Work Text:
3/12 6:02 pm
Sometimes it makes me goddamn sick that I got a mind like a sewer. It's real useful in working. Every city needs a sewer, to keep the crap from piling up. And the city's my work, and the other sewer-minds who don't just imagine stuff but do it, too. Takes one to know one, I guess. But sometimes it makes me sick, just the same. That I can't turn it off. That piece one comes floating along, bumps into piece two, and all of a sudden, I got a shape, a meaning - no matter if I was really looking, no matter if I want to. It's just goddamn there, right in front of me, and I see it. Can't help it. And sure enough, here comes piece three to nudge in and fit just so and confirm that the shape I'm guessing toward is real.
Another thing I hate about myself is that I can't leave things alone. After that first hunch, the first shape, it nags at me. Won't leave me alone, so I can't let it alone until it's settled. How my mind works; not a thing I can do about it.
I was down Below today, and lucky I was, because Father had his hands full. Peter had come down to give Jacob the usual pediatric once-over, just routine, but it still ticked Father off that Peter didn't think Father's examinations were enough without his sticking his own stethoscope in, too. And probably Jacob was picking up on Father's being ticked off, because uncooperative doesn't begin to describe how he was behaving. Kicking, screaming, even trying to bite with those two neat teeth he's got in front now. And Peter didn't want to upset the kid more, and Father was getting ticked at Jacob, and it was all building up, you could just watch it. V. was off on some work duty, I knew that, I'd just come down to talk to Jamie about the maps and to Pascal about transcribing the code manual, so what the hell, I stuck my oar in. Figured I wasn't PO'd about my territory and my grandson being usurped, so maybe if I held the kid, he'd settle down. Had the sense not to say so, just offered. Father got a kind of a look, like he didn't much like that either, but in spite of how he feels, he really does want Peter to check the kid out, knows he's too close himself to really see any problem in that quarter plainly. Doesn't let his feelings get in the way of good sense. Unfortunately, it's just the feelings that the kid picks up on. Like his daddy that way. Lots of ways. Except outside.
Anyway, Father consented to me scooping the brat up and swinging him around good a couple times to get his mind on something besides how ferocious he thought he ought to be, and tickled him some, and only got kicked a little before he'd settle down for a serious cuddle, paying no attention to Peter and his stethoscope anymore. Nothing special about me, just that somebody was holding him who wasn't upset about the whole business. Anybody but Father would have been okay, but then again, Father wouldn't hand the kid over to just anybody, so maybe the fact it was me had a little to do with it after all. Father makes this big deal about how, except for me, he'd have lost son and grandson both, and I really wish he wouldn't, because what the hell else would anybody have done, but one of the side effects is that he figures I got rights with the kid nobody else does.
Third dibs: after himself and Vincent. And I came third. And I kind of like that because anyway he's a great kid and we get on pretty well, me and Jacob, even when he's not red-faced screaming and baring every tooth he's got. I don't usually get on that well with kids, don't know what to say or do around them, but with Jacob that doesn't matter because he doesn't know the sense of the words yet, just the meaning. So if I mean pretty well, best I can, that's what he picks up on. So I'm not so scared of messing up as I am with Alexandra. Hell, I'll come right out and say it: Jacob knows my heart. And owns it. And he knows it, it's okay by him, and mostly doesn't tie it in knots on that account like some people I could name. That’ll take him a few years yet. Now, it's just simple, and he's great company, and I know what to do around him, or whatever I do is okay by him, which amounts to the same thing, and it's pretty great, generally.
Anyway, so Peter got on with what he was doing, without having to worry about Jacob trying to kick him in the teeth, all the while comparing notes with Father about how, although the kid looks like your basic cute, blond, blue-eyed rug rat that age, the differences are still there. Inside. Heart rate slower than norm. Temperature higher than norm. Hearing and sight a whole lot better. Ditto coordination, which I already knew: can't walk steady yet, but he can jump, and snatch something out of your hands quicker than you can see him move. Nasty sense of humor, too, for a kid that age. Likes to take a swat at your butt when you're not looking, then falls down laughing at how he's startled you. Wonder if V ever was inclined that way. If so, he gave it up long before I got a crack at him. But hanging around with Jacob makes me wonder about things like that...
