The Dark Mother Trilogy
| A Mother's Prerogative | A Mother's Regret | A Mother's Grief |
This was written over a rather longer period of time than is my usual, but it's done, and that's the important thing. Massive thanks to Wychwood, who was a superb sounding board and beta reader for this collection. Others have also done their part, specifically all of those who beta'd my 14 Valentines of 2007. For those who have any interest, I will note that this was written 1, 3, 2; not the normal arrangement for a trilogy.Warnings:
The third part of this collection, A Mother's Grief, does contain reference to the death of one of the main characters in the fic (seeing as it's a Parrish/Lorne fic, draw your own conclusions). It happens off-screen, but it is a crucial element in the final installment. Don't say I didn't warn you. Also, keep in mind that this was written before Lorne has a canon first name, so at the time it started I went with the Parrish/Lorne Community's familiar standby - Nick.
Susan Lorne hadn't been sure what to think when she got a letter from her son saying that he'd be home on leave for Thanksgiving and that he'd like to bring a friend with him. Well, she knew exactly how she felt about Nick being granted leave; she would be thrilled to see her only son. It had been more than two years since she'd seen her first-born, and oftentimes it seemed like longer. It was the bringing a friend that threw her. Not once in the thirteen years he'd been in the service had Nick ever asked if he could bring someone home with him; the unspoken implication that the friend was a romantic interest coming to meet the family. He'd made it clear when he graduated the Academy that he was going in for life; he didn't think the military life would be conducive to marriage, and he didn't want to end up facing the prospect of a divorce. He had always been the most stable of her children, knowing what he wanted and how to get there. She could understand his concerns about the military life, but at the same time the decision made her despair of ever having grandchildren. Yes, both her daughters were younger and still had plenty of years, but they were fast approaching their thirties, and showed no signs of settling down. There were days she thought they never would.
She'd written back, telling Nick that of course he was welcome to bring a friend home with him. There had been no response. She knew he was stationed in Antarctica, but she couldn't imagine that the mail service was that bad. She wondered if something had changed, if his leave had been canceled. It had certainly happened before; that was one of the reasons it had been more than two years since they'd talked through more than just the postal service. It didn't bother her husband, but then Mike always had been an introvert. As long as the letters kept coming, even if they did arrive partially blacked out and months after the date in the upper corner, he didn't worry too much.
After six weeks of no reply, she'd concluded that Nick wasn't coming. Again. She had added another tick mark to her mental list of reasons she was displeased with the military this year, and went back to her day to day life. The girls were still coming up for Thanksgiving, and Cindy had even been making noises about bringing her 'we're not dating, really Mom' boyfriend with her. Preparations had to be made, and Nick's absence didn't change that; he was always the first to tell her not to worry if he didn't make it home for a visit. "It's just the way these things work, Mom. Nothing to do but roll with it." Therefore it was with no small degree of surprise that she opened the front door and found her son standing anxiously on the front steps. As he caught sight of her, his expression changed to a classically unrepentant grin that chased away any lingering worry she might have been harboring. "Hi, Mom."
Her jaw dropped in shock; she couldn't bring herself to believe that he was home. She reached out a tentative hand, sliding her fingers over the familiar planes of his cheek as if to prove to herself by Braille that this really was her son standing before her. Once she had confirmed what her eyes were telling her, she gave up the internal fight and pulled him into a tight hug. She knew her voice was wobbly, but she honestly didn't care; he could put up with a few minutes of weeping mother. It built character, and she'd certainly earned it. "We didn't think you'd be coming!" She felt him shrug self-consciously, but couldn't bring herself to loosen her grip. It had been far too long since she'd held him; she'd be damned if she'd let his pride get in the way of making sure he knew he was welcome. When she opened her eyes, she noticed a stranger standing behind her son. Reluctantly, she stepped back, understanding his tension more clearly. She turned to the stranger, offering her hand in greeting. "I'm Susan. You must be Nick's friend...?"
