Thierry Bellamy & Jonathan Crane are (antiqued) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-13 21:48:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | catwoman, john blake |
Who: Wren and Thierry
What: Picking Wren up from the airport
Where: New Orleans, Louisiana
When: Recent
Warnings/Rating: Sads.
Wren still wasn't sure leaving for Louisiana was a good thing, even for a day, but she hadn't heard anything from Luke, and Gus was getting sadder and sadder, and she thought the trip might be distracting for the little boy. And Thierry had said only good things about his parents - her grandparents - and maybe it would be good for Gus, family, even though she had no idea how she was going to explain that Gus didn't actually know he was her son.
That was the thing that consumed her thoughts on the flight, and it was a welcome break from the pain in her abdomen, from her perpetual exhaustion and the growing certainty that Luke was staying through the door intentionally, that he wasn't coming back. MK still wouldn't answer her calls, and Evie didn't let on that anything was bad in Gotham, and she would have said something if things were bad, right? She considered checking in with Jade, and she might do just that if she didn't hear anything by the time she got back, but just now she was worried about Gus, about how quiet he'd been, and how he was back to wanting to do nothing but cling and hide behind her.
The flight was long, and Gus asked after Finch every few minutes, only to have Wren reassure him that Finch was at the doggy hotel, where he was having a tiny vacation. The absence of the dog, Wren was starting to realize, was a big problem, and she wondered if her grandmother (and wasn't that strange?) had any pets. She might have to find a kitten or a puppy otherwise, because she couldn't handle that look on Gus' face, like he'd just lost his best friend in the whole wide world.
As far as first meetings went, Wren wished she and Gus could have looked less miserable and more put together, but they got off the airplane looking jet lagged and dejected. The sundress and sweater Wren wore covered the bandages that lined her midriff, and Gus' cheerful yellow overalls did nothing to hide the way the little boy clung to her leg, his fingers shoved into his mouth. She wished she could pick him up, but there was no way she'd manage it, and she just ran her fingers through his unruly hair as she waited at baggage claim for someone who looked like the boy in the pictures with her mother.
Even knowing the airline’s tendency to be late rather than early, Thierry had arrived at the airport half an hour before Wren’s flight was due in. It had been a hard couple of days, and it showed on the man’s face with the dark circles under his eyes, the knick on his neck from shaving with an unsteady hand. But he was there, dressed in a pair of cords and a plaid button-down, intending on returning back to his mother’s to dress for the funeral.
When her plane was announced, Thierry rose from the molded plastic seat he had settled in, quickly scanning the boards for where their baggage claim would be, arriving just moments before she emerged from the gate. He didn’t say anything for a long while, watching her from a distance, because there was absolutely no mistaking her as anyone other than Lark’s daughter. But he couldn’t stand there forever, just watching, so as her fingers ruffled through the little boy’s hair at her side, Thierry crossed towards her, forcing a smile on his face despite the grief that filled him near to overflowing. “Wren?” he asked, the Southern accent soft. “It’s good to finally see you. I just... well, I wish it was under better circumstances.” Death brought people together moreso than life did, it seemed, which was sad in more ways than one.
When Wren's mother died, she had been just a little older than Wren was now. Seeing Thierry standing there, looking so much older than he had in those photos, made Wren painfully aware of how old her maman would be, had she lived, and it added to the sharp ache in her heart. Maybe she shouldn't hurt over that, and she knew it. Her maman had killed innocent girls that weren't much older than Gus. She had taken a child from the woman she was about to meet, and she had taken a brother from this man in front of her. She worried, as she hadn't during the flight, that she might not be welcomed here. But Thierry looked so sad, so broken down, that she couldn't turn and run, no matter the uncertainty she was feeling. Wren had grown up feeling alone in the world, but she knew what it felt like to lose a parent, and she couldn't turn her back on that.
