Disclaimer: I own nothing.
I'm glad you guys like this one! It's pretty unhappy, much like the movie that inspired it's nature. However, like the movie, it ends with a rekindling of love. I figure I'd just spoil that little fact because, well, it ends the same as my other stories :) There's really nothing to spoil there. Anyway, thanks for the reviews and I hope you like this chapter!
"You have to go to your mother's house, Tala," Derek said tiredly as he stood in his daughter's doorway. They were getting ready to exit the apartment so he could take the girls back to Penelope's house. "You know she has you during the week."
Tala hadn't even begun to get her backpack together and was sulking at her computer, messaging with Emily, who had just left Quantico to return to London. "Don't care," she said, not bothering to look up from her computer screen. "Not going."
"Tala, get up," Derek said sternly. "You are going to your mother's house. She told me the team caught a case, so we're going out of town anyway. I leave in the morning."
Huffing, she got up from her sitting position and growled, "Fine. Give me five minutes."
"Good," he said, moving away from the door and heading back down the hall to check on how Soraya and Lindy were faring. "Hey, you two," he said, entering the room his younger daughters shared. "You guys ready to go?"
"Ready Daddy!" Soraya said with a grin. She stood up and grabbed her purple backpack. "I can't wait to see Mom. I missed her."
Leaning down to kiss his daughter's forehead, he said, "I know you did." Turning to Lindy, he asked, "You all done with that book, sweetie?" He pointed to her copy of The Kite Runner.
She nodded. "Finished it last night," she said quietly.
"You going to be okay?" he asked. "It was making you really upset."
Lindy didn't say anything to that. Derek sighed and led them out of the room towards the kitchen. Tala had emerged from her room, an angry expression on her face and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked just like Penelope when she was angry. She looked like Penelope any day of the week.
"Everyone ready to go?" he asked, grabbing his keys from the kitchen counter. He smiled at his daughters.
"No," Tala snarled, glaring at him.
"Yes!" Soraya said excitedly at the same time as her older sister was denouncing leaving.
"Let's get going then," he said, ignoring his eldest's lack of enthusiasm.
XXXXX
Derek turned his car off as he pulled into the driveway of his old house. He felt a feeling of instantaneous rage flash through him when he saw a car he didn't recognize parked there.
Tala's scowl confirmed that it was Kyle's car. "God, I hate that tool," she muttered.
"Let's get you three inside," he said, seeming to ignore Tala's comment, but secretly praising her for it in his mind.
Soraya and Lindy jumped out of the car, both of them excited to see their mother. Tala, on the other hand, stomped out and slammed the car door, stalking up the steps to the house and shoving her way inside. Derek followed in behind them and shut the door more gently for fear Tala might slam it.
From the living room he could hear the sounds of laughter, namely Penelope's signature giggle. He entered the living room and found Penelope and Kyle sitting on the couch. His wife's head was thrown back as she laughed, a glass of wine in her hand; Kyle's hand was resting on Penelope's thigh. Derek clenched and unclenched his fists to keep from saying anything or changing his body language.
He had to keep his anger under wraps. No matter how badly he wanted to pummel the man with his hands on his wife, he couldn't.
Not when she was clearly happy with the bastard.
When Penelope's eyes found Derek's, her laughter stopped abruptly, and she took a long swallow of her wine. "Er, hello Derek," she said stiffly. She stood up from her seat and set the wine glass on the table, smoothing her skirt in the process.
"Mom!"
Soraya came racing into the room after having put her backpack down. She threw her arms around Penelope's waist.
Penelope smiled and kissed the top of her daughter's head. "Hey, sweetie," she said, keeping her arms around her daughter for a moment. "You have an okay time at Daddy's?"
The little girl nodded and grinned. "Yep," she said. "We went to the zoo, and I got to feed a giraffe."
"Cool," Penelope said, smoothing back some of Soraya's hair. "You'll have to tell me more about it.
"Maybe we should go to the zoo sometime," Kyle suggested. "I'd like to feed some giraffes with you, Soraya."
Derek shifted uncomfortably with anger and clenched his jaw. He noticed Penelope was avoiding his gaze. Clearing his throat, he said, "We ate, uh, before we came. So…they don't need dinner."
Penelope looked at him finally, but didn't say anything. "Oh," she squeaked. "Alright."
Just when Derek thought things couldn't get any more uncomfortable, Tala entered the room. Her face was scrunched in a glare, and she directed it towards her mother and Kyle.
Penelope smiled hesitantly at her daughter, hope lighting up in her eyes. "Hey, Tala," she murmured. "How was the weekend?"
The look on Penelope's face when Tala ignored her tore Derek's heart into yet another piece. Even if things were tense between him and his wife, he never wanted to see her hurting.