Likely Father will eventually disapprove him out of it, but it'll take awhile: he's not so upset to have annoyed, irritated, disappointed, or exasperated somebody else as daddy is. A tougher character all around, I'd say. Tons more self-confidence. Maybe not so strong an empath. Or maybe he “hears” just fine, but doesn't bother “listening”: doesn't give much of a damn what other people feel toward him. Maybe, for Jacob, there's not that deep bedrock of fear that if he doesn't somehow please everybody, all the time, they're going to toss him out with the trash and not love him anymore. Tons more careless than daddy. He's got everybody Below wrapped around one furless, claw-free finger, and he sure knows it, and he's going to be a little tyrant pretty soon if somebody doesn't sit on him hard. But that's not my job, and anyway that's for later, not now. I just see it coming. It's how I am.
Anyway, there's Peter and Father talking back and forth over my head, and me being serious about having this great snuggle with my number-one rug rat and finishing up and starting to put his doctoring things away, Peter goes, "I've always wondered why she didn't tell me. I've always wondered if she didn't feel she could trust my discretion.”
Father comes back, "Don't be absurd. She didn't tell Vincent either, and that's much more to the point."
"It's petty, I know," Peter admits. "And probably it would have been needless”. He reaches over and fuzzes Jacob's hair. "Considering that the resemblances proved to be almost entirely internal. But there was no way to know that beforehand. And I would have thought she'd have come to me."
"To one of us," Father agrees, fiddling with his glasses, which means he's more upset than he's letting on. "Although I admit I hadn't always been particularly sympathetic in the past, We'd arrived at a sort of truce, particularly during Vincent's illness. I would have thought she'd have consulted me, if anyone." Putting his glasses back on, Father spread his hands to say that if anyone had the right to feel bewildered and slighted, he was the one.
And me, I duck my head and try to pretend I'm furniture, wheels going around ninety miles a second, off like a rocket from that casual exchange.
And I'm thinking: Here she was, unmarried and pregnant and no chance for V. to make an honest woman of her in the way that her boss or friends would accept, or understand. And to top it off, there's a really huge chance the baby will look like daddy, so even assuming that's OK by her, she doesn't dare have it in a regular hospital. Given who she is, it'd be all over the tabloids by nightfall, with pictures, interviews with the doctors, the whole nine yards. She can't do that. She won't do that. Only one she can trust absolutely is Peter, because he's a helper, been treating V. since V. was a kid, knows as much about those differences (medically speaking) as anybody else on earth. And Peter's also a specialist in obstetrics and pediatric surgery who delivered her, for heaven's sake. Catherine went to college with his daughter. He's literally known her all her life. What better credentials could there be? I didn't know enough, back then, to check out Peter, or what she might have told him, and he'd have lied like a platoon of troopers if I had, so it doesn't matter anyhow. But since I got to know Peter, I always vaguely supposed she would have checked things out with him as soon as she knew she was pregnant. And she didn't. And that goddamn makes me wonder.
Was it possible she didn't know, herself?
Sometimes, people don't. She'd been under a lot of stress, they both had, her and V., over the Spirko business. So no surprise if you miss a period or so: sheer stress. Or maybe you're so preoccupied with the troubles that you don't even notice that you missed. But a pregnancy like that, six months to term, likely gets off to a running start: a week's about like two, in terms of fetal development. So six weeks, between the time in the cave and the time she was snatched, would have been about like two, three months. End of first trimester. Clothes getting too tight, in very specific places. Maybe morning sickness. Weird cravings, likely, given the kid's different physiological needs. Chewing chalk or drinking gallons of milk to make up the calcium deficit from it being drawn out of her system vacuum-cleaner style, to make all those tough little super-dense bones.
No, I don't buy it. She had to know.
I can understand that she didn't tell V. right away. He was half off his head anyway, not a good time to tell him he was going to be a daddy to god knew what, by a woman he'd semi-raped (he'd see it like that: he does see it like that) in a cave while so delirious that he doesn't even remember what happened. And the last person (pardon me) she'd have wanted to confide in was Father. I mean, really! Go to your disapproving quasi-Father-in-law as the first one you tell that his rather odd son knocked you up? When he's just come around to the prospect of you and said son holding hands, more or less, and privately (he's told me, since) believes you got a better chance of being impregnated by a shower of gold than by his strikingly, physiologically nonhuman pride and joy? Who'll be certain you got knocked up the usual way and are trying to pin it on V? Not goddamn likely. Which leaves Peter. The absolutely perfect choice to monitor what was pretty certain to be an unusual and maybe tricky pregnancy. But she didn't tell Peter. And that's very damn odd. Unless....
3/13 1:20 pm
She knew.