She gave him a small smile of greeting, and she nudged Gus toward the spinning conveyor belt of the baggage claim carousel, where his bright blue backpack was spinning around. The bag was small, certainly nothing that had needed to be checked, but it had been the best plan Wren could conceive of to get a moment alone with Thierry. She waited until Gus was a few feet away, ready to grab his bag as it passed, and she spoke quietly. "Gus doesn't actually know he's my son, and he's had a really hard time lately. I know it's a big favor to ask for you to keep it a secret, but I don't want to overwhelm him, please?" She pleaded, her grey eyes overly bright with fear and fever.
Thierry watched as the boy ran off towards the baggage claim, half keeping an eye on him as well though his attention was on Wren as she spoke. The news came as more than a bit of a surprise, but it wasn’t his place to question why it was the way it was. He was certain that Wren had her reasons, and he wouldn’t do anything to spoil that for her. “I’ll mind my words. My mother may ask, and I’ll tell her as well to be good.” His smile was easy and warm, and it was oh so strange seeing her standing there in front of him. Though his first inclination had been to see everything that Lark had been, Thierry could see Quentin in there as well, in the eyes, the shape of her face, and it brought back a lot of memories that he hadn’t thought on in years.
It was all of that, wrapped up with the loss of his own father, that had Thierry stepping closer, giving Wren a quick embrace, a hand rubbing up and down her back briskly. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me,” he whispered softly, blinking back the tears that he hadn’t let fall since hearing about his father’s passing.
"Thank you," Wren replied gratefully. She knew they had to stop lying to Gus eventually, but she'd always felt like it was Luke's decision when that happened, since he was Gus' legal guardian. But as time passed, the lie was going to be harder and harder to keep, and she was just thankful that Gus was still young enough not to question things too much.
The embrace was unexpected, but Wren had always been a tactile person, and she returned the hug and kept the pain that wracked her body to herself. Even with that sharp agony in her belly, it was nice, that hug, especially after everything that had happened recently. "I'm sorry- Losing a parent- I know what that's like," she admitted tearfully. "You don't have to thank me," she added, pulling back when she felt Gus' arms close around her leg. She looked down, and she tousled his hair. "You rescued it," she said proudly of his bag, which earned a tiny smile that was so much like Luke's that it made her heart splinter. "This is Thierry. Can you say hi and introduce yourself?"
Gus, emboldened by his success with the backpack, looked at the older man and, after giving him a wide-eyed stare that was too assessing and too old for such a tiny boy, he reached out a small hand to shake Thierry's hand, his other arm still wound tightly around the safety of Wren's knee. "Bonjour, Thierry," he lisped. "My name is Auguste," he said giving the name the exaggerated French accent that Wren used, despite the fact that his name wasn't actually that at all, and looking shyly proud for it.
Releasing Wren, Thierry gave her a smile that was more sad than anything, but he knew how things could be. Instead, he turned his attention to the little boy with arms wound around one of Wren’s legs, unable to help the grin that pulled at his lips. Sinking down to his level, Thierry extended his hand, giving Gus’ a gentle shake. “Bonjour, Auguste,” Thierry responded, inclining his head in greeting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” That little hand was given a squeeze before Thierry rose back to his full height, meeting Wren’s gaze for a moment, that look speaking volumes about how impressed he was with her little boy.
“Shall we? My rental’s parked in short-term, but I fear it’s quite a walk there.” He paused, glancing towards Wren again, thinking. “Is he okay to walk? I can help, if needed. This airport tends to be busy, and I wouldn’t want him to get lost.”
Walking long distances didn't work very well with a four-year-old, but Wren knew Gus wasn't going to let himself get lifted off the ground by someone he'd just met either. She looked around baggage claim, hoping this place was like any big city, and she relaxed a little once she saw the coin-operated carts that helped people carry their luggage out. "Gus, how about a ride on one of those?" she asked, trying to make it sound like a game, like Luke did with nearly everything. The little boy considered for a few minutes, obviously trying to decide how he felt about all of it, but he nodded reluctantly against the back of Wren's leg a second later, and she gave Thierry a hopeful look. "Can you get us one, please?" she asked, wishing again that she could just pick the little boy up herself, the way Luke would have done. She wasn't doing very well as a Luke replacement.
