A/N: Hope you all enjoyed food-poison-riddled Marshall! I make him well remarkably quickly. ;)

XXX

It was unclear exactly how much seemed to resonate or get through to Marshall on Thursday morning, but as he kept insisting that he was okay to ride in the bouncing car, Mary took him at his word. Privately, she felt that he could've done with another day of lounging around, but she also thought the worst of his spell was probably over, and if he said he was all right then she wasn't going to treat him like a pansy. In any case, they were able to sleep in since they didn't have a particularly long drive to Indiana, which meant they wouldn't be in the SUV for as long anyway.

Marshall must've thought it was essential they brave the roads because he said very little about letting Mary drive, even though he had tried to dissuade her from the idea in the dead of night. It would've surprised the woman if he really remembered getting in the car at all. He pooled all the vigor he had into washing up and getting dressed; she helped him into the passenger side, and he was asleep again before they'd reached the first stoplight out of the hotel.

Nothing about this bothered her in the least, because it gave her some quiet with which to chew over everything he'd said when they'd been nestled together on the bed. In hindsight, she really couldn't believe she'd sat with him for that long without bolting, but he'd seemed so pacified by her touch that she couldn't leave. It wasn't the cuddling that was nagging at her though, it was the words of her partner – oddly philosophical and ethereal for someone who hadn't even been able to keep his dinner down.

Mary protected people for a living. She was 'good at it' because it was her job. Marshall had to be misjudging her, twisting the way she was with her witnesses into the way she could be with a child. The two were not the same thing; it didn't equate. It wasn't like she could grab her kid by his collar and yell into his face to straighten up and fly right like she did some of her more negligent charges. Child Protective Services would be called faster than you could blink, and that would be the end of motherhood as well as the end of her career. How could she be sure that she wouldn't be a volcano ready to explode with a baby if she got frustrated, the way she did at work? There was no guarantee, and when it came to Mango, she operated only under guarantees.

And still, as Indiana loomed even closer and Marshall continued to snore against the windowpane beside her, flashes and visions began to appear in her mind even when she tried her damndest to make them go away. Before she'd met Brooke and Chris, she'd pictured a mysterious little boy with no distinct features running around by the ocean with his rough-and-tumble brothers. His well-to-do, perfectly responsible, upstanding parents had watched the trio fondly, maybe with the dad running in to toss his youngest through the waves for good measure. It was as clichéd and as corny as the day was long, but that was what Mary had always seen.

Now, though, that snapshot made her faintly ill, especially now that the Harmons had been given faces, names, and personalities. There was nothing to fear from them, and yet Mary had a harder time watching them foster a young boy into their fold. Theoretically, it should've been easier now that they were more defined, but Mary had to strain to picture it – to even want to picture it. Instead, she was creating some bizarre illustration of life with Mango among the uptight Manns. If she was going to harbor some secret fantasy for anything, shouldn't it be her child with her own family – a reformed Jinx, a doting Brandi, a fun Uncle Peter? Mark in the picture, and Mary learning the ropes overnight? Maybe it was because she knew how impossible that print was, but all she could come up with was June, Avery, and Brianna.

Why? She barely knew them, and she certainly didn't know Ted. Ted didn't even like her. And Marshall wasn't even her family. On the off chance he was, it didn't mean Ted and his proclivity for timetables and rule-following was going to be put to rest. She didn't want Mango ensconced in all that.

Or, did she? Agendas meant structure even if they didn't mean kindness, and that was something Mary had definitely lacked as a child. They stood for stability and order, both of which she often threw to the winds if she was feeling free, but something she still craved when she felt herself beginning to spin. She might not want to be a taskmaster like Ted, but she wanted security – for herself and for Mango.

Luckily, Mary didn't have to spend all day ruminating about all her mix-ups, because Marshall finally awoke around lunchtime. He'd stirred on a few occasions, grunting and groaning and changing positions, but this was the first time he had come around for real – like he intended to stay up. Rubbing his eyes like a little boy and shaking his hair out of his eyes, he squinted out at the blazing sunshine streaming onto the dash, and then at the clock to see how long he'd been under.

"Gracious…" he finally remarked in a thick voice. "I don't remember the last time I slept for that long…" he rumpled his hair in the back in an absurd attempt to flatten it.

"Did it do you any good?" Mary asked, feeling strangely significant because she was the one driving when she'd been at his mercy for the whole of the voyage. "Are you feeling better?"

"Hard to say at this juncture…" he mused, still fooling with his locks. "But…maybe a little…" there was some color coming back into his cheeks. "I have a bit of a headache…"

"Your body wants food even if you don't want it," Mary speculated, sounding a lot like her partner. "We can eat a late lunch later if you're up to it."

