Wow, I am so sorry about that long break, I was honestly too tired to post anything, but here it is! Thank you to those of you still following this story!
Daddy was really quiet. It wasn't a gone day, though. Daddy didn't get out of bed on the gone days. He didn't talk or eat. Today, Tyler's daddy had done a lot. He'd woken up and eaten and shown Racer a shower and even talked to Doctor Denton and Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Specs. His daddy had smiled and cried all at the same time and Tyler didn't know if he was happy or sad.
Now, his daddy was just quiet. They were back in this new room in space that looked out over the whole world. Race could see everything and it all moved so fast. The world was a big place; so big that Tyler couldn't even believe it. There were so many things to look at and things just kept happening and happening and happening that the little boy could hardly keep up.
The quiet felt familiar even though nothing else did, but Daddy looked so different. He was sitting with his legs crossed in front of the giant windows in the ground, watching World move around way down below them. "Daddy… are you sad?" the little boy asked when he saw the tears on the man's face. He climbed into his daddy's lap and looked up at him, using his small hands to wipe at his cheeks.
With a small sniffle, the young man smiled at the little boy. It was a little smile but it was still a smile. Tyler loved it when his daddy smiled. "Hey… come here…" he whispered, lifting Race up and turning him in his lap. "Guess what?"
Looking out into the world, Tyler cocked his head to the side. "What?" he asked, not knowing what his daddy was about to say at all.
A kiss was pressed to his head, right behind his ear, and the child giggled before Daddy spoke, "We've been in the world together for twenty four hours." The man brushed Tyler's hair back. "That's a whole day…" Daddy's voice was soft and small as he lifted Race up and spun him around, letting him look out over the beeping cars and twinkling lights like the ones he'd seen in TV. "We tried pancakes, n' we took a shower, n' we made the bed go up n' down…"
A small, nervous nod was all the response that Tyler could give his daddy. He still missed Wardrobe and Bed and Eggsnake. It seemed to upset Daddy whenever he tried to ask about Room. So he didn't. "Daddy?"
"What, baby?" Daddy breathed, rocking himself like he did whenever Tyler James had a bad dream.
"The World is big…"
A small chuckle made Race smile as he bent his head back to look up at his daddy. "Yeah, kiddo… I told you it was," he whispered. "N' one day, you're gonna see all of it. But we're gonna start here, okay? We're gonna start where Daddy grew up…"
Curiosity gripped the little boy as his head tilted to the side, though it was still upside down. "You grew up in this room?" he asked, still not quite understanding.
His daddy shook his head. "No. No, I grew up in New York," he explained. "Look out the window, Tyler." When the little boy coward a little bit against him, still not used to the altitude, Daddy held him a bit tighter. "It's okay, I gotcha, just look," he instructed again, taking Race's hand in his own and lifting it towards the glass and pressing it flat against it. "That right out there… that's New York City," he said.
Jack hadn't realized how much he'd missed it. All those years trying to claw himself out of the big city and here he sat, taking in every single little detail, terrified he may never be able to see it again. It was loud and dirty and bright and the people were eccentric and odd. Jack loved every part of it so much. The noise coming from the streets was the most comforting thing he could ask for at the moment, a deafening noise of familiarity from a life Jack had let himself pretend never existed.
Maybe something still felt horrible inside of him. Maybe deep down, he knew he'd never be the same, he couldn't ever be the same kid that he had been. Right now, none of it seemed to matter. "Start spreadin' the news," he sang so softly into his little boy's ear. "I'm leavin' t'day. I wanna be a part of it… New York, New York…" He used to hate this song. Now, if he heard it everyday, he wasn't sure it would be enough.
While he held this precious child in his arms, he never once looked back to see if someone was going to come through that door. He didn't fear that six beeps would be heard above him. He just sat with his son in a hospital at the top of the world and sang to him, watching the bustling streets of Manhattan far below them.
It was one of the most beautiful things Jack had ever seen.
