AN: One-shot, Harry Callahan's point of view. Introspective. Some K/N.

Live With It

Summary: Harry's daughters show up with an injured Kit and Harry has to make some serious adjustments to his way of thinking.

Harry Callahan thought that did a fairly good job of adjusting To his daughters' somewhat unusual lifestyle. He honestly tried his best to be supportive of their choices and understanding of their problems. He let his oldest daughter spend all her free time with her best friend either off on "business" on a nearby celestial body, or in her room, her bed covered with what looked like crosses between spaceship schematics and sheet music, trying to keep ecosystems from collapsing, or prevent the feud between the seven varieties of plant life in the school aquarium from reaching crisis proportions. He accepted the fact that his youngest daughter had a near genius IQ, a social circle that consisted primarily of lifeforms found out near the universal rim, and that her closest confidant was a sentient computer that followed her around like a dog and could regard you curiously with anywhere from zero to twenty-two eyes. On the whole, most days he felt that he did a pretty good job of rolling with the punches that came with being a single-parent bringing up two young wizards.

Today was not one of those days.

When Harry heard the familiar pop of displaced air from the backyard when he was cooking dinner, he actually smiled a little to himself bemusedly. He had found a note stuck to the fridge in Dairine's hand writing that morning: Out with Nita and Kit on a short business trip to Alpha Centari. Left early to beat traffic. Should be back around 4. Nita says buy more lettuce. -Darine

"The things you get used to." He murmured as he set the sauce on to simmer and headed to the back door to see if Kit was staying for dinner.

Fifteen minutes later, the sauce was burning and Harry hadn't even bothered to put the chicken in the oven. It could've been he look of terrified panic on Nita's face as she and her sister struggled through the screen door, dragging Kit between them, that had distracted him, or it maybe it was the pale, mask-like look on Dairine's. Nothing that made her look like that had ever boded well. More likely though, it was the fact that Kit was drenched in blood starting from the right side of his T-shirt and going all the was down his jeans, and had barely managed a rasped "Hi, Mr. Callahan," before dropping from his partner's arms and collapsing on the living room carpet.

Harry wasn't sure, later, how any of them got through the next quarter of an hour. He'd picked the boy up and carried him to the sofa, noticing through the haze how his breath sounded unnaturally labored in his throat. He'd helped his now almost frantic daughter gather the things she would need for a more intensive healing spell than the patch up she'd apparently done on the spot, and he'd listened to her and Dairine's hurried consultation about what to do next.

"Look, he's an AB, and neither one of us can-"

"I know that! Just go get Carmela, and-"

"Just because she's his sister doesn't mean she has the same blood type, Nita..."

"She's an O- universal donor! Now shut up, and go get Carmela!"

Harry could recall the last time Dairine had actually shut up just because Nita, or anyone, for that matter, had told her to, but this time she closed her mouth and, skirting the bloodstains on the carpet, left with another bang! out the back door. Nita was kneeling on the floor by the couch, holding her partners hand as if she didn't even realize she was doing it. The stillness of the scene was almost surreal when compared to the hectic movement of the last half hour. Harry cleared his throat.

"Honey," he said, putting his hand gingerly on her back, "Shouldn't we get him to a hospital?"

He felt her swallow hard as she shook her head. "He'll be OK." Although the expression on her face made her look like she was lying. "I patched up all the major damage, and it looks worse than it really was. He needs a blood transfusion soon, though. He lost a lot. It just wasn't a... clean hit." His daughter's voice was thickening. Harry tried to keep his own voice level as he asked the next question.

"Nita, what happened?"

But she didn't answer, because suddenly Dairine had returned with Kit's older sister, and there was no room for him there anymore. The three girls were suddenly in motion again. Carmela, with a look somewhere between fear and blazing determination on her face, was plugging in her own name in the speech for a blood transfusion spell, Dairine was handling the machination for making the equivalent of a hypodermic needle out of nothing but syllables and Nita was tying it all together and setting it up to run with an automatic gauge, to make sure it gave the right amount to Kit without taking too much from Carmela. Harry backed off and leaned against the living room door-frame, his brain still floating in shock. He had thought he was used to the idea of his girls frequently risking their lives, or as used to the idea as a parent can get, but this...

He knew what they were up against. He knew that the enemy for his girls was the Enemy, the one behind every bad name human kind had ever come up with to disguise it with. He knew that what they were doing was bound to be dangerous. But he had accepted these things knowing that they seemed to understand the risk, acted responsibly with the power they had been given, and had support. Becoming acquainted with Tom and Carl and having several alien house guest use his home as a kind of vacation base had even given the situation a semblance of normalcy. After all, it's not crazy if everyone you know is doing it. Sometimes his daughters did come home looking sad, or confused, or with a troubled look in their eyes he couldn't place, but they had always been honest about their problems, and they had always, somehow, bounced back. They had always come home. Even Kit, who had by some sttrange osmosis process, become nearly family, had always come home. He thought he had accepted it. But now Harry had to come face to face with the fact that maybe he had only accepted it academically.

