Eric, Wes, Jen, Mr. Collins, Miller, and Dr. Zaskin belong to Disney/Saban. I am using them without permission, but I am not and do not expect to make money from this.
Gaby, Jimmy Duran, Frank Kelly, Gunn, Kane, Quinn, Pamela, and Dennis Myers are mine.

Rated PG-13 : Harsh language; strong sexuality; violence; mature themes including child abuse and prostitution.

Please review, I'm a feedback junkie.

Sins of the Fathers


Investigation

The hospital room was quiet, except for the soft sounds of machinery. Wes sat by his father's bedside, waiting, his thoughts inevitably returning to that dreary hotel, so different from this white, sterile room. Again, he wondered what could possibly have taken his father there, how he could possibly be connected to Eric's mother.

His eyes rested on his father's face, washed clean of blood now, and almost peaceful in sleep, before he stole a glance at the third occupant of the room. Eric sat in another chair, his face as blank, controlled, and expressionless as it had been when he identified the dead woman as his mother. His dark, Asian eyes suddenly moved up to meet Wes's.

"Don't look at me like that." There was an undercurrent of hostility in his voice.

"Eric... God, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"That was your mother back there. She's... dead."

Eric looked back at Collins' still face. "My mother walked out on me twenty years ago. Why should I care what happened to her now?"

"But -- she was your mother, for Christsake."

"So what? She gave birth to me. But that was pretty much where it ended." Eric got to his feet and walked to the window. "She never protected me from that asshole she was married to. My 'dad'. She never even tried to stop him from hitting me. After he took off and my grandmother died, she dressed me up, told me to take my favorite toy... and she took me to a bus station and left me there. Said she'd be right back. I never saw her again until today. She left me for strangers to take care of. Why should I give more of a shit about her than she did about me?" His voice had risen in anger.

"Eric, please... you'll wake Dad up. I don't want him upset."

Eric looked back at the bed, some of the antagonism fading from his face. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I understand." Wes watched him turn back to the window. "Still, you have to feel something..."

"No, I don't." The hostility was back in his voice. "I want to help solve this case to help you, and Alan -- your dad. But as far as I'm concerned, she's just another dead hooker."

Wes blinked, taking a moment to answer. "Okay. If that's the way you want it."

"That's the way it is." He moved restlessly toward the door. "Look, if you don't mind, I'll go down to the stationhouse. See what Jen and Jimmy have come up with."

"Sure. Let me know."

"It'll be okay. You'll see." Wes looked up to see Eric's face holding compassion, before it faded back to controlled blankness.

He smiled. "Thanks. And..."

"What?"

Wes looked away uncomfortably. "Nothing. Just... if you need to talk, I'm here."

"Thanks. But there's nothing to talk about." In another moment he was through the door and gone.

Wes stared after him. Eric talked tough, but Wes knew it wasn't real, it was his defense against a world that had treated him badly, sometimes brutally. And he remembered the way Eric had reached out to touch his mother's hair. He felt something, under the anger. Wes only hoped he could face those emotions, and deal with them.

"Wes?"

He turned to the bed, realizing the sound of their voices, or the door closing, had awakened his father. "Dad," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Not too good... where is this? The hospital?"

"Yeah. The doctor said you'll be fine."

"What happened?"

Wes hesitated. "The police found you in a hotel room. Passed out. Do you remember how you got there?"

"I..." Collins stopped, raising a hand to his head. "I got a call yesterday. Board member at Atkinson. Wanted to meet."

Wes listened in silence. Atkinson Labs was another pharmaceuticals manufacturer, smaller and more specialized than Bio-Lab, but with valuable assets. Bio-Lab was in the process of acquiring it, or trying to. The negotiations were proving to be tricky. It was important, Collins -- and Wes and Eric -- felt it could give Bio-Lab the boost it needed to complete its recovery from the mutant attacks of two years before. It occurred to him that this incident might derail the deal for good.

"He said it had to be in secret -- didn't want anyone to know -- made me promise not to tell anyone. Set it up for the bar in the Wells hotel..."

"The hotel where we found you. Why there?"

"He said no one we know would be there to see us."

Wes half-smiled. "That's for sure."

"We met. Talked. He kept stalling."

"Did you have anything to drink?"

"Yes. I had coffee..."

"You smelled of alcohol."

"I didn't drink anything like that..."

"Then what happened?"

"Don't know. That's all I remember, just bits and pieces, until now."

Wes looked at him, thinking. Much as he tried to keep an open mind, there was no way he could believe his father had gone to a run-down hotel, gotten drunk, met a hooker, and murdered her. He had to be telling the truth. Which meant he had been set up.