There was no way that Thierry was going to refuse her anything, and though he recognized that he might be coming off as a bit desperate to make some sort of connection with his niece, he didn’t intend on stopping. So he fetched one of the carts, pushing it back towards them with as much of a smile as he could muster considering the circumstances they found themselves in. There were questions he wanted to ask, things he wanted to know, but he kept those to himself right then, recognizing that here and now was not the best location for the sort of conversation that he wanted to have with Wren. “I’ll let you push it, I don’t think he would trust me to,” Thierry said a moment later, relinquishing the cart in lieu of sliding his hands in his pockets, trying to seem as easy and warm as he could. But even Thierry had to admit that he wasn’t himself that morning. The loss of his father had been an unexpected, sudden thing, and realising that he wouldn’t talk to his father again hadn’t entirely sunk in as reality. It was that dream, the same sort of dream he had walked when Quentin and his family had been killed.
Wren gave Thierry a grateful smile. She didn't know how to have family, not really. Things with Brielle had been tense, even before the situation with Luke, and her maman had been just a girl when Wren was little. She grew up with a teenager who treated her like a doll, not with a woman who knew how to be family and mother, and it was obvious that she wasn't precisely sure what to do, though she liked this man with the kind eyes. Gus, too, wasn't used to family or strangers. His time with the family that had stolen him hadn't involved any kindness, and he was scared of people in general. In short, the two of them were like feral cats, eager for affection, but quick to be scared off, and Wren was sorry that they weren't better when it came to helping someone grieve.
Wren looked at the cart, and then she looked at the little boy clinging to her leg. "Gus, let Thierry help you into the cart, oui?" she asked, though she hated to impose, but there was no way she was going to be able to lift the boy, and pushing a cart was probably going to be out of the question too. She'd never felt like she should be in bed more than at that moment, when even a luggage cart seemed daunting. "Thierry's my uncle," she added, running her fingers through Gus' hair, and hoping to coax him into trust with stories, which the little boy always liked. She gave Thierry an expectant look, one that was also slightly apologetic for putting him on the spot. "He knew my maman," she added, tapping the little boy's nose gently.
As Wren spoke to the little boy, gentle words and touches that showed how much she cared for him, Thierry eased forward, eventually dropping down into a crouch, hands extended towards him. “C’mere, buddy,” Thierry said in a voice that was as unthreatening as he could make it, though in truth, there was little about Thierry that could ever be considered threatening. He was warmth and friendship wrapped up in a genuine expression of caring that could not be faked. “Let’s get you in the cart, and then we’ll be off, yes?” He glanced towards Wren for a moment, one brow lifted. “Does he speak French? I wasn’t sure...” Thierry himself had been raised in a bilingual household, though his parents spoke worse English than their children ever did. It was a part of him that he had never let go of, and something he felt he had to hold on even tighter to now that his father had gone.
Wren watched to ensure Gus didn't have a bad reaction to Thierry's hands, and while the boy looked uncertain and bit his lip as he reached out for Thierry's hands, there wasn't any crying. Wren knew Gus wasn't comfortable with it, but she figured it was better to get him into a car and heading somewhere he could take a nap during the service, and the luggage cart was the first step toward that. "I'm just teaching him," she said of the French. "He understands a lot," she said proudly, "but he's only been with Luke and I a few months," she explained.
Luke's name made Gus immediately perk up. "Do you know Luke?" he asked Thierry, all hopeful wide grey eyes. "Do you know Finch and Jack?"
