Title: "Heartbreak Town"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing: Duncan, Lizzie, and baby makes three
Spoiler: "One Angry Veronica"
Length: one-shot
Summary: "Me and the baby and you side by side."
Author's Note: Just a little thing that popped into my head last night sometime during "Grey's Anatomy." In my head it was a short little ficlet, and somehow turned into an epic thing. No spoilers, just a teeny, tiny bit of speculation based on the title for this week's episode. Also, the first time in nearly ten stories that I've written in third person so this was a bit of a challenge for me, and please forgive if it's a little awkward, Either way, hope you enjoy.
The knock comes in the middle of the night, just like the last time, and he's too sleepy, too worn out, too tired to do more than drag on a t-shirt before creeping bleary-eyed to the door. Lizzie Manning stands in the doorway, looking very un-Lizzie Manning-like, wearing a dark hoodie and jeans and sneakers, like she's ready to run. The harsh florescent lights paint her skin a sickly shade of yellow, her eyes bruises in an otherwise pale face. He keeps his eyes fixed on those black pits, the hollows beneath newly gaunt cheeks, anywhere but the pink-wrapped bundle in her arms.
"Duncan," she whispers, black eyes darting nervously from side to side, and he already knows what she's going to say before her mouth opens again. "I need your help."
He lets her into his suite without a word, eyes fixed on the back of her head, blonde hair only a few shades darker than her sister's, and ignores the fluffy pink softness peaking over her shoulder. She wrinkles her nose as she carefully sits on the couch, shifting the blanket into the crook of her arm. "It smells like a distillery in here." She adjusts the blanket, covers the tuft of fluffy pale white. "Partying hard now that Meg's not your problem anymore?"
She's never seen his face as anything but a blank mask from the day his sister died, but he recoils visibly, something almost painful dragging across his face. "Logan lives here too, you know," he says evenly, but there's a line creasing his forehead and she finally notices that his eyes seem permanently fixed somewhere over her shoulder. "He thought we should drown our sorrows in a bottle of Jack, now that we both have dead girlfriends." She glances at his bedroom, the bed unmade and disastrous through the partially open door, and sees the second bedroom, the door closed, the sounds of deep breathing permeating the silence.
She closes her eyes briefly, wishes he'd look at her so he would see the regret in her eyes. She isn't here to hurt him. She's here because she needs him. "I'm sorry," she says and he finally looks at her, his forehead smooth and his features stone-faced, and when he looks into her eyes she thinks he believes her. "I'm just freaking out." She glances down at the bundle in her arms, and his eyes follow and for the first time all night they stay fixed on the mass of pink.
He sits down across from her, back straight, eyes lifting and fixating on the black eyes haunting her face. "What's going on, Lizzie. Why are you here?" The question is singular, but she gets the meaning anyway, pulls down the blanket so he has to see his baby's face.
It takes all her courage to look him in the eye and tell the truth. "We're going to run away, and you're coming with us."
He just looks at her, his heavy breathing matching Logan's in the next bedroom. It's not the reaction she was hoping for, but he hasn't started throwing things or kicked her out of the suite either. Instead, he surprises her. "Where are we going?" he asks, eyes locked with hers. He doesn't ask why, or how, or when they'll be back. Just where. It turns out it was the reaction she was hoping for all along.
She struggles to stand with the weight of the baby in her arms, and his fingers lock around her elbow gently, helping her up. He still won't look at the baby, but his face is tight with anticipation, eyes flashing with excitement. "Anywhere but here," she says and he just nods.
"Give me ten minutes."
She leans against the doorjam of his bedroom while he hurriedly throws things in a bag, grateful for the support under her back, something, anything, to prop her up. The baby is nestled in one of Duncan's dresser drawers, two Neptune soccer hoodies cushioning her against the hard wood. Her interest is piqued when he props himself on his knees and pulls up the corner of his mattress, dropping neatly bound piles of bills into his bag.
"Wow, Duncan," Lizzie says with a laugh, the first attempt at humor since she showed up on his doorstep. "You have some kind of secret career the rest of us don't know about?"
