Blake appeared to be sleeping as Jenna and Avon walked into the room, but the moment the door closed he turned his head to look at them. "What took you so long?"

He sounded weak, Avon noted clinically, trying to ignore the relief he felt upon hearing Blake's voice at all. Weak it was, but not to the point of death; it was, rather, the weakness of a man healing after injury and the trauma of repairs to that injury. In other words, the healthy weakness of recovery. "You seem to have made a habit of being difficult to find," Avon shot back, but there was a weakness in his own voice, the weakness of relief, diluting the acid of the retort. He moved closer to the bed, studying Blake, trying to gauge the extent of the other man's injuries from the amount of bandaging and the color of his skin.

But Blake's attention had shifted; he focused on Jenna now, still standing near the door. She seemed unable to bring herself closer. Avon offered her a fractional, encouraging nod, which seemed to be enough She took a hesitant step forward as he moved aside, close enough to offer support if needed, but far enough away to allow her a moment of being alone in Blake's gaze. "Jenna."

Her eyes drank him in greedily, a man she hadn't seen for too long, a man she'd once resigned herself to never seeing again. "Roj." She tried a smile.

"I knew you weren't dead," he murmured. "Deva believed it, so I let him think I did, too, but something told me it wasn't true. I knew you had your reasons--at least, I assume you did." He fell silent, waiting for her response. What Avon had intended as a simple recon mission--determine Blake's status and see if he had any suggestions for a convenient place to hole up and lick their wounds--had become, instead, a moment of reckoning. Of course, bringing Jenna to Blake right away presupposed that this meeting would be more than Avon said he intended, but he'd also known it would be impossible to keep her away from Blake. For all her determination to keep Blake and his Cause out of her life, she could no more stay away from him than Avon could. For that, he could almost feel relief at the thought of getting it over with, the accusations and recriminations that stood between them.

Jenna's smile, unsteady at best, faltered and died as she nodded. "Blake, we don't have a lot of time right now, Orac's just got control of the ship and should be taking care of the crew, but I did have my reasons, and it's time you knew them. At least, the main one." She hesitated a moment, then turned back to the door, opened it, and beckoned for someone to enter. "This is Jared." She flashed the small figure an encouraging smile as it stepped hesitantly into the room and clutched her hand. She took a deep breath and turned back to the bed. "Jared, say hello to your father."

Blake studied the small boy, who stared back at him with wide-eyed interest. He leaned against his mother for a moment, then took a step forward to get a closer look at the bandage-wrapped figure lying on the bed. "What happened to your eye?" he finally asked, with the directness of all small children.

Avon smothered a smile at Jenna's dismayed gasp; he was fairly certain that this wasn't how she'd envisioned the first meeting between father and son. But Blake was smiling at the boy, explaining that he'd had an accident, and that seemed to satisfy Jared, who turned back to his mother and asked if he could sit with Mister Vila again. She nodded, watched him dart out of the room, then turned back to Blake warily. "Vila's been keeping him amused," she explained, then faltered to a stop at the stony expression on his face.

Avon braced himself as well, managed to stand his ground as Blake studied both of them. After a moment, he spoke. "You shot me." As expected, Blake's voice held accusation.

Avon nodded, unable to speak.

Blake's gaze traveled around the bed to meet Jenna's eyes. "And you wanted me to believe you were dead." Jenna nodded, as robbed of speech as Avon. "Not only that, but you hid our son from me, never even told me about him." She nodded again. "Well." There was a long pause, then Blake cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I suppose I deserved that."

Jenna and Avon exchanged uncertain glances. "Which?" Avon finally found the voice to ask. "Which did you deserve?"

Unexpectedly, Blake laughed. It wasn't his usual laugh, deep and full and rich, but then, his chest wound hardly allowed for that sort of thing. But still, it was a laugh, no matter how weak, no matter that it ended abruptly on a hacking cough. "All of it, I suppose," Blake responded to Avon's cautious, humoring, query. Once he'd regained his breath. "All of it and more. Can you forgive me?"

Why, Avon wondered acerbically, did Blake always manage to put him off balance? This time he wasn't alone; Jenna looked as confused as he felt. And Blake, smiling through his good eye, looked quite pleased with himself. As if he enjoyed their discomfiture.

"You want us to forgive you?" Jenna had finally found her voice, and it rang with disbelief. "After what we've just told you? Without any other explanation?"

Blake nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice serious again. "I want you to forgive me, and no, I don't require explanations. From either of you." He caught their glances, each in turn. Avon still found it difficult to get used that one-eyed gaze. Somehow, it pierced him deeper to the soul than both eyes ever had. "I know why you did what you did, what drove you to it. Or rather, who." His hands lifted and fell back weakly in a gesture of self-recrimination. "I was playing games when I should have been welcoming home friends I'd long since given up hope of ever seeing again, and I allowed my obsession with the rebellion--and it had become an obsession by then--to force you away from me, Jenna. Foolishness, all of it, but it took a surgeon telling me how close I'd come to dying before I could appreciate that fact. I don't deserve your forgiveness, either of you, but I'm still asking for it. I just hope it's not too late."

He was speaking to both of them, but that last, Avon sensed, was for more for Jenna than for himself. When she nodded, uncertainly, hesitantly, and reached out to clasp Blake's hand in her own Avon saw the other man's tense shoulders relax a little, and felt his own lips curl in a brief, sardonic smile. Avon's forgiveness he seemed to take as a given, despite the multi-layered history of misunderstanding between them; was love that much more difficult to win back than loyalty and friendship, that much more fragile? He shrugged. Perhaps it was, and who was he to say otherwise?

He listened for a moment as Jenna told Blake more about Jared, then started to slip out of the room to allow them some privacy while he checked on Orac and the status of the ship.

"Avon."

He paused, then turned back to face Blake. "I assume you have some plan to get us out of here?" Avon nodded cautiously. "A place for us to go?" Avon nodded again. Blake sighed with relief, then returned his gaze to Jenna. "Good. When we get there, we need to talk about how you've been handling things in my absence. Especially the loss of a certain ship I'd grown rather fond of." He made no mention of Cally, but Avon wasn't fooled for a minute into thinking that Blake hadn't heard of her loss. Apparently he'd kept better track of them than they had of him, over the past few years. Something else for them to discuss. "Think you'll be up to it?" There was challenge in his voice and eyes, but no hostility.

Avon bared his own teeth in a mockery of a grin. "I am looking forward to it," he replied, surprised to find that he meant it. Then he left before the grin turned into a genuine smile. It would never do to let Blake think he had the upper hand.