It was when Maxwell got caught in that explosion. When Gabriel had would-be defector Patrick Hanlon taken out: before Maxwell got quite far enough away. I went around to the hospital, cornered a couple nurses, and found the one on duty that night: the one who'd told her. She'd donated blood, and the signs were there, all flags flying. Went white as a sheet, the nurse said: an absolute bombshell, by the reaction. And that was a good two weeks before she was snatched. She knew for two weeks. And never told anybody, so far as I can tell. Sure not Maxwell: it hit him like a ton of bricks, that she'd been pregnant. Just about bit my head off after the autopsy, when I told him, jealous as hell and defending her posthumous honor, like I was making it up, slandering her. He still isn't real pleased talking about it, even now. But he still says she never gave him clue one about it, and I believe him. So I did a bounce back to the best buddy, Jenny whatever, and turns out she's like Peter - sure that Cathy would have come to her, hurt that she didn't, certain that there must be some other explanation.
One thing about being pregnant, It's just about impossible to keep secret indefinitely. People notice. So let's figure the options.
She could have taken a leave of absence or just quit (after all, she hardly needed the money) and have the baby in decent seclusion, with doctors (even if not Peter) she could probably pay enough to keep their mouths shut if the baby turned out like daddy. But she wouldn't have liked that: too risky. She took her promise of secrecy seriously - Jenny didn't even know about V. - and what's bought can be unbought for a better price. I don't think she'd have risked that. She'd have gone to Peter, instead, just like he thinks. And she didn't. So scratch plan one.
Plan two: She could have moved Below for good. But she'd been a high-powered lawyer with the DA's office and a high-flying socialite, keeping company with the like of Elliot Burch. And giving (I hope) all due credit, assuming the DA's office get some creeps off the street, and assuming that's worth doing, she helped do it: not only one of their best investigators but one of their top trial lawyers, besides. Everybody says it was real important to her to feel she made a difference in some of the crap that goes on, topside. I can sure understand that, too. Protecting, in her own way ... and in a way V. can't. I can understand that, too. Her own life, on her own terms, with not much to do with V. except by way of motivation and moral support, I guess. So settling down to be a hausfrau in dirt-and- dust, wash-all-the-clothes-by-hand-and-wear-home-patched-hand-me-downs, Utopia USA, everything small-scale, personal, opting out of the topside craziness, making her own separate peace with it, would have been a wrench and against her principles, to boot. She'd had that chance, I gather: tried it and then turned it down, after her pop died, going by what V. has told me. She still felt she had unfinished business topside that was more important than staying with V., even though he'd actually admitted he wanted her to stay. So how would she have taken to forced exile because her baby wasn't fit to be seen? And how would V. (assuming he hadn't gone completely around the bend in the meantime, when he found out) had felt about her giving up her professional life that way? Ten to one, he'd have seen it as a sacrifice, and his fault, and all because of the baby he'd forced on her (as he'd see it), and things would have gone rapidly downhill from there. It never would have worked. Too much guilt, too many stifled resentments - like a shotgun wedding with all the trimmings. They don't last.
Two-A was definitely out. But maybe she was trying for a compromise. Plan Two-B: Duck Below during the pregnancy, then play it by ear from there, once she knew what she'd be dealing with. That's possible. And when she found out (as she would have) that the baby was perfectly fit for public view, then what? Take the baby back Above and do the co-parenting thing with V. on the weekends? And do the single mom thing Above, herself, the rest of the time? Sure, she could afford in-home daycare round-the-clock, live-in nanny, and keep her job and everything (you don't work that hard unless it means a lot to you, when you don't need the money). And single moms with quarterly allowances that approach the GNP of Rwanda aren't social pariahs nowadays. She could have toughed it out, smiled sweetly and said she'd felt it was time to expand her horizons to motherhood and did it herself with a turkey baster or recruited a genetically superior volunteer or contracted with a sperm bank, whatever - who was going to argue with her? Or even so much as criticize? Maxwell, who was convinced whatever she touched turned instantly to flowers and/or platinum? Not likely. Moreno, who kept out of his employees' personal affairs because he couldn't stand much scrutiny into his own, as we came to know all too well? Not much likelier. She could have done the single mom thing in public and it would have been socially acceptable, maybe even trendy, because she was the one doing it. No problem there.
