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Entry tags:
.fic: Sons (D/M) 1.1
Title: Sons
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin, sort of (Victor-fic, but there issubtext present)
Rating/Warnings: PG, angst. O, delightful, dulcet angst.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Post-ep. for 4.01, "Showdown." The ending that got pre-empted by that Sam foolishness.
Notes: One of the things that I really wanted to see, but of course didn't get to, was Victor going to the hospital. And of course Danny is at the hospital when Victor's there, and of course they meet and have a little Talk of sorts.
This is from Victor's POV, which is a new thing for me.
SONS
Victor Fitzgerald had no memory of leaving his borrowed office, or the drive over to St. Vincent’s, or of climbing out of the car and ordering the agent to go home. The hospital hallways blurred into bright lights and refractions of metal, smell of antiseptic and voices – his asking for his son's room, those of the doctors and nurses asking him who is your son, sir?, and why the hell didn't they know who he was?; he'd almost asked this until he remembered, and said he was looking for Martin Fitzgerald, and then they'd given him directions.
He made his way up to the inpatient ward, frowning at the pastels and generic outdoor paintings decorating the wall. The nurses were dressed in flower-decorated scrubs, and it struck Victor as ridiculous, this attempt to make this place look cheerful, to give the illusion of health and recovery. And Martin was somewhere in this hopeless maze, put there by a killer’s bullet, and Victor had no idea if his son was awake, or if he knew what had happened, what Victor had done – had almost done – for him.
“Victor!”
Startled, he stopped and turned, looked down, blinked in surprise when he saw his wife.
Petra was sitting quietly in a chair, her coat folded neatly on the chair beside her and her briefcase resting by her feet, some folders open on her lap. Impeccable and crisp even at the end of the day, not a strand of dark hair out of place. That was Petra, and he felt hopelessly rumpled next to her, in a suit he hadn’t taken off for twelve hours.
“You were in another world,” she remarked as she removed her coat from its resting place and gestured for him to sit down – not a suggestion, an order reinforced by Petra’s stern blue eyes peering at him over the rim of her glasses. “Now, sit down before you fall down.”
“I’ve been sitting down all day.” Victor collapsed into the chair, ignoring his wife’s satisfied smile. “Have you extracted anything from those doctors?”
“‘Those doctors’ say he’s doing well. He’s breathing on his own, and that’s good.” Petra’s left hand closed over his, cool metal of her wedding band pressing into his skin. “He’s breathing, Victor. That’s good news.”
He knew the expression on his face was one of utter disbelief. Petra rolled her eyes and sighed, but didn’t say anything.
It was a sad thing, Victor supposed, when ‘he’s breathing’ constituted the high point of the day, because not so many hours ago Martin hadn’t been breathing at all. He wondered what he would have done if that call had come, the one that all day long had had him hesitating before picking up the phone – I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Fitzgerald, but your son…. He shied away from the rest of the words. Go to the hospital? Stay at the office and watch the Bureau and DHS snarling at each other? Go out to find Dornvald himself?
“You need to calm down,” Petra told him, her grip on his hand tightening a bit when Victor tensed in an attempt to get up. “You can’t go in there like this; you’ll upset him.”
And how he could upset Martin when Martin was unconscious, Victor had no idea. He snorted and shook his head – these were ridiculous, unproductive thoughts, and only Martin was capable of making him think them.
“Is he alone?” he asked.
“He has a friend in with him now,” Petra said, and offered him a slight smile. “I’m taking a break for a while.” Her nod indicated the papers on her lap. “A summit on third-world economics in Vienna next week… I need to prep my replacement.” A searching look, and he couldn’t hide from her now anymore than he could have thirty-six years gone. “I know you won’t tell me, but is everything okay?”
“Dornvald’s dead.” It’s not okay, but it’s a start.
“Good.” Cool, but fierce all the same.
He disengaged himself from her and stood, running quick, useless hands over his coat. “I won’t stay long; he needs his rest.”
Petra nodded her agreement and he turned and left, moving as quickly as he could down the hallway, absently keeping count of the room numbers as he passed. 5204, and he almost walked right by it, another semi-darkened room in an endless series of them. He paused and stepped back, peering in through the open door, caught by a soft murmur of sound, a human voice, somehow broken free from the white noise of instruments and lights.
