What Happens from Here?

It was officially the next morning, the sun was almost out and since the news about… this person, came about in the most unexpected way, nobody has moved from the table for the past three hours. Everyone just sat in silence. It was more like everyone was in shock.

Carrie was in shock that she finally told the boys the truth; Zack was for the first time in his life, speechless.

It was Cody who was probably taking it the hardest. Millions of thoughts were running through his mind.

From this moment it would've seemed a long time ago when life made sense. It used to be so easy getting up in the morning and eating breakfast then going to school.

It used to be so easy just sitting down at lunch having a conversation with friends about terrible homework assignments.

It used to be so easy to think about all the possibilities of "what if" and "why not."

But for Cody, these trivial things that ran throughout his head every waking moment just went out the window. The truth about the theory of "what if" is the fact that even though you can think of possibilities, you never even dream about the impossibilities.

How could something like this be hidden for so long? Where do you begin to sift through the natural thoughts of, what's his name, how tall is he? Is he the oldest, the youngest, who's the middle child? Who's really the smartest, the most clever?

During the midst of all of Cody's thoughts, Zack made the first move of getting up from the table.

"Where are you going sweetie?" Carrie said with a light voice. She obviously felt a little guilty for springing this on the twins as abruptly as she did.

Moving away from the kitchen like a zombie, Zack turned around and in a stale voice he replied, "I hafta pee… I've been holding it since last night."

Then he turned back around and disappeared around a corner. It was just Carrie and Cody at the table. They were both afraid to look each other in the eye, both not wanting to be asked any questions.

Her fingers were fidgeting;

His toes clung onto the knobs of his chair.

The heating vents were turned on in the hotel eliminating the eerie silence, which was kind of a relief.

Silent breathing and ankle joints cracking under the table could be heard.

"What happened mom…" Cody finally spoke.

He didn't know if he really wanted to hear the truth or not, or if he even wanted her to reply. She gave him a look like she was really at a loss of words and didn't know where to begin.

Cody understood and didn't really want to pressure her into saying anything more because he was afraid the next thing that came out of her mouth would be the last stone to crumple his world completely.

He placed his hand over his mothers as a sign of understanding. Then he got up from the table heading towards his room.

"We were young…" Carrie uttered.

Cody stopped.

"Me and Kurt…" Carrie's voice was beginning to crackle; she paused as a tear ran down her cheek. She was looking across the room at a photo of her with Kurt and the twins and let out a sigh.

"Oh Cody, we were so young and stupid… we didn't know what to do… we didn't think."

Carrie couldn't allow herself to break down in front of her children; she still had to hold the family together. She paused to regain her composure.

"Not a day goes by that I don't feel guilty for what happened."

She pulls the printed photograph out of her night robe and stares at it. Cody just now noticed that even though she disregarded his existence to him and Zack, she never did give the photo back to him.

"All of these years… and I thought he was being well taken care of… It was a promise… He was supposed to be well taken care of."

Cody felt it was time to leave Carrie with her thoughts, so he went back into his room where Zack was already lying up in his bed seemingly in deep thought.

"Where do we go from here?" Zack finally spoke. He was bending each of his fingers back and forth, needing something to do to take his mind off reality.

"I really don't know" Cody replied.

"I mean, this whole time, our entire lives, we've always been the "twins" we do everything together, we are known as Zack and Cody. But this whole time, there's always been another one of us… the whole time. What does that mean for us?"

Cody paused for thought for just a second.

"It doesn't mean anything. We will always be Zack and Cody."

Cody sat down on his bed. Zack leaned forward.

"But what about our brother? We know he exists now. What should we do about it? I mean should we meet him, or pretend this didn't happen? I'm so confused right now."

"I'm just as confused as you are too. It's like, suppose we do meet him. What are we going to say to him? What if he hates our guts? After all, we we're the lucky ones."

"But it could've just as easily been one of us that ended up like he did." Zack reminded him.

"So what do you want to do?" Cody asked.