She watched the stranger glance at her son, seeming to have a whole conversation without the benefit of words, before he accepted her handshake. "David Parrish, ma'am."
She looked him over curiously; this wasn't at all what she had expected when Nick had said 'a friend'. David was tall - several inches taller than Nick, even - blond, and tan. They were both tan. She hadn't thought you'd get that tan in Antarctica. Jane, who lived two doors down, had a nephew who'd spent a year working in Antarctica as a plumber because the money was insanely good. He'd come back looking sickly-pale from a lack of sun exposure, not like he'd just returned from two weeks in Hawaii.
She shook her head, clearing it of thoughts that had no business there when her only son had just returned home and she had guests. She put on her best housewarming smile, and took a few steps back into the house. "Well, come on in. You can toss your things in Nick's old room until we get everything sorted out. We weren't expecting you, so it'll be a bit of work hauling out the air-mattress, but nothing we can't handle. We'll deal with that once you've had dinner and settled in a bit." She turned her gaze more firmly on Nick. "Your dad's in the basement, doing...whatever it is that he does down there. You might want to say 'Hi' at some point."
Nick nodded, and proceeded to drag 'David' up the stairs to his room. She shook her head and wondered what exactly that was all about, and if Nick was going to tell her about it. She had an idea, mothers always do, but she didn't want to jump to conclusions. And she really didn't want to think that her son didn't trust her enough to tell her.
* * * She learned over dinner that evening that the two had met through 'work'; work, of course, being something classified beyond belief, and yet somehow involving a botanist and a career military officer with a specialty in geology. She also learned that David had no family of his own, which made her heart ache for him; no one should be that isolated. He grew uncomfortable when she tried to say something, though; even her son was oddly matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Nick explained later that most of their coworkers were orphans or estranged from their families, but all the information did was unsettle her further. After all, her son was taking part in whatever it was, and he had family. Did that make her more or less likely to have a man show up on her doorstep in uniform to offer his condolences? She didn't ask; she knew Nick wouldn't tell her even if she did, out of concern for her wellbeing. Nick was a firm believer in 'what you don't know can't hurt you', and she'd never been able to break him of it. If he was going to talk to anyone, it would be her husband, and Mike had been withdrawing more and more since his retirement.
Her suspicions about David's relationship with her son were resolved that first evening, when she asked Nick to help her get the air mattress down from the attic. He blushed impressively, but his voice had been calm as he told her the air mattress wouldn't be necessary; David would share his room. To his credit, Mike had simply nodded and gone back to his book. She'd given both of the boys hugs, and sent them up to bed as if they were children. She didn't mean to be patronizing, but with the anxiety over their relationship gone - something she hadn't even noticed until it lifted - the two seemed smaller, somehow, and frailer. Nick didn't even complain; he just muttered something about jet-lag and led the way up the stairs.
That was, for all intents and purposes, the end of the surprises for the week. That didn't mean things were normal; they couldn't have been further from normal if they'd tried, but they weren't blatantly abnormal, either. It was all the small things that were wrong. There was strangeness to the 'boys'; one that she couldn't define, but which bothered her nonetheless. It surfaced periodically, in glimpses out of the corner of her eye or a whisper in her ear, but never enough for her to figure out what was wrong. It wasn't that her son was gay; that had been a surprise, but it didn't change who he was. It was more that he brought up memories of her brother, after he'd returned from the Vietnam War; that was the closest she could come to an accurate description. That sense that there was something wrong, or at least something not-quite-right, but you didn't know what it was. It was painful to see in someone you loved; her brother had been drafted in 1970, and he had come home damaged in ways that they hadn't understood at the time. Even after he'd kicked his heroin problem, she'd been scared to let Nick or the girls near him, afraid of what he might do. She'd had a bad night where she'd worried that maybe Nick was taking something, but a quick perusal of his room had been reassuring on that front. Her brother's stashes had never been well enough hidden to fool her, not once she'd known what she was looking for. But now, just as she had when her brother had first returned home, she was left waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Even though things never came to a head, it still was a rough week. Nick's old room was next to the master bedroom; every night she heard them through the wall and wished desperately that she didn't. The whimpers and cries broke her heart, especially when she realized that some of them were her son's. If they had been the sounds of passion, she could have closed her eyes, waited for them to quiet, and then gone back to sleep. These were the sounds of pain, and they kept her awake long after the rest of the house had fallen silent again. She never did receive any answers about her son's nightmares, but she did find some comfort. It came Friday afternoon, in a casual conversation with David that took an unexpectedly serious turn. It had been just of the two of them, cleaning up the kitchen while everyone else chatted in the living room. She hadn't planned to bring up anything about whatever it was they did; in fact, she'd been prepared to take the stoic matriarch approach and let Nick have the space he thought he needed.
