Landing in London 5

by Athena13

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Natalie had been gone a week when the letter came. It wasn't unexpected, but he had no idea what the man who had given up his wife and taken his own life would have to say to him.

Blast him for not taking care of his wife?

Blast him for keeping his secret and condemning him to his death?

Blast him for trying to break his word and get him out of prison?

He couldn't have been more surprised by the letter's contents.

Frustrated and angry, John dropped the letter onto the pool table and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. He'd been playing it safe and sober since his suspension from the force, but it wasn't getting him anywhere. After this, he might as well seek oblivion.

With a shaky hand he poured himself a generous helping from the bottle of Wild Turkey that Evangeline had gotten him one night in a failed bid to bring herself down to his class. But this wasn't about Evangeline and he wasn't going to spend his self-castigation chips wondering what he was thinking being involved in that relationship. He knew the answer to that very well - he was keeping himself safe from his feelings from Natalie. No, he had better sorrows to drown out.

The first being the fact that Natalie was pregnant with his child, three thousand miles away in London and could barely stand to be in the same room with him. The other being that her dead husband had just written thanking him for keeping the secret and asking him to keep looking out for his widow. The ultimate of ironies.

Cris explained that he had been programmed to take his own life and he didn't want to resist anymore. He wanted to end the secrets and his struggle. He wanted Natalie to know the truth so that she could get past it and so whoever had done this to him couldn't use it against her someday.

God. John ran a hand over his face. That man loved Natalie. As she deserved to be loved.

Not like him. John took another slug of whiskey and grimaced.

He was just pouring himself another glass and contemplating drinking straight from the bottle when he heard a knock at the door.

"Shit."

"John. I know you're in there. Open up."

Michael.

His brother come to check up on him. As he had almost every day since he had shown up at Michael and Marcie's shell-shocked from Natalie's bombshell that she was pregnant.

Resigned, John took a quick hit of the rough alcohol and went and opened the door. He held the door open and let Michael walk past him into the messy apartment.

"You look like shit, John. And you smell like a brewery." Michael turned and faced his brother across the pool table.

"Distillery. And I've only had one and half drinks."

"It's not going to do anything but give you a hangover. Natalie will still be pregnant and you'll still be suspended."

"It might make me forget, for a little while, Doctor Brother."

Michael raised an eyebrow and then noticed the papers lying in the middle of the pool table.

"A letter from Natalie?"

"Cristian Vega."

"Damn," Michael whispered.

"Yeah. Want a drink?" John asked.

"Nah. What did he have to say to you?"

"Take care of his widow." John laughed bitterly. "I took care of her all right."

"What are you going to do, John. About the baby. About Natalie."

"What the hell can I do? She asked me to leave her alone. She said she'd come back when she's ready."

"That could be twenty years from now, John. That child deserves a father."

"And Natalie deserves some time to deal with everything I put her through."

"Don't wait too long, man."

"Do you want a drink, Michael? Because that's all I plan to do tonight."

Michael had, of course, been right about the alcohol just giving him a bad head the next morning. It figures that it turned out to be the morning when IA had called to him in. Now, it was just a matter of waiting to see what his career future in Llanview was going to be.

Just as he had to wait for Natalie.

He hated waiting. It went against the grain. When something was broken, he fixed it. When someone needed help, he provided it.

And if he was being brutally honest with himself, if he wanted to avoid something, he avoided it. Or her.

But he wasn't completely helpless.

He promised to not visit or call, but he did not promise to do nothing to tip the scales. So he decided to do that was completely unnatural to him, in a myriad of ways. He sat down and wrote his unborn child a letter. A letter that contained his heart.

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Now
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John sprinted towards the door and got there just as Natalie was led out. He slid between everyone else and lifted her off her feet and hurried her to the paramedics.

He eased her gently onto the waiting gurney, but refused to step back while the paramedics looked her over. He held her hand and nervously stroked her hair.

"Is she going to be all right? Check her blood pressure." he demanded.

"I'm fine, John," Natalie said through her smoke rasped throat.

"I, uh." John broke off and ran his hand over his hair, his elbow in the air. He looked down at his shoes and let out a deep breath.

"John." Natalie reached out and grasped his hand. "I"m okay."

"The baby?" His voice was filled with the tears as the panic of the past half hour caught up with him.

"Her pressure is a bit high. We're going to take her to the hospital to have her checked out more thoroughly. Do you want to come with us, Sir?" One of the paramedics asked.

John looked back at the other fire and police officers crowding the scene, then back at Natalie.

"Go with my niece, John. Take care of her, and your son." Bo put his hand on John's shoulder.

John nodded and followed Natalie into the back of the ambulance.

As the ambulance got under way, John noticed that Natalie's cheeks were flushed and she was trembling. Silently, he took her hand and began to stroke her hair off her damp and sooty face. He leaned his head close to her ear and began to murmur calming words. Under his hand her pulse still raced.

"She's still flushed. Her doctor is concerned about her pressure," John told the paramedics with a calmness that belied the fear racing through his body.

"We can give her something..."

"No! I don't want anything. It could harm the baby. I'm due in two months." Natalie's hand squeezed John's in panic.

The paramedic looked at John.

"Then you're going to need to calm down. What can I do to help you?" John continued to stroke her forehead.

Natalie closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Natalie. Everything is all right. Everyone is all right. The baby, our son, is all right. I love you."