Thierry caught the boy under his arms, lifted him with one sure motion before depositing him in the cart, unable to help the ruffle of hair before he came around to take the handles of the cart, leaning in towards it and Gus in the same breath. “I do know Luke,” he answered, keeping himself on Gus’ level, his smile easy. “And Finch is his dog, right? They came to visit me at my store the other day.” He gave a glance over towards Wren, a small nod of her head as he hoped things were okay, and then he was pushing the cart gently towards the entrance to the airport closest to where he had parked. “But I don’t think I know Jack. Why don’t you tell me about him.”
Knowing Luke went a long way to earning Gus' trust, and he started babbling in his lispy way, disjointed stories about Luke and the dog and Jack, which filled up the silence on the way to the car. Wren, for her part, was curious about when Thierry had spoken to Luke, but she kept her quiet until they reached the car. She wasn't going to ask, she told herself. She didn't have any right to ask, right? But she couldn't keep quiet in the end, and as she waited for Thierry to settle Gus into the backseat, she bit her lip and fidgeted with the hem of the sweater she wore. "Did Luke say anything important?" she asked, unsure about whether Thierry had spoken to him after she'd seen him last. "Or anything, really?" she asked, watching Gus to make sure he was okay.
The door of the rental was closed, his hand lingering on the car as his attention was drawn back towards Wren and the question that was posed. Thierry’s brow lifted at it, pondering how to respond. “We mostly talked about how he was feeling. Tired, it seemed, and then we spoke of his parents.” He made no mention of their attempts to contact the dead, unsure of how Wren would take his foray into that, and besides, it was Luke’s to share if he felt he wanted to. “Is something going on, Wren? Something that you want to talk about?” The morning air was heavy with humidity, the world just starting to stir, so very different from Las Vegas.
"He hasn't been very happy lately, I don't think," she said of Luke, and she was obviously looking for him to agree, if that was the case. She'd been supposing that, thinking that he wasn't, and she was glad he'd talked to someone about it, someone that could maybe help. She gave him a sad smile, and she shook her head. "Just that," she said, referring to what she'd just said about Luke. "I'm okay," she added, habit and rote and a lifetime of saying just that. MK could get the truth out of her, but MK wasn't answering her calls lately, which just made her sadder. She motioned to the car. "We should go?" she suggested. The stitches were sore, and she was hoping she'd be able to rest for a few minutes before they had to go to the service too. She reached for the door handle. "I'm- I'm glad he has someone to talk to," she added.
Thierry didn’t say anything for a long while, but he knew there was something missing here, something that ought to be said but was being kept quiet. But he didn’t push, instead lifting a hand to rest on Wren’s shoulder, giving it the tiniest of squeezes. “If you ever need someone to listen, Wren, I’m here for you. I want you to know that.” And that was all that Thierry said on it, moving around to the other side of the car, keys in hand, as he slid into the driver’s seat. Waiting until Wren was buckled in, he started the car and made for the exit, pausing only to pay the parking fee, and then they were off.
He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other rubbing at the stubble on his jaw, attention mostly on the road. “I haven’t told my mother about you,” Thierry added several moments later, sparing a glance towards Wren. “I wasn’t sure if you would actually come, and I didn’t want to... well, put anything more on her than she’s already dealing with. With my father and everything.” The corner of his mouth lifted, just for a moment, and then he was glancing in the rearview towards the little boy buckled into the backseat. “Have you ever ridden in a plane before, Gus?” Thierry asked him, lapsing into French to see what he might understand.
"Thank you," Wren said when he squeezed her shoulder, realizing that he wasn't going to share whatever Luke had said, her expression going the tiniest bit crestfallen. There were so many secrets lately, she thought, and then she corrected the thought. There had always been secrets, from the very beginning. Maybe that was just who they were?
She didn't buckle the belt. "My stomach isn't feeling well," she said apologetically, and she buckled the seatbelt behind her back instead, to keep the car from protesting and dinging the entire time. "I understand if you don't want to tell her who I am. It's a hard time for all of you, and it might not be the time for that stress," she offered. The last thing she wanted to do was make things worse, and having the daughter of the woman who had murdered your son and grandchildren show up on the day of a funeral might be too much for someone. "I really do understand," she repeated, in case he thought she was just saying it to be polite. "It's just nice to be here," she said gratefully.
