Jacob glanced at the dashboard clock and found to his dismay He'd only been on the interstate for eleven minutes. It felt much longer. His gaze traveled to the grim-faced occupant of his passenger seat. Jacob's stomach clenched in an unfamiliar way.
This should have been a good moment for him. It had been less than an hour since Jacob and Elizabeth Scott had left the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and begun the drive to the girl's home. She hadn't argued with him, or tried to renege on their deal. In a few hours all of his efforts will have paid off and he'd be returning to Reddington's side with his mission accomplished. This should have made him happy. He was going back to where he belonged.
Over the past few weeks Jacob had found that he missed the older man's company. He missed Reddington's quirky anecdotes. He missed being prodded to try some seemingly inedible dish. He missed sharing a quiet drink after a successful business negotiation. Despite wishing to return to his long-time companion however, Jacob's feelings about leaving Nebraska were muddled.
Elizabeth Scott shifted slightly in her seat and Jacob forced himself keep his eyes on the road. He knew exactly what was wrong with him, of course. It was the girl. He was unhappy because the girl was unhappy. Why was anyone's guess.
According to the file he'd once stolen from his social worker, Jacob had an 'attachment disorder.' He 'lacked empathy' and 'struggled to form emotional bonds'. For the most part Jacob couldn't argue with that assessment. Even with Dembe, the caring had come gradually. With Liz it was different. He only spent a few hours in her company and yet somehow it had been enough for him to connect with her. It was probably for the best he'd be cutting with the farm girl sooner rather than latter. If she had this effect on him now, he couldn't imagine what would happen if he stayed.
Jacob shook himself. He couldn't believe he'd even allowed himself to entertain the thought. Jacob Phelps, settling in Nebraska, just to be close to some girl? It was beyond ridiculous. He had to do something, distract himself from his errant thoughts.
"You okay?" Brilliant opening line. Reddington would have been so impressed with his conversational skills. Liz didn't even bother to turn her head away from the window.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Jacob's mind flashed to Elizabeth as she'd been inside Reeves' office. The caseworker had been jumpy when he'd passed the file into Liz's eager hands. Jacob had forced himself to respect her privacy and not read over her shoulder. Instead he'd kept his eyes on Reeves, who he'd been concerned might pass out from the terror over breaking department policy. He'd been sweating like he'd just turned over nuclear missile codes to the Russians.
They'd all sat in silence for ten minutes as Elizabeth read and re-read the documents. At last she'd stood, put the envelope on Reeves' desk and told Jacob she was ready to go home. That was the last thing said to him in the past forty minutes.
"You seem quiet."
"Unlike some people, I don't talk unless I have something to say." Jacob was silent a moment as he weighed his options. Clearly Elizabeth wasn't eager to share her thoughts with him. On the other hand she was obviously having some kind on internal struggle. If he kept prodding she might change her mind and choose to vent to him.
"Do you regret reading the file?"
"None of your damn business." Jacob smirked at Elizabeth's increasingly spiky tone. If he kept going, she was definitely going to explode.
"I'm just saying if you wanted to talk about it-" Elizabeth suddenly turned to Jacob eyes flashing dangerously.
"I don't, so stop bugging me!" Jacob glanced at his passenger's face and registered that the expression was very similar to the one she'd wore before she'd flipped a table over and attacked him. Under ordinary circumstances he wouldn't have minded sparring with Elizabeth Scott, but given that he was currently driving at over 60 miles per hours, now probably wasn't the best time for a physical altercation.
"Copy that." It was time to change tactics. Fortunately he had a plan B already in place and Liz's comment had inspired him.
Jacob kept his left hand on the wheel of the car while his right groped for the top of the storage compartment between his and Liz's seats. He flipped the lid open and withdrew a plastic case.
"What are you doing?"
"Putting in a CD. You clearly don't want to talk. We have two more hours on the interstate, and radio reception tends to be unreliable." He slide the metallic disk into the player and advanced to the fifth track. He grinned as the rapid beats blasted out the car's speakers.
"Are you serious?" Jacob turned to her, his face a picture of innocence.
"What? I like this song." It wasn't a lie, technically. Admitted he'd had hadn't been an immediately convert to Destiny's Child, but there was something catchy about the rhythm of this track at least.
"Bullshit." Jacob's smile widened. If she didn't believe that he was indeed a fan, he'd be more than happy to demonstrate for her. He started bopping his head to the music.
"I wanna put your number on the call block.
Have AOL make my emails stop,
cause you a bug a boo.