From Petra’s words, he’d been expecting Samantha Spade, but instead saw a dark head bent close over Martin’s body, resting on folded arms. White shirt a beacon in the darkness, sleeves rolled up, unexpected flash of gold around a wrist. A young man – not young, he corrected himself, but almost everyone looked younger these days – his son’s age at least, hunched over and staring at Martin with an exhausted, burning intensity that Victor couldn’t examine too closely – too personal, intimate almost, this one-sided, desperate dialogue.
He paused there, in the doorway, listening. Spanish, he thought, spoken at headlong speed, the smoothness of it shattered by rough breath and occasional flights of English – we got the bastard, Martin, we fucking got the bastard and God, Fitzie, you scared the hell out of me last night – and in a flash he knew who this man was.
“You’re Danny Taylor,” he said stupidly.
Taylor jerked upright and whirled, staggering to his feet with a violence that sent his chair skidding backward. Victor’s gaze flew to the bed and the still form lying on it; Taylor’s eyes followed his, fastening on Martin for a heartbeat before darting back to Victor, then to the bed and back to Victor again.
And Martin didn’t move.
Victor stepped more fully into the room, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of it. Martin was just… just lying there, the only movement that of his chest rising and falling. And Victor, who had been picturing huge banks of machines and a series of inhuman beeps and clicks measuring off Martin’s heartbeat and pressing air into his lungs, was almost slack and incoherent with relief. A few more steps took him to the metal railing, where Taylor’s suit jacket was draped carelessly, material brushing against Martin’s forearm, and Martin was so pale in the shadows and the lights coming from the street.
“They, uh, they sedated him,” Taylor said, voice small and distant in the silence, almost fearfully hushed, as though in church. “He hasn’t woken up since… since I’ve been here.”
Victor turned to look at him, saw dark, weary eyes under a thatch of dark hair, a small bandage taped at the top of his right temple. Vaguely, he remembered reading the initial report… Martin shot twice, perhaps fatally, once in the chest and once in the abdomen, and the other agent suffering only bruises and a cut to his temple from broken glass.
“You were the agent with Martin,” he said, striving to keep his tone neutral, but knowing what crept through anyway: My son is almost dead, and you’re not.
“Yeah,” Taylor said softly, and he’d heard the unspoken accusation. “I mean, yes, sir. I was.”
And that wasn’t fair, because one look at Taylor’s face told Victor that he hadn’t gotten away with only that bandage. Wounds ran deeper, and even as he watched, Victor could see Taylor closing off, stitching himself together again.
“I – I’ll go.” Taylor moved to take his jacket, but Victor motioned for him to stay put. Taylor froze, staring at him uncertainly.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Victor gestured to the dislodged chair. “You look exhausted.”
“Not much sleep, sir.” Taylor gathered up his jacket and obediently sat down, burying his hands in the fabric. Shoulders squared this time, jaw set, gaze darting back to Martin as though drawn there, or as though Martin would disappear if he looked away too long.
Victor stared at Martin for a long moment, trying to convince himself that Martin was still breathing, that the intervals between each breath weren’t becoming longer. And they weren’t, of course; the machine monitoring his heart and lungs continued to beep away in regular, hypnotic rhythm. Only fear, unaccustomed and unwelcome, but so very present made him believe it – kept him from objectivity and calmness, and damn Martin for doing this to him.
He was acutely aware of Taylor next to him, tie undone and unprofessional, sitting in determined, desperate silence.
“I’ve read the official reports,” he said quietly, “but I would like to hear your version of events.”
Taylor laughed, short and bitter, but obediently ran through the few minutes that the world had needed for Victor’s life to turn upside down.
“.. and… and I stayed with him in the ambulance, until they took him up to surgery.” Taylor fell silent, staring at his hands now. Elegant, long fingers, and Victor could see dark, dried crusts in the corners of the nails. Martin’s blood? He knew how hard blood was to get out once it dried. “Wish I could have done more.”
“You did enough,” Victor said, and that at least was true. Jack had said Taylor’d been out in the field much of the time, except for a few hours back in the office – when Victor had been in negotiations with Homeland Security over the fate of Paige Hobson. “And you kept Martin alive. I… Thank you.” Had to draw a breath, because that was Martin’s blood on Taylor’s hands, and Taylor had kept Martin from dying for those few minutes before help could arrive. “I’m very grateful. More than I could say.”
Dark eyes were fixed on him now, bruises and shadows under them, disbelief in them.
And Victor knew what Jack thought of him (knew and didn’t care, most of the time), and had a pretty good idea what he told his team. And he knew what Martin thought – stay out of my life, okay? – but still… It stung, that gratitude for saving his son’s life could be so easily disbelieved.