Tala shot her mother a glare and went over to Derek to give him a hug before he left. "I'm going out with Jenny, so I'm going to say goodbye now," she murmured, hugging him tightly. "I love you, Dad."
Hugging her back, he kissed the side of her head and whispered in her ear, "Love you too, Baby," he murmured. "Have fun."
"Be back by eleven, please," Penelope said. "You've got school tomorrow."
Scoffing, Tala said, "Whatever, Mom."
"Young lady, don't talk to your mother that way," Kyle snapped, also rising from the couch.
"Fuck off, Kyle," Tala grumbled, moving to leave the room.
"Tala!" Penelope cried, appalled.
"And don't use that kind of language, or I'll -"
She laughed sarcastically. "Or you'll what?" she snapped.
"I'll make sure to smack that smirk off your mouth."
Derek couldn't keep silent any longer. Getting closer to Kyle, he straightened to his full height and growled, "You ever touch my daughter, and I'll make sure you can't get up off the ground. I don't care if you're fucking my wife or not, but you don't ever touch my children!"
"She's going to have to get used to me disciplining her because I'm going to be here for a good long while," Kyle said hardly, straightening his back as well. "So I have the right to -"
"The right?" Derek thundered. "You don't have the right to do anything!"
"Enough!" Penelope shouted, stepping between them.
Kyle turned his gaze away from Derek to look at Penelope with disbelief. "Baby, how —"
"I said enough, Kyle!" She grabbed Derek's arm harshly and hissed, "Come with me!" She dragged him into the kitchen and glared at him. "You need to leave now, Derek."
He looked at her incredulously, shocked at why she was pulling him aside like he was the misbehaving child in the classroom. "Excuse me?" he growled. "You're telling me I need to leave? That bastard just threatened to harm Tala, and you're letting him! I have every right to yell at him."
"You think I don't care that Kyle just said that to Tala?" she snapped, putting her hands on her hips. "If he dared lay a hand on her, I would have his ass in jail before he could even blink. I will be having a conversation with him, but right now you're scaring Soraya."
"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "Soraya hasn't even…" His voice trailed off. It was like he was giving up, just like he had with their marriage.
Penelope crossed her arms over her chest. "And for your information I'm not sleeping with Kyle," she added, averting her eyes once more. "That was so far over the line. You had no right to say that."
He glared at her and rubbed the top of his head. "Just make sure you keep that asshole in line," he muttered. "But I swear to God: he lays a finger on Tala, Lindy, or Raya and I'll kill him."
She wanted to say more, but just she sighed, not wanting to talk with him anymore. "Leave, Derek," she whispered, ignoring the ache beneath the left side of her ribs. "Please."
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, neither blinking. It was as if they were trying to find the answer to all their problems.
Penelope looked into his brown eyes and tried to find something, anything to tell her how he was feeling at the moment. What he was thinking. But she saw nothing. He was just staring at her blankly.
As she stared at him, her eyes flicked to his left hand. It was so strange to see him without the ring that had once bound them together in marriage. She didn't now why she was so bothered by this though. The day after he'd left she'd taken the ring he'd given her when he'd asked her to marry him and stuck it in her dresser drawer. She had no idea what had happened to his, but she constantly wondered. Had he tossed it in the trash or thrown it down the drain.
She was a hypocrite. She was the one who wanted this. She shouldn't care.
And apparently he didn't care either.
With his mouth in a hard line, Derek grumbled, "Keep that bastard from hurting our daughters, or I will." And then he stormed out of the house, kissing his daughters on the head before leaving.
XXXXX
"Kyle, I need to talk to you," Penelope said harshly as she walked back into the living room. Soraya and Tala were gone from the room, and Kyle was pouring himself more wine.
"What's up, Babe?" he asked, leaning back against the couch cushions.
She didn't waste any time tearing into him. "Don't you ever say that you're going to lay a hand on my daughter," she hissed, shoving her finger into his chest. "Because if you do there won't be a place on this earth you can hide from me."
Kyle laughed. "Babe, I wasn't being serious," he said. "She was being disrespectful to you, so I thought I'd give her a little talking to."
"You let Derek and me handle that," she ordered. "We've only been dating a month, Kyle. You don't have the place to tell her that."
Raising his hands in surrender, he said, "Okay, fine. I'll ease up. I just don't like the way she talks to you. You're her mother, not a petty teenage friend of hers. She's acting like a bitch, that's all that can be said."
Angrily, Penelope pointed towards the door. "You don't get to say that about my daughter," she said. "Get going. I need you to leave now. We'll talk more about this later. Right now I can't even look at you." She watched a smirk grow on his face and shook her head. "I'm not even kidding right now. Get out of my house."
Seeing that she really wasn't kidding, Kyle blew out a sigh and went towards her to kiss her cheek. She turned her face away. "I'll call you."