It took a second for Gus to realize he was being addressed. He'd been staring wide-eyed, trying to understand things way too grown up for him. It was the same look he gave Luke all the time, the one that said he didn't quite understand why Luke was taking care of him. "Oui!" he finally piped up, which Wren wasn't actually aware of, assuming he'd understood the question properly. "Went to church," he explained in English, and Wren assumed he had gone on a trip with the people he'd lived with before, which turned out to be true, since Gus began babbling about it at length.
It wasn’t that Thierry didn’t want to tell his mother about Wren, but it was a complicated situation all around. “I want her to know,” Thierry said after a moment, his voice quiet. “Because no matter what’s happened in the past, you are still family, Wren, and we don’t leave family behind. Ever.” There was the smile again, just a half-thing that didn’t quite reach his eyes to push away the tiredness, attention again drawn back towards Gus as the little boy started babbling about his own trip, unable to help the small burst of laughter that came at his excitement. “He’s a sweet thing, isn’t he?” Thierry said of him, glancing towards her again as he signalled for their exit, attention momentarily diverted as he checked the mirrors and guided them off towards his parents’ home in the French Quarter. While Thierry had left the city after Katrina, his parents had stayed behind, refusing to give up their home, the roots they had put down, for anything. ‘We will rebuild,’ he remembered his father saying, when he tried to convince them to head upstate with him. But his parents were stubborn things, refusing to yield once they had put their mind to something, so Thierry had left them be. They were survivors, and he knew they would survive this as well.
Wren took a deep breath, one that said she knew it was going to be a tearful day, and she hoped there would be other children that Gus could play with and not be around all the crying. He liked other children; it was adults he had issues with. "Okay. If you think it's a good idea," she said, because Thierry knew his family; she didn't. She didn't even feel like she was part of any of this yet. She'd always thought, when she was small, before she knew her father was dead, that she would know him on sight, and that she would fall right into his arms. But she was older now; she knew better. She gave him a soft smile, and she reached over and squeezed one of his hands on the steering wheel in a universal gesture of reassurance.
"A rest would be nice first," she said after a moment, and it was a quiet question, without being a question at all. If she was feeling well, she wouldn't have asked. But she wasn't feeling well, and a glance at Gus in the rearview said the little boy could benefit from a nap too. "If it's okay. I don't want to put anyone out," she said, perpetually not wanting to be in the way.
Thierry glanced towards Wren’s hand on his own, turning his hand over to return the squeeze of fingers, the car slowing as they neared their destination. “You can take my room, if you don’t mind my luggage littering the place. “They moved the funeral to noon, due to some relatives getting in late this morning, so we’ve plenty of time. You and Gus can get some rest, and perhaps before we head to the church, you and I can sit with my mother for a few. The house will be empty this morning, we’ve asked everyone to save visiting until this afternoon, after the service.” Though that was mostly Thierry who had arranged that, knowing Wren may be visiting. That was a meeting he wanted done without onlookers; enough was going on without anything becoming a spectacle. “And I’m... really glad you came, Wren. I don’t think I can really put into words how much it means to me to have you here, even if we haven’t known one another long.” Thierry threw the car into park outside an older house, hands still resting on the wheel. His gaze was fixed out the window, to the street he had grown up on, to all the memories that washed back just being here.
"We don't mind," she assured him, pulling her hand back and settling it on her lap. She didn't move once the car parked. Instead, she just stared at the house that was nothing she'd ever known. She'd lived three years in Louisiana, but she remembered nothing of it. It was a pretty old house, and she thought of all the times she and Luke had longed for something similar when they were just children, back when it seemed that a white picket fence and a window seat in the living room would fix nearly everything.