"Yes…something light…" he was inclined to agree. "But, I can assure you that I will be staying far-far away from anything that comes out of the sea for a long time yet."

"I could've figured that," Mary was blasé. "Do you want a drink? I think there are still a few Cokes in the backseat…" unwisely, she tried to reach around her seat while driving, saw that it wasn't going to work, and gave up. "Well, we can pull over for a minute if you decide you want one."

"No need…" he retrieved a half-full water bottle from one of the cup holders and jiggled it. "Although, I could do with a fresh one down the road, but I'm good for now. I neglected to ask in my daze earlier, but you do know where you're going, right?" his eyes skated up and down over her form. "We're not going to end up in Albany, New York or anything, are we?" referring to the Indiana town with the same name.

Mary snorted, "I do know how to read a map, believe it or not. And look up directions on the Internet, so don't go making me out to be an imbecile yet."

"Will avoid," he stretched his arms over his head, interlocking his fingers in a bridge, which produced something between a groan and a sigh. "We probably won't even get in as late this time. That should make Ted happy."

"We should all be glad something does," a wisecrack that she couldn't resist. "You mean he can actually get enjoyment from something that doesn't include a schedule or a shelf full of alphabetized books? You aren't so different in that way, you know…"

"Oh, getting the digs in now that I'm feeling up to par, are we?" but Marshall was grinning nonetheless. "Order and precision are not always to be frowned upon – it is the inability to be flexible that I like to think I do not exemplify."

"Was Ted always the way he is now?" Mary spit out, probably feeding her vision of Mango the honorary Mann. "Precocious as they come even as a kid?"

Marshall appeared to think for moment, likely glad to have something to focus on that didn't include the blur from Wednesday night. Mary was a little taken aback at the idea that he had to consider at all – surely he had a distinct version of Ted formed in his brain from childhood. But, the more she deliberated, however, the more she realized this might not be the case. He was the youngest, after all; Ted and Eric were both older than he was, and so he hadn't even known them their entire lives. His first memories probably only just began when he was three or four years old.

And, when he came to his conclusion, he seemed a little surprised himself at the resolution.

"Well…no, actually…" it was like he was thinking out loud as he went along, only putting the puzzle together as he explained each detail. "He was timid, if you can imagine that, but absolutely about appearances. There was a performing side to him – when the red light went on, he was the perfect gentleman. The minute the director called 'cut' then he was in the back corner, looking over his shoulder, trying to prepare his next lines."

"The director being your father?" Mary guessed.

"None other," Marshall proclaimed with an errant wave of his hand, as though he were introducing Seth out of thin air. "Seth Mann – the Francis Ford Coppola of the Mann household."

"Am I supposed to know who that is?"

"You get the gist, though," he surmised. "Dad was undoubtedly what put Ted on edge. But, the difference between the two of them was that dad just was that way; it was woven into him to be tough. I'm not actually sure if Ted had that trait to start with or if he honed it growing up with the head of Operation Falcon as his father."

"Did you guys get along?" Mary pressed, mostly because they had already been through Marshall's speculation about Ted's rigidness. "I mean, I know you say you aren't close now, but when you were younger?"

"Well…sort of…" he was spraining his brain another time, like it was so far back that he didn't even know he'd retained any kind of reminiscence. "In some ways, yes. I certainly was on better terms with him than with Eric…"

"How come?"

"Probably just the age difference," he stated simply. "Ted and I are further apart – oldest and youngest. Eric's in the middle; we butted heads all the time over stupid stuff. Sibling rivalry, I'm sure, since Eric's only two years ahead of me; he didn't get much 'alone time' with my parents before I arrived…"

"If he ever had it," Mary reminded him. "With Ted around."

"But, Ted kind of took me under his wing, so to speak. I'm not entirely sure it was because he wanted to…" able to grope for sustenance in the backseat, it seemed he was hungrier than he'd realized, because he came up with a furled bag of pretzels. "No doubt my dad had a hand in that too. 'You look after Marshall' he would say. 'Watch your brother.'"

"Because you really needed watching."

"No, but Ted did what he was told," Marshall rationalized, nibbling off the corner of a pretzel, careful not to ingest too much at once and set his stomach off. "It was either that or face the wrath of Seth, and he'd pick the former every time."

"You really think your dad was that bad?" his partner couldn't help being curious, not when the man chalked every intricacy of Ted's behavior up to what daddy dearest had instilled in him. "I met him, Marshall. He was domineering, he was gruff; I get it. But, he wasn't a monster."