You buggin what? You buggin who? You buggin me,
and don't you see it ain't cool."
As Jacob sang, he watched Liz out of the corner of his eye. He could see the corners of her mouth twitching as she fought to suppress a smile at his antics. This spurred him on to an even more impassioned performance, until finally he had her laughing.
"You're an asshole." There was no venom in her insult, in fact it was almost affectionate. A warm feeling washed over him, as he looked at her chuckling over his clownish behavior. He'd made her happy, if only for this brief moment. He took a strange amount of pride in that.
"Come on, you know you want to..." He nodded at the speakers.
She rolled her eyes, then began half-heartedly, "When you show up at my door you're buggin me."
Jacob joined her, "When you open up your mouth, you're buggin me.
Everytime I see your face you're buggin me,
you're buggin me, you're buggin me."
By the time the song finished they were both in stitches. Jacob was perfectly willing to continue their car karaoke, but Liz reached out and hit the stop button on the player.
"Why'd you kill my jam?" He was genuinely confused. He had thought they were both having a good time.
"Destiny's Child is not your jam. You got that CD because of me." Jacob considered lying, but found he didn't really want to. Instead he decided on the route of verbal ambiguity. It was a technique he'd learned from Reddington, who was a great fan of obscure truth.
"I noticed their poster in your bedroom, but that doesn't mean I can't like them." Jacob answered Liz's sceptical look with a shrug. "It's true. I travelled a lot growing up and the man who raised me believed in embracing a broad range of cultural experience. Have you ever heard of Tuvan throat singing?"
"No."
"It's impressive. These guys can sing two to four notes at a time. Of course it isn't always melodic. At certaining points the singer can sound like they are burping for a really long time." Jacob's mind flitted back to the festival Reddington that dragged him and Dembe when they were 15 and 16. At one point they'd looked at each other and burst out laughing. Reddington had scolded them, but the glint in his eye had told Jacob that he hadn't really been angry.
"You're making this up. I bet Tuva isn't even a real place." He wasn't surprised Liz hadn't heard of it. American public education didn't really bother with world geography, at least beyond the "big name" countries.
"It is...though now it's called Tyva. It's on the northern border of Mongolia." Jacob's seven years with Reddington had been much informative than a high school and college education would have been, at least were global knowledge was considered.
"And you've been there? To Tyva?"
"Yes." They'd spent two weeks hiking, rafting, and trekking through the Sayan mountains. Jacob had appreciated the aesthetics of the landscape, but he was thrilled when they had finally returned to civilization. He could only take so much tranquillity, not to mention time away from hot showers.
"Where else have you been?"
Jacob shrugged. "A lot of places. Greece, France, South Africa, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, England, Argentina, Poland, Columbia-"
"You bullshitting me right now?" He could understand why it would sound far-fetched. Elizabeth was seventeen and she hadn't yet left her home state, let alone the US. Jacob was only four years older than she was and had already visited six of the seven continents.
"I was raised by an international businessman. We travelled a lot." Of course most of the places he'd visited hadn't been for vacations. There'd been quite a few times they'd been crossing borders to evade police authorities and then departing immediately for a destination across the globe.
"You're telling me, you've been around the world and yet you choose to set up shop, here, in Nebraska?" Jacob paused a moment, wanting to be careful with his answer. Elizabeth believed he was a local private eye hired by her father. Reddington had made it clear that no one know should know anything about his investment in the girl, including the girl herself.
"You don't think much of your home state do you?" Liz snorted, apparently accepting his deflection for the moment.
"We both know Ohama isn't exactly Paris." Jacob smiled. Why was it girls were always so obsessed with Paris, like it was some romantic Mecca. The reality wasn't quite what they imagined.
"Which frankly is a good thing. Paris smells like pee." The horrific odor was the number one thing that tourist brochures did not advertized about the 'City of Lights'.
"What?"
"If you're a man it's totally legal to urinate on the street, so the city smells like pee." Jacob was pretty sure people peed in the streets in every city in the world, but at least in most of them it was frowned on, if not illegal.
"But it's not legal for women?"
"I know. Sexism, am I right?" Liz laughed, then her express sobered.
"I still rather be there than here. Nebraska feels so small sometimes I can barely breath." Despite the miles of nothing currently surrounding them, he understood what she meant. Nebraska was in many respects a nice place to live. It was scenic. It was safe. For many people it would be idyllic. Unfortunately for her, Liz clearly wasn't 'many people'. It was too static, too dull for someone like her. She needed a challenge, an adventure.