David was the one who broached the subject, his voice quiet as he helped her to load the dishwasher. "I wanted to say 'thank you'."
She cocked her head to the side, pausing her work on one of the carving knives to study him. "Is there anything in particular behind that, or is it just for having you over? If it's just for having you over, you're plenty welcome. This is the first time Nick's brought someone home since he moved out; I'm just glad it's someone like you."
He blushed, and stared into the pile of dirty dishes for a moment. When he spoke, it was still directed at the dishes. "For not asking questions he can't answer. He loves you, all of you, very much. But there are things we can't talk about, not even with family - Things that we don't even like to think about. I..." His hands gripped the counter, tendons visible with the effort. "I almost lost him, once; I thought I had lost him. When things were back to normal, I asked him to bring me home with him. So I could meet his family. So I could know who he'd leave behind if something ever happened." He sighed, and bowed his head. "I guess I just wanted to know that I wasn't alone in worrying about him." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. It was sad, and bitter, and full of a hundred emotions she couldn't begin to name. He spoke again, but it was more to himself than anything. "So few of us have family; you forget what it's like to have someone back here. Why we're really fighting."
She paled, because he was a botanist. A good one, if the comments he'd made on her house plants were any indication, but a plant scientist all the same. She'd worked as a secretary in the college of life sciences for over twenty years, and never once had she heard a scientist use that tone of voice paired with words of violence; not even the radical activists that rotated through the faculty occasionally. She wondered what 'us' he was talking about, where they really worked if battle was such a casual concept. She reached out and pulled his hands from the counter, holding them gently in her own and forcing him to meet her gaze. "I don't know what you've seen, or see, and I don't think I want to imagine it. That path leads to madness. But I'm glad to know that my son has found someone that he cares about; that he's happy."
He blinked at her, and she was surprised that the one expression she could recognize in his eyes, through all the others, was sympathy. She wondered what she'd said that had caused it, and then realized she she didn't want to know. Because there were things she didn't know about her son's life, and knowing a little would be worse than knowing nothing. David swallowed, visibly pulling himself together. "Thank you, Mrs. Lorne. That means a great deal to me."
She nodded briskly, released his hands, and handed him a towel to dry them. "Now, I want you to go in there and get to know the girls better. I expect I'll be seeing you for a number of years to come, so you'd best make a good impression while you can." He nodded again, this time looking more as she might have expected and less like the bearer of unfortunate news, and she chuckled as he wandered out of the room and into the fray. She waited until she could hear the boisterous voices from the living room draw him into the conversation, until she could hear the jokes and good hearted ribbing that meant he was one of them. When she heard that, and knew that he was settled and would not return, she sat down at the kitchen table and allowed the quiet laughter to turn to tears. There, in the kitchen where she had raised all three of her children, Susan Lorne wept for all of the things that she would never know.