It had never come down to a bloodstain on the carpet before.

His nerves were more than a little frayed when he finally cornered Dairine in the kitchen, a pale Carmela sitting at the counter clutching a glass of orange juice to try to bring her blood sugar back up, and demanded an explanation.

"Sweetie," He said, not succeeding so well at keeping his voice level this time. "What the hell happened out there?"

Dairing sighed and slumped into a chair, meeting her father's eyes but looking past exhausted. Carmela looked up, her face set. Apparently, she hadn't been told any details yet either. "It was just supposed to be an exploratory mission. Nita had been... contacted by one of the inhabitants of a moon near Alpha Centari. They seemed to be asking for her to run interference for them with a localized, half-sentient binary composite. She thought it was more my thing, so she roped me into it. We were just heading out today to establish initial contact and see what we could, or even should do. We split up: Nita and I went to check out the composite and Kit was supposed to go rendezvous with an ambassador from the group of beings who called us there. I don't know if they met up or not, but everything seemed on the up an up. Then, about a half hour after we split up, Nita just stopped. She looked really freaked out suddenly, and said we had to go find Kit right away. She wouldn't stop and explain, and I don't know how she knew where he was, because it wasn't where we left him. I could barely get here to stay still long enough to give me the coordinates." Dairine rubbed her face in her hands and sighed again, looking grim once more. "When we got showed up, there was no sign of the ambassador- there was no sign of anyone, but there were signs of a fight- and Kit was already... Already down." She finished in a low voice.

Carmela's eyes were narrowed. "As soon as I get me strength back up you're going to give me those coordinates, Dairine." It was a statement. "I'm taking my curling iron and going up there. I don't care if he can blow things up with a car antennae, nobody does that to my little brother."

"Why didn't you go straight to his house, Dari, if your sister knew where Carmela was?" Harry asked.

"We didn't, for one thing, and for another, Nita vetoed it. She said that if Kit's mom saw him like that she'd never let him do anything more dangerous than a leaving the backyard again."

"She was right." Carmela snorted. "Mama's a nurse. "She knows too much about what stuff does to the human body. She calls it being "ER shell-shocked," and it makes her a little paranoid about our safety sometimes. If she knew that you guys were getting in this kind of stuff on a normal basis..."

"Today wasn't normal." Dairine said firmly. She met her father's eyes, with a small, still grim, smile. "I'm sorry, Dad. I don't think we had a choice."

Some time later, he wasn't sure how long, he was leaning in the living room doorway again. He'd heard voices. Kit was awake, although from the looks of things, he wouldn't be up and running any time soon. Nita was perched on the edge of the couch, leaning over him, her hair tucked behind her ears.

She wasn't looking him in the eyes as she spoke.

"... you'll have to stay in bed for a few days. Carmela's going to get some of your clothes, and you're going to stay here tonight. You really shouldn't be moving at all for a while. Hopefully, she'll help you cover your ass at home from your mother, although Carmela might looks like she might want to take a chunk out of it herself-"

"I'm sorry Nita."

"...You already said that. You don't have to apologize for anything. You're not going to die today." She tried to smile, but her father noticed that her eyes were still focused on a point on the pillow just above his head.

"I knew I wasn't going to die today." He whispered. "I knew you'd get there in time to save me. I didn't have a choice but to do what I did. That wasn't why I said I was sorry when I..."

Se cut him off. "Then why did you?" She she demanded. Her eyes were stern and wet.

He sighed, sinking a little back into the couch cushions. "Because I knew what you'd see when you got there, and I knew what you'd think."

She turned her head away, her throat working ineffectually against tears. She made to get up from the couch. "You should get some sle- Kit, lie down!"

But he'd levered himself up, although Harry saw him turn noticeably paler and clench his jaw in pain to manage it, and put his arm around her, pressing his forehead into her shoulder. His voice reflecting the strain it was for him to sit up right now, he gasped: "I wasn't going to leave you Nita. I knew what you'd think, after your... But, what kind of partner would I be if I...?"

For a moment she froze, and then she broke, and then she cried, and she got him to lay back down by the simple expedient of draping herself on top of him and sobbing. Kit, still pale, kept his eyes closed, and he didn't say anything else, but he also didn't let her go, and suddenly Harry had a strange thought:

This is private. I shouldn't be watching this.

And of all the gut wrenching things he had felt that day, that one moment clenched at him the worst. His daughters were wizards. They did things that most adults didn't even have the audacity to dream about, and they faced things regularly that required more courage than most people had to summon up in a lifetime. Sometimes they came back injured, and although most of the time those injuries weren't physical, there probably would still be times when they would bleed on the carpet. He would do this best to heal them both. He would stand by them. He would support them. They were all he had, and for their sakes, he could learn to live with it. All of it.

Except maybe with the idea that his oldest daughter had found someone from whom she needed all those things just as much as she needed them from him.

He found he had wandered over to the phone. He stared at it, deciding absently that he was going to phone Tom and Carl, and then put a call in to the Rodriguez'.

If he was going to come to grips with this, he wouldn't be doing it alone.