"I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps," Jack murmured, rocking his son in his arms as his little boy began to doze off, the stress simply too much for him to handle. Jack tried to remind himself that it would get better one day. That one day, Tyler would adjust. "And find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap…"
A vague thought passed through Jack's head at what he might be doing if he was back in Room as his son melted back into his chest. He felt his heart clench for a moment as he thought about the nights he'd sit up in his stupid yellow chair and take Lamp and click it on and off while his little boy tried to sleep.
Never again would he have to train his boy's sleeping habits in such a way.
"If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere," Jack whispered. He looked down onto the streets again, tears rushing down his face as he somehow managed to keep his quiet, hoarse voice steady. "It's up to you, New York, New York…"
Six years and Jack was finally here. He was free. He was free and his son was free and everything was alright.
And then that moment ended.
The next morning they were outside. The doctors had said it would be good for him. It would be good for Racer. Jack hated the mask the boy was forced to wear but the fresh air wasn't awful. The warm clothes made him feel secure; the beanie, the scarf, the coat. It was more clothes than he'd worn in a long time. The woosh of the wind and the chatter of the people and the honking of cars made Jack feel only slightly overwhelmed today. He'd wanted to get out for a minute, just pretend for one second that things were normal.
That wasn't what the universe wished to grant him today.
"Jack, honey, I know this is a lot to take in—"
"Mama, just let him breathe for a second."
"It doesn't mean we won't both do our best for you, son."
There were tears in Jack's eyes. Truly, he'd never really thought about what would happen when he got out. If he got out. After all of these years, trying to get out, to get back here, to see these people again, and then losing hope, Jack had never once stopped to think that maybe things had changed, that maybe when he got out his family just wouldn't be the same.
Unable to look at his parents, the ones that had taken him in so long ago, he held onto his little boy who sat quietly in his lap. He let his chin rest on top of that curly blond hair as he stared straight ahead into nothingness.
It was going to be a long day. Then again, Jack had already known that.
A pull at his sleeve made him sniffle. He leaned his ear down for his son who whispered quietly in his ear, so no one else could hear, "Daddy, what's divorce?"
Sniffling a bit from the cold, Jack shook his head. "Um… I should… I should take him back inside…" he forced out, his voice only breaking a little bit.
"Honey…"
"Jackie—"
"Daddy…" Jack looked down at his little boy as he nodded sadly and took his hand, leading him back through the large hospital. His shoulders slouched a bit as he walked, just needing some place to think.
Daddy was sad now. Race didn't know how to help him, so he just swung their hands between them, glancing shyly back at Uncle and Grandma and Grandpa. The child guessed they were going back to New Room now. It was odd to him, having so many doors that led to so many different places. The world was so big.
Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Specs didn't come back with them to New Room in Hospital. It was just Tyler and Daddy. Daddy set him up on New Bed and then went to the sink to splash some water on his face. Sometimes Daddy did that after Gone Days. Race didn't know why. "Daddy?" he asked innocently, lying on his stomach and having nothing better to do than to just watch his daddy, unsure of what was happening.
Looking back down at him Daddy rubbed at his face, clearing his throat before he walked over to the bed. Scooping Tyler up in his arms, Daddy held him, laying on his back on the mattress and staring up at the ceiling.
For a long while, neither of them spoke. Tyler played with the sleeve of his daddy's shirt and his daddy kicked off his shoes. It was very quiet until Daddy started to speak. "Remember… remember when I told you about Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Specs?" he asked, never taking his gaze off of the white block above them. "How we all lived in the house with the swing n' we'd… we'd eat ice cream n' have barbecues outside?"
The kid did remember that. So he nodded. "It's a real house… not TV," he stated, reciting what his daddy had told him. He remembered making Daddy cry. He hadn't meant to.
Daddy sniffled, still not looking away from the sky. "Well… Grandpa… he don't live in that house no more," he said. His voice was empty. "Grandma lives there with her friend Teddy."
"Where does Grandpa live?" Tyler asked, not understanding. He'd only lived one place his whole life, until now.
A hand ran over his hair as his daddy responded, "Far away." That was all the answer he gave.