"Do you mind if I give you some advice, as someone who has travelled pretty much anywhere you can imagine?" Liz made a face as though she'd swallowed something sour.
"Let me guess: 'There's no place like home?'" Jacob smirked at the Wizard of Oz reference. Having never had a home, he was in no position to assess the veracity of that statement.
"No. Traveling is great, but where you go doesn't matter nearly so much as who you go with." Jacob thought of Reddington, Dembe, and Mr. Kaplan. Any memory of wonder, discovery, or joy that he'd possessed had been with one or all them beside him.
"You really love them, don't you?" Jacob glanced over at Liz sharply, "Your brother and foster Dad." Love? Liz threw out that word like it was so simple. It wasn't, at least not for him.
"I'd have nothing without them. I'd be nothing without them." If Jacob had never met Reddington he would have probably spent his life on the streets, until the police eventually caught him. Then it would have been off to Juvie for him. He wouldn't have met Dembe. He would have grown up alone, with no one caring if he lived or died.
"I get that. Sam is...my whole world." Jacob felt a wave of mutual understanding pass between them. As different as their childhoods had been, they both knew what it was to be saved.
"You're lucky. We both are."
"You never finished the story about your brother. What happened after he threw you into the dresser and cracked your skull?" Jacob was surprised she remembered what he'd said to her in the waiting room, let alone was interested in hearing more. Even more astonishing was that he wanted to tell her. He let his mind drift back to the day that had changed the course of his life.
The address on Dembe's card didn't belong to a doctor's office or a clinic. Instead he found himself sitting in basement of a Brooklyn brownstone. There was medical equipment, and what appeared to be a patient table, but somehow Jacob doubted that this practice was listed in the phone book. That probably wasn't a bad thing. Reddington clearly had money, and he wouldn't have instructed Dembe to use this physician if the man didn't know what he was doing. A competent doctor willing to overlook legal restrictions was a good acquaintance to have.
"You've been to this guy before?" Dembe nodded once. Jacob waited a moment before determining his babysittee wasn't planning to elaborate.
"Why?"
"I was unwell." Before Jacob had a chance to deliver a sarcastic retort, the door opened and a large bearded man strode in. Dembe stood immediately and extended his hand in greeting.
"Dr. Koslov." The bearded giant laughed, crossed the room in two bounds, and seized the offered limb.
"Dembe, my fine lad. It is good to see you looking so robust. Mr. Reddington was right when he claimed you had a strength many growth men would envy. Your recovery is nothing short of miraculous. I am confused to see you here alone, without him. He is well I trust?" The man's English was perfect, but his ascent was definitely foreign. Definitely eastern European.
"Yes, he is well, but Jacob is not." The doctor turned his attention toward Jacob, who pulled off his cap.
"Come here, boy." Jacob complied and the man began removing the bandages Dembe had wound around his head. Jacob winced as Koslov inspected his head wound.
"You are fortunate. I think we can get away with two staples. I assume this will go on Mr. Reddington's account?" Dembe opened his mouth to speak, but Jacob cut him off.
"Actually no, I'd like to cover this myself...assuming we keep this visit between us." Dembe's face darkened with disapproval.
"You should not ask Dr. Koslov to lie to Raymond." Jacob shoot a return glare toward Dembe.
"I'm not asking him to lie, just to not to volunteer the information. That's covered in patient confidentiality, isn't it?" Jacob twisted his head to check the doctor's expression.
"For ordinary doctors, yes, however I am not an ordinary doctor, nor is Mr. Reddington an ordinary patient." Jacob's stomach sunk. Of course this guy was in Reddington's pocket. He should never had come here.
"So you won't do it?" The doctor studied Jacob's face for a moment before sighing.
"Given that the injury isn't too serious and that you are not Mr. Reddington's ward, I'm willing to hold my tongue on two conditions: 1) You can pay me the $500 fee and 2) You can convince Dembe to likewise maintain his silence. I'll give you a few minutes alone to discuss it."
Jacob waited until Koslov had left the room before turning to Dembe. Everybody had a price, Jacob just needed to find his. "How much is going to take to keep you quiet? $100? $200?" Dembe's glower became even more pronounced.
"My honor is not for sale. I am prepared to face the consequences of my actions." The ward of the shady Mr. Reddington was a damn choir boy. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Easy for you say. What's the worst Reddington's going to do to you? Ground you? That will a real hardship for the guy who didn't even want to leave the hotel room. Versus me, who will be out of the best paying job I've ever had. The job that was going to keep me fed for months. Have you ever been starving, Dembe? Not hungry… but starving?" Self-righteous was easy for people who had nothing at stake.
