly, "I do hope you are joking."
"What's wrong with making an introduction?" Kenshin said, sweetly innocent. "And arranging things so people meet that need to know one another?"
"It's meddling."
"Brandon and Shannon don't seem to be complaining." He blinked at her, giving her his best naively innocent look.
"That's different."
"Brandon and Shannon?" George asked.
Kenshin smiled. "I'll tell you about them later."
He had continued to work on the ball of Christmas lights and had straightened out several strands. There were a few dozen more to go, and he said, "I can remember in the sixties, your father would have this entire house decorated with lights."
George's eyes lit up. "I always loved that. It was so merry."
"We could do it again." Kenshin eyed the supply of lights. Each strand was about twenty-five feet long. There were thousands of feet of lights in that mess.
"I was just going to do the tree," George said, diffidently. "I just brought the whole mess down because it was so tangled up."
"Do you want to do the house?" Kenshin asked. He did. He liked Christmas lights -- all the pretty colors suited his sense of aesthetics.
"Sure." George grinned.
"Then we'll do the house."
--
The roof needed repairs, Kenshin discovered, when let himself out an attic dormer window the following morning. The shingles were cracked and curling up. Some of the wood trim was rotten as well, and weathered and worn. He frowned at that, and made a mental note to see that it was all repaired.
Well, it would keep the rain off their heads through the holidays, anyway. Though he also decided to check for leaks in the attic, and apply some tar to the worst spots. He loved the old house, and didn't want to see any unnecessary damage done to it.
There were hooks already pounded into the eaves from past lights. He gingerly walked across dew-slick shingles to the edge and began threading the strands of lights though the hooks. However, the view quickly distracted him -- he sat back on his heels and regarded the vista with fascination.
Once upon a time, this had all been countryside. He remembered riding a horse for hours through fields and along creeks and dirt country lanes. Now, however, past the estate's walls were other estates -- newer houses, on lots of a few acres in size. It was still nominally "country" but they were gentleman farms. And past the estates, more densely packed houses rose. The outskirts of the city proper was only a few miles away.
The air had been more polluted, however, back then -- and, in truth, a few decades ago it had still been bad. It was a bit hazy, but that was mostly humidity. He couldn't smell any smog. In the last several years, the world had gotten a lot more serious about protecting the environment, out of necessity. Plus, people drove less because of the cost, and worked out of their houses more, and used fewer fossil fuels.
It was still gloomy overcast, and bitter cold. He thought it might snow later.
After a moment more of staring at the view, Kenshin returned to work.
He'd done this before -- many times, actually. He wasn't afraid of heights, and wasn't exactly breakable; he'd always volunteered for Christmas-light-stringing duty when he was living here.
He was affixing a long string of bright blue lights to the ridgeline when a car turned into the long drive up to the manor house. He didn't recognize the vehicle -- Saito was supposed to visit later, but this wasn't Saito's car. Curious, he peered over the edge of the roof at the visitors. The car parked, and from above, he identified Sebastian and a skinny woman he assumed was Morgan's mother Deborah. Deborah's hair was artificially blond, he could tell so from three stories above her head.
They hadn't noticed him on the roof. Kenshin walked around to the window and slipped back inside. Quiet out of habit and nature, he padded silently across the floor and took the servant's stairs down to the second floor. A sense of ki led him towards Morgan's room, and from inside, he could hear her wary, and very soft, greeting: "Mother. Father."
"Hi honey!" Deborah was cheerful, too cheerful. It was a sort of false good humor that set all his warning senses to jangling. "How's my granddaughter!"
"Asleep." Morgan's voice was low.
"Oooh, such a cute cute cute little girl ..."
"Waaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Deborah's voice, in a cootchie-coo tone, and the baby's displeased wail, were nearly simultaneous. Kenshin didn't blame the baby one bit; if he'd been abruptly woken up from a nap by someone babbling at him in that tone of voice he'd have been pissed too.
"Mom, I just got her to sleep!" Morgan protested.
"And I just got here and I want to see my granddaughter."
"Don't pick him ... MOM!" Morgan sounded nearly frantic. "Mom, put her down! She was having a nap. Mom! Mom!"
Morgan's voice was hitting a panicky note, and Kenshin stood outside the door, wondering what to do. He doubted Deborah was doing anything actually harmful to the baby. Morgan's motherly instincts were combining with Morgan's brattish tendencies and the result wasn't pretty. On the other hand, it was rude and obnoxious to wake a sleeping baby, make her cry, and then pick her up when the mother said, "No!" even if the mother was your own daughter.