Sighing, Tyler just let himself lay on his daddy's chest, looking out the giant windows at the world. The world was like all of the TV planets happening at once. The boy didn't know where to look or listen because everything kept happening all the time. He couldn't keep up. "Daddy, is the world always this loud?"
For a moment, Daddy looked confused. There were horns honking and doors ticking and people were talking over them. It was coming from the same place the six beeps would come from when Spider was coming. He could never find the voice. Every person had a different face and a different voice.
"This is just one part of the world, Racer," Daddy said. "Every place you go is a little different. It's just how it works," he explained. Still, the little boy didn't understand, but he didn't ask anything else.
Silently, the child wondered if this was a dream, if he'd drifted off into a TV planet in his sleep. Daddy told him that didn't happen. Maybe they were still in Room. Daddy said they were always in Room. They were never anywhere but Room, but this still didn't feel like dreaming.
It was a long while that they lay there. Race tried to get used to the sounds. He watched the fluffy white spots in the sky float and move. Clouds. Sometimes he used to see those through Skylight. It was space. He could see Space through Skylight. These were windows. He could see everything now; all of the different faces of the different persons. There were so many persons.
Time didn't matter to Race at the moment as he lay on his daddy's chest, growing more and more tired by the minute. He knew he shouldn't be tired, Daddy and him hadn't even run track today, but he couldn't help it.
He was nearly asleep when he heard ticking on the door again.
Jack forced himself to open his eyes at that. His head was killing him. "Come in," he called quietly, his voice once again breaking. He bit his lip as he forced himself to sit up. All he needed to see was the bland suits the men were wearing as they walked in. Subconsciously, Jack held onto his son a bit tighter. He did not want to do this right now. "Uh… h-hi…" he said as Tyler tried to hide in his chest. The young man tried to calm him, running a hand through his hair as those big men walked over to him. He had to bite his tongue to keep from asking for his mama. He wasn't a child anymore.
"Mr. Kelly, I'm your lawyer, Gerry Bunsen and this is Detective Seitz," the smaller of the two spoke. Jack nodded, swallowing back his fear. "This must be Tyler James." When the stranger reached out for his son, the child gasped while Jack did his best not to react. Tyler grasped onto his shirt tightly.
Unable to help himself, Jack swallowed hard. "Wh-where's my family?" he breathed quietly, unable to make eye contact with the men. He really did not want to be here right now. He just wanted to go home. This was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about at the moment.
One of them let out a sigh and Jack bit his lip to keep calm, closing his eyes for a moment as Race crawled behind him, not liking the strangers at all. "We thought it would be better if we had this conversation in private."
Blinking back any kind of emotion that he had already been told would be normal at this point. He didn't need any of this. He just wanted to go home. Jack didn't think he was asking for too much. Still, he knew he couldn't avoid this. So he nodded and continued to pet his son's curls before he finally turned to the boy. "Racer, these guys ain't gonna hurt us," he promised.
The child looked up at him, still clinging to his shirt. "Are they aliens?"
"No…" Jack breathed. "Not aliens." At least, not so far as Jack knew. For all he knew, he still could be dreaming. "These are the good guys," he tried to explain, hoping that much was true. "They're gonna ask some questions about… about Room n' about Spider," he said. "I'm gonna talk with them for a little while, okay?"
With big, curious blue eyes, the boy cocked his head. "And I can come with?"
Clearing his throat, Jack shook his head. "I'm just gonna be right over there, kid," he promised, nodding over to where the detective and the lawyer sat by the windows that looked out over the most beautiful city in the world to Jack. "And you can lay down here n'..." the young man looked around for a second before his eyes found something his brother had left with him. "You can listen to some music."
It wasn't a radical discovery. It shouldn't have been. There, laying on Jack's bedside table was a small iPod with some headphones attached to it. Seeing it just made his heart swell. He swallowed hard and reached for the thing. His son had never listened to music. The thought of it made Jack feel sick a little. All of this was so far from ordinary. It was hard and confusing and just so much all at once and he didn't know how to react to any of it.
