Walter, Daniel, and Ernest don't edge around Jack when he comes back to work. Even though he's out of his head thinking about Katherine at home without him, they treat him just the same as they did before – stealing his good drafting paper and teasing him about his inability to keep his skin free from some smudge of ink or graphite for more than ten minutes together. Honestly, Jack is grateful. It's nice to have some semblance of normalcy, especially when it feels like he's treading on eggshells at home. He's grateful to Edith, too, who has delayed returning to school for another week until Katherine's allowed to move around normally, as Jack can't afford to take the two weeks the doctor ordered off.

They eat dinner together, the three of them, in the evening quiet of the kitchen, after Katherine manages to walk downstairs without doubling over in pain or leaning on Jack, so they're all doing pretty well. And then there's a knock on the door.

Jack answers it to the last person in the world he's expecting to see.

"Mista Pulitzer?"

The man isn't quite fully blind yet, but he's carrying a cane with a gold topper in the shape of a wolf's head, presumably to tap out his path. Jack's always hated the kind of men who carry canes, even the blind ones, though he knows that's bad. It just seems so odd to him that something that's caused him nothing but pain can be just a fashion statement to another man.

Mr. Pulitzer sweeps his hat off his head. "I wanted to, ah, express my condolences."

Jack just blinks at him for a moment, then remembers himself, stepping aside. "Come in." He leaves the door for the man to shut himself – he might be used to butlers doing such things for him but Jack isn't going to play those games – and indicates for him to follow him into the living room. "Katherine, we's got a guest."

Katherine is stretched out on the sofa, she's more comfortable that way, at the moment. When she looks up, her mouth drops open. "Father?"

He coughs a little, straightening his spine. Hair greying, eyes blinded, he still looks every inch the soldier that travelled from Hungary to fight for America. "I- I just came to express my condolences. I know what it is to lose a child."

"Your condolences?" Katherine's voice is low and dangerous. Jack knows what that means.

"Katherine-" He tries, but it's hopeless.

"Your condolences?" Katherine snaps, propping herself up on her elbows from where she is on the sofa. Jack remembers, very suddenly, why he sometimes pictures her as an avenging angel rather than the kind that stand around nativity scenes looking pretty. "You think that your condolences make a jot of difference? My daughter is dead and you didn't even know I was pregnant. You've never bothered with us before, why the hell are you here now?"

And, to be fair, she's got a point. If it were him (or, honestly, if Katherine was in full health), Pulitzer would have a broken nose. Even without such consequences, the older man looks startled, taken aback by his daughter's vicious temper. Sure, Katherine and her father had fought like cat and dog when she lived at home, but her time living with Jack has made her firmer in her convictions, if it's possible. She's not about to be pushed around and Jack pities any man who so much as tries to. Mr. Pulitzer's thoughts clearly are not in the same vein, though, as he scowls and goes to admonish Katherine for her outburst.

"I do not appreciate-"

"Father?" Edith steps into the room, holding a pack of cards, stopping in her tracks at the sight of her father.

That had been Katherine's idea, to distract the three of them from the long empty nights that seem to stretch interminably ahead of them. Katherine and Edith knew games like whist or old maid, which Jack had never heard of, but, once having played them, discovered that the 'appropriate' games for high society ladies were ridiculously boring. He promptly broke out a box of matches to stand in for betting chips and taught both of them how to play poker and blackjack, which ended up being more enjoyable for all involved. Somehow, Jack can't see either his wife or his sister-in-law inviting their father to join in the game.

"Edith?" Pulitzer turns, blind eyes scanning for a blur of colour that might be his middle daughter. "What are you doing here?"

Edith schools her face into the kind of haughty indifference she has mastered, that she keeps in a jar ready to put on at a moment's notice, and juts out her chin. "I'm staying with Katherine and Jack for the Christmas holidays." She purses her lips. "Which you would know, if you read my letters."

Pulitzer stands, caught between two pairs of furious eyes. "I think it might be best for me to leave."

The hurt that flashes across Edith's face damn near breaks Jack's heart. He hates Pulitzer. The man hasn't seen Edith in more than a year and he can't stand to be in the same room with her for more than a minute.

"I think so too." Katherine replies, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

With a nod, Pulitzer turns on his heel and walks out of the door. It takes until the front door slams behind him for Jack to gather himself enough to follow the older man.

"Mista Pulitzer? Wait up!" Jack bursts out of the door, swearing under his breath as his shoeless feet hit the frosty pavement. Joseph Pulitzer stops in his march down the street, turning around to face Jack as he runs up. "Kath, she, uh, she ain't herself. You should come back. Y'know, sometime. Visit her. When she's more up to it."