* * * The boys stayed exactly a week. It wasn't long enough, not nearly, but it was better than nothing; both of them seemed anxious to return to wherever it was that they now called home. Each had a duffel full of the most random items imaginable, candy bars and coffee and teddy bears and flash-drives; a result of shopping lists they'd been asked to fill by friends, or so they'd said. Nick hugged her tightly, and made her promise not to worry too hard - that they'd be fine, and the girls needed more of her worry than he did. She'd pointed out that the right to worry over her children was a mother's prerogative. He laughed then, but there was something dark in his eyes that forced her to turn away.
David simply hugged her, whispering a quiet thanks and a promise to visit when he got the chance. She made sure that he knew he was always welcome in their house, with or without Nick, if for no other reason than his skill with her houseplants.
As she watched them go, her son followed by his lover, Susan shivered in the cold November air. Worry might be a mother's prerogative, but that didn't make it any easier to bear. Returning to the kitchen, she made herself a cup of tea and settled at the table with the stationery and fountain pen she had purchased the day before. If she was going to worry, she might as well do it productively.
Dear Nick...
~ Finis ~
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Susan Lorne returned from the market around 12:30 and parked in the garage. As she removed a few bags from the back of the car, she heard noise coming from inside the house and froze. Those were definitely footsteps, but she couldn't tell how many pairs. A quick glance at the other parking space in the garage confirmed that Mike was still out. The girls knew to call before coming over except in an emergency, and there were no missed calls on her cell phone. She checked again, but nothing - no calls, no messages. She set down the grocery bags, and reached back into the trunk to grasp the tire-iron. She pulled it out and approached the door to the house cautiously. She could hear someone laughing, and the timbre sounded vaguely familiar but she was taking no chances. Hefting the tire-iron, she knocked on the door to the kitchen.
"Whoever's in there, I'm coming in. My kitchen had better be intact!"
She opened the door and stepped through. What she saw made her drop the tire iron in shock and bring her hands to her mouth. "Nick? David?" There, leaning casually against the kitchen counter next to his suspiciously red-faced lover, was her son. She couldn't believe it; she didn't even know if she wanted to believe it. It had been over three years since the boys had visited for Thanksgiving, and there had been nothing in the recent letters indicating upcoming leave. "How did you- Why are you..." Shaking her head, she put the questions aside. "Come here, both of you. It's been too long."
As he pushed off the counter, she realized that Nick's casual pose had been affected; it was only when he crossed to her that he genuinely relaxed. He swept her up in a hug that was much tighter than she had expected; even when he was young he'd never been a demonstrative child, her best efforts to the contrary. When he pulled back, there was a hopeful expression on his face. "Um, 'Hi, Mom?'"
She narrowed her eyes. "Don't think that's going to get you out of explanations, young man. You're just lucky David's here, or I'd pull out the wooden spoon right now. You took years off my life, sneaking into the house like that."
His grinned and shrugged off the threat. "It was worth a shot."
She shook her head, exasperated; Nick was unbelievable at times. She thought about pushing for a more concrete reason about why they had suddenly shown up in her kitchen, but this wasn't the time. There was sure to be a better opportunity later, and there was something in Nick's eyes that told her she might not want the whole answer. Even smiling, there was something subtly missing. The annoyance was superficial at best, however; she was far more relieved that he seemed to be acting more like his old self than he had the last time she'd seen him. Giving up the lost cause that was attempting to get her son to act his age when home, she turned to David and pulled him into a hug. He was bulkier than he'd been on his last visit, more muscular. She wondered what he'd been up to; Nick had always been solidly muscular, but David had been on the wiry side when they'd been introduced. She released him and headed back to the garage, pausing when she reached the threshold to turn back to them. "Well? Are you just going to stand there, or can I get some help with the groceries?"
* * * Her son had changed.
