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"Hey Chibs," Tara interrupted the silence in the room. He had been entirely focused on the baby he held, entirely focused on ancient memories that just wouldn't leave him alone. He had no idea how much time had passed with him holding this baby and Tara doing whatever she was doing. He looked up and focused on her. "I am finished up here. I am going to go get...whoever that guys was and let everybody else know what is going on. She can have visitors for a few minutes, but she needs rest."
Chibs looked over at the girl, Maeve, who was barely awake at this point. Her eyes kept drifting shut, and it looked as if she wouldn't be awake for any visitors anyway. "What should I do?"
Tara smiled. "It looks like you are doing just fine. Just….stay right there. I'll be right back."
He had been afraid that she would say that, but he didn't argue. He heard the door gently shut as Tara left the room. He glanced down at the baby in his arms, who was making tiny whimpering noises, but thankfully not crying.
"Looks like it's just you and me, kid," he muttered at the baby, who seemed to hear him. He knew that, scientifically speaking, infants were not capable to focusing on anything, but he would have sworn that the baby was looking straight at him. It unnerved him.
"Is he okay?" Maeve spoke up, in a small, tired voice. "Is he….healthy and everything."
The baby started whimpering again at the sound of his mother's voice, and Chibs sighed. He had thought that she was asleep, but it wasn't the first time he had been wrong. He looked up at the girl and explained, "I think he is. He looks like a fine, healthy lad."
He thought that he saw her offer a weak smile, but her eyes were closing again and she sounded miles away when she muttered, "Good. That's good."
He wished that the girl were more awake. He wanted to ask her what was going on, why she had traveled to America with the IRA and why she didn't want to hold her newborn son. Most of all, he wanted to know why, immediately after giving birth, she had denied the fact that he was her son, when Chibs had literally seen the boy born with his own eyes. Tara was right, though. She had just been through an ordeal, and clearly she needed her rest. However, the door cracked open and offered him another source for the answers he sought. Mr. McCormick entered, followed closely by Fiona and Kerrianne.
"Quietly," Chibs warned instantly, nodding towards where Maeve rested. "She's asleep."
McCormick nodded as Fiona rushed over and lay her hand on his shoulder and plant a kiss on top of her head, while Kerrianne hovered nervously by the door, unsure of what she should do in this situation. Chibs caught Fiona's eye and somehow, she could tell that he was literally begging her to take the baby off of his hands.
"Come here, little one," she whispered as she lifted the baby from her husband's arms. Chibs tried to ignore the look of love on her face as he focused on McCormick.
"What the hell is going on, David?" Chibs asked. His voice was quiet, but there was absolutely no mistaking the serious tone behind it.
"Now he calls me David," McCormick mused with a sad smile.
Chibs rolled his eyes and continued, his voice rising with every word, "You bring this girl here, nine months pregnant with my great nephew, and she literally gives birth in our Clubhouse. I can't shake the feeling that there is some part of the bigger picture that I am missing."
Fiona looked as if she agreed wholeheartedly with him, and McCormick knew very well that he owed them an explanation. He wished that the wee baby could have waited a couple of extra days to be born, so he could have met with the family and had this conversation in a more calm and less desperate situation.
"Calm down, my boy. Let's not wake her," McCormick urged. "There is a lot to be discussed, and I will explain everything, but maybe it's best if we do so elsewhere?"
"No," Chibs argued. He was tired of waiting for the right time or the right place. As he spoke, his anger was easy to see. "Something is going on, and I swear to everything holy I am not leaving this room until I find out what."
McCormick sighed. Filip had always had a fiery, stubborn streak, matched only by the woman next to him. He should have suspected that the years had done nothing to suppress it. McCormick took a seat in an empty chair and began to explain.
"The girl came to us after Padraic died. I am sure that you are both aware of her last name, and the weight that brings with it." The Roarke family was powerful in Northern Ireland, and their allegiance lay with the Ulsters. "She was terrified. She found herself pregnant with the baby of an Irish Catholic man, who had strong ties to the IRA. Her family didn't approve of him, as you can imagine, but figured it was just a phase that would pass. They didn't know about the baby. Can you imagine what their reaction to finding out that their daughter, the Protestant princess, was pregnant by Padraic would be? They would not have been kind."