So he didn't.
Sighing, he slid the headphones onto Race's ears and helped him lay down. The boy looked up at him oddly, not used to not being able to hear what was going on. Tyler was observant in every way. He grew up learning every sight and every sound he could find. It wasn't a lot, but to them it was everything within their reach. It hurt to think about.
"Daddy, I wanna stay with you," Tyler insisted, a small whine in his voice that Jack knew all too well.
Jack looked down at him. "Just close your eyes and listen," he said gently, picking up that small device in his hand for the first time in six years. He didn't think about it as he found something calm and tame, just loud enough to keep the kid distracted. He pressed a kiss to his child's head, watching his son become fascinated within a second before he slowly crawled off the bed and turned to look at those detectives that he didn't want to speak to.
They both stared at him, as though they were waiting for him to speak. Jack didn't know what to say. "Wh-what d'ya wanna know?" he asked.
They pulled up a chair for him and Jack began one of the longest conversations he was sure he'd ever had.
Nothing that had happened to him had been simple. Though he wished it could be cut and dry, he did his best to ramble on flatly about the day that had changed his life for good. Once upon a time, he thought those days were long gone. The day he and his brother had been left behind, those awful days in the system, the day he'd been adopted. It was naive of him to think he might ever just be a normal kid.
"So this girl, Amelia," Seitz began. "She is the one who took you?"
Shaking his head, Jack took a deep breath. "No… no, she… well, yes, but… Spider, he was there too. She just told me some lie and I believed her." That's all it took. One pretty girl told him a lie and he lost six years of his life. He lost everything. "Th-then Spider, I guess he was waitin'," Jack said, pinching a bit at the bridge of his nose. "He injected me with somethin'. I couldn't move… n' he threw me in the back of his truck n' the next thing I knew, I was in…" Room. That godawful, stupid little shed that Jack would remember every miserable inch of for them rest of his life. That was the place his baby was born. It was the place he grew and played and dreamed.
The men were watching him closely. Jack didn't seem to notice. "And Amelia and… this man," one of them continued. "They both came in nightly to—"
"Yes…" Jack hissed. He ran a hand down his face. He'd already gone over this. "I know you have to ask, but I already told you this. What else do you need ta know?"
"Tyler James, is he hers?"
Those words cut like a knife through Jack's chest. He suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe. "What?" he asked, his voice small and just a little bit angry.
Not understanding what he'd done wrong, one of the detectives only asked again, "Is Tyler James Amelia's son?"
Maybe he should've known this would happen. Maybe he should've been thinking about all of this. He should've let the overwhelming relief wear off sooner so he could stop to think that he wasn't any kind of typical victim. "He's my son," he stated, his voice nervous and unsure, though there was nothing he was more sure of than that. No matter what, that boy was his. It was the only thing he knew was real anymore.
Glancing back at his child, Jack missed another long sigh that escaped one of the men he wished would just go away and leave him alone. So many things were happening. Pop had been talking about lawyers and medical bills and Jack didn't want to keep up with it anymore. Last time he'd been out in the world, he'd been sixteen. He'd only still been learning about how the world actually worked.
"Mr. Kelly," Bunsen said, leaning closer to him. Jack just leaned away, masking it by sitting up straighter, taking his elbows from his knees and wiping at his tear stained face. "I think it's important that we know for sure he's one hundred percent yours—"
"He's mine," Jack repeated almost desperately.
Trying to find the right words, Bunsen nodded. "I understand. You raised him and protected him, but from what you've told us, you were not the only person that she had been with and if she steps forward—"
"She's dead." The words rolled off of his tongue bitterly. He could still remember it all so well. Time may have blurred together in Room, but being outside gave him just a bit of clarity that the young man never asked for. He hadn't known Amelia was pregnant until Spider had locked her in with him. She'd been carrying for six months then. She'd gone into labor and Jack had been all alone without the slightest idea what to do. The fact that Tyler James was here was a miracle in itself. He hadn't had a chance of keeping Amelia alive after that.