While flurries of thoughts were being juggled between the twins, Carrie sat at the dining table. How was she going to make it through work today? It was a pretty rough night, and it was going to be a pretty rough day. How would she be able to look at her kids in the face? How could she teach them to learn from their mistakes when she made the biggest one imaginable? They would never look at her the same ever again. Was she a good parent? Was she even a good person?

By the time it reached 8 in the morning, everyone was so tired Carrie allowed the boys to miss school and sleep in. There were a lot more important things to handle at the moment. She wanted to slip out of the suite unnoticed so that she could hide from her boys for the rest of the day. The last thing she wanted to do was talk even more about this.

The one thing that Carrie did do before hanging up on Kurt, was arrange a meeting point. Kurt was near Boston and he would take a detour with the band to meet up with Carrie. They were going to talk about how they were going to let the boys know about this. This was before Carrie knew Cody had been eavesdropping. She knew without a doubt that she could not handle this alone.

Kurt was definitely going to be in for a surprise.

"YOU DID WHAT?"

Panic spread over Carrie's face. She knew Kurt would be a little surprised, but he was just plain freaking out.

They had just met up in an almost deserted bar fifteen miles away from the Tipton. They were in a private area. He seemed stressed out from the drive, apparently he drove the whole night through.

"Kurt I had no choice, I was in a corner! Believe me if I could've gotten out of it I would have."

"Well what did they do? What did they say? Are they mad at me? A- Are they mad at us?"

"Kurt calm down."

"How can I? I'm their father. If I wasn't there to tell them about this myself, how can they ever trust me to be there for them when something this deep impacts their lives? I lost one son already; I can't lose the other two, not now. I love them too much."

"You're not gonna lose them Kurt. You know the boys love you. This is just something they're going to have to take in little by little at a time."

His face changed from panic to sadness.

" But all this time has passed, all this time I've wondered if he was even still alive. After all this time…"

Kurt was at a standstill. He placed his hands on the back of his neck and looked up at the ceiling.

"…and now I realize that he's been living in hell his whole life, and he probably doesn't even know anything different."

Carrie just stood there silent, she leaned to the side and grabbed her purse off the bar table and went through her bag to pull out the photograph. She tossed it onto the table in front of Kurt. He looked down and his mouth opened as if to mumble something, but nothing came out. With a shaky hand, Kurt lifted the photo into his palm and realized that he was holding a picture of the son he hadn't seen in thirteen years. A single tear ran down his face as he placed his other hand in the front of the photo as if to reach out to this boy.

"My god… he looks just like our other boys… he looks just like his mother…" Kurt smiled weakly.

He looked up at Carrie as if to silently say thank you.

"Are you sure telling the boys was the right thing to do?"

Carrie lifted up her arms.

"I'm not sure if anything I do is right anymore, the best we can do is go with what works at the time being."

Kurt was finally regaining his composure; he was getting calm enough to sit down. Carrie went ahead and sat right next to him as they both just stared at the picture. It had been a long time since they had sat so close together. Usually they would try to go their separate ways whenever Zack and Cody weren't around. It was as if they had to work hard to hate each other. But just this once, for a little while, they were able to stand being around each other. They finally had something they agreed on, they had skeletons in their closets that they both shared.

"You know"… Kurt started. "I always had this vision in my head that if or when I ever saw my third son, he would be happy, and that he would've truly been better off without me, without us. And now that I see what became of him, I feel regret all over again…"

"What do you think we should do?" Carrie asked.

"We should both probably talk to the boys about this. Together. They must have a million questions."

"I suppose you're right."

It became noon before Carrie and Kurt even moved from the table. Emotionally they were both strung out and dazed from the mental blows they both received. Kurt went ahead and drove with Carrie back to the hotel leaving the band with the RV. It was going to be a while before Kurt came back. As they pulled up to the hotel, their hearts were rapidly beating, knowing they were in for the battle of their lives.

For the first time ever, they would be sitting down in the chairs, while the kids would demand reasons for their actions.

"This feels like report card day all over again." Kurt said trying to lighten up the mood just a little.

"Well Kurt, I never really had to worry about that…"

They both smiled and worked up the courage to get out of the car to head up to the suite.