“Don’t mention it,” Taylor said after a minute, turned back to Martin, and there was that look again, that Victor couldn’t or wouldn’t name, as though the sight of Martin were somehow necessary for Taylor. “Only did what I could.”
“It kept him alive,” Victor told him, and there must have been more in his voice than he’d meant – that damnable quaver that he’d picked up somewhere, as the day had worn on – because Taylor was looking at him doubtfully again.
“You didn’t see,” Taylor said hoarsely, shaking his head. “I mean… God. He wasn’t breathing. Just… just fucking lying there.” The hands were going again, gesturing and flickering, their own language, speaking eloquently of agitation. “And I kept thinking that he’d died, even when the medics said he wasn’t.”
Taylor fell silent again, offered a muttered apology for freaking out after a moment, and Victor nodded an acceptance that Taylor didn’t see. He stood next to Taylor, seeing the dark, bowed head in the corner of his eye, the slant of shoulders, and tried to find a way to reassure him.
He’d never been particularly good at this with his own agents, hadn’t ever been good about taking reassurance from others, even his superiors – especially his superiors, come to think of it.
“There aren’t many people in the world who can tell Martin what to do,” he said at last, as much for himself as Taylor, “and Emil Dornvald isn’t one of them.”
“Yeah,” Taylor said, flashing him a subdued smile, humor flickering in his eyes for a moment before tiredness extinguished it again. “I know how that is.”
Victor laughed softly, which earned him a sidelong, somewhat amazed look. “You should go back to your apartment and get some rest,” he told the younger man, not expecting to be obeyed, wondered briefly if there was anyone waiting for him at home, or had passed the day hoping he was safe – a mother, father, wife. “I’m sure Jack will want you early in the morning.”
“Yeah.” Taylor nodded thoughtfully, but he made no move to go. A smirk, faint but there, played at the edges of his lips. “Maybe you should take your own advice, sir.”
“I should,” Victor agreed.
He didn’t move, either, only stayed and listened to the beep and click of Martin’s heartbeat.
-end-
PS to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mardia_: Even though I have not yet seen your Victor drabble, I posted this because I did see some fic up by you, and I suppose that counts. But don't think I'm not going to hold you to Victor!fic *ominous look*
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin, sort of (Victor-fic, but there is
Rating/Warnings: PG, angst. O, delightful, dulcet angst.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Post-ep. for 4.01, "Showdown." The ending that got pre-empted by that Sam foolishness.
Notes: One of the things that I really wanted to see, but of course didn't get to, was Victor going to the hospital. And of course Danny is at the hospital when Victor's there, and of course they meet and have a little Talk of sorts.
This is from Victor's POV, which is a new thing for me.
SONS
Victor Fitzgerald had no memory of leaving his borrowed office, or the drive over to St. Vincent’s, or of climbing out of the car and ordering the agent to go home. The hospital hallways blurred into bright lights and refractions of metal, smell of antiseptic and voices – his asking for his son's room, those of the doctors and nurses asking him who is your son, sir?, and why the hell didn't they know who he was?; he'd almost asked this until he remembered, and said he was looking for Martin Fitzgerald, and then they'd given him directions.
He made his way up to the inpatient ward, frowning at the pastels and generic outdoor paintings decorating the wall. The nurses were dressed in flower-decorated scrubs, and it struck Victor as ridiculous, this attempt to make this place look cheerful, to give the illusion of health and recovery. And Martin was somewhere in this hopeless maze, put there by a killer’s bullet, and Victor had no idea if his son was awake, or if he knew what had happened, what Victor had done – had almost done – for him.
“Victor!”
Startled, he stopped and turned, looked down, blinked in surprise when he saw his wife.
Petra was sitting quietly in a chair, her coat folded neatly on the chair beside her and her briefcase resting by her feet, some folders open on her lap. Impeccable and crisp even at the end of the day, not a strand of dark hair out of place. That was Petra, and he felt hopelessly rumpled next to her, in a suit he hadn’t taken off for twelve hours.
“You were in another world,” she remarked as she removed her coat from its resting place and gestured for him to sit down – not a suggestion, an order reinforced by Petra’s stern blue eyes peering at him over the rim of her glasses. “Now, sit down before you fall down.”
“I’ve been sitting down all day.” Victor collapsed into the chair, ignoring his wife’s satisfied smile. “Have you extracted anything from those doctors?”
“‘Those doctors’ say he’s doing well. He’s breathing on his own, and that’s good.” Petra’s left hand closed over his, cool metal of her wedding band pressing into his skin. “He’s breathing, Victor. That’s good news.”