But a problem delegating care of the kid to somebody else, paid help or friends, whatever, on an ongoing basis. Her mom died when she was still a kid, and V. never knew his mom at all. And V.'s made it clear they both felt that lack very keenly. So Above or Below, that's an absentee mom situation; and would Cathy have settled for that for her child and Vincent's? And would she have been willing for V. to feel his child was just fine to keep her company Above, whereas he wasn't, and be deprived of the child himself, to boot, except on visits? Or leave the kid full-time with V. and drop in on them when she could squeeze out the time? That would be the double-whammy - not only delegating the momming but shifting it to V., and in effect abandoning them both in favor of her independent life and career. Divorces have been founded on less. And they'd both find it hard to justify or live with, her and V., if the kid missed out on a regular childhood, sunshine and swings and stuff, not because he was visibly different but because his mom was too busy saving the world to make sure he got it. That would be real hard for either her or V. to swallow, long-term.
I've found that in general, crusaders make lousy parents. And the better they mean, and the more committed they are, the harder it is on the kids. Doesn't mean they don't do good - just means it doesn't begin at home.
No matter how you slice it, you got a choice between do-gooding career and full-time momming - Above or Below, depending on how the kid turned out, which she couldn't know in advance. And depending on how V. took the news, that she was obviously dragging her feet about telling him.
Sure, right at first, V. was pretty non compos. He'd just recovered enough to notice the bond was gone and he was freaked about that. So she wouldn't have told him then. But afterward, it seems that things had settled down. Week or so before she was snatched, she gave him a diary. He showed it to me, and the inscription. That suggests a return to calmitude. She could have told him then. If she was going to tell him at all.
She never told anybody. Just sat tight, like if she didn't do anything, the problem would take care of itself and disappear.
That gives me a real bad feeling.
There was no way she could keep the pregnancy from Vincent in the long run. Or only one way.
These days, the fact that you're pregnant doesn't automatically result in a baby nine months later. Or even six. You can't assume. There's no hard evidence Catherine seriously meant to have this kid.
And a fair amount (although mostly negative) to suggest otherwise. I hate it that I can't leave things alone.
3/15 3 am or so
One routine thing the uniforms did when Catherine was snatched was get her phone records. All her phone records: home and office. This morning I sailed in, pulled the file from (the 210 can get away with stuff like that), and went over the calls for that first Monday after she knew (Joe got blown up on Saturday. Cathy went to the hospital, donated blood, and got the news on Sunday). Monday, she left a callback request for best buddy Jenny, who was out of town at a convention all that week, never got the message in time to call back. But she didn't call other best buddy, the happily married and 2.5 childed Nancy Tucker (NT confirms, in case Cathy used a pay phone or something). Just tried to get to unmarried, childless Jenny.
Again, it's what she didn't do, not what she did, that makes me wonder.
The rest of the week, through Thursday, nothing but legit business calls; I checked out all the numbers. That would be when she was mulling it over, deciding what to do. Showed up every single day, too, despite all that was going on, which indicates how important that job was to her. No rush: by her, it had only been five weeks, with eight months to go, not the five it turned out being: still plenty of time, she'd think, to decide.
Friday morning, bingo. From the office. She called a Dr. Edmondson whose name was not in her address book. Who, his receptionist tells me, is an obstetrician specializing (let's be delicate here) in family planning. I swung by his office - no surprise, Right-to-Life picketers six deep on the sidewalk. With placards, Dr. Phil Edmondson's main practice is upscale abortions – “pregnancy terminations” is the PC term. Office records show one Catherine Chandler (new patient, no referral) had made an appointment for a consultation. That Friday phone call: the times match. The date set for the appointment was the following Monday: three days after she was snatched. She never got there.
Maybe she was just checking out her options.
But she didn't call Peter. And she didn't tell Vincent.
That Friday afternoon, before she was snatched, she sent V. a note asking him to meet her at the threshold below her apartment building. Didn't go to his place; asked him to come to a broken-bricked sub-basement. Don't know what to make of that, except it doesn't sound like a great place for an intimate, emotional chat.... It was a real long hike, the longest V. had made since his collapse. Exhausting. Not something she'd put him through casually if there was a better or easier option. So she really wanted him there, not anyplace else. Away from her apartment; away from his chamber. Real private. Neutral ground, maybe? She never got there, of course; and with the bond down, V. couldn't know any of her feelings during that time. But the note said she needed to talk to him about something important. She didn't say what. Maybe she was going to tell him then. Maybe. And tell him what? Past that, all the rest is guesswork.
I hate it that I got a mind like a sewer.
I'm going Below now. Probably V.'s finally asleep, finished with his sentry rounds. Likely he'll figure I've finally gone clear around the bend. But he won't mind if I collect Jacob for a major snuggle. I don't care if I wake them both up. I don't care if they both think I've gone bonkers. I got a right: third dibs.
He's such a great kid and I don't like thinking that except for that bastard Gabriel, he might never have been born.
The hell with it. I’m going Below.
END