She had expected it, of course, but not like this. It was more obvious this visit than it had been before; it just took longer to see it. That Thanksgiving had been full of unusual quiet periods and a vague sense of unease - like a spring coiled just this side of too tight. This visit, he seemed much more normal at first glance - he laughed, he smiled, and he discussed the Rose Bowl with his father in a way that she hadn't realized she'd been missing. That made the oddities all the more visible, at least to her. He was up in the night, every night; he didn't touch the beer that she'd so carefully picked up the morning after his arrival, or the sauerkraut; and the morning she'd made cinnamon rolls he and David had both been violently ill. Those were the small things, and if she had to she'd put them down to a strange diet in "Antarctica".
The things like his refusal to wear short sleeves and the gun he kept under his pillow...those were harder to overlook. The gun had even led to a fight; it had been their first fight in ten years. It wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat, and she still wasn't sure who had won. If anyone had won. No one ever really won the knock-down, drag out family fights that the Lornes occasionally engaged in. You just survived.
In retrospect, David had been entirely too calm about the whole incident, but again - that was the least of her worries.
* * * Two days after the fight, Nick came down with a migraine. Nick didn't get migraines. After a less than encouraging explanation from David (she knew that they couldn't tell her things; she understood that. She just wished David didn't feel the need to keep trying to explain things when his explanations were full of "Well, there was this thing. But I can't really tell you about that. And Nick's been getting headaches, and the doc thinks it's this other thing, but I don't do bio.").
That evening, she poked her head in to see how he was doing and found her son asleep. When she closed the door, however, it squeaked. "Mom?" Apparently he wasn't as asleep as she'd thought.
She hesitantly stepped back into his room, and closed the door behind her. She kept her voice gentle, not wanting to make his headache any worse. "What's wrong, Nick?"
He sat up in bed, and she realized it was the first time she'd seen him without a shirt since he'd come home. He raised a hand to rub at his eyes, and she gasped. There, highlighted by the fading sun, was a latticework of scars across his forearm. Both forearms. So that was why he'd been wearing long sleeves and tugging at the cuffs all week. Thankfully, he didn't register her shock; she might be upset that he was keeping things from her, but right now he was hurting. She could wait until the morning. Steeling herself, she stepped closer and ran a hand gently through his hair. "Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I'll be here when you wake up."
He nodded, and settled back into the bed, to all appearances already dead to the world again. She smiled softly; he'd always done that as a child, waking but not waking. It had been exasperating during his teens; he'd answer coherently that he'd be down for breakfast in ten minutes, and then she'd find him fast asleep five minutes before the bus came. Now, though, it was a blessing; it meant she could talk to David undisturbed about whatever had happened to her son, and she would know.
* * * She never did find out the details of the scarring on Nick's arms.
She learned that David had the same marks, and that there had been an accident of some kind while they'd been on vacation in New Zealand, but that was all she could get David to tell her. There had been a pleading quality to his voice when he'd refused to elaborate, and she'd let it go. Whatever had happened, she might well be better off not knowing. She'd been about to concede the point, but was saved the awkwardness when David's cell phone rang. She stood and headed to the kitchen to give him some privacy, but paused in the doorway when she realized that he had forgotten about her. Eavesdropping wasn't exactly moral, but a little never hurt anyone. Of course, it would have helped if any of his conversation had made sense.
"Parrish. Doctor Lam, thank you for returning my call. No, he's an artificial. First SGC batch, as far as I know. It's been...yes, that sounds about right. No, no seizures. Just severe headache, nausea, dizziness. Yes, that's why I called. All of them? Yes, I understand. I'll let him know. Thank you."
David hung up the phone, and Susan realized that he'd gained about fifteen years worth of worry-lines over the course of the phone call. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. And it involved her son. This time, she felt no guilt whatsoever when she followed David up the stairs and stood in the hallway outside her son's room. She was his mother; this was something she had a right to know. The voices were quiet, but still audible. Like the phone call, however, she didn't know enough to piece together the bits of conversation that she could make out.
