Hello, another story from me and back (after a very long break) to come back to this wonderful fandom with a new story.
So yeah this is massively AU. I don't really have a lot of background notes in the works in terms of the timing for this story, I am going to put it about seven to eight years before the first season, also I am not an adoption/medical expert nor an expert on teenage parents in another state so I don't know how accurate this is going to be.
I know I have made Mamma Reagan the enemy in this story, I am choosing to make her the villain of this story because A. we needed one and B. She's not really a character I ever write so it was easy. I am also choosing to write that her reaction to Jamie and the pregnancy on the same day she got the diagnosis for her cancer. Again this is AU so if she is a bit OCC...believe me she pays the price later on. Hopefully this story begins to make more sense as we get into it.
I don't know when I will be able to update, it used to be weekly but that was before I got a job so...I will try and update when I can. I predict this little story will be seventeen (ish) chapters.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review and let me know what you think when you get a chance!
AU for Trigger Warnings for Cancer, underage pregnancy, medical issues and a lot of swearing-I swear a lot in my stories so if that is something that you struggle with them please keep that in mind.
And yes...Eddie makes an appearance at some point...I just don't know when.
Spelling and Grammar are never my strongest points and so please keep that in mind as you read.
There's A Place Where Lost Things Go
Chapter 12-Burning With Rage Forever.
Danny, Frank and the rest of the family try to deal with the emotional fallout. Jack Boyle has no idea how HE is the voice of reason in this but somehow he is. Otherwise known as this Author actually likes Jack and would love it if the writers got their head out of their asses and got him and Erin back together before the season finale.
Jack sometimes wonders how he is the only smart one in the room.
He really does because it's not like anyone here is stupid, they are all smart people and yet he was the only one who picked up that Jamie was triggered the fuck out before and that doesn't sit right with him at all.
Burning with rage forever he thinks looking out of the upstairs window onto the dark and empty street. That's what Jamie was, a tormented kid burning with rage forever. And there was very little that could be done to fix it outside of a time machine or a spirit board.
(And he wouldn't put it past Danny to give both a try if he was in the right mood for it)
He loves his wife—despite the fact that they never seem to have time for each other—and he loves his daughter but if he'd know that he had to put up with this mess then he'd have seriously considered eloping in the beginning…or maybe the career move to London.
Right now he's tucked Nikki and Harrison into the big bed upstairs side by side next to each other. Nikki has inherited her mother's dark hair and even that little pout that Erin has in her sleep and Harrison is fussy. He doesn't get why his Dad isn't here Jack supposes and Jack is a poor substitute for the man that he really wants.
He tucks the boy into bed next to his daughter, sets the monitor in case either one of them fusses and then slips downstairs. For all the money in New York he would stay up there with the two children and far away from the children downstairs but then he was not going to give his father in law and his brother in law excuses. He didn't bother with the older man. Henry didn't like him and Jack didn't like Henry that was par for the course. He just wished it was on personality and not because he actually believed in Innocence until Proven Guilty and Wood Shampoos were not an appropriate interrogation technique. But here they were.
He comes downstairs and sees that though they are all drinking nobody has bothered to pour him one. He goes for a beer and then pauses and grabs the wine. Linda is already sat twirling her half empty glass and he tops her up.
"Remind me again why we do this?" he mutters out of the side of her mouth and she quirks a smile at him as he puts the wine back on the board.
"Because we love them"
"Hmm"
Linda smiled at him and rubbed his arm. She alone was one of the only people who got it. Who understood what it was to love a Reagan and all the complicated shit that came with it.
He sighed and took a sip of wine. Danny was pacing up and down the length of the floor. His father in law was stood at the window hands in his pockets back to them all, Joe was stood by the chair that Henry was sat on, Erin was perched on the end of the couch and as it was per usual it was Danny and Erin that were screaming at each other.
"I mean really" Danny said waving his arms around like a windmill. "I told you Erin that Mom was a sore spot and I told you that what four or five times? And so what do you do you bring up Mom and then you imply it was his fault—"
"I did not imply!"
"Oh okay then I guess that makes up for it then" Danny spat sarcastically. "Mom is the Anti-Christ to Jamie Erin and to me and to Joe—"
"Leave me out of that one" Joe muttered and Danny turned to look at his brother who held both hands up in surrender.
"It's complicated for me Danny" Joe said quietly. "I didn't like what she did, still don't, do I think Jamie's got a right to hate her you bet but I was there at the end and you were not"
Jack had to agree with Joe's assessment. He too had found what Mary had done a tad too heartless. He had a very shitty relationship with his own parents and even he had to conclude that his own mother would not have thrown him out if he'd gotten a girl pregnant. Granted of course she would have walloped him with the back of her hand until his ears were so bruised they'd have fallen off but the truth of the matter was that she had been his Mom…and that would have been the end of that.
But there was also the acknowledgement that Mary paid the full price at the end. Dying while one son hated you, one son clearly did not want to be there and one son was missing was not a very pleasant way to go. Jack had tried to stay out of it as best he could, took Nikki away from most of it but Erin had been insistent that Nikki spend time with her grandmother and so he had been there most of the time when Erin had been forced to play piggy in the middle between her mother and father the latter of who had not been shy about how much he had hated what she had done.
Jack wondered briefly if Jamie had ever known that, if he had ever gotten just how much of a firework his father had been…he sighed and took another sip of wine. In his experience nobody wanted his opinion anyway so what was the point?
"Francis do you think we should have someone look for him?"
Danny stopped speaking and then clicked his fingers. Joe threw him his mobile phone. Jack personally thought Joe should be up for sainthood. If he'd had his fingers clicked at him like that by Danny Reagan the only place that phone would have been thrown would have been at his brother in law's head.