He manages a tight smile himself. "After I took that trip to Cuba my parents froze my bank account. I wanted to be ready just in case." She still looks skeptical, and he just sighs. "Hey, I was a Boy Scout" he defends himself and rolls his eyes as her laugh turns into a full fledged giggle. "I learned to always be prepared." He slips the bag over his shoulder, inclines his head slightly towards his converted dresser drawer. His voice gets quiet, and the humor slips away. "Are you ready to go?"
The humor's gone from her face too, and her voice is feeble in ways he's never heard it before. "Ready as I'll ever be." She scoops the baby into her arms, cooing softly when she lets out a wail. "Shhhh," she whispers. "Aunt Lizzie's taking you on an adventure. You can cry all you want in the car, okay? Let's try to be quiet till we're on the road, huh? Sound like a deal?" She's amazed when the baby shuts up instantly, and when she looks up Duncan is watching them intently. "She's a good kid," she says to break up the sudden tension in the room," but he just watches and says nothing. "Duncan?"
"Let's go," he says and starts out of the bedroom and she has no choice but to follow in stride.
He doesn't lock the door behind him and they take the service elevator and leave through the back door. Neither of them talk about what they're going to do, and she wonders if they ever will, and more than that she wants to know why he's so eager to hit the road with her, and if he'll ever tell her why.
They take her car because it's a comfortable, reliable tan Camry and his is a flashy, expensive SUV, and he still doesn't say anything when she buckles the baby into the car seat in back and drops his duffle in the trunk next to hers. "I'll drive," he offers, and it's the first thing he's said since he watched her pull his daughter out of his dresser drawer.
She settles into the front seat beside him and the silence is thick and almost painful and nothing like the comfortable laughter they shared in his hotel suite. There's a CD case he brought with him on the floor at her feet, and she leafs through it, struggling to make out the titles in the weak light. U2, Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band…exactly the kind of arena rock she'd expect Duncan Kane to listen to. She keeps flipping and is surprised to come across a Nirvana CD hidden in back, half hidden under the new Fall Out Boy album. The squiggly turquoise lines are even more blurred in the moonlight and she slips it out of the case and into the CD player. Duncan takes his eyes off the road for a minute as music fills the silence in the car, and the baby gurgles softly before falling back into sleep. "Nirvana," she jokes, just to break up the tension. "Not exactly your style, Boy Scout."
A ghost of a smile crosses his face and he glances at her quickly, amusement lacing his eyes. "It was Lilly's. She thought Kurt Cobain was hot."
He realizes he's referring to his sister in the past tense and the smile disappears as quickly as it formed. He turns his eyes back to the road and keeps them locked straight ahead, anywhere but the rear view mirror and the person in the backseat. She doesn't mention the irony, that the only thing he has left of his dead sister's is a CD by a guy who also died much too young.
The tense silence is back, and she figures she has nothing to lose and charges onwards with the awkward questions. "Do you still miss her?" she asks, knowing it's a stupid question, but wanting to know the answer anyway.
"Of course I miss her," he says. "She was my sister."
Lizzie knows all about sisters. She used to have two, and now she has one, and even though Grace is still breathing, she hasn't been hers for years. She takes a deep breath, keeps on plunging ahead. "Does it ever get easier? How long did it take you to wake up without thinking she was still there with you?"
He doesn't tell her about the visions and the pills, and that sometimes he wakes up and is positive he can still feel Lilly's breath on his cheek. He doesn't answer her question, because he can't answer her question, and counters with a question of his own. "Is that why we're running away, because you miss Meg?"
She breathes in sharply at mention of her dead sister, because the wound is still fresh and raw, and she's still not convinced that it's all not a big joke, and that one day Meg won't wake up again just like she did before, that if she could cheat death once, she could do it again. "No, that's not why we're running away. We're running…" she trails off, trying to find the right words, trying to let him into her thoughts without letting him into her head. She turns to face him, noting the handsome Kane profile, seeing a little of what her sister must have seen, and thinking of her sister gives her the necessary courage. She grasps his chin lightly between her fingers, angles his face so he's looking right into the rearview mirror and no where else and the pink bundle in the backseat is everywhere but out of his line of vision. "We're running because I want her to have a chance."