"What?" Natalie's eyes opened in shock.

"I. I." John's breathing hitched, he had trouble catching his breath.

"Do you need oxygen, John?" One of the paramedics asked, a sly grin on his face.

"John!" Natalie called out to him.

"I..said I love you. This is not quite how I imagined telling you. I was so damned scared when Antonio called me, then when I saw the flames coming out of the front of the diner." John leaned his forehead against Natalie's. "I love you," he whispered.

Natalie's eyes filled with tears and she reached a hand up and began to stroke the back of John's head.

"I love you, too," she whispered.

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The Cottage

"Please, John. I'd rather rest in my own bed. They'll just wake me up every couple of hours and check my vitals and what not."

"You need your vitals checked."

"Not every two hours. My pressure is fine. I just want to go home." Natalie squeezed his hand, her blue eyes filled with tired tears. "Please. Just take me home. Jess or someone can come stay with me."

"I'll stay with you," John insisted, then he realized he just had been conned into agreeing to take her home.

"Thank you." Natalie sat up and began to slide her feet to the ground.

"You might want to get dressed first," John drawled and put his hands on her arms.

Natalie looked up at John, her eyes wide and disarming. "Wanna help?"

"Oh yeah, totally conned." John rolled his eyes and pulled her to a standing position.

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He never got an answer, but he kept writing. At least once a week. Sometimes more.

Sometimes he just wrote about the cases he was handling or Michael and Marcie's haphazard wedding plans. Other times he wrote about waiting out his suspension and waiting to hear from Natalie. Once he even wrote about his father's death.

Another time he wrote directly to Natalie, telling her how her fire and mess woke him out of his Caitlin induced coma.

And he wrote about his shame at keeping Cristian being alive a secret and for letting him get sent to prison. For not doing more to make sure he got the help he needed.

Only Michael knew about the letters from him, but even he didn't know how many and how honest he was in them. How open. And he didn't know if Natalie had told anyone, Bo or anyone in her family about the letters. Heck, he didn't know if she was even reading them.

But he kept writing.

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"Thank you doing this," Natalie said as she and John walked into Natalie's cottage.

"It's the least I could do. Now, get up to bed before I carry you up there." John put his hands on his hips and smiled at her.

"I'd like to see you try." Natalie put her hands over her pregnant belly and raised her chin.

John shook his head and smiled down at the ground. "Natalie. What am I going to do with you?"

"What do you want to do with me?" Natalie asked.

"Natalie," John said, then stopped.

"You think about it. I'm going to take a nap." Natalie's smiled had disappeared and she turned and headed up the stairs. "You know, I'd really just like a beer and a pool table about now."

"That's how we got into this mess in the first place." John's smile tempered any sting.

"I'll just be upstairs gestating." Natalie stuck her tongue out and disappeared up the stairs.

John sighed and ran his hand through his hair. He wanted to tell her what he really wanted - to marry her and raise their child together. Maybe even have another child. Or two. But not today. Not while she had a rasp in her voice from the smoke. Not while she might be in danger.

John was checking on Natalie for the fifth time in the last two hours. His face was grim. He had finally gotten through to someone at the FBI who was willing to talk. After months of stonewalling their suddenly talking was concerning, but not more concerning than what they were saying.

They were closer to getting to the person who was responsible for kidnaping Cristian and programming him to kill Tico and Antonio. They had their suspicions about who it was. It was believed that Antonio was not the last intended victim and that today's attack was by the same person.

Which was why Commissioner Buchanan had ordered Carlotta, Antonio, Jessica and Jamie into protective custody. RJ was threatening to revive his custody suit for putting Jamie in danger, though Lindsay had talked him down that the danger was her blood, not who she lives with.

Natalie could also be a potential victim because of her close relationship to the Vega men. To that end, John had Michael bring him a suitcase. He wasn't going anywhere.

He walked into the room and lowered himself into the chair next to the bed. He took his gun out and put it on the bedside table and watched her sleep.

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Natalie leaned back and let the fire warm her frozen toes. She and Miguel had stayed out too long after sunset and it had gotten colder than she had been dressed for. But that was London. It wasn't as snowy as Pennsylvania, but it was just as cold with the wet. Natalie liked London now that she had Miguel to hang out with. He was an easy companion and if she hadn't been pregnant she might have done something about how good looking he was.

Their meeting at the café over an English breakfast had been Natalie's luckiest break in a while. She was starting to get restless and lonely being in London without friends or a job. But since she didn't know how long she was staying and given her mercurial emotional state she had agreed with Joey that she would just take it easy and take care of herself.

Miguel, who was taking a year off from college and bumming around Europe had the time to spend with her when he wasn't working at the café where they first met. And when he was working, Natalie sat there reading the English tabloids, or all the books she always wanted to get to but never found the time. Or John's letters.

Miguel always seemed to know when she was reading a letter from John. She would have what he called her "Sad Look" and he'd bring her a cup of herbal tea. Once he had found out she was pregnant he refused to serve her the caffeinated variety.

What she loved most about Miguel is that he never asked questions. He talked about his life back in the Dominican Republic and then New York. He talked about his travels. He talked about his girls. His family. But he never pressured Natalie to talk about her growing up or who the father of her baby was. Or why she sometimes looked so sad.

He let her escape from what her body told her everyday was inevitable.

End...for now