"I love my father," he didn't want there to be any confusion. "I wouldn't be where I am today without him. But, if you take what you saw between me and him and multiply it several times over, that's how it was with him and Ted. Ted's the oldest; dad expected a lot out of him, to set an example for me and Eric."

"But, do you think he's better off for it?" Mary did not know why she was getting so deep into this, but family dynamics were starting to intrigue her. "He's a carbon copy. What about the girls? What if they grow up to be little machines?"

"I think you're reading a little too much into this," now that they were reaching the root of things, Marshall left his own dysfunction behind, crunching his pretzels. "Yes, Ted is eerily similar to my dad. But, it's that whole nature versus nurture thing. Parents only impart so much into their kids. Some of them come hard-wired differently, and nature never factors into it. Look at Brianna."

"But, how can you promise that? How can you be sure?" that snack was starting to look good, as the blonde hadn't eaten any breakfast, but she was too intent on her questions to bother stealing any. "Who's to say if the environment won't make a difference? What if because my youth was horribly screwed up that Mango's ends the same way? That no matter how hard I work at bringing him up completely opposite of how I was, that the need to drink and dump others and snort meth and make deals with druggies and be a hard-nosed work-obsessed freak is still in there somewhere?"

Her little speech earned her quite a look from her friend; he even paused mid-chew, looking like a six-year-old who had been caught munching when he wasn't supposed to be. There was still a cowlick in the back of his head, and he wasn't wearing his usual button-up on account of throwing on the nearest outfit he could find that morning. Slowly, he finished whatever was in his mouth, glancing down to see how many pretzels he had left, blinking just as gradually as he was chomping.

There was really no good way to go about this, Marshall thought. Everything Mary had just rattled off told him so much, and it all spoke volumes. Never before had he seen her regard potential motherhood so closely and deliberately. By the same token, she'd always been so adamant about the adoption that he'd never truly found out why she believed she was incapable of becoming a parent herself. Now he had a whole plethora of reasons to draw upon. She was worried Mango would suffer the hardships that she had. She thought her family might be a bad influence. She thought securing a witness was a world apart from securing a child. And on and on – the most bewildering of which was her sudden interest in his relations.

Swallowing, watching Mary run her fingers up and down the steering wheel, Marshall knew it was do or die. She might bite his head off or completely change the subject, but he'd never know unless he tried.

"Parenthood isn't really imbedded with a lot of warranties," he eventually affirmed, deciding this might be safe and even helpful. "Plenty of pledges, sure. But, certainties are hard to come by. The only thing you can really control is yourself. That is a lot to reconcile, but it is also a lot of power – both frightening as well as invigorating."

Prophetic to a fault, Marshall never let the woman down when he had something poetic to say. But, his words were as fearsome as he had indicated they would be. Not being in charge killed Mary and she found nothing 'invigorating' about it. But, he'd also said, in a roundabout way, that she could wield her hand and her wisdom and cast this kid – should he become hers – in her own image. It might only get her so far, but effort counted for a lot.

"That doesn't mean my putting my blood, sweat, and tears into my child would really work out for the best," pessimism was Mary's specialty, and it was showing. "Don't I kind of have a warped sense of what's right and wrong for those under eighteen?"

"Oh, I don't know…" Marshall deliberated, but he was coming off as though he had all the knowledge in the world. "You put up a front that you find kids to be infuriating and obnoxious – nothing short of detestable, really, like they're the dirt beneath your shoes…"

"This is really making me sound maternal…"

"But," he continued like he hadn't even heard her. "Does Leo Billups ring a bell? Iris McBride? Her sister Lily? Tasha, our visitor from Russia? Not to mention the Sullivan clan, Sabrina Jordan…"

His incessant babble was getting to her, "Where is this going?"

"All under eighteen," he pointed out. "Some of them even under ten…"

"Just Gretel Sullivan," Mary mumbled, just so she could feel like she was one-up on him, even for a moment.

"But, I don't use the term 'kid gloves' loosely. You save it for the ankle biters and the ankle biters alone," his eyes were beginning to revive, the glimmer they had lost in his bout with food poisoning returning as he laid out his concrete case. "When Leo told you about how much he missed his father, you were right there with a shoulder for him to cry on."

Literally, Mary recalled, even though she knew Marshall was only speaking metaphorically.

"When Warren McBride couldn't forgive that his daughter had disobeyed him, you were mama bear, ready to fight him tooth and nail," those had been proud instances in the man's career. "Tasha needed acclimating to the United States, and I never doubted for a second that she was safe in your hands…"

"I forgot her groceries."

