Broken Roots
Chapter Two: Fragile Leaves, Easily Crushed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,001
Disclaimer: I own Crossing Jordan. Um, right. That was a lie. I don't own anything. Except my own insanity. I can't even claim to own DVDs for Crossing Jordan. Okay, I can, but only season 1.
Summary: Sins of the father are passed onto the son. Sins of the mother to the daughter. And somewhere in the middle of all of that lies the truth.
Pairing: Woody/Jordan (kind of sort of... ok...eventually :) )
Author's Note: So I had grand plans. They didn't really work out. They never do. I don't know why I keep thinking they might. :P
This will be a bumpy ride. The idea is to get to a happy (well... Happier?) ending, but it's not there yet. It's going to take time, possibly a lot. Bear with it...
Fragile Leaves, Easily Crushed
"What is that doing here?"
The first words out of his mouth, and under other circumstances, she would have been worried by them. But not right now. She's holding Maddie in her arms, and that was her secret weapon. While Woody might have been an ass to Jordan and everyone else, a jerk on par with right after his shooting, he was not, could not be that same jerk to Maddie.
Well, to the midget, as he always called her.
Jordan smiled. "I told Lily I'd watch her tonight. And I told you about it, too, but if it's a problem, I can always—"
"No, don't," he said softly. He collapsed on the couch and dropped his head into his lap. She sighed. She knew what this was. Now he would feel guilty. He would apologize to her, to everyone, and it would only make him hate himself more. The cycle was almost complete. She hated it, all of it, but this part was actually the worst. She knew what they said. Abusers followed a pattern, and the remorse phase was not to be trusted. The cycle would begin all over again. Woody would go back to the alcohol, back to being a jerk.
She should let him leave. She knew that. She didn't want to, and that was a problem for both of them. But maybe this time, with the help of the files she'd requested, they'd break the cycle. She sat down next to him, and Maddie grabbed a hold of his shirt.
He looked up at the baby, down at his shirt, and muttered under his breath. "I'll be back. I need a shower."
Jordan watched him go, smiling a little. He was still there, the man she knew and loved. Bent, broken, and beaten down, but he was there. She saw him every once and a while, even in the darkest times, a smile or a look, a memory. Maddie continued to reach for him—Woody remained her favorite person after Bug and Lily—and then started to cry.
Jordan winced. She hoped that Woody was not planning on a long shower. He might need one, though. She didn't know when the last time he'd showered was, and he always looked like hell these days. "He'll be back, Maddie. He's not gone. He'll be back."
She got up and tried rocking the child a bit as she went around the counter to check on the food. She had wanted to eliminate as many potential upsets as possible. So, she had food, if he was hungry, she had Maddie to keep him from losing his temper, and she had gotten rid of the alcohol again. She didn't know how he kept buying it—it wasn't like she was giving him the money, and he wasn't taking any from her—but the house was free of it.
Maddie was still crying when Woody finally emerged from the shower, looking fresh and new, and a lot better than he had when he went in. She would have smiled if Maddie wasn't screaming. He looked at her for a moment, and she knew he was laughing at her.
"Why did you volunteer to watch a child that doesn't like you?" he asked quietly, studying Jordan for a long moment. She hoped that the same thought was running through his head as it was hers. That this seemed right, familiar. Her, Woody, and a child. It should be their child, but Maddie was close.
"Oh," she shrugged. "Sometimes I forget that I was never meant to be a mother."
Woody took Maddie from Jordan, and the baby settled down quickly. "That's not necessarily true. The problem with Midget here is that you are not her mother. She can't get what she wants from you, but she thinks she should be able to, and that makes her cranky."
"You mean, she'd like me better if I was lactating?" Jordan asked, amused.
He rolled his eyes at her. Maddie hit him on the nose, and he held her upside down for a second, teasing her. She giggled. Jordan watched, unable to stop herself from feeling jealous. Sometimes she wondered if things would be different if they were more than just awkward roommates.
"You made food?" Woody asked as he went to pick up Maddie's bottle from the counter. He held it just out of the girl's reach and taunted her a few times before giving it to her. Okay, that wasn't quite as cute. Jordan could live with that.
"I don't cook. You know that," Jordan said. "But I figured... With Maddie... I thought I'd just pick something up, spare us any fight over what to eat and whether or not you were going to make it."
He nodded, the haunted look passing over him again. Maddie touched his face, and he smiled down at her. Jordan wondered if there was any way to get a more permanent loan. Maybe if Maddie was here more, or Woody had his own kid... Their own kid...
But would it be a lie? Would he just be pretending to keep the child happy as he slowly lost himself again? She didn't know. She hoped not.
"Woody, I know you're not going to like this," she began, "but we have to talk."