"Nick? I called the SGC, they said that the timeframe fits. You, Stackhouse, and Jimenez are all reporting similar symptoms. Dr. Lam said it's an atypical chemical build-up they've been seeing in some of those with the artificial gene."
Nick sounded groggy, but alert. Not like he had when they'd spoken earlier - really alert. "Figures. They couldn't have warned us about this before?"
"Apparently not everyone's been having it. Dr. McKay spent over two weeks at SGC on his last visit and never showed any signs of harmful ATA-S levels. There was a hand-out in our leave packet about calling in if certain symptoms popped up; you must have missed it."
"David, McKay lives in his labs. He was probably touching as much there as he normally does back home. Jimenez, Stackhouse... They've been in the city as long or longer than I have. Let me guess, the longer you were exposed the worse it is, right? I'm first batch, too, at least of those treated at the SGC. They probably screwed up the sequencing or something."
"You know that's not true; you'd have shown problems long before now if that were the case. It's been different batches who've been having problems, not just yours. You just haven't been on leave since the bulletin went around. None of the command staff has, except McKay, and he's usually pulled for on-the-spot stuff."
Nick sighed. "I know. I know. So, what are they going to do? Does it get better, or am I going to have to assault the first life signs detector I find?"
"They're sending you back, with the weekly data burst." There was a pause. "Tomorrow."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Susan bit down on her lip hard, backing away as quietly as she could. Something was wrong, very wrong. So wrong that Nick was being recalled, and if the last time was any indication he wouldn't be back for three years. It wasn't fair. She climbed down the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, wondering if she should bother to tell her husband the news or let Nick break it. It wasn't like Mike would really care; he'd been drifting away for a while now. She turned on the kettle, and got a mug for tea while she thought things through.
Nick was sick, that much she was certain of. It had something to do with an experimental procedure that the military had done to him. Done to her son. Her hand tightened around the mug, and she felt the arthritis in her knuckles flare; the pain felt good - calming. It was a familiar pain. They were recalling him because of this "problem." Dizziness. Nausea. Her son had been a pilot once; a good one, if she could believe what he'd told her in his old letters, and he's always been honest until he transferred to Antarctica. Even about the unpleasant things, even if he stayed vague because of the censors. One thing she'd always known was that he loved to fly - it was why he'd gone to the Academy, even though his math wasn't great and he'd never be an engineer.
She didn't know a lot about the military; she'd made a point to stay out of it as much for Nick's sake as her own, but she knew one thing. Dizzy pilots couldn't fly.
Her son, her perfect son, couldn't fly anymore. The Air Force had done that to him. She heard a crashing sound, and realized that she'd thrown her mug at the wall. Blinking, she crossed to pick up the shattered pieces. She hadn't meant to do that. She looked up at the sound of footsteps, and found David standing in the doorway. "Are you all right??"
She put on her best 'silly old me' smile. "Just an accident. My arthritis acts up some days, and the grip just goes. No harm done." She looked down at the pieces she had collected in her hand. "How's Nicky?"
"He's still not feeling well, you know how migraines are."
She didn't; no one in her family had ever had a migraine, and that included Nick, but she nodded anyway. "Of course."
David cleared his throat. "There's something else." She looked up. "We're leaving in the morning."
She tried to look surprised; she really did. It didn't matter, because David was staring intently at the kitchen stove. "In-in the morning? I thought you were staying another two days. What happened?"
He cleared his throat, and shifted nervously. "There's been a situation, in Antarctica. They need Nick back as soon as possible."
"But what about his migraine? Shouldn't he wait to travel until he's feeling better?"
If possible, David looked even guiltier. "He says he'll be fine by the time we get there; it's close to twenty-four hours of travel, after all, and you know how he is about duty."
"I know." She did, too. Nick was fiercely protective of his own. He'd taken the wrestling team's honor code seriously the year he'd made captain, and she knew that the need to look out for "his" men had carried over to his career in the Air Force. Understanding the why didn't make it any easier, though, and it was only part of the why. "I'm." She swallowed hard. "I'm going to bed, once I get this cleaned up. It's been a long day. Mike will be back from his bowling match in an hour, if you need to talk to him. I'll be up to see you boys off in the morning." She stood slowly, wincing as her left knee cracked.