Pulitzer doesn't quite manage to hide the surprise that flits across his face, but quickly schools himself back into indifference. "Your wife hates me, Mr. Kelly."

He's not quite successful. There's an edge to his voice, bitterness, perhaps, or even sadness. It doesn't really matter. Jack doesn't care how Pulitzer feels.

"No. That's me. I hate you." He says, folding his arms across his chest. "But you's her dad."

"She does not want me around."

"An' I don' fuckin' care!" Jack snaps, running both hands through his hair, making it even more crazed than usual. He says the next part to the pavement, to his sock-clad feet that stand on it, with his hands clenched into fists in his hair. "I jus' lost my daughter. You's got a chance to get yours back. I'd be in your shoes in a heartbeat, so get your shit together an' show up for her."

There's a long pause. Jack's eyes flick up to the other man, muscles tensing themselves to run if the man comes at him with that cane for his rudeness. And then Pulitzer says something that neither of them were expecting.

"When is convenient for me to call again?"

Jack blinks. He hadn't exactly been expecting that whole speech to work, honestly. His brain flicks through what they've got coming up… and the fact that Smalls is currently sleeping on their sofa because times are hard. They'd been left alone to grieve for a while, but the world doesn't stop for mourners, and normal life had to come back sometime. And, whilst neither he nor Katherine have said it aloud, they're both grateful. It's good to have family around. David and Miriam. Crutchie and Race. Henry, Albert, the rest. Daisy and Medda. They'd never survive this without them.

"We ain't got nobody comin' for dinner on Thursday. Y'can come then." Jack nods, decisive. Pulitzer returns the gesture, more reluctant, an incline of his head but there, nonetheless, before turning to leave. At his retreating form, Jack calls out. "You should bring Constance. Kath an' Edith would love to see her."

He walks back into the house with one thought on his mind: Katherine is going to kill me. Sure enough, when he walks back into the living room, hovering in the doorway, Edith has retreated to some unknown place elsewhere in the house and Katherine is pacing up and down, wearing a hole in their hearth rug, despite visibly wincing at every step.

"I cannot believe him!" She snarls the second that Jack appears in the doorway. "He denounces us for months, as then as soon as tragedy strikes he comes along to lord it over us-"

"Ace." Jack sighs, his hand braced against the doorframe.

"- like he has any right to after everything he's put us through –"

"Sweetheart-"

"- and to waltz in and say that he knows what it is to lose a child –"

"Katherine!" He finally snaps. It's not quite a shout, not quite, but it's enough to make her turn around, shocked at his tone. "I's told him to visit again. On Thursday."

"You what?" She growls. Oh, he's in trouble, alright. "Jack Kelly, you had no right –"

"No, but I was right." He says firmly, walking forward and taking hold of her hands guiding her back to sit on the sofa. She'll rip her stitches at this rate. "Katherine, angel, I hate the guy too, okay? But he's your father. He was hurtin'. Genuine, like."

"My father doesn't know what it's like to hurt." Katherine turns her face away.

"Everybody knows what 's like to hurt, love." Jack says, crouching in front of her, still keeping hold of her hands. "'S the only thing we's got in common."

Slowly, oh-so-slowly, Katherine turns back to look at him, something unreadable on her face. Disentangling one of her hands from his, she reaches out to stroke his face, relishing the way that his eyes flutter closed as she traces the contours of him, suddenly understanding why he seems to spend half his time trying to capture her in pencil lines. If she had any talent with art, then she'd do the same.

"When did you get so wise, hm?"

"Oh, it was the weddin', see?" Jack grins up at her, wickedness in his eyes as he takes hold of a curl that has slipped from her updo, framing her face, and gives it the tiniest, gentlest tug, teasing her. "What's mine is yours an' all that. I's got your wisdom, an' you took my stupidity-"

He breaks off, laughing, ducking away from the hand she raises to swat at him, splaying himself out across their living room rug instead, smugly pillowing his head on his hands and closing his eyes, a smile still on his lips. It grows wider when he feels Katherine's warm body press against his. He lets one arm flop out from under his head, welcoming her, but otherwise stays very still, letting her position herself so that she's comfortable. Dr. Graceton has assured them that she's making excellent progress, but he knows that moving just a hair the wrong way still hurts. It's only when she's stopped squirming, her head resting on his chest, that he wraps his arm around her, staring up at the white of the living room ceiling, illuminated by the glow of the fire in the grate. He's just glad that they've found their way back to one another. He's been lying in bed each night like a tin soldier, keeping his arms and legs to himself until she seeks out his embrace. It wasn't until the night before, when she asked him, in the vulnerability of sleep's twilight, if he didn't want to touch her anymore, that he'd realised that him trying to respect her boundaries and not to hurt her in his sleep had come across all wrong. He's touched her more in this one evening than he has done in the past few days put together.