She releases him and turns back to the road, the cars zooming by suddenly fascinating, and she's surprised when he answers in kind. "I want that too." He flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror for just a moment, and his voice gets stronger. "I want that for her."
His right hand is resting lightly on the gearshift, fingers tapping lightly in beat with the music, and she slowly rests her fingers on top of his. "Who would have thought it, huh? Lizzie and Duncan against the world."
His fingers turn to wrap around hers and he gives them a light squeeze, eyes slowly moving back to watch the sleeping person behind them. "Yeah, Lizzie and Duncan against the world."
They drive for an hour before Duncan pulls into a random driveway paralleling a house that looks like something straight out of a Jennifer Love Hewitt movie and Lizzie starts protesting but Duncan calms her down by saying "I know a guy" and reminds her of his trip to Cuba. He carries the car seat and she carries the diaper bag and a stereotypically sketchy-looking guy opens the door and shakes his head in amusement as he surveys them and says something under his breath about how Duncan must have been getting busy.
"Can you do us a favor?" Duncan asks, neglecting to correct the guy. "We're kind of in a hurry."
Another hour later they have new names and new addresses and the guy – Danny – tells them they may want to change their appearances as well. Lizzie thanks him for his help and buckles the baby back into the backseat while Duncan pays the bill. When they're back on the road she tells him it's a good thing he has a thing for blondes, and makes a mental note to buy bleach at their next stop. They stay the night at a cheap motel with one bed and three crackly TV stations but they're too tired to care.
Duncan carries the diaper bag and both their duffels, and Lizzie takes care of the baby. They're both staring at the bed when he rolls his shoulders and stretches his arms over his head and she knows what he's thinking and stops him before he can say the words. "I know you're a gentleman, Duncan, but we're sharing the bed. It's a king and we're both exhausted and I just don't care. We won't even know the other is there."
They cling to opposite sides of the bed all night with the baby nestled between them and he offers to take turns waking up to walk and feed her, but she sees the stark terror in his eyes the first time she wakes up screaming, and tells him to get some rest and that he can be on duty the next night.
They spend the next morning putting together a game plan. Duncan wants to run for Mexico and the great beyond, but Lizzie insists that it's too predictable and too easy to get caught, and with all the money they have stashed, they should just stay in the good ole USA. They decide to head west the next morning, and Lizzie makes a mental note to defiantly pick up that hair dye.
On the second night they're in another motel room with another single bed and they go to sleep on their opposite sides while Lizzie looks after the baby all by herself. True to his word, Duncan wakes up every time she screams, and sometimes when she doesn't, but he's never made a move to touch her. Lizzie tells herself that she should be angry, furious even, that Duncan is the kid's father and he can't even hold her let alone feed or change her or do anything to help her, but sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and watches Duncan watching his baby, wonder and confusion ringing his eyes, and she knows he'll reach out when he's ready. She just hopes it's sooner than later because being a single parent isn't much fun.
On the third day Lizzie sits in the backseat with the baby so she can feed and change her when the moment comes, and spends half the morning letting the kid suck on her finger even though it hurts and it's kind of gross just because it keeps her quiet. Duncan glances back every now and then in the rearview mirror, watching them with his daughter's eyes. The baby is beautiful, with Meg's mouth and rosy cheeks and the same innocent smile, but the eyes are all Kane, full and blue and turned up slightly at the corners. Jake Kane's eyes. Duncan Kane's eyes. Lilly Kane's eyes. Lizzie didn't know Lilly Kane, not except in passing, and she never spoke to the girl except on the rare occasion she accompanied her sister to a party and Lilly was there stealing the spotlight. When Lizzie looks at the baby, all she sees is her sister, Meg's laugh and Meg's smile and Meg's nose crinkling in amusement, and it comforts her to know she has a piece of her sister with her. She has to wonder, when Duncan looks the baby, if all he sees is his sister and the blood caking her hair and her cold, dead eyes frozen forever in streaming video. She has to wonder if it's why he can't touch his own daughter.