"Yes." Jacob blinked. That wasn't the answer he'd expected. It was hard to imagine the huge boy having ever missed a meal. Then again the doctor had mentioned Dembe's 'miraculous' recovery. Maybe the kid's life had been harder than Jacob had assumed.
"Then do you get why I might not be real eager to feel that again?"
Dembe was silent a moment before nodding. That was a promising start. What else could Jacob say to convince the guy not to rat him out? Would an apology work? Dembe had cracked his skull, but Jacob had deliberately provoked him. They both shared the blame for what happened.
"Look...I was a dick. I know that. And I get that you don't want me around. That's fine, that's nothing new for me. If you want me to not say another word to you for that rest of the week, I'll do it, but I need this job. Please." Jacob couldn't remember the last time he'd used that final word with anyone. He only hoped it would pay off here.
Dembe was quiet for nearly thirty seconds before reaching a decision. "I won't lie to Raymond...but I won't expose any falsehood you tell. You can even tell him we left the hotel, if you'd like. Get your $200 bonus."
"You know about that?" Had Raymond told Dembe before Jacob's had arrived about the details of their deal?
"I was listening at the door." Yet again Jacob's massive charge surprised him.
"Kind of sneaky for someone as honest as you." The kid clearly had layers, Jacob would give him that.
"Raymond is honorable is his own way, but I have found him less than forthright, on occasion." For a non-native English speaker. Dembe sure knew some fancy words.
"Forthright? Seriously? Do you read the dictionary for fun, or something?" For a moment the older boy looked almost embarrassed.
"I enjoy books. Raymond reads to me, when he has time." Jacob pushed down the unexpected feeling of jealousy. It was stupid to envy Dembe his relationship with Reddington. He wasn't a little kid anymore. He certainly didn't need anyone to read him bedtime stories.
"There's a library near the hotel. I can bring you some books tomorrow, if you want." Jacob had 'borrowed' one or two in the past and had yet to be caught. He could probably sneak out a few more if Dembe was interested.
"I would appreciate that. Thank you." The older boy smiled at him, and Jacob unexpectedly found himself smiling back. Maybe the week wouldn't be a nightmare after all.
"So then what happened?" Liz's voiced pulled Jacob back into the present.
"The doctor fixed me up, good as new."
"And your brother kept your secret?" Jacob nodded. When Reddington had returned that night, Jacob had told him that they'd hung out in the room all day. Dembe had seemed surprised, given that he'd agree not to contradict any story Jacob came up with. He'd assumed Jacob would want to take advantage of the opportunity to get the extra $200.
Jacob had considered it, but in the end he'd decided not to. He told himself it was for practical reasons, that such a lie would be more easily exposed, but in reality it hadn't felt right, particular after Dembe had reimbursed Jacob for the money he'd spent at the doctor.
"Yeah. First time anyone ever did anything like that for me." Dembe had shown him mercy that Jacob had done nothing to deserve.
"He sounds like a good brother."
"The best." Jacob felt an unwelcome pang of loneliness. It had been over a month since he'd spoken to Dembe. He hoped his brother was keeping himself safe. Jacob didn't know what he'd do without him.
"You're lucky. I always wanted a sibling. A part of me was hoping that maybe I already had one." It took a moment for Jacob to realise Liz was talking about the file. It was funny that she wanted to discuss it now, when less than thirty minutes go she'd nearly bitten his head off for asking.
"You were an only child?" Liz nodded.
"As far as the State of Nebraska knows I am. Although apparently my biological father was a con man who ditched me to go the lam, so who knows." Jacob could hear the undercurrent of anger beneath the flippant tone.
"And your mother?"
"Died in a fire, that she may have started herself. The report was 'inconclusive.'" No wonder Liz hadn't felt like sharing what she'd found in the file. She was probably expecting him to respond with an 'I told you so.'
"Could have been worse. She could have been a negligent crackhead like my birth mother." Liz turned sharply to look at him. Jacob shrugged, feigning a nonchalance that after all these years he wished he could actually feel. "Family isn't blood, and blood isn't family. I think we both made out alright."
"Yeah, I think we did too." They fell into a companionable silence, very different from the one they begun the trip with. Jacob found that he no longer dreading the length of the ride, but rather it's conclusion. He didn't want to drive away from Liz, knowing he'd never see her again. Stupid and sentimental of him, but it was what it was. Jacob looked over at Liz and found her looking out the window, smiling at the seemingly endless fields stretching to the horizon. She was happy. They were both going home. It was enough.