That was possibly the biggest understatement any of them had ever heard. Chibs had spent years with the IRA, and Fiona and Kerrianne were both Belfast natives. The IRA and the Ulster radicals had been fighting each other for years. They were all too well aware that it wasn't likely to end anytime soon.
"So your solution was what?" Chibs asked. "Hide her for months? Bring her here? And then what?"
"I offered her safety, for as long as she wanted it," McCormick replied. "I told her that, if it was her desire, we could keep her and the baby safe. It turns out, that wasn't her desire."
"Then what?" Fiona wondered, desperate for a bit of understanding. "I don't understand."
"She wants to go home. She wants to leave this heartache behind and return to her family and live a normal life, just like most any young girl in her shoes would. She didn't come to me to ask for safety for herself; just for her child."
"And you brought him here," Fiona said, the realization dawning on her slowly, but surely.
"I brought him to his family," McCormick finally revealed. "To the only family that he has left."
The declaration was met with stunned, stony silence for a moment. Chibs face was unreadable. Kerrianne's mouth hung open, unable to believe what she was hearing. Fiona looked slightly dizzy.
"I need to sit down," she admitted, her husband instantly vacating his chair and offering it to her. She felt better once she had a seat and was able to think. Could McCormick really be saying what she thought he was saying? "David….what exactly do you expect us to do? To just take the baby, no questions asked?"
"He needs you. Getting the rest of the council to agree to this was...difficult. They favored allowing one of our adoption facilities to handle the child. I disagreed. Being here, with family, is what is best for the boy," McCormick declared, confident in his words.
"What about her?" Chibs cut in, still stone faced. "The boy has a mother. He doesn't belong with us, he belongs with her. She came all the way here-"
"I only came here to bring the baby," the pretty brunette interrupted, suddenly wide awake. "David said that you would take care of him, that you were Paddy's family and now his family as well. I came here to see that he is taken care of, because I can't do it. I am fucking nineteen years old. I am supposed to be away at university, not in fucking California. I never wanted a baby in the first place. I would have had an abortion, but Paddy begged me, said it would be wrong. He promised me that he would take care of us, be here for the baby and for me, so I agreed. Well, now Paddy's not here. He's gone and he isn't coming back. I am glad I kept the baby, because it's what he wanted, but I can't live the rest of my life with a kid because somebody who isn't here anymore wanted me to. I can't look at a reminder of him every single day."
The room was completely frozen. Kerrianne's mouth hung open in surprise, any of her previous thoughts or concerns flying out the window. Fiona mirrored her daughter, hand over her open mouth, hiding a trembling lip. Mr. McCormick was shaking his head wordlessly at the girl, wishing that she had just stayed asleep and let him handle it. Chibs stood alone, in the corner of the room, his eyes narrow, lips pressed into a thin line.
"Mae, my dear girl," McCormick soothed, attempting to calm the girl. "This news is fresh to all of them. Perhaps they need some time to process, to let the dust settle if you will."
"Fresh to them?" she hissed at the older man. "Why is this news fresh to them? You have known for months, and you didn't think it wise to mention it?"
"I was waiting for an appropriate moment," he replied, his gaze resting on his feet. "I needed to make sure you wouldn't change your mind."
"You said that they would take care of him! You promised me!" the girl shouted, miraculously not waking the baby who slept soundly in Fiona's arms. McCormick opened his mouth to try to calm the raging girl.
"Of course we'll take care of him," Fiona stood from her chair and moved towards the girl. "Of course we will. We loved Paddy, like he was our own, and we will love him, too."
"We will?!" Kerrianne broke in, excitedly. She rushed over to her mother, trying to get a glimpse of the baby.
"You will?" the girl asked, her former anger and bravado gone.
Grins broke out across the room, and the excitement level was so tangible that they almost didn't hear Chibs when he spoke.
"No," he said quietly, seriously, his voice laced with something even his wife couldn't identify.
"Filip?" Fiona turned instantly toward him, her face the picture of shock. "What do you mean?"