"That is decidedly not what happened." She tells him. Jack can hear the smile in her voice and he finds himself sending a thank you out into the evening, not to anything specific, just there. Something like praying, perhaps.

"You ain't tellin' me you wouldn't have taken a bit o' dimness to get all o' this?" He cricks his neck to squint down at her, grinning as he gestures to himself.

"All of what?" Katherine scoffs, shifting her head from his chest to the rug beside him so that she can look at him; first his face, then, playfully, the rest of him as if assessing. "Please, I'm way out of your league."

Jack grins, delighted. "Come off it, Ace, I's seen the way you looks at me."

"When?" She snarks. Katherine tries very, very hard not to look at his lips. She can tease him all she likes, but they both know that she can't resist him. It's written right across his face as he smirks at her, a face that's so close to hers that it's making her head spin.

"Now." He presses forward, kisses her open-mouthed and lazy-tongued and delicious, because they have all the time in the world and the rest of their lives to live out together.

Hell, Katherine's missed this. She's missed Jack. Even though the thought of intimacy in the further sense sends her body cramping up in pain and terror, she's missed this. She needs this. Because Jack shows the people he loves that he loves them through touch – the hand that lingers on her knee or the small of her back, the way that he tugs her into his lap to read to him – and he's been afraid to touch her, for fear of hurting her. He'd told her so, which, whilst heart-breaking, is substantially less so than why she'd thought he was drawing away from her. But they're okay, because he's just leaned forward and kissed her and it's as exciting and exhilarating as the first time they kissed.

"Thank you." She whispers as he draws away.

Jack's pupils are blown wide, the way they always are after he's kissed her like that, and Katherine revels in the knowledge that she did that. "Really, Ace," he smiles, slow and a little bit dazed, "the pleasure's all mine."

"Not that, you nitwit." She laughs, batting at his chest, then nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. "For talking to my father." And then, with a bout of sick guilt, for her own audacity to be happy, after all this: "And for this. I've missed this."

"Missed what?"

"Us. Being happy. Being close." Her words don't draw a reply from him, but his arm tightens around her a little and her turns onto his side to wind his free hand through her hair. She has to ask, though. "Can… can you be happy with this? Just us?"

"Sweetheart," he sighs, and she can feel his warm breath on her skin, "I's got everythin' I's ever wanted right here."

"But… children. Family."

"We is a family, Mrs. Kelly." He tells her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "We's got a marriage certificate to prove it. An' we can still have kids. 'S plenty o' orphanages around. When we's older, when we's ready, we'll get a kid. A kid like I used to be, 'cept this one won't ever know what it's like to be cold, or hungry, or unloved."

And the thought honestly hadn't crossed her mind. She's been so caught up in it all, the loss of Lucy, of everything she represented, that she hadn't even thought through the possibility.

Lucy was the future that her and Jack have been planning since they realised that they wanted forever, not just one night in a penthouse in the sky. She's been what they've been building towards throughout all of this – their careers, their passion projects, yes, important, but nothing so important as the two of them and the family that they were going to build. Lucy was everything, and now she's gone, taking with her Katherine's ability to conceive and tearing up the tentative future that they've spent more than a year sketching out together. It's not just Lucy. It's the promise that Lucy was, the part of both of them that bound them inextricably together.

But they already have that promise. It's sealed around their fingers in gold. A promise written in blood and sweat and tears that they have pooled together.

The loss of Lucy will stay with them like the loss of her sister has stayed with Katherine; a pebble in each of their shoes as they walk through the world, sometimes enough to break an ankle, sometimes unnoticeable. But she isn't their future, something to strive towards. She isn't their past, to be forgotten. She's just a part of them, loved and lovely, and theirs.

And one day, when they're older and they're ready, they can have another child to be loved and lovely, not one from her womb, but no less theirs for it. They can do this together. They will be stronger for it.

Jack pulls away from Katherine, smoothing her hair back off her face and searching her eyes. She's never seen him so anxious. "Can you be happy wi' that?"

"Jack, I've never wanted anything more than I want this. Than I want you." She's never meant anything with more of her soul in her entire life.

"For sure?"

"For sure."