When she wakes up on the fourth morning, she's shocked when she opens her eyes for the first time and dawn is peaking in through the partially opened curtains. It's the first time in nearly a week that she's slept through the entire night. Duncan's side of the bed is empty and the covers are pushed back. She looks into the light and sees Duncan and his daughter standing in a patch of sunlight, the half-naked baby curled against her father's bare chest. The foggy light blurs his features and he looks about half his age, his hair sleep-combed and messy, and if not for the muscles defining his chest, she'd think he was no more than ten-years-old. She looks at him, and looks at the baby, and a sliver of panic slips into her heart and she's reminded, for the first time in nearly a week, that she's a teenager and he's a teenager and they have no idea how to be parents and they technically kidnapped a baby and will probably wind up in prison, and maybe this running away thing wasn't such a good idea.
Lizzie isn't sure what to say, or if she should say anything at all, because she knows she's doing the right thing even if it's the biggest mistake of her life, and she's grateful when he breaks the silence and turns to her, looking older and more in control, and the baby cuddled in his arms looks like no one but herself. "It's her first sunrise," he says, and there's a note of pride in his voice masking the usual emptiness, and when he shocks her by bending his head and dropping a kiss on his daughter's fuzzy head she thinks maybe it could work out after all.
When they cross the border from Nevada to Arizona, after a half-hearted trip to Vegas where they soon decided it was too loud and too crowded and too easy to get caught, Lizzie makes him turn off the road at the sixth rest stop and helps him guide the car into an oversized parking lot as he looks at the Walmart sign like he's just entered another dimension. "Time to see how the other side lives," she says and pulls the key out of the ignition. The baby is sleeping, for the first time all morning, in the backseat and Lizzie is reluctant to move her but the hair dye is still weighing on her mind.
She drags Duncan down the aisles, dropping bulk packages of formula and diapers, and two packages of hair dye in the shopping cart: bleach for Duncan, dark for herself. He follows along behind her, softly cooing to the baby and tickling her under her chin, and it's like watching a different person. She ambles behind him as they exit the baby section, an explosion of pink filling their cart, and watches the way his jeans hang off his hips, the way his shoulders neatly fill out the expanse of his long-sleeved tee, and realizes that even with new hair colors, they'll still stick out like sore thumbs. She runs to catch up with him and hooks her fingers through his belt loops, pulling him to a halt mid-stride. "Hold it rich boy," she says with a smirk. "I think you're in need of a wardrobe adjustment."
He groans miserably as he watches her throw a couple cheap sweaters and even cheaper jeans into the cart, and covers his eyes with one hand as she pushes him along towards the women's section. "I can't believe you want me to wear this," he says, holding up a pair of overly wide-legged jeans and shirt that reads Wrangler. His mother would die on the spot if she ever caught him wearing something less than designer. He glances at the baby, sleeping securely in her car seat, her face calm and peaceful, unlike the worry lines constantly creasing his forehead, and the dark circles marring Lizzie's otherwise smooth cheeks. He watches the straight curve of her back, wondering how his entire could consist of his dead girlfriend's sister and baby. His baby. Helpless and tiny and fragile, he'd thought he'd break her, the way his parents thought he'd broken his sister, the first time he'd held her to watch the sunrise. It had gotten easier as the seconds ticked by and the day started fresh and new and the baby was still in one piece, cradled against his chest and watching him with pure, honest trust in her eyes. And for a moment, he'd thought he might be able to do this. Then Lizzie, complete stranger Lizzie, had woken up, sleepy-eyed and confused, but smiled at him holding his baby, and she'd turned that smile to him and looked right in his eyes and he saw the faith and trust there that he never saw in his parents' or Lilly's or Veronica's eyes, and he'd known he'd be able to do this.
He protests again as she drops a particularly ugly shirt in the cart, and she rolls her eyes, tosses a knit shrug on top of it. "And you think you'll go into politics," she scoffs. "Middle America loves Walmart. It's never too early to get in touch with your base." He easily catches the sparkly tank she pegs at him and gives her a curious look. "Hey," she defends herself, adding a peasant skirt. "I always wanted to look like an Olsen twin. Are you really gonna crush my childhood dreams?"
He quietly folds the clothes, casts a glance at his sleeping daughter. "I'm not sure I see much of a future in politics, you know, with our criminal record and all."