"Yes, and moms forget to pick up an extra packet of formula at the supermarket," he intoned, prepared for her finding fault with her abilities. "There will be mistakes – I'm not saying there won't be. But, mistakes are how you learn; mistakes help you to grow, to think twice when the fork in the road divides you again…"

"I don't like making mistakes," Mary snapped like a grouchy two-year-old. "I like to be sure."

"I know that," he acknowledged politely. "And, I understand it. But, it is a sacrifice you make when it comes to motherhood. I think until now it has been a menace you grappled with too fiercely to let it go. Relinquishing control wasn't a risk you were willing to take…"

"I never said I'm going to take it now," the blonde wanted to be certain he knew that. "Never."

"Too true," Marshall slid in neatly, offering a pretzel in hopes of appeasing her, which she bit with some brutality. "But, I'm just saying. If your worries or your obstacles consist solely of the capability or the management aspect, those are things that can be remedied; they are things that can be worked on…"

"And what if I can't be fixed?" she demanded ruthlessly, spoiling to stump him. "What if there's no repairing me, huh?"

A long exhale wafted into the open air, and at first Mary thought that Marshall was irritated with her, but it seemed he was actually disheartened by her view of herself. More and more she was realizing just how much it upset him when she tried to make herself sound much worse than she really was. But, Mary was used to people thinking she was nothing but a no-nonsense bitch that she just assumed that was all she could be. Sometimes it bothered her, and sometimes it didn't. Right now, it was troubling; because it was the first time in many years she had wanted to be someone different.

"You don't need fixing," he emphasized quietly. "You are not broken. A kid is entirely new territory – ground unbroken. It's shedding your skin and growing a different – not better – one. If you need a hand to guide you along the way, then…"

His voice trailed off, but it couldn't have been clearer that he wished to be that hand – blessed with sight and leading the blind. The offer took Mary back to their positions on the bed the night before, when she'd mopped up his forehead and nursed him back to health. He had said that she'd been a pro, and she had waved it away as going through the motions on account of a younger Jinx. But, a funny, delightful sort of flutter had taken place in her stomach at him thinking she was able to tend to people in their time of need – not just witnesses, but others too.

And, he'd claimed then that he would help her with Mango. As a voluntary uncle? A partner? A simple friend? Who knew for sure?

"Do you remember anything from last night?" Mary suddenly asked him, probably catching him off guard with the change of subject. "Do you remember…I don't know…" she didn't want to be too explicit if his mind was dim. "Anything you said…anything we did?"

"Some…" evidently, he didn't need to think about it for too long. "Mostly that you were there with me to see to it that I didn't fall and hit my head on the counter. I seem to recall talking to you once I was back in bed, but little specifics." Shooting her an offhand glance and holding up another pretzel, "Why?"

While she'd intended to shield him from their deep discussion, especially when it could easily be forgotten if he didn't remember, Mary knew he was going to weasel her objectives out of her anyway. It was best to get it out of the way now; they were already in the heart of the fire. All this 'motherhood' talk was burning and blistering her flesh from all sides.

"Because we talked about this," she informed him, sucking the salt off her pretzel as she spoke, even though it was making her thirsty. "You were half-baked as hell, but you were pretty set on convincing me that Mango is nothing but a Shannon."

Marshall wondered if he could make a joke about this, if he could shove the whole thing under the rug, because now that Mary had refreshed his memory, he was able to summon up something about Mango's future. Between yesterday and today, he'd gone out on a limb and exhausted the subject, which made it even more shocking that his partner hadn't given him a sound thumping yet.

This could mean a variety of things, most of them exciting. Was she not so offended by the idea of being a mom because she was seriously pondering becoming one? Could that be? Well, it wouldn't be solely because of Marshall that she made such a decision, but if he hassled her anymore, she might run precariously far in the opposite direction. Now was the time to steer things away if he ever wanted her to be able to come to the conclusion by herself.

"Bit of overkill by this point, no?" halfway between teasing and serious, it seemed to do just the trick.

"Yeah, kind of," she even laughed lightly. "It's a lot to take on."

Who, what, where, and when 'it' was referring to would have to be determined at a later date, but Marshall could feel fireworks exploding in his belly already – for a reason that had nothing to do with oysters. But, he played it cool and bobbed his head, knowing that agreeing was the fastest way to get on Mary's good side.

"Yes…" he concurred, scraping the bottom of the pretzel bag one last time. "It sure is."

XXX

A/N: If anyone can convince her, it would be Marshall!