David nodded. "Right. I'm, um, going to bed as well. I just wanted to make sure you were all right."
"I'm fine." She made a shooing motion in the direction of the stairs with her empty hand. "Go worry about someone who needs it."
He looked like he was going to protest, but she smiled as hard as she could and he seemed satisfied with that. With a mumbled "Good night" he turned and disappeared back up the stairs. Once he was out of sight, she slumped against the table. Nick would be gone, again, in the morning. And this time he hadn't even been able to tell her himself.
* * * The leave-taking was awkward. Nick was obviously still in pain, which made her regret her uncharitable thoughts. There wasn't time for apologies, though. The car that the Air Force sent was early, and David overslept. Between one thing and another, she barely got a chance to hug the boys before they were out the door and once again out of her life. Mike hadn't even made it out of bed to say goodbye.
Since it was a Saturday, she fell back on routine and sat down at the kitchen table with a piece of stationery to write her weekly "Dear Nick" letter. Except that as she put pen to paper, she realized that she had absolutely no idea what to say.
~ Finis ~ | Leave Feedback |
| Written as part of The 14 Valentines Project 2007 |
It was the day before Mother's Day that Susan Lorne's world fell apart.
It was a normal morning; the kind where you slept in, made coffee, and settled into the comfortable chair to listen to NPR while you finished waking up. Mornings like this, she didn't even miss her ex-husband.
Her morning was interrupted by the doorbell; she rose to answer the door, curious as to who would be visiting on a Saturday morning. She knew it couldn't be either of her daughters; they were driving over for brunch the next day with their families. Mike still wasn't speaking with her, even though a year had passed since the divorce, so he wasn't an option, and her friends knew better than to visit before noon on Saturdays without prior warning. That left Nick; and the last two times he'd visited it had been unannounced, so it made a strange kind of sense. Having come to a satisfactory conclusion, she made her way to the door and opened it with a smile.
What she found was David, Nick's lover. He looked ready to collapse, and she put her questions out of her mind for the moment, pulling him into her arms. He hugged her tightly, and she could feel him shaking against her. As she held him, she realized that he was very conspicuously alone; Nick was not coming up the walk or off to the side; he was simply not there. That, combined with David's reaction to seeing her, was enough to set off warning bells in the back of her mind. When David finally released her, she led him into the kitchen without a word. She moved mechanically through the motions of making a cup of coffee for him, setting it down before she took the seat across from him with her own mug. She could tell from his appearance - pale, and thinner than she had ever seen him - that something had happened, and it wasn't good. She just wasn't sure how bad was bad. Taking a deep breath, she forced her hands to curl around her coffee mug while she waited; the last thing David needed was to see her own hands shaking as her anxiety grew. She took heart in the fact that it was David who had arrived, not someone from the Air Force. It meant that there was still hope; at least, that's what she told herself.
She watched as he drank his coffee quietly for a few moments, studying the black liquid intently between sips. The warm liquid did him some good, and when he looked up she noted that some of the color had returned to his face. He took a deep breath, but before he could speak there was a knock at the door. She rose, pausing on her way to the door to squeeze his shoulder. He looked up at her with a haunted expression, and spoke in a rush as she released him. "I'm sorry."
She paused, mind going blank with the power of those two words, but before she could process them for more than badbadbad, there was another knock at the door. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together, telling herself that it might not be what she thought. It couldn't be what it sounded like. After all, David could be apologizing for any number of things. Even in the privacy of her own mind, the explanation sounded hollow and false. Pasting on what she hoped was a convincing smile, she took a deep breath and opened the door.
"Mrs. Susan Lorne?"