"Wes... what happened? I think I saw a woman..."

"She was found in the room with you, Dad." He hesitated. "She's dead. Murdered."

"Oh my God."

"Yeah. Are you sure you don't remember anything else? Anything at all?"

Collins' face contracted slightly. "A few vague images -- nothing clear. Walking through a hallway. Voices, arguing."

"A man and a woman?"

"No. Two men. Don't remember seeing them." Collins stared up at him, licking his lips. "Am I a suspect?"

"Not to me, Dad."

"Thanks, son. But the police suspect me, don't they?"

"It'll be okay." Wes paused, looking down. "There's something else. I guess I should tell you now."

"What?"

"That woman." Wes sighed. "She was Eric's mother."

"What?"

"She abandoned him twenty years ago. Now she showed up here."

Collins watched him for a few seconds. "Eric's mother... does he know?"

"He's the one who identified her."

"God. How's he taking it?"

"Not too well." Wes smiled grimly. "Claims he doesn't feel anything. Won't even talk about it. You know how he is."

"Yes. And I know something about how he grew up." At Wes's inquiring look, he smiled. "I had Eric investigated when I made him commander of the Guardians. He's had a rough life, but he's come a long way. Really worked hard to make something of himself. I admire him for it. I hope this doesn't set him back."

Wes glanced at the door, remembering Eric's words, and his face. "I wouldn't bet on it."


Anger. That was all he felt. Vaguely he wondered why there was nothing else. Why he didn't feel at least a little grief, just this cold, boiling anger. She had been his mother, he had the uncomfortable feeling that his lack of grief was unnatural. But if anything had been unnatural, it was her, she hadn't been a real mother at all.

Those last months. He didn't want to think about them, didn't want to remember. Another stab of anger went through him. This was all her fault, what the hell was she doing here, reminding him, when he had put it all behind him? Only it wasn't really behind him, was it, some inner voice mocked, certainly not now. He could still see her face, and his...

Eric had been only nine years old. They had lived in a run-down little house in a small town in northern California. Anyone casually driving by would have assumed it was abandoned, with its untended lawn, peeling paint, general air of neglect. And the house hadn't been the only thing that was neglected.

The images, the sounds, came back to him. His father, sitting in a chair in the kitchen, staring at him with cold eyes. Angry, the way he usually was. Calling to him.

"Come here, brat."

"No, daddy!"

"I said come here, you little bastard!"

Having no choice, he went. His father seized his arm in a hard grip. He saw his mother frown, and then look away, taking another sip from the glass she always had in her hand.

"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"

"Yes."

"So why are you making noise?"

"I was just playing."

"Well, shut up. Play somewhere else. No one wants you around here." He pushed Eric roughly away.

In the living room, he sat down and tried to play again, but the raised voices from the kitchen distracted him. He started to talk to himself, to drown them out, but remembered that it would only get him in trouble again, and maybe get him a slap, or worse, this time. He was quiet, and tried not to listen, humming softly under his breath.

"I wish you'd leave the kid alone, Denny. Maybe he'd be quiet if you weren't always making him cry."

"He's your brat, Pam. Just keep him out of my way."

"Me? He's your problem as much as mine."

"Like hell he is. He didn't get those slanty eyes from me."

"Can't you ever shut up about that?"

"Why should I? I only married you because I thought you were going to have my kid! But you didn't think it would be so easy for me to tell he wasn't mine, did you?"

"I made a mistake! How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"

"Some mistake. And more than one. How many guys could it have been, Pammy? A dozen? A hundred? Screwing around is the only thing you're good at."

"Shut up." The sound of her footsteps.

"That's right, bitch. Have another drink. That's the other thing you do really well. Getting loaded."

"If it bothers you so much, why do you stick around?"

"Good question. Maybe I won't be around much longer. Why should I help you raise that brat?"

"Like you're any help."

"What the hell is he doing in there?"

Eric stopped humming abruptly, realizing he had gotten louder as he tried not to hear what they were saying. A moment later his father was crossing the room, face enraged, to grab his arm and yank him to his feet.

"Shut up! Shut up!" A hard hand cracked across his face...

Eric deliberately relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, feeling the heat in his face, almost feeling the sting of those slaps again, after twenty years. His hands clenched once more as the old feelings washed through him, the helpless anger, the fear, the pain. The knowledge that both his parents considered him to be no more than an unwanted nuisance, something to be punished into invisibility, or stepped on, like a bug...