She realized, after a few seconds, that she'd gone quiet without answering him, without saying anything, and she nodded. "Okay. A nap, and then we can sit and talk," she said, though her stomach turned over nervously. A glance in the rearview told her that Gus had dozed off during the quiet lull, and she smiled softly, a sad-fond smile. He looked so very much like Luke, and her heart hurt with it. "Can you carry him in?" she asked. "He's a heavy sleeper. If you don't jostle him, he won't wake up," she assured him, and then she reached for the door handle. She could do this, she told herself. Some sleep and something for the pain, and she could do this. She pulled her phone out of her pocket as the door swung open, and the look on her face as she watched the screen light up was glaringly hopeful. But there were no messages from Luke, and there were no missed calls, and she tucked the phone away and gave him a sheepish look over her shoulder. "Okay. Let's go."
“Of course,” came Thierry’s answer as he opened his own door carefully, closing it just as gently so as not to wake Gus, glancing towards Wren for a moment before he shook his head, reassuring in his look that there was nothing to apologise for. A few moments later, Thierry had the little boy in his arms, the car door bumped shut with one hip. “Everything will be fine, Wren,” Thierry assured her as he led the way to the old house that had been his childhood home.
He didn’t knock, instead just tugging open the screen door with one hand, holding it open for Wren to step in ahead of him. The house was a picture of comfort, lived-in and full of warmth, pictures decorating the walls of Thierry and his brother as children, pictures of his parents, other family members. “Mom, I’m back from the airport,” Thierry called out, letting the door swing shut behind him. Just as it closed, an older woman in her sixties bustled in, a narrow thing with dark hair, smile lines at her mouth and eyes, there was no mistaking her for anyone other than Thierry’s mother, and though she smiled, it was clear there was grief in her dark eyes. “I’m going to show them to my room, let them get a little sleep before we talk, okay?”
Wren wished she could believe that anything would be okay, but she was too turned around right then to believe that, too sad and hurting and forlorn. She reached for Gus' hand, which was dangling from Thierry's shoulder, and she rubbed his fingers as Thierry called out to his mother. She tried not to look too long at the pictures that lined the walls, not to show too much curiosity, and it was the exhaustion that made her manage it. She smiled at the woman who bustled in, a shy and uncertain smile, and she mouthed a silent thank you when Thierry offered his room for a nap. Gus murmured in his sleep, asking for Luke, and she soothed him with fingers to his cheek as she followed Thierry. Sleep. Everything would be better after she slept. It was a lie, but one she was willing to pretend to believe just then, if only to get through the next few hours.
Thierry knew that his mother had questions, and hopefully, later, he would have some answers for her. But that was for later, when everyone had had a chance to settle. “Do you want me to bring you some tea or something to eat?” Thierry asked as they moved down the hallway to the guest room, his old room, the door left open and displaying a quiet room, cool, with a full bed taking up most of the space. It was made, and true to Thierry’s earlier comments, his luggage was strewn about, a dark, charcoal-coloured suit hanging on the back of the door, various other bits and pieces of his life strewn about. Gently, Thierry leaned over the bed, putting Gus down on the mattress, a hand cradling his head as he lowered him fully down, a soft sigh escaping him as he straightened. “Are you going to be all right, Wren?” he finally asked, just a whisper, his attention on her once more.
She nodded. At least right then, she would be okay. "I'll be okay," she said aloud, as if it added more truth to it, and she moved to the door, intending to close it behind him, so that she could lie down on the bed with the sleeping boy. The circles around her eyes were darker now, and she obviously needed the rest. She wanted to thank him again, but she thought it might come across as being a little much, and so she just put her hand on the wooden frame. "Maybe when I wake up," she added about tea or eating. Gus had eaten on the flight, and she wasn't hungry at all. "Thank you, Thierry," she added, though she'd been trying not to thank him again, and then she closed the door softly and leaned back against it. It took a few seconds to blink away the tears that threatened to fall, but she managed it, and she crawled gratefully on the bed a second later.