He knew the expression on his face was one of utter disbelief. Petra rolled her eyes and sighed, but didn’t say anything.
It was a sad thing, Victor supposed, when ‘he’s breathing’ constituted the high point of the day, because not so many hours ago Martin hadn’t been breathing at all. He wondered what he would have done if that call had come, the one that all day long had had him hesitating before picking up the phone – I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Fitzgerald, but your son…. He shied away from the rest of the words. Go to the hospital? Stay at the office and watch the Bureau and DHS snarling at each other? Go out to find Dornvald himself?
“You need to calm down,” Petra told him, her grip on his hand tightening a bit when Victor tensed in an attempt to get up. “You can’t go in there like this; you’ll upset him.”
And how he could upset Martin when Martin was unconscious, Victor had no idea. He snorted and shook his head – these were ridiculous, unproductive thoughts, and only Martin was capable of making him think them.
“Is he alone?” he asked.
“He has a friend in with him now,” Petra said, and offered him a slight smile. “I’m taking a break for a while.” Her nod indicated the papers on her lap. “A summit on third-world economics in Vienna next week… I need to prep my replacement.” A searching look, and he couldn’t hide from her now anymore than he could have thirty-six years gone. “I know you won’t tell me, but is everything okay?”
“Dornvald’s dead.” It’s not okay, but it’s a start.
“Good.” Cool, but fierce all the same.
He disengaged himself from her and stood, running quick, useless hands over his coat. “I won’t stay long; he needs his rest.”
Petra nodded her agreement and he turned and left, moving as quickly as he could down the hallway, absently keeping count of the room numbers as he passed. 5204, and he almost walked right by it, another semi-darkened room in an endless series of them. He paused and stepped back, peering in through the open door, caught by a soft murmur of sound, a human voice, somehow broken free from the white noise of instruments and lights.
From Petra’s words, he’d been expecting Samantha Spade, but instead saw a dark head bent close over Martin’s body, resting on folded arms. White shirt a beacon in the darkness, sleeves rolled up, unexpected flash of gold around a wrist. A young man – not young, he corrected himself, but almost everyone looked younger these days – his son’s age at least, hunched over and staring at Martin with an exhausted, burning intensity that Victor couldn’t examine too closely – too personal, intimate almost, this one-sided, desperate dialogue.
He paused there, in the doorway, listening. Spanish, he thought, spoken at headlong speed, the smoothness of it shattered by rough breath and occasional flights of English – we got the bastard, Martin, we fucking got the bastard and God, Fitzie, you scared the hell out of me last night – and in a flash he knew who this man was.
“You’re Danny Taylor,” he said stupidly.
Taylor jerked upright and whirled, staggering to his feet with a violence that sent his chair skidding backward. Victor’s gaze flew to the bed and the still form lying on it; Taylor’s eyes followed his, fastening on Martin for a heartbeat before darting back to Victor, then to the bed and back to Victor again.
And Martin didn’t move.
Victor stepped more fully into the room, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of it. Martin was just… just lying there, the only movement that of his chest rising and falling. And Victor, who had been picturing huge banks of machines and a series of inhuman beeps and clicks measuring off Martin’s heartbeat and pressing air into his lungs, was almost slack and incoherent with relief. A few more steps took him to the metal railing, where Taylor’s suit jacket was draped carelessly, material brushing against Martin’s forearm, and Martin was so pale in the shadows and the lights coming from the street.
“They, uh, they sedated him,” Taylor said, voice small and distant in the silence, almost fearfully hushed, as though in church. “He hasn’t woken up since… since I’ve been here.”
Victor turned to look at him, saw dark, weary eyes under a thatch of dark hair, a small bandage taped at the top of his right temple. Vaguely, he remembered reading the initial report… Martin shot twice, perhaps fatally, once in the chest and once in the abdomen, and the other agent suffering only bruises and a cut to his temple from broken glass.
“You were the agent with Martin,” he said, striving to keep his tone neutral, but knowing what crept through anyway: My son is almost dead, and you’re not.
“Yeah,” Taylor said softly, and he’d heard the unspoken accusation. “I mean, yes, sir. I was.”
And that wasn’t fair, because one look at Taylor’s face told Victor that he hadn’t gotten away with only that bandage. Wounds ran deeper, and even as he watched, Victor could see Taylor closing off, stitching himself together again.
“I – I’ll go.” Taylor moved to take his jacket, but Victor motioned for him to stay put. Taylor froze, staring at him uncertainly.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Victor gestured to the dislodged chair. “You look exhausted.”
