Summary: Mia gets to learn about some of her family history while stuck in a hospital.
solo
It all started with a photo album.
Amelia was only nine years old. Bedridden, in a hospital bed, weak from pneumonia. Hedy had barely left her side since she was first admitted. Only for work, for the bill to pay, and when she could rely on May or Ben or Claire to watch over Amelia while she was gone.
Being away from her was hard. Being with her, almost harder. It broke Hedy's heart to see Amelia like this, wheezing through her cannula, half a dozen tubes snaking out of her collar. Because they spent so much time in the hospital, Hedy had bought her daughter some special hospital gowns, just a bit of comfort. Amelia's favorite, of course, was the bumblebee pattern she was wearing now.
On her lap was a photo album that Ben had left on his last visit. Hedy didn't want to stress Amelia out with schoolwork, so she asked to bring things that would help distract her instead. Of the books and tapes her brother and wife had brought, the photo album was one of them, old and dusty. Hedy was pretty sure she hadn't seen it since high school. She wondered where they found it.
Hedy sat on one side of the bed while Ben sat on the other, both leaning in to explain each picture as she saw them. May was at home taking care of Peter, who had visited earlier. He had given Amelia a little blue alien plush, one that Amelia had tucked under her chin right now, showing the toy the pictures to.
Amelia slowly turned through the pages. Most were of Ben and Hedy's childhood, alongside Richard, in their various youthful adventures. Their various prom nights, graduations, first dates, and weddings. There were older still, of their own parents, photographs they inherited from family no longer surviving.
"Now, that's our mother Lynne Solo," Ben explained, pointing to an old wedding photo from the early 70's. A woman with blonde hair in a very lacy white dress with a high collar, standing next to a man in dress blues, who could've been the spitting image of Richard. "And our father, Douglas Parker, but everyone just called him Mogie,"
"Why'd they call him that?"
Ben and Hedy shared a blank look, and Ben looked down at Amelia. "You know what? I have no idea."
Mia laughed. "It sounds silly. Why's he wearing that suit?"
"It's his military uniform," Hedy explained, turning a page to show a portrait of their father in his greens. "He served in the Vietnam War with a lot of his friends at the time. I was born right around when it ended."
Ben nodded. "He visited when he could, but he was away for most of our early years. I didn't have a lot of strong memories of him until I was four or five."
"And he stayed home after that?"
"He sure did. Never went to war again. Said he was done with it. Sure made our mother happy."
"Where are they now?" Amelia asked.
A slightly somber atmosphere fell between them, and Hedy was the first to find the words. "Our mother died right before I graduated high school. She was very sick, and she didn't make it."
"Sick like me?" Amelia frowned, pulling her little blue friend closer to her chest.
"Sort of," But Hedy shook her head. It had been difficult getting through school while also dealing with her mother's impending death. It had been slow. Very slow. They all knew it was going to happen. Only a matter of when. And to make it as peaceful and comfortable as they could. "She got cancer from smoking. God, how old was she, Ben?"
"Forty-two," he answered in a subdued tone. Ben had been working his way through trade school at the time. He'd only just started dating May. Richard had been working towards his master's thesis. It almost put everything in their lives to a complete standstill. "She was young."
"When she died, our father was inconsolable." Hedy continued. "Losing her was hard on all of us, but our father took it the worst. He stopped eating. Just… just started to waste away. He died a little over a year later, after her birthday."
"How?" Amelia frowned, confused.
Ben and Hedy shared another look, and Ben shrugged. "The doctors said it was a broken heart. It's, um, Richard had a word for it. Stress, erm, stress something," He snapped his fingers, trying to think. "Oh! Stress-induced cardiomyopathy!"
Amelia blinked at him, perplexed. Ben chuckled sheepishly. "It's also called broken heart syndrome. Sometimes, when someone a person cares about dies, it hurts too much. Their heart gives out. That's what happened to our dad."
It seemed the Parkers had always carried a strange tragedy in their name. They all died young. Even Richard and Mary. Maybe fate had it in for the family. Maybe it was simple bad luck. Now, looking at Amelia, pale and breathing strained in her bumblebee gown, Hedy hoped to God her baby would be spared.
The topic was a decidedly unhappy one, and both Hedy and Ben were relieved when Amelia turned the page and changed the topic.
"Who's that?" she asked, pointing to an older photo, black and white. Dated sometime in the early sixties, it was a candid photo of a man on a pier with the Statue of Liberty in the background. He was tall with broad shoulders, dressed in a tailored dark suit, with black hair slicked back, an easy smile on his face. Early thirties, handsome, and judging by the quality of his watch, rich to boot.
"Oh, that's your great grand-father," Hedy told her, blinking at the only photograph she ever had of him. This was taken well before she was born; by the time Hedy was around, he would have been almost fifty. "On our mother's side. Her mother was Ursule. Lynne was their only child; they only had a brief relationship before he took off, so they never married."
"Like you and my dad!" Amelia grinned at making the connection.
"Yes, honey." Hedy died inside. Ben cut her a sharp look. He had no kind things to say about that man, so he made the wise decision not to speak at all, letting Hedy do the work. "Just like us. Except our grandfather didn't abandon Ursule. They never married, but when he found out she had a child, he made sure to send her money, and visited when he could. His work took him all over the world, so he was always away somewhere, living some sort of adventure. Paris, Germany, China, Argentina..."