The man standing before her was in formal Air Force uniform; her son was dead. The grief she'd been holding back, telling herself that David was having a rough time and Nick was still alive, had to be alive, came bubbling up. She heard someone sobbing, and belatedly realized the sound was coming from her. She felt arms around her, guiding her to the living room. As her vision cleared enough to see, she found David crouched in front of her. She took a shuddering breath, trying to regain her equilibrium as she remembered the Air Force officer she had left on her doorstep. She straightened (her mother had always taught her that nothing was an excuse for ignoring the courtesies of hospitality), and found the officer staring at David with raised eyebrows, his expression shifting from confusion to concern as recognition set in. She watched the two men interact as if on stage, countless rows of seats away, as opposed to not four feet in front of her.
"Oh, God. Parrish?"
David straightened and stepped away from her, turning to face the officer - a colonel, she realized. Nick had made Lieutenant Colonel last year; the memory of his letter about the promotion came unbidden, and she could see the well-formed pen strokes in her mind. He'd been so happy about earning his silver leaves. "Colonel Sheppard."
The name sounded familiar, and she realized that this was the Sheppard that Nick had mentioned in his letters; Nick had admired the man greatly. She wasn't sure she could second the admiration, as the colonel looked like he was about to be sick in her living room over her son's choice of lover. "I... I had no idea." The colonel moved to sit down in the first chair he found, the ancient over-stuffed La-Z-Boy. She couldn't believe his nerve; her boy was dead, and she would not allow this man - she didn't care who he was - to speak badly of his choices. And then there was David, who was not her son, but was still almost as important; she knew that she was using his welfare as a shield for her own emotions, but for once she felt like taking the easy way out. Before she could speak up and tell the poster boy for the USAF exactly what she thought of his judgments, the colonel was speaking again. There was pain evident in his voice, and it made her reconsider her own judgments. "Why didn't he tell me? I mean, everyone knew about me and McKay; it wasn't like I'd have said anything."
David's face hardened. "Not everyone has the flexibility you do, Colonel. Your place is there; you're too important for them to drag you back to Earth. He was an artificial; do you know what it would have done to him if he'd been reassigned? He had a career to worry about. He was..." She saw him take a shaky breath. "Ten more months, John. He was ten months from his twenty." The comment 'artificial' caught her attention, bringing to mind her son's last visit and the illness that had caused him to leave early.
Sheppard looked appalled. "God, Parrish, did he really think I would have allowed that?" He stood, beginning to pace the length of the living room in obvious anxiety. She knew that if it had been any other day, she would have felt sorry for him. As it was, she only felt numb.
David shrugged. "You can't save everyone, Colonel, and he couldn't take the risk. The program was his life; Atlantis was his life. If Caldwell filed a report, what could you have done? It was a blurry line whether Caldwell could make that kind of call, and he could never have successfully fought a Don't Ask allegation. No one can; even I know that." Susan blinked. Atlantis? What kind of a project title was that? Not that it mattered anymore, but she would ask David later. There were a lot of things that she would ask David, and for once he would give her the straight answers that her son never could.
Sheppard paused, shoulders slumping; he looked remarkably like a kicked puppy, eyes full of sadness and pain. He turned to face them both, still focused on David. "I would have protected him, somehow. I... I understand the reasoning; I do. I just wish I didn't have to." Something changed in his expression, and he seemed to remember that she was there as well, and why he had come in the first place. He visibly straightened, and she recognized the 'military mask' that Nick had worn a time or two. "Mrs. Lorne. I regret to inform you of the death of your son, Nicholas Lorne, in the service of his country."
* * * Colonel Sheppard remained well into the evening, telling her of the Nick that he had known, and after he left she and David spoke quietly over a bottle of old scotch that she'd held onto in the divorce. Their conversation was finally halted by the chiming of the grandfather clock in the living room corner. Midnight.
It was Mother's Day, and things would never be the same again.
~ Finis ~
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