A ripple of unrestrained pain broke his stony exterior for a split second, and then it was gone. "I mean...no," he said again, before looking up at Maeve, who looked like she wanted to cry. "I'm so sorry, but no."
With that, Chibs left the room, leaving a shocked Fiona and Kerrianne, a confused David, and a heartbroken Maeve in his wake.
"What do you think is going on in there?" Tess wondered, her eyes drifting towards the hall leading back to the dorm. Tara had come out and told them all that the baby, a boy, had arrived, and Fiona and Kerrianne and the old man had gone in. Opie and Tara were over by the bar, talking quietly, probably filling Opie in on whatever was happening.
"I don't know," Kozik shrugged. "Probably some family stuff."
It was growing late, and Tess was exhausted. She had been there working since this morning, and at this point, she would pretty much kill for a bed. Kozik wouldn't hear of just letting her go home. He took her safety very seriously. There was a girl having a baby in one of the back rooms, and Kozik was staying until the situation was handled, which meant that she was staying as well. He had offered to set her up in his dorm, but she held out hope that they would be going home at some point tonight. Besides, she didn't mind staying awake if it meant spending time with him.
"Makes sense," Tess agreed. "Think they'll let me hold the baby after the 'family stuff' is done?"
Kozk grinned at her. "You like babies?"
"Everybody likes babies," Tess insisted, not meeting his eye. "They're cute and sweet and tiny."
"And they scream their heads off and poop everywhere and never let you sleep," Kozik argued. "Babies are hard. When my kid was born, I swear, I went days at a time without sleeping."
"Your kid?" Tess asked, instantly more awake. "I...I didn't know you had a kid."
He had realized his mistake the second the words left his mouth. Sometimes, it seemed like he had known Tess his whole life. It was easy for him to forget that there were things, important things, that she didn't know. This wasn't the way he would have chosen for her to find out about one of those important things.
"Yeah," he told her. "A daughter. Kendra. She is nineteen now. Her mom, a girl I dated for awhile in high school, got pregnant when we were seventeen."
"Wow," Tess breathed. "I guess I just never pictured you as a dad, you know? You never mentioned her before."
"I was never really much of a dad to her," Kozik admitted. "I was too young. I was there for awhile, when she was tiny, but after I graduated high school, I joined the Marines and was gone most of the time. When she was a kid, I saw her a few times a year, called when I could, but her Mom got married when she was ten. She had a good stepdad, a happy life. I wasn't in such a great place after I was discharged, and she didn't need me weighing her down."
"I get that," Tess told him softly. "I'm sure that you did the best you could."
"I tried," he said honestly. "She was always taken care of, and she knows if she needs me, I would be there in a second. We're in a good place now."
"That's good," she told him, unsure of what else to say. Hearing him talk about his daughter, and seeing the obvious love he had for the girl, despite his mistakes, made her heart swell. The more she knew about him, the more she liked him. At this point in her life, growing super attached to him was probably a stupid idea, but she found herself caring less and less. She couldn't stop herself from liking him even if she wanted to.
"What about you?" he asked, pulling her from her thoughts. "You ever think about having kids? I know you said once that you didn't want them, but I bet you would make a great mom."
She shrugged. "I used to think I wanted kids. Back when I was with Tim, before my accident. I thought that I wanted to be a suburban housewife with two kids and a dog. But now? I mean, I barely have my own life together. I can't take care of a kid. I can barely take care of myself, you know?"
"You don't give yourself enough credit," Kozik told her. "You are doing a hell of alot better than most people would be in your situation."
"Yeah, but my life right now isn't exactly conducive to having a little kid around," Tess made her point. "Maybe someday."
He tried not to picture her with a tiny, blond haired, blue eyed little baby, but he failed miserably. His only hope was to change the subject, and quickly.
"We should be able to head home when they come out," Kozik mentioned, off hand. "It's probably been a long day for you."
"I'm fine," she assured him, glad for the shift in conversation. "Is it always this crazy around here? Lockdowns and IRA and live births in the Clubhouse?"
"Sometimes," he admitted with a smile, aware that she was teasing him. "But we handle our shit and move on. All this will be over soon and things will calm down."