When they opened the door, both Carrie and Kurt were a little surprised to see Zack and Cody sitting at the dining room table, waiting for them. Both of them were smiling and sitting up nice and straight, hands folded.

"Hello mother." Cody said cheerfully.

"Father." Zack nodded his head.

This was a little disturbing, Carrie thought. Neither she nor Kurt was expecting to come home to this. In the middle of the table sat a fresh batch of cookies made by Cody.

"Would either of you like a cookie. I made them myself." Cody said showing all of his teeth.

There was just silence. What was going on? Why weren't either of the boys upset, or even slightly unhappy?

"Perhaps a different time then…" Cody suggested, his grin never fading.

"Hey boys! Look who's come to see you." Kurt said happily holding out his hands for hugs. The boys didn't move.

Instead they kept smiling.

Kurt put his hands down.

"So uhh… how was school today?" He tried to change the subject.

"We didn't go to school today." Zack said still grinning.

"Oh right." Kurt forgot. He took a deep breath and then stared at Carrie wondering what they should do to break the tension that was in the air.

"Would you like to have a seat guys?" Cody gestured his hand to the couch.

"Oh… I think were fine." Carrie said looking at Kurt and then back at the boys.

"Sit down." Zack said, his grin fading into just a scary looking smile.

Both parents quickly rushed to the couch and sat down not moving a muscle. They knew that they were in for it. Whatever was going to happen, they were just gonna have to take it.

Zack stood up from his chair and grabbed one of Cody's cookies and began to nibble on it before he slowly walked towards the couch. He began pacing back and forth examining both Carrie and Kurt. They were both nervous. Finally, Zack stopped right in front of them and began his speech.

Zack tilted his head as if to look up towards the sky.

"Due to recent events... hidden agendas, the unveiling of SECRET FAMILY MEMBERS... all that good stuff… we the children of the household have come to the conclusion that it is only fair that we be entitled to repercussive benefits."

"You know… for psychologically damaging our fragile minds by lying to us our whole lives." Cody added.

Carrie and Kurt just looked at each other. Then they looked back at the boys.

"What… kind of benefits?" Carrie asked.

"Oh, just a few mother." Zack assured her.

"First! We both would like a raise in our allowances, not just cash, but in privileges as well."

"Like what?"

"We get to choose our bedtime from now on. I mean come on, we're old enough to know when we're tired, and we know what time school starts." Zack said.

Carrie shrugged her shoulders. That was it? The boys just wanted some dirt on them to get some extra stuff? This was too good to be true. So what if she paid a few extra bucks in allowance, or let them go to bed when they felt like it. So what if Kurt bought them new clothes and gadgets, It all seemed like reasonable demands that she could actually deal with, what's the worst thing they could ask for?

She sat through their incredibly long list of demands like extra games, and new sneakers, and basketball equipment. It was more of a relief really. Maybe telling the boys this grudgingly difficult secret wasn't so bad. It seemed like they were able to take it pretty well. But it was the one demand at the very end of the list that nearly stopped both her and Kurt's heart cold.

"…and finally, we would like to meet our brother." Zack said finishing off the list.

For the first time since the parents got back, Zack and Cody's smiles disappeared. It was apparent all the other stuff they demanded was just a cover up for what they really wanted.

"after all… he's family." Cody finished.

There was a deafening silence in the room. Carrie's eyes went wide and Kurt's mouth just hung open. That was the killer, which was the number one fear that the two of them shared. It not that they didn't want the boys to reunite, it was the fact that for the first time both Carrie and Kurt would have to answer to the son that they had never really met, why he was given away.

" are you sure about this?" Kurt said finally doing the talking for he and Carrie.

" Yes. We need to meet him, look at him. Speak to him… we probably have so much to talk about that it would take forever just to scratch the surface." Cody said.

Carrie let out a breath of exhaustion. She was on her last leg. She laid her head on Kurt's shoulder and just sighed in defeat. Kurt knew just how she felt. But he knew it was time to stop hiding from the past. It was time to pull that skeleton from the closet even if things were going to turn out for the worst. It just had to be done.

"Alright… then it shall be done…" Kurt smiled, but deep down he was very scared.