She stops in mid-throw, the canvas jacket slipping through her fingers. "We talked about this, we're doing the right thing. We can't let her stay in Neptune. We have new identities, we lay low." She holds up the cheap clothing that's about to constitute their entire wardrobe. "We've come too far to get caught." He just crosses his arms over his chest and looks over her head, and she reaches out and lays a hand on his forearm, her touch comforting and insistent at the same time. "We're not getting caught, okay?"
He catches her eye as the baby wakes up with a soft cry and Lizzie gathers her in her arms. Her eyes are a soothing brown in her tanner cheeks and even have bit of sparkle in them, without a trace of that terrified girl who showed up on his doorstep. "Okay," he says, and says it again, his voice sounding more determined. "Okay."
"Okay, what?" she demands, because she needs to hear him say it, she needs him to stand behind it and believe it the way she does or they'll never make it.
"Okay, we're not getting caught," he says and she smiles at him, that same trusting smile, and squeezes his arm in reassurance.
"Go be the man," she says and gives the cart a little push in the direction of the check-out line. "I'll watch the baby."
While Duncan waits in line Lizzie feeds the baby, holding the bottle like the picture she saw in the "Dr. Spock" book she bought at a rest stop their second day on the road. An older woman sits drops beside her with a flurry of shopping bags and turns her eyes to the baby.
"She's beautiful," the woman says. "How old is she?"
Lizzie lies and says a month even though she's really only three weeks, because admitting it was only three weeks would mean admitting Meg's really been gone that long, and if she lies and says it's a month she can lie and pretend her sister isn't really dead. The woman peaks over her shoulder as she feeds, her forehead knotting as Lizzie reaches up and pushes her hair off her forehead, wondering what crawled up the woman's butt in the course of three seconds, until she realizes it's her left hand that's exposed, and the woman's eyes are locked on her naked ring finger.
"You raising her yourself?" the woman asks, her forehead smoother but her eyes laced with disapproval.
It's a look Lizzie knows too well, the same way her mother looked at her when she asked for her first lipstick at thirteen, the way her mother would sit in the cold, sterile hospital room and watch her eldest daughter's belly grow and swell without a ring on her finger. She remembers that last dinner all too well, when she told her parents she didn't understand why they weren't putting up a memorial for Meg the way the Kane's did for Lilly, and Grace had turned to her with those judgmental eyes and calmly said, as if she were discussing the weather, "Because she was a whore, Lizzie. Why would we honor a whore?" And in that instant, she'd known that she had to get out, that it didn't matter that her parents had temporary custody of the baby and she could go to jail for kidnapping. She had to get out. She had to get her niece out. She had to save her the way she and Meg hadn't been able to save Grace. She remembered the icy gaze in Celeste Kane's eyes after Lilly's death, the familiar blank gaze in Jake's eyes, and had turned to the only person she thought would understand.
She shifts her eyes to Duncan and the woman follows. "We're raising her together," she says and the woman smiles slightly, as if realizing what a colossal bitch she turned into.
"She's very lucky. There are too many children these days who never know a real family." Lizzie wants to laugh, because the last thing she and Duncan are is a family, but this strange woman is cooing at the baby and she's curling into her arms like Lizzie is the only mother she's ever known, and she catches Duncan's eye as he inches closer to the cashier and he shoots her a reassuring smile, and she realizes she and Duncan are all this little girl has in the world, and like it or not, they're the only family she ever wants her to know. "What's her name?" the woman asks, tearing Lizzie away from her fantasy of a life where a little girl with Manning DNA gets to be happy, and a little girl with Kane DNA gets to be free.
"Excuse me?"
"Her name, what is it?"
Lizzie glances at Duncan, who's finally made it to the head of the check-out line and is helping the cashier load their purchases into the cart. "We haven't decided yet. We're waiting for her to develop her personality and decide for herself."
The woman gives her a look that screams "those crazy kids these days" but smiles politely and picks up her packages as an older man approaches them, car keys dangling from his fingers. "C'mon, Sue," he says. "I'm double parked."