He pushed all of it out of his mind, forced it into the same small corner it had been in for all of his adult life. He knew, if he let it out, if he let it take over, even for a second, it would tear him apart, it would somehow make him into that frightened little boy again, or let out all the rage that lurked inside him until there would be nothing of him left. It could destroy him forever. He held on to the anger, keeping it strong, but under control. It was all that kept the rest of it back.


"Are you sure you can handle this case, Jen?"

Jen stared at Jimmy indignantly. "You don't think I can be impartial? I would never let my personal feelings interfere, especially when a murder's involved." She glanced around at the tiled walls of the small, bare interrogation room at the stationhouse where they had retreated to find a little privacy.

Miller had returned to Bio-Lab, but Eric had appeared a few minutes before and joined them. Her eyes lingered on him for a moment, nervously. She had come to feel comfortable around him, and to like him more than she had expected to, although she still sensed the anger that always seemed to lie just beneath his surface. He did seem to have mellowed since the time of her mission here, in 2001, perhaps because of Wes's continued influence, perhaps because of his more recent relationship with Gaby. Now -- the hard, impenetrable mask was back, worse than ever. Not that she could blame him, under the circumstances.

"You're living in our prime suspect's house. You're friendly with him, you see him every day, you have dinner with him every night, for Christsake. And you're in love with his son," Jimmy went on. "How can you be impartial?"

"I can handle it."

"Okay, for now, but I'll have to discuss it with Lieutenant Quinn. The same thing goes for you, Eric. You work for Collins, and... it was your mother who was killed."

"That makes no difference."

"I think it does."

"Damn it, are you questioning my judgment?" Eric's face suddenly sparked with rage. Jen tensed. In the time he had been her partner, Jimmy had struck up an unlikely friendship with Eric. She had the feeling this situation would test it.

"No. But... be reasonable, Eric. Please. You know I'm right."

Eric subsided, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his whole body betraying tension, but making an obvious effort to contain it. "I'm all right with this. At least let me sit in. I want to know what's going on."

"We'll have to talk about certain things -- things about your mother. I don't think you want to hear some of it."

Eric's mouth curved in a cold, humorless smile. "I have no illusions about my mother. This is just another case. It won't bother me."

Jimmy considered him for a moment. "All right. For now."

"Good. Thanks." He relaxed a little, his face blanking again.

"Okay. Want me to bring you up to date?" Jimmy went on when they both nodded. "Preliminary exam shows the victim was hit on the head, then strangled. No surprise there."

"Was she conscious after the blow to the head?" Jen asked.

"Nothing definite yet, but she may have been awake enough to scratch Collins' face, if that's what you're after. We're testing the scrapings from under her nails."

They both nodded. It was a standard piece of investigation. "Anything else you can tell us?" Eric asked.

"The crime scene unit is still going over the room. We traced the call to 911. It came from a pay phone on the street. We're lifting fingerprints from the phone and the coins in it."

"A pay phone. Probably a hotel guest who didn't want to get involved. Or was covering something up."

"I know. We're looking into it." He paused, giving Eric an uncomfortable look. "We have more information about your... the victim, from the San Francisco PD. She lived there, ran the escort service whose card she was carrying. She had several girls working for her, she didn't -- er -- do the work herself, at least not often."

"So the question is, what was she doing here?" Jen said. She also looked at Eric, seeing that muscle in his jaw jump again.

"Yeah. That's about all, at this point." Jimmy faced them both with a sympathetic smile. "I know you're worried, that this means a lot to both of you. I won't rest until we know the truth."

"Thanks, Jimmy," she said gratefully.

"Yeah, thanks," Eric added, with apparent sincerity, but no real warmth. He got up restlessly and started for the door. "If that's all you've got for now, I'm going to get going. Keep in touch."

Jen got up too, followed him to the door and called his name. He stopped in the doorway and turned to look at her. "Are you all right?" she asked.

His face was as hard as she remembered ever seeing it. "Sure. Why shouldn't I be?"

Her brows contracted as she moved closer. "You know why. You must be upset."

"I'm not upset."

"Eric... don't try to be so damn brave."

Something flickered behind his eyes, whether anger or pain she couldn't quite tell. He sighed. "Look, I've already been through this with Wes. I haven't seen my mother for twenty years. She doesn't mean anything to me, except as a murder victim. I want to solve the case, and prove Mr. Collins is innocent. Other than that..." He shot her a cold look. "I don't give a shit." He turned, and stepped out.

She watched him walk away, his back stiff and straight. "Do you believe that guy?" Jimmy asked softly behind her.

"Not for a second."