"That sounds fun," Amelia murmured wistfully. "I want to see the world, too."
"I know, honey," Hedy smiled sadly at her, and made a promise she knew better than to make. But she made it anyway. "And you will someday, I promise."
"What did he do for work?"
That was a harder question to answer. "Well, he did lots of things, as I understand it. He was very wealthy, and his business took him all over. He met my grandmother at an event in Las Vegas, some kind of backgammon competition."
"What's backgammon?"
"Well, it's this board game you play between two people, and in Vegas if you win, you get a lot of money," Hedy realized she was getting into too much detail, and scaled it back a little. "Uh, anyways, my grandfather was a world-class backgammon player, and it's where they met and fell in love. For a little while, at least."
"Whoa, that's not what he told me," Ben said, laughing. Hedy and Amelia cut him curious looks, and he explained, "Well, when we were kids, he told me how he served in the Army and fought against the Nazis, and then later helped in the occupation after the Allies won."
This, actually, did not surprise Hedy. "He told me he was also an art thief. And didn't Rick think he was a CIA agent?"
Amelia gaped in awe, while Ben laughed, slapping his knee. "Oh, that's right! Gotta admit, Grandad always knew how to tell a good story."
"So which one was it?" Amelia asked, her eyes flicking between the two of them. "A spy, a thief, or a soldier?"
"A gambler." Hedy confirmed. It was the only true thing she knew about him.
"A womanizer," Ben said at the same time, and earned a burning look from Hedy. "What? She's old enough!"
"That, too," Hedy begrudgingly agreed. She looked back to Amelia. "Grandad was a very… interesting man. But whatever he did, he showed up when we were born. He cared about Lynne and he loved to see us. And tell all kinds of stories."
"Lots of illegal stories," Ben clarified.
"What happened to him?"
Ben shrugged at Hedy again, before she explained, "Well, I was maybe only ten, the last time I saw him. He never stayed for very long. Even in… retirement, he lived somewhere far away, and he always said something different each time we asked. Moscow, Copenhagen, London. He was always mercurial. But he sent us a lot of letters and postcards, some with return addresses. The last time I ever contacted him was for our mother's funeral, but he never responded."
"He never showed." Ben said.
"I thought you said he cared," Amelia looked betrayed.
"He did, in his own way," Hedy sighed, rubbing Amelia's back to soothe her. "To be honest, he might have already died by then. He must have been… in his sixties? Maybe? I'm not sure. Our grandmother died a little before you were born. He never showed up then, either. Or if he did, we never saw him."
He always had a youthfulness to him, Hedy remembered. A smile that made him ten or twenty years younger. The three of them all sitting in a circle around him as he told the wildest stories and — apparently — telling each of them a different version of his past. Even now, Hedy couldn't even guess which one might have been true, if any at all. The CIA spy one, however, she doubted the most, simply because it sounded too fantastical for the kindly, fun-loving old man she knew.
"He always said he had dangerous work," Ben said, but he looked unconvinced as well. "Retired or not. He moved a lot. He probably never got the message. Although I wonder why he never bothered to check in, then."
It was uncomfortable to discuss such theories in front of Amelia. It wasn't the first time Ben and Hedy had talked about their mercurial grandfather before, what had happened to him. Hedy preferred to think he was dead. For all intents and purposes, he was. He was no longer a part of their lives, as far as she was concerned.
Rick had never quite believed Grandad had abandoned them, although his proof was a bit out there. The anonymous donation to their mother's funeral service, enough so that none of the children had to spend their school money to put her to rest. The small windfall Richard's college had received, allowing Rick to find the extra work he needed to complete his graduate studies. How Ben found a job right out of school, or that when Amelia was a baby, she won a lottery for sick children that would pay for some of her aide; a competition Hedy had never submitted her to. Ben had been skeptical; anonymous donations and fundraisers are made all the time, by thousands of different people. It was just a coincidence. But Rick had been certain, and even Hedy had her doubts at time. Still, if it were true, what stopped their grandfather from sending a letter or postcard like he used to?
"His name was Napoleon," Hedy said at last, although she couldn't be sure that was true, either. Amelia made a face like that, and Hedy laughed a little. "Yes, like the French guy. But our Napoleon was American. Probably."
"He sounded cool."
"He was," Hedy agreed, sharing a look with Ben. Those were the blessed days of their childhood, when they had both parents, each other. Grandma lived close by and visited often, but not Napoleon. He might visit once or twice a year, at odd times, usually with little warning; he'd make up for it with wonderful, thoughtful gifts. Hedy had always believed he cared about them growing up; it made his disappearance hurt all the more. And the fact that none of them would ever get answers was just something she had to live with. "He was a complicated man. But he loved us. He'd love you, too."
She emphasized this by tapping Amelia's nose, making her smile again.
A/N: Inspired by conversation with charmanderisacutie on tumblr. Basically a giant reference to The Man from UNCLE. You can pry this crossover from my cold dead hands. (I also don't know how to write endings).