The child was frantically crying now. Deborah said, "Just like you, Morgan. You cried all the time too. I say that's justice -- you got one just like yourself."
Kenshin winced.
"Mom!" Morgan sounded like she was near tears.
"We're going home now. Go pack your things." Sebastian said. "We'll meet you in the car."
Oh. Well, that explained Morgan's panic about Deborah picking her baby up.
"No! I don't want to go!"
"It's Christmas, honey. It's time for you to come home."
"Put my baby down!"
Morgan's fear had hit a note that Kenshin couldn't ignore. He pushed the door open to discover that Deborah was wrapping the baby up in a blanket, Sebastian was peering into a diaper bag, and Morgan was standing in the middle of the room with tears streaming down her face and her fist balled. "Stop it!" she screamed at her parents, "Stop it! I don't want to go with you!"
"Then stay here," Deborah said, angrily. "I'm taking my granddaughter home. This isn't your home, or hers."
She turned, and saw Kenshin, and said, in a mocking tone of voice, "Who's this? New boyfriend?"
Sebastian, however, knew Kenshin. He hissed, "Debs, it's him. That Kenshin guy."
Kenshin said, very calmly, "I suggest putting the baby down and leaving before I need to call the police."
"This is stupid. She needs to come home. George is an old sick man and he doesn't need to be looking after her, and he can hardly control her in the state he's in!" Deborah clutched the screaming infant to her shoulder.
"Not being controlled is part of the point, Mom," Morgan snarled. "Give me my baby back!"
Kenshin didn't want to get into a physical wrestling match with Deborah at the moment; she was holding the baby. Still, when she started for the door, Kenshin planted both feet solidly, and blocked her path by the simple expedient of standing in the doorway.
She stopped short -- like most people, and particularly women, she wasn't about to get in a fight with anyone. "Get out of my way."
"No." He reached in his pocket for the cell phone. He'd let the cops sort this out. At sixteen, Morgan was old enough even by modern laws to chose which relative she lived with. If need be, he'd get his solicitor involved.
"GIVE ME MY BABY!" Before he could open his phone, however, Morgan screamed, and lunged for Nicky. She managed to rip the child from Deborah's arms ... but then baby slid out of Morgan's grasp.
Kenshin dropped the phone, lunged, caught the infant a foot from the ground, and rolled away from all of them with the child tucked to his shoulder protectively, one hand splayed across the back of the baby's head and his back defensively turned towards the combatants. In a low, dangerous voice, he said, "Stop. Now."
The adults stopped; however, Kenshin's command-tone didn't quite work as well on the baby, who continued to scream.
"What the hell's going on here?" Carrie arrived in the doorway, sword in hand -- though Kenshin suspected he was the only one aware that she was armed. Carrie was getting pretty good at the see-me-not illusion many Immortals could use to hide their weapons.
"She's trying to take my baby away!" Morgan screeched. Hearing her mother's fear, the infant screamed louder.
Kenshin patted the infant's back. Nicky was rigid, wailing in Kenshin's ear, fists clenched, face going purple with outrage. However, he didn't think the kid was actually hurt -- her cries were outraged, in reaction to being roughly handled and feeding off her mother's upset, but she was not injured.
Kenshin could tell the difference in tone between a hurt baby and a merely distraught baby, but he would hazard a guess that Morgan couldn't yet. The two were feeding off each other, and Morgan was about to have a complete melt down because her baby was so upset.
"Carrie," Kenshin said, "Take Nicky and Morgan downstairs to the kitchen. I'm going to have a word with these two."
"You could have caused your baby to die!" Deborah snapped at Morgan. "Don't you ever think?
"You have no right!" Morgan took a step towards her mother, fists balled. "She's mine. You cannot take her from me! I won't let you! I won't let you! I won't let you!"
"Morgan, nobody's going to take your baby away." Kenshin spoke soothingly. "Here, take her downstairs with Carrie."
Morgan seized her baby back and bolted out of the room, tears suddenly streaming down her face. Carrie hurried after her, and Morgan turned his attention on her parents. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
"She needs to come home!" Deborah started to pursue Morgan, and Kenshin stepped back into the doorway. She stood there, jittering from foot to foot and clearly trying to decide if she could bolt around him. Kenshin folded his arms, squared his shoulders, and tried to look like he was taking up more space than he actually occupied.
She tried to squeeze past him anyway. Kenshin, disgusted, blocked her with an upflung arm. "Stop it. Listen to me. I will only say this once, and then I will call the police: You must stop this."