Max let himself into Hoyt's office and closed the door behind him. It didn't have much of a lock, but then he doubted Woody cared at this point. There was nothing worth stealing here, there was hardly anything at all. This wasn't where Max had expected to find his daughter's friend.
Honestly, he'd hoped that Woody would finally break down Jordan's walls, and they'd be married with kids by now. Then he'd read about Hoyt's death in the papers and almost come back, for Jordan's sake. He should have, should have been here for her, not just with Woody presumed dead, but while he was missing following that damn trial.
Max sat down in the chair, putting his burden on the desk. He wasn't ready to open it yet. He was still trying to figure out how Hoyt had become the man Max had argued with earlier. He'd done a bit of observing lately, watching his daughter and her friends from the sidelines. Lots of things had changed while he was gone, but he couldn't get over what had happened to Hoyt.
The trial, the newspapers, they didn't really show Hoyt, and he was probably better off that way. But it had taken a few favors from people Max used to know to get him into records again, to get a hold of the full transcript. What he read made him sick. He didn't want to believe it.
If Hoyt's father hadn't been dead... Max could have killed him. Let's face it. Woody had become a good friend and practically a son. He had Jordan's heart, and Max had known it long before either of them did. And Max wanted the men who had hurt his son to pay.
Too bad they were all out of his reach.
Max looked at the small metal box again. He didn't want to open it. He needed to, needed to lay this to rest at last. But... He wasn't ready.
He opened the top drawer of Hoyt's desk. Three folders, plain manila ones. Max wasn't sure what made him look at the names on the side, but he did. Calvin. That was the brother. Jordan. And Nigel? Max flipped the folder open and cursed softly when he realized what these were. Letters. Woody's goodbyes. He was planning to leave, and that meant more than Boston.
Max couldn't let that happen. He'd gotten Woody involved with the case, and he knew that was only the start. He looked at the box one more time. It was safe enough where it was. He put the folders back and headed out the door. Maybe he should have called, but he'd rather do this in person.
He got into his car and started it up. He hoped that he wouldn't find this man down in a bottle. Both of them deserved better than this.
"I really, really hate it when you say that," Woody muttered, shifting the midget in his arms as he turned to look at Jordan. "It's never good."
She shrugged, managing a half-hearted smile. "What can I say? I'm never going to do the right thing when it comes to you, Woody. I couldn't love you when you wanted me to, I loved you when you didn't want me to, I used you to sabotage my relationship with Pollack, and then I let you go when you were never the rebound guy. And I made you come back when you weren't ready. I just can't let you go."
He looked down at the midget. She was squirming again, reacting to his mood. And he hated having that effect on a child. They shouldn't have to feel this, feel like he did. He brushed the top of Midget's head, the soft hair she'd gotten from Lily. "You can't let go of anything, Jordan. It's your curse and your charm."
She smiled at him. "So you like me?"
He laughed a little, shaking his head. "Jordan, I think we both know the answer to that. But let's deal with the elephant in the room for change. What did you do? And why?"
"I called the sheriff's department in Kewaunee. They're sending me the files on your father's death," she told him. She took a deep breath and hurried on, "I know, you said you didn't want me to do anything. You said you didn't care, that Cal was wrong, but I just thought... I thought if we really proved it, for his sake and yours..."
"Jordan," he said. It felt like a curse as it left his lips. He handed the midget back to her and held up a hand. "Not another word. Just... Leave me alone. Please. Just for now."
She nodded, biting her lip, and he went into her bedroom, closing the door behind him. He closed his eyes and slid to the floor. He didn't want to face this. He didn't know how to face this. She had a point. He couldn't go on like this. Not with the nightmares, the fractured memories... He wasn't sure what was real and what he had dreamed up to torture himself. He couldn't keep waking up just as he was about to pull the trigger aimed at his father's back...
Sometimes it wasn't even that. It was worse. It wasn't anything like what he remembered. No convenience store, no punk, not even a gun. He almost remembered waking up, walking to the kitchen, grabbing a knife, and going to where his father was on the couch, passed out drunk, raising the knife...
He always woke up before he actually did it. Whether that was because he couldn't accept that he'd killed his father or that he really hadn't, he didn't know anymore. He didn't want to know the truth. Maybe it would stop all this worrying, but he didn't know if he could handle knowing that he had done it.
He didn't want to believe that he was a killer. He still felt no remorse for what he had done to Montelli, and the bastard hadn't died, but Woody did not want to be a killer. He didn't want to be his father's killer. After all that had happened, he still wanted that part of his soul clean. He wanted to be better than what his father was, what his father had done.
He put his arms over his knees, his head on top of them. He wanted some sort of relief, but he couldn't even cry these days. No, he was stuck, trapped, with his own demons and plenty of pain. Maybe Jordan had offered him a way out.
Maybe she'd just condemned him to the worst sort of hell.