"I can get some of the guys out—"
"If he goes this time it's because he wants to" his father in law said heavily. Jack watched as Danny slid his eyes up to his father the argument fresh on his lips and then Frank turned and Jack thought the man looked defeated.
It was an odd look on Frank Reagan and Jack who had a contentious relationship with the man at best had to concede that it was not a look that he wanted to see on Frank's face very often.
However Jack thought that they were missing the grand point.
"If he leaves this time it's because he wanted to" Frank said quietly. "I don't have it in me to go through this again Danny—"
"So you want to sit on your ass and let him fade away—weeks after we just got him back…fuck me—"
"Oh he's coming back" Jack said before he could stop himself. He could feel a headache coming on and Danny slid his eyes to his and for once the look was not the polite and slightly hostile look that Jack was used to him. It was an oddly desperate look and Jack wondered despite how much he tried to keep close to his chest just how much insanity was going on in Danny Reagan's head. How much he too had been suffering with the death of his mother and the disappearance of his younger brother.
God he did not envy Linda on that one, he really didn't.
"Seriously?" he asked the room at large. "I mean it cannot just be me who knows that he is coming back right?"
Again everyone looked at him. Jack sighed. Here right here was why you should not have too many cooks in the kitchen.
"Harrison" he said pointing at the stairs. "Harrison is why he's coming back."
He refrained from using the word Duh. Barely.
Danny opened his mouth and then closed it.
"Oh"
"Yeah" Jack said delicately. "He's coming back for his son, he's overwhelmed right now and who can blame him? He doesn't know how to feel or how to talk about how he feels, that's why the court recommended he have therapy. He doesn't have a clue what he is doing probably hasn't for a year and a half all he's done is put one foot in front of the other and try to keep his head above water. Then he finds out that the one person who kept him from coming home is dead, you're on him like a blanket and he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that you're all mourning the woman he never got to mourn because she told him to go, so he clings to anger so he doesn't have to deal with his problems. You get one mother after all. Jamie's a kid dealing with more problems than you are ever going to get. So he's overwhelmed? He's proven himself time and time again that he is a father first. So he's coming back. Of course he's coming back. He's a parent. The thing you've got to worry about is how to get him to stay once he comes back but I think…I think maybe he might stay"
"Oh?" Henry asked sardonically. "You got any ideas on that one smart ass?"
"More than you old man" Jack bit back before he could stop himself. The older man smiled. It was hard to figure Henry out sometimes, it was like he enjoyed prodding Jack out of his box. Personally Jack sometimes thought a good sharp brush with death might do Henry a lot of good. Man was retired for a reason and it was most certainly NOT Jack's fault that he was board stiff.
"I know that he feels like an outsider. It's written all over his face, I know that he feels like the rug is gonna be pulled out from under him. I know that he was triggered to high hell and back walking in here and that four times during that meal he looked at you Danny as if to tell him to get him the hell out of there but you didn't bother looking back at him"
Danny flinched. Jack sighed. This was like court and usually that would give him a good feeling but right now it was making him tired and not in the good post sex kind of way.
"He's gonna come back" he said turning to his father in law. "And then you and him have got to have it out because we can't keep walking on eggshells like we do. This entire thing is going to keep gnawing at the two of you until you get it out. Cause he's fine with everyone else"
That was true too. Jamie was fine with him, Danny, Joe, even his sister. His grandfather was a mystery but Henry had worked a beat in the fifties so Jack reckoned he knew more about unexploded ordinance more than the rest of them combined. Frank was the problem. Frank was the parent.
"Anything else?"
Jack downed his wine and then.
"He's going to hate your wife for a very long time" he said to Frank. "And you are going to have to let him, and we—" here he shot his own wife a look. "Are going to have to accept that. And one day he will wake up and he will stop hating her and then that is when he will go to her grave"
His wife shot him that half look her eyes overbright. Jack sighed. He loved Erin heart and soul he really did…it was true though that when you married a person you married her family and the Reagan's should have come with a warning label and a get out clause.
"You wanna grab Nikki and go home?"
Erin nodded her eyes overbright and Jack took that opportunity to get the fuck out of there.
As he left Danny turned.
"I hate it when your right you Princeton dickhead"
Jack laughed.
Danny was always Danny and Jack was always Jack and so he flipped him the finger and then went up the stairs.
It was all good in the end.
He put Nikki in the car and then Erin came to join them.
"Grandpa's with Harrison, Dad's gonna wait up for him…Joe and Danny and Linda are going home"
"And?"
"And I think that I need a drink"
She looked at her shoes and then back up at him and Jack could see it in her eyes. The pain of it all, the love that she felt for her mother and the loss of her, the loss of her little brother, the anger that she too felt, all of it swirling up inside of her and he tugged her close to his side and she burrowed her face in his neck.
"You were amazing in there" she said finally.
"Nice closing argument I suppose"
"Yeah"
"You think Danny will ever get it through his skull that I went to Yale and not Princeton?"
She laughed and pulled back looking up at him.
"No."
"Figures"
"Take me home Jack. I wanna put Nikki to bed and I want…I want you to hold me for a while"
"I can do that"
"And talk"
"About?"
"I don't know…just not this"
Jack nodded and then…
"You think maybe tonight might be the night to talk about siblings for our daughter—"
"No"
"Okay…then maybe we could talk about a vacation"
That brightened her up.
"Somewhere warm?"
"Are you kidding? Two weeks of seeing you in a bikini knowing we have fostered our teething daughter on your father? Please I'll book it tonight"
Erin laughed and Jack grinned and they both got in the car.
And Nikki slept on.
So there you go, see you next time.
Next Chapter-In which Eddie and Jamie talk it through. Part 1.