"She's my daughter! She needs to come home!"
"Get out of the way." Sebastian crowded behind his wife, and glared down at Kenshin with his fists balled.
Kenshin knew they weren't listening to his words. However, he felt compelled to try to reach them. He said, firmly and as calmly as he could manage, "You know I am Immortal and have lived over a century and a half. Over a century ago, I had a son who I loved very much. He was much like me, and I thought I was the closest to him of all my children. However, he was making some foolish mistakes and I tried to push him to be a better man -- I loved him dearly, but I didn't love what he was doing to himself and his wife and children. I am not sure he understood that even if I was displeased with behavior I still loved him. He ... left. He left all of us. Me, his children, his wife, his brothers and sisters. He's certainly dead now, and I do not know how or where he died."
He paused, wondering if Morgan's parents were understanding what he was saying. He added, "I made the same mistakes with my son that my Shishou made with me. I've vowed never again to make the same sort of mistake ... I caution you that if you push Morgan away you may find you would give anything to have her back, including accepting her in your life as she is, rather than you would wish her to be."
"Get the hell out of my way." Deborah had her fists balled and she glared angrily at Kenshin.
Yeah, they weren't listening. Well, he'd tried.
"Get out of my house, Sebastian." George's voice held nearly as much command as Kenshin's; Kenshin was impressed. He didn't think he'd ever heard George hit quite that note of pissed before.
"You can't keep my daughter here!" Deborah screeched.
"Your daughter is sixteen. If you want to take her home I suggest you go to the courts and try to get it court ordered. I suspect that once some of the stories about how you've treated her come to light in court, you'll find I will have no trouble obtaining legal custody." George sounded truly furious. "Giving her a choice between an abortion and being kicked out on the streets comes to mind as something the judge might be interested in. And allowing a fifteen year old girl to spend time unsupervised, overnight, with the same boy who got her pregnant before."
Deborah had gone white. Sebastian, red. "Grandfather, you don't understand. That boy was mentally deficient and we didn't know about the money ...! And we thought she was babysitting his little sister ... she lied."
Kenshin thought that was a rather thin excuse; he'd determined that Morgan was apt to lie almost immediately. And had she been his daughter, she would not have been babysitting for the Garrets to begin with. However, he held his tongue, recognizing this was George's house and George's fight.
"I understand perfectly well." George snapped back at Deborah. "I just don't agree. Now get out of my house before I chose to call the authorities."
After they'd left -- which they did under protest, and with promises to return later with lawyers -- George leaned on his cane and stared at the closed front door for a moment before locking it. Then he said, "Merry fucking Christmas to you too, 'Baz. -- Grandfather, were you talking about my great-uncle Yukio?"
"Aa." Kenshin sighed. He wondered if Morgan's parents would call the cops, and if so, what would happen. "We should go make sure Carrie doesn't kill Morgan, that we should."
"We need to talk. Tonight." George met Kenshin's eyes, then quickly looked away. "There's a story I need to tell you."
--
Morgan paced the kitchen angrily, her child held to her shoulder.
Carrie said hesitantly, "Has she tried to do anything like that before?"
"She succeeded." Morgan spun to face Carrie. "I hate her. In the hospital, when they released us, she was holding Nicky -- and she got in her car without me and put her in the carseat and drove away before I could get in. I had some friends there, Lisa and Jim. We thought my mom would come here, because that was the plan -- she knew I was staying here."
Morgan slapped her free hand, the one not clutching Nicky to her shoulder, against the refrigerator. The baby startled and began to cry again. Morgan paused her story to sooth her, then said, "We got here and she wasn't here. And she wasn't answering her cell phone. So we drove to her house -- to my old house -- and found she had set up a whole nursery in my old bedroom."
Tears trickled down Morgan's face. "I've lived with this sort of thing my whole life. She never listens to what I want. Neither does my father! They just tell me what I'm going to do. And what I was going to do, they told me, was come home and raise my baby there. Except if I moved in with them, they'd never let me raise Nicky. My mom would raise him. She even told me I wasn't ready to be a mother!"
Her baby was crying again and over the top of her howls, she said, "They thought they could keep the baby and I would come home to them. I hate them. They didn't want me there when I was pregnant, they kicked me out, but then they found out what the baby was worth and now they're trying to kidnap her because they say I can't raise her!"
"I'm sorry." Carrie tried to picture her own mother doing something so awful, and she couldn't. Her mother could be obnoxious at times -- but she did understand boundaries.