"Even still, if this man, William Snyder," Bunsen continued, the name sending chills down Jack's spine. It was odd. For some reason, Jack had liked it better when he hadn't known that evil man's name. It was easier to think of him as some soulless monster. "If the baby is his—"
"What, you're gonna give him to him?" Jack asked, his voice only hardly as sharp as it should've been.
"If he's not yours, James, the state has the right to put him in the system."
Everything seemed to freeze at that and Jack shook his head, unable to process the information. His chest felt tight. "H-he's my son… he's mine," he breathed. "You can't…" The words were dying as soon as they left his lips. Because they could.
If Jack were to be completely honest with himself, he had never once considered whether or not Race was biologically his own. All that had ever mattered was the fact that Tyler was his. That boy was his.
"Just think about it, Jack," Seitz sighed. "We'll… we'll get out of your hair for a while now."
The young man did not watch them leave. He didn't hear the door open and shut. He didn't wait to listen for the footsteps to fade away. He just watched his little boy on the bed, his crystal blue eyes fluttering innocently as he let The Beatles lull him to sleep.
That child was everything. That child was the only reason that Jack Kelly was still alive to this day.
Before Jack knew it, he was climbing back onto that bed, blinking away the tears and gently pulling the child to him. He made sure to be slow and careful, just like he always was before when he moved Tyler from Wardrobe to Bed. He curled around the child, wanting to protect him from the world he's missed so much.
Closing his eyes, Jack tried to imagine everything he'd ever stopped himself from imagining back then, back when he'd somehow managed to convince himself that it wasn't out here, that Room was all that was left. He just wanted to go for a walk in the park or on the beach, he wanted to play a song or go for a driving lesson with his big brother. He wanted to hold his son's hand while he watched the sun rise and take him out to eat and give him ice cream and let him run outside with his friends, but now there was that doubt in his mind.
Escaping was only the beginning. Somehow all of this was still happening. Somehow, Jack was now terrified that someone was going to come and take his own son away from him.
So he held him tightly, never wanting to let go again.
They must've laid there for hours, but Jack didn't notice. He wanted his brain to shut off. So he closed his eyes and tried to do just that. He didn't hear the door open. He only hardly felt a hand on his back. When he did, he tensed, his eyes peeling open as he feared he'd forgotten to put Tyler to bed properly. He wasn't supposed to fall asleep. He had to put his son in Wardrobe. He had to get the child out of there.
"Jack…" Jack's eyes opened at that distantly familiar voice. He hesitantly let go of his little boy and rolled over, turning his head to the side. "Hey." That was all Spencer had to say before Jack was sitting up and clinging to his brother, hiding in the older boy's chest. He felt childish and stupid but he didn't care. Specs just hugged him back. "Hey," the blond said again, his voice breaking only slightly. "Are you okay?"
No. Jack Kelly was far from okay. Still, he pulled away, wiping at his cheeks, unable to meet his brother's eye as he tried his best to nod. "Y-yeah," he insisted. "I'm fine."
With his hand still on Jack's shoulder, Spencer shook his head. "No you're not." It wasn't a question. The younger boy could only shrug, his legs swinging just a little. He reached back to put a hand on Tyler's leg. The boy rolled closer to him. "You know you don't have ta be okay. No one expects you to be."
"Specs," Jack said, the name feeling odd coming off of his lips like that, so casually. His heart swelled. He turned back to his son and carefully scooped him up, sniffling as he cradled the child to his chest, slipping the headphones off of his ears and pressing a soft kiss to his head. "I don't know what I'm doing…" he admitted softly.
Moving to sit down beside his brother, Spencer let out a long breath as they both stared out at the city that had raised them. "It's a good thing ya don't gotta figure it out alone…" he promised, letting their shoulders touch.
Neither of them knew what was coming. All Jack could do was hope that everything might one day be okay.
As always, thanks for reading! Make sure you tell me what you liked, what you didn't, what you would change or what you would improve by leaving me a review! Love ya, babes!