"Good luck," Sue says as she follows her husband out of the store, and Duncan comes up immediately, already pulling open the straps in the car seat and gesturing for her to buckle the baby in.
"What did she want?" he asks as they head for the car, but Lizzie is too caught up in her thoughts to hear the question. "Lizzie," he snaps. "Earth to Lizzie! That woman, what did she want?"
"What?" she asks as she snaps to attention. "Oh, you know, typical girly stuff."
"She didn't recognize us though?"
"We're in the middle of no where. No, she didn't recognize us." Just to be sure, she rummages through the bags as he loads them into the trunk, and pulls out the hair dye.
"Ready to channel your best Billy Idol?"
He picks up the second package and slams the trunk shut. "Only if you're ready to channel your best Angelina Jolie."
They're halfway to Utah, looking nothing like Billy Idol or Angelina Jolie, but sufficiently different in appearance anyway, when she tells him what's really bothering her. "We need to give her a name."
"What?" he says and shuts off the Coldplay they've been listening to for three days straight.
"We need to give her a name, Duncan," she repeats and he looks at her like she's lost her mind. "Oh, come on, don't look so surprised. We can't keep calling her "the baby" all the time. She needs a name!" His back does that ramrod straight thing it did when they first set out on the road trip, and he keeps his eyes anywhere but the rearview mirror, but they've been together and been through too much for her to let him pull this crap again. "We need to name her, Duncan, whether you're ready to or not. It's not fair to her. She's a person, a real person, and real people need names."
"Okay," he says quietly. "Okay, we'll name her."
His heart sounds half in it, like he'd rather have hot pokers shoved under his finger nails rather than give his own child a name, but she pushes through it and bounces ideas off him. He won't agree to anything she suggests and after an hour she gives up. "I'll buy a baby book the next time we stop," she says and he smiles weakly.
"Whatever you want," he says vacantly and she returns to watching the scenery fly by, whatever intimacy they've built over the last week apparently dismantled.
They stay at another cheap motel a mile from the Grand Canyon and an hour before five he surprises her by asking if she'd like to take a drive. They pack the up "the baby" and watch the sunset in a park on the North Rim, saying nothing as the sun crests over the canyon in gorgeous shades of orange and red and deep purple. He shocks her again by breaking the silence, arms crossed over his bent knees, his posture slumped in ways that would make Celeste Kane's hair turn white. "I want to name her after my sister," he says and his voice is thick and heavy.
"I want to name her after mine," she says, shocked yet again when her voice catches on sob and it's only when the tears start streaming down her face that she realizes her sister's been dead for almost a month and it's the first time she's cried. When he gathers her in his arms and holds her to his chest and she feels his own tears mingling with hers, she wonders if it's the first time he's cried for his own sister.
A cry breaks through the still air, and they pull apart in that laughing way people have when a major moment is broken up unexpectedly. Duncan pulls his daughter out of the car seat, and holds her in his arms as the last of the light spills into the canyon. "Margaret Lillian," he says. "What do you think of that?
Lizzie wrinkles her nose. "She sounds like an eighty-year-old woman. But – " she continues quickly when Duncan opens his mouth in protest. "I like it. I really like it."
Neither of them can bring themselves to call her by either namesake and in the end they decide on Maggie, "because she's her own person and deserves her own name, not a dead girl's," Lizzie would later say whenever anyone asked.
The car ride back to the motel is quiet, but without the tension of before. Lizzie knows she shouldn't because things are calm and easy between them again, but she has to ask. She has to know. "Why didn't you want to give Maggie a name?" she asks, and it's the first time either of them have said the name out loud.
She expects him to recoil again, to slip inside himself the way he always does when he's upset about something, but he just sighs long and loud and turns to look at her, catching a quick view in the rearview mirror on the way. "Giving her a name meant admitting she's mine, like you said, a real person. Without a name it was like we were playing a game, you know? It wasn't really real."
"Like playing house."
"Exactly. Like playing house." He pauses, turns back to the road. "Why did you wait so long to ask?"
"Because choosing a name meant admitting Meg was really dead."
This time, he's the one to reach over and squeeze her hand and without a word he lets her know that he understands.