"The thing is, I'm not ready." Morgan was pacing quickly now. "I'm so not ready for this. I don't know what to do, Carrie. I'd give anything to have friends and family like you do. I don't. Jeffrey was all I had -- we both had fucked up family lives and he was everything for me. Nobody stands behind me ... well, Grandpa George does, but he's gonna die. And then where will I be?"
On her own, Carrie realized. And if George didn't make it a couple more years, she'd be on her own and a minor and almost certainly forced back to her parents by the law.
The baby hiccupped and started whimpering rather than howling.
"You were jealous." Carrie said, quietly. "That's why you did what you did. Pretending to be Kenshin."
Morgan bounced the baby in her arms gently. "Shhh. Shhhh," she said, though the baby wasn't crying anymore and seemed to be winding down. "Shhh. Shhh."
"Morgan ... you hurt Kenshin. You hurt Kenshin as much, maybe more, than you hurt me." Carrie folded her arms and glared. She could forgive something that wounded her, but anything that brought pain to Kenshin was a whole different matter.
Morgan glared at her. "It's not fair, you know. You have the great guy, and the great life, and parents who love you -- hell, they chose to have you. You're adopted, right? Richie told me Immortals are always found, not born." She patted her baby's back; he jumped and started crying again. "Your parents wanted you. They wanted you enough to chose to have you. Mine ... mine didn't. My mom tells me all the time I was an accident, and blames me for her having to get married to my father instead of Toby -- she was dating both of them! They fight all the time. I don't know why they don't get divorced, except that my father doesn't want to pay alimony and my mother doesn't want to lose her precious social standing."
In a smaller voice, Morgan added, "Nobody wants me. Nobody at all."
"Kenshin cares about you," Carrie found herself saying. She hesitated, then added, "The reason he hasn't offered to take you in is that he's worried about my reaction, I think."
She knew that was the reason, actually. And until this very moment she'd been wholly unwilling to entertain the idea. Now ... well, she was still angry, but the angriness was mixed with utter disbelief at Morgan's parents, and a bit of understanding.
Morgan snorted. "You don't like me."
"Kenshin's philosophy on life is catching, I think. He'd say he likes you, he just doesn't like your choices." Carrie met Morgan's eyes. "You really hurt us. And it was deliberate. And I'm pretty pissed about it, particularly because it was deliberate. And it hurt Kenshin. No, I'm not sure I want much to do with you -- because I don't trust you."
"I'm sorry." Morgan hugged her whimpering baby and paced back and forth. With heartfelt feeling, she repeated, "I'm sorry."
Carrie sighed. "Why did you do it?"
"I was angry." Morgan was wearing a hole in the floor, walking back and forth. "I was angry, okay?"
"Whatever did I do to you?" Carrie snapped. "Whatever did Kenshin do?"
"I'm ... sometimes I just get so angry at everything. Not you. Just everything." Morgan let out a shuddering sigh. "I'm sorry, okay?"
"Next time you feel like that?" Carrie said, "I suggest a punching bag."
Morgan patted her baby. "Carrie, I don't know if I can do this."
"What?"
"Raise a child. I don't know if I'm ready. I don't want my mother doing it, but ..." Morgan swayed back and forth. "I ... I I'm all screwed up, Carrie. I can't do this. I can't! I can't!"
Morgan suddenly thrust the baby at Carrie, who reflexively accepted her. "Hold Nicky. I'm going ... I don't know where I'm going."
She ran out of the kitchen, sobs trailing after her.
"Yes, Morgan, I'd be happy to hold your baby," Carrie said, staring down at her armful. It was the first time she'd ever held an infant this small and she found she was scared to death. The child was so vulnerable -- helpless. Her newness and tinyness were terrifying.
And she was also profoundly unhappy. The baby was crying again, displeased wails. She hugged her close, wondering what she was supposed to do to get her to stop and make her happy. But then she grew quiet, though she scrunched his face up as if he was concentrating -- perhaps summoning the energy for more noise, she thought?
After a second, her face relaxed. She hiccupped and made a cooing noise. And the a certain odor of dirty diaper wafted up to her nose, and then to her everlasting dismay, she felt her arm grow damp as bodily fluids -- and not, she was reasonably sure, urine -- soaked through the baby's jumper and through her sleeve.
"Oh, ewwwww." Carrie stared down at the baby. Diapers weren't supposed to leak, were they? "Let's go find Kenshin, kiddo. I bet he knows how to change you."
--