Her reply was interrupted by the sound of boots coming down the hall. They both looked up in time to see Chibs stomp through the main room.
"What's going on, Chibs?" Kozik called out, but the other man ignored him and walked straight to the exit. "That can't be good."
Not even half a minute later, Fiona followed her husband from the back room, and Kozik tried his question again. "Fiona, what's going on?"
"Long story," the woman answered without stopping. "No time to explain. I need to catch him before he takes off."
And with that, she was gone, leaving Kozik and Tess sitting cluelessly on the couch. Opie and Tara were looking on silently from over by the bar, and Kozik could tell that they didn't know anymore than he did.
"So," Tess cut into his thoughts. "I am guessing that those 'calm times' you talked about still might be a ways off."
"Filip Telford, don't you dare get on that bike and leave without hearing what I have to say first!" Fiona shouted at her husband as he approached his bike. There were time when her loud, commanding voice came in handy, and this was definitely one of those times. He stopped in his tracks, but didn't turn to face her.
"Fi," he managed to get out, his voice sounding strangled. "I can't do this right now. I just need to get away for awhile, clear my head."
"I know you do," she huffed, a bit breathless as she finally caught up to him. "But you need to hear me out first. It's not just you anymore, and you can't go stomping off whenever things aren't going the way you expect."
She was right, and he knew that, but he didn't want to admit it, so instead, he just said nothing, choosing instead to pull out a cigarette and light it.
Fiona stopped a few feet from him and wrapped her arms around her body against the chill in the air. She gave him a minute of quiet before speaking again. "Tell me what you're thinking, Love."
"I don't even know," he laughed without humor, looking up at her. "This is all happening too fast. When we woke up this morning, Paddy was dead and buried, and now he is a father and he's still dead and buried and we are supposed to take in this baby and raise him. because his mother won't do it? It's...just too much."
"She's still a baby herself," Fiona sighed. "And just months ago, she lost the man she loves. It would be hard for her to manage on her own, to be reminded of him everyday. I wouldn't be able to do it either."
"And you think it won't be hard for me?" he countered.
"I know it will be," she acknowledged. "You loved Paddy. We all did. But Filip, we aren't scared nineteen year olds with no family or friends to turn to. She is."
"I know that," he admitted. "I just don't know if I can do this."
Fiona knew how difficult this was for him, knew that he was still reeling from the death of his nephew. She took pity on him and wrapped her arms around him, offering a gentle smile. "You're not in this alone, Filip. You've got me, and you've got Kerrianne. You've got your brothers here, and a real support system. It's not just you."
"I'm glad," he muttered into her hair, relaxing into the hug. "Jesus Fiona. A baby. What the hell would we do with a baby?"
"The same thing we did all those years ago, when we brought Kerrianne home" Fiona replied, ending the embrace and looking at him again. "I remember you didn't sleep for days. You kept checking, making sure that she was breathing. You were scared back then, too, but it all turned out alright, in the end. You're a fantastic father to Kerrianne, despite all the shit we have been through. And it was never supposed to be just her. In a perfect world, there would be three of our kids running around, getting into trouble."
"Four," he corrected, instantly. "We agreed on four."
"That's right, you managed to effectively negotiate and extra kid," she reminisced with a grin. "Well, if we take this wee boy, we'll be half way there."
"I still don't know Fi," he groaned. "It's alot. All at once. I just, I need to get of here. I need to-"
"Think," she interrupted. Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed a kiss against his lips. "I know you do. I'll be here waiting when you get back, we all will. You go and you think, but Filip, please know that I want this. I want to take that sweet baby boy home with us. I know that you need some time and some space. Just be careful, and come back in one piece, yeah?"
He was stunned for a moment, by how incredibly lucky he was to have her here, with him, even after all these years. Despite all the shit that was closing in on him, he was glad that he wasn't alone.
"I love you Fiona," he told her, fastening his helmet. "I really do."
"You better," she told him, watching as he started his bike and rode away. When she couldn't see his tail lights anymore, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for his safe return, before going back to whatever was waiting for her inside.