It takes Keith Mars almost three weeks to track them down and he finally catches up with them at an outdoor café somewhere outside Omaha. Lizzie is sipping an oversized latte and Duncan is doing the morning crossword and Maggie is giggling to herself in her car seat when a vaguely familiar man creeps into Lizzie's sightline. Keith spots them immediately, even with the new hair color, and smiles to himself at the sight of a seemingly young family enjoying the unusually good weather. Except he knows better, and he's been through this routine before, and the smile crumbles into a frown because he knows how this is going to end.
Duncan recognizes him before Lizzie Manning, and he grabs her arm urgently, gesturing towards the bald man approaching them. He hurriedly grabs the car seat and Lizzie slips the diaper bag over her shoulder and they make for the exits, but Keith is on them before they clear the next table.
Duncan stands stock still as Keith slides up next to him, the baby's giggling the only sound in the nearly empty café. The other patrons are watching with interest, a real life version of "Cops" out of the ordinary for their sleepy town. "Duncan," Keith says evenly. "We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but you know you're going home either way."
Lizzie makes a move to take the baby carrier and slip out unnoticed, but Keith is too quick. "You too, Ms. Manning. There's warrants out for both of you. This is a lot more serious than using a fake ID to hop a flight to Cuba."
"Can't you pretend you never saw us?" Lizzie pleads. "It can be our secret. We have money. We can pay you whatever you want."
Keith is unfazed and Duncan looks vaguely embarrassed that the girl Keith caught him with just offered to bribe the father of the girl who's still his current girlfriend. "It's me or the police, Ms. Manning," Keith tries again. "Pick your poison."
Duncan catches her eye and she knows this is the end. They can go home with Keith or they can wait for the police to find them and send them back to Neptune in handcuffs. It's not a difficult choice.
Neither of them can look at Maggie as they follow Keith to his car, or as they board the Kane's private plane and sit through a flight both of them hoped to never take. Keith falls asleep almost immediately and rocked by the motion and noise, Maggie follows suit. Duncan and Lizzie look everywhere but at each other as the plane veers closer and closer to Neptune.
Lizzie decides it's her turn to break the silence, and turns to Duncan, sitting across the aisle from her staring dejectedly out the window. "We failed her," she says quietly and it's enough to get his attention. "I promised to keep her safe and we failed her. We're going to go to jail and she'll go to my parents or your parents and either way everything we tried to do will be for nothing."
"But at least we tried," he says and he looks at her with complete understanding in his eyes and she realizes it's more than a Kane or Manning attempted for either of them.
"We're still going to prison," she sulks. "I don't want a big butch girlfriend named Bertha."
"I'm kind of looking forward to it. I look good in orange," he says and smiles, wide and bright, and his daughter's eyes crinkle in his face and everything instantly seems a whole lot better.
"Did you just make a joke about going to prison?"
He shrugs his shoulders and breaks out into laughter, the first time she's heard him laugh – really laugh – during their entire misguided adventure. "What else can we do?"
"I'm going to testify for you." Her voice is serious and he knows she means it. "I'm going to tell them that I stole the baby and you just came along for the ride."
"Lizzie –"
"I'm serious. I started this, I'm taking the fall. I'm going to tell the police about my parents and Grace. I'm going to make them understand that we had no choice."
"Okay."
"I mean it, Duncan. We're not going to prison and you're going to keep your baby."
"I believe you," he says and he's looking at her with so much faith and trust in his eyes that she thinks she could believe it too. "You kept me going all this time. It's my turn to do it for you."
Keith clears his throat and they jump apart and he sounds regretful when he tells them they've landed. Duncan asks to carry his daughter out of the plane, but Keith says he's got a court order to return the baby to the Mannings and takes her out himself.
Lizzie isn't sure she can get off the plane, face what's out there, but Duncan simply smiles in that brand new way she's not used to. "Remember what you said, Duncan and Lizzie against the world?"
"Duncan and Lizzie against the world," she repeats, feeling a little stronger.
The door opens and bright light spills across the carpet, and they both take deep breaths as they cling to each other's hands and step out into the sun together.
Writers live for feedback – please leave some if you have the time.