“Not much sleep, sir.” Taylor gathered up his jacket and obediently sat down, burying his hands in the fabric. Shoulders squared this time, jaw set, gaze darting back to Martin as though drawn there, or as though Martin would disappear if he looked away too long.
Victor stared at Martin for a long moment, trying to convince himself that Martin was still breathing, that the intervals between each breath weren’t becoming longer. And they weren’t, of course; the machine monitoring his heart and lungs continued to beep away in regular, hypnotic rhythm. Only fear, unaccustomed and unwelcome, but so very present made him believe it – kept him from objectivity and calmness, and damn Martin for doing this to him.
He was acutely aware of Taylor next to him, tie undone and unprofessional, sitting in determined, desperate silence.
“I’ve read the official reports,” he said quietly, “but I would like to hear your version of events.”
Taylor laughed, short and bitter, but obediently ran through the few minutes that the world had needed for Victor’s life to turn upside down.
“.. and… and I stayed with him in the ambulance, until they took him up to surgery.” Taylor fell silent, staring at his hands now. Elegant, long fingers, and Victor could see dark, dried crusts in the corners of the nails. Martin’s blood? He knew how hard blood was to get out once it dried. “Wish I could have done more.”
“You did enough,” Victor said, and that at least was true. Jack had said Taylor’d been out in the field much of the time, except for a few hours back in the office – when Victor had been in negotiations with Homeland Security over the fate of Paige Hobson. “And you kept Martin alive. I… Thank you.” Had to draw a breath, because that was Martin’s blood on Taylor’s hands, and Taylor had kept Martin from dying for those few minutes before help could arrive. “I’m very grateful. More than I could say.”
Dark eyes were fixed on him now, bruises and shadows under them, disbelief in them.
And Victor knew what Jack thought of him (knew and didn’t care, most of the time), and had a pretty good idea what he told his team. And he knew what Martin thought – stay out of my life, okay? – but still… It stung, that gratitude for saving his son’s life could be so easily disbelieved.
“Don’t mention it,” Taylor said after a minute, turned back to Martin, and there was that look again, that Victor couldn’t or wouldn’t name, as though the sight of Martin were somehow necessary for Taylor. “Only did what I could.”
“It kept him alive,” Victor told him, and there must have been more in his voice than he’d meant – that damnable quaver that he’d picked up somewhere, as the day had worn on – because Taylor was looking at him doubtfully again.
“You didn’t see,” Taylor said hoarsely, shaking his head. “I mean… God. He wasn’t breathing. Just… just fucking lying there.” The hands were going again, gesturing and flickering, their own language, speaking eloquently of agitation. “And I kept thinking that he’d died, even when the medics said he wasn’t.”
Taylor fell silent again, offered a muttered apology for freaking out after a moment, and Victor nodded an acceptance that Taylor didn’t see. He stood next to Taylor, seeing the dark, bowed head in the corner of his eye, the slant of shoulders, and tried to find a way to reassure him.
He’d never been particularly good at this with his own agents, hadn’t ever been good about taking reassurance from others, even his superiors – especially his superiors, come to think of it.
“There aren’t many people in the world who can tell Martin what to do,” he said at last, as much for himself as Taylor, “and Emil Dornvald isn’t one of them.”
“Yeah,” Taylor said, flashing him a subdued smile, humor flickering in his eyes for a moment before tiredness extinguished it again. “I know how that is.”
Victor laughed softly, which earned him a sidelong, somewhat amazed look. “You should go back to your apartment and get some rest,” he told the younger man, not expecting to be obeyed, wondered briefly if there was anyone waiting for him at home, or had passed the day hoping he was safe – a mother, father, wife. “I’m sure Jack will want you early in the morning.”
“Yeah.” Taylor nodded thoughtfully, but he made no move to go. A smirk, faint but there, played at the edges of his lips. “Maybe you should take your own advice, sir.”
“I should,” Victor agreed.
He didn’t move, either, only stayed and listened to the beep and click of Martin’s heartbeat.
-end-
PS to
mardia_: Even though I have not yet seen your Victor drabble, I posted this because I did see some fic up by you, and I suppose that counts. But don't think I'm not going to hold you to Victor!fic *ominous look*
no subject
*beams*
I love you. This was so good. So good.
*rubs hands gleefully*
Oh, man, it was all pitch-perfect. Danny and Victor...eee! So awesome.
no subject
I love Danny and Victor, I do. Not together, of course, but their interactions are quite delightful to speculate about *g*