As soon as he was out of the house, Penelope sat down and rubbed her forehead. She was just going to have to dump Kyle. He disrespected her, and the moment he mentioned harming Tala as a way of teaching a lesson was the final straw. The next time she saw him he would be getting kicked to the curb.
Finishing off her wine, she tiredly made her way to the kitchen to put the glass in the sink. She still had a few hours before Tala would be home. Returning to the living room, she found Soraya now on the couch watching TV and Lindy in one of the armchairs with another book. "Hey, girls," she murmured.
"Hey, Mom," Lindy said in her soft voice. She looked up and smiled softly.
Penelope sat down on the couch next to her youngest daughter and kissed the top of her head. "You okay, Raya?" she asked. She was slightly worried that the exchange between Derek and Kyle had scared her.
"Just watchin' Phineas and Ferb," she said nonchalantly. She didn't seem affected at all. "You know Mom, I kind of wish we had a pet platypus. You said we could get another dog after Clooney died, but we never did."
Lindy snorted. "I highly doubt a platypus is what Mom and Dad want," she muttered, flipping a page in her book.
Penelope heard the way Lindy added both her parents in the mix and sighed. Apparently her seven year old wasn't the only one who wanted her parents to reunite. An idea sparked in her head and she said, "You know, I don't think we could do a platypus, but what do you say we go and get another dog?"
"Daddy should come, too," Soraya chirped, turning to look at Penelope after a commercial break had started.
"Honey, Daddy has to work this week," she said tiredly. "And he wouldn't be seeing the dog. The dog would live here with us."
Lindy didn't even look up when she said, "I'm not going unless Dad does."
Penelope rubbed her forehead. "Girls, we'll talk about this later, 'kay?" she murmured.
She wasn't in the mood to discuss Derek with Lindy or Soraya. She was still fuming form the comment he'd made about her sleeping with Kyle. If she said anything about Derek in that moment, it would only prove to be more damaging.
But not talking about it didn't keep her from thinking of him and what he'd assumed about her and Kyle. To her, it was proof of how little they knew each other anymore.
Marriage had killed their connection, just like it had their friendship.
"I still think we get a platypus still," Soraya grumbled.
XXXXX
It was nearing two in the morning when Penelope quit pacing. The front door to the house had opened to reveal Tala, and she immediately ran to the atrium to find her daughter.
"Where the hell have you been?" she said angrily. "You were supposed to be back by eleven. It's now almost quarter to two!"
Tala met her mother's gaze equally as if to challenge her, but took off her coat and threw it on a hook by the door, not responding. She walked right by her to go to the kitchen, and Penelope followed after her.
"Tala, I'm talking to you!"
Tala smirked. "Yeah," she muttered, going into the fridge to grab a bottle of water. "So I noticed."
Penelope was furious. "Tala, I understand you're upset, but I'm still your mother," she said, trying to keep her anger in check. "You -"
"Some mother you are," she snapped. "You let your boyfriend say he was going to smack my mouth off." She tilted her water to her lips and took a short swig before returning her icy gaze to Penelope. Smiling sarcastically, she added, "I'd give you 'Mother Of The Year' for that one."
"Kyle has been taken care of and will not be coming back here," Penelope said in frustration. Her expression softened. "I'm so sorry you had to hear that, baby. But I'm promising you, no one I date is ever going to lay a finger on you."
"Fine. Whatever."
Penelope sighed, tears flooding behind her eyes. "Tala, you can't keep treating me like this," she said quietly, but firm. "Please. I just want us to go back to the way we used to be. Don't you remember? You actually used to like me."
Staring daggers at Penelope, Tala spat, "You know what, Mom? Yeah, I do remember how it used to be. And I didn't like you...I loved you! But after what you did to Dad, I can't say anything other than I'm ashamed to be your daughter." Penelope felt her gut drop and her heart shatter. "You hurt the one man who loves you more than anyone in the world! You left him without even trying to talk to him. So for your information, I just want you to leave me the hell alone. I don't want anything to do with you anymore."
Without another word, Tala stormed off to the stairwell, leaving Penelope in the kitchen, stunned. Tears filled her eyes and she felt them trickle down her cheeks. Everything felt huge, like a mountain she had to climb if she had any hope of surviving.
Suddenly, a buzzing noise sounded from the counter. Wiping her eyes, she looked towards Tala's phone that was left on the counter. She pressed the screen on, swiping past the text from a friend so she could see the background photo. The picture on the phone was one of Derek, Tala, Lindy, and Soraya. It was taken only a week ago, while the girls had been with their father.
As Penelope looked at the happy faces on her family's face, she couldn't help but feel like she was no longer a part of it.
Sorry this one was so long...