Chapter Text
It takes about a month for the nightmares to start. In retrospect, Court's surprised they make it that far considering the wealth of trauma they’re all hoarding.
His mind lilts unwillingly towards Smaug the dragon, because Colt took it upon himself to show Claire The Lord of the Rings and now Court is reading her The Hobbit before bed every night.
She has that special pre-teen ability to be simultaneously embarrassed and demanding about it, but he’s not ashamed to admit he loves flopping onto her bed and trying to keep his ridiculous voices consistent to make her laugh. She thinks it’s really funny when he tries to sing. He doesn’t think it’s funny at all, but the belly laughs he gets at his expense are worth it.
It reminds him of reading to the twins when they were little, when they were obsessed with Percy Jackson and he had to figure out how to pronounce all those Greek gods and monsters. He remembers at the end of the first book, the way Percy offered to get rid of his abusive step-father and his mom told him, “if my life is going to mean anything I have to live it myself,” before using Medusa’s head to turn her husband into a statue and sell him for her college tuition and a new apartment, for freedom and safety. It’d stuck out to him.
Of course he’d killed his own abuser not long after and been thrown in jail for his efforts, and he hadn’t gotten to live his life at all, let alone for himself. The twins did, and now he’s got both of them and Claire, so he’s trying to make peace with it even though it was kind of a shit deal on his end of things. He hopes Percy got a better run of luck, but he never got to find out because they were only halfway through the third book when. . . Well.
He’s spent a lot of time thinking about that. He wonders if the boys ever went back and finished the books. If it’s another promise he made and then broke by being taken away. Or if it’s a guilt he’s hanging over his own head for no reason because they don’t even remember.
All of which is to say he shouldn’t be as surprised as he is when he wakes up to Jean-Claude’s paw in his mouth. He doesn’t know how the hell the dog of all people snuck up on him. Is he getting soft? Does getting soft matter if he’s finally safe?
Another paw to the face. Fairly gentle, but his claws still drag over sensitive skin.
“What?” he grunts, swatting at him. “Do you need to go out? I feel like you have better options than me. I mean the kid’s wrapped around your little paws there, pal. She’s a way better bet.”
Jean-Claude warbles at him, a funny little growl like he might build up to a bark if Court doesn’t get his shit together and quickly.
“What?” he asks again. Jean-Claude hops off the bed and trots to the doorway, looks over his shoulder. When Court doesn’t move he growls again, a little louder this time. “Alright,” he says. “Bossy. Demanding.”
Half asleep, he follows as Jean-Claude leads him to Claire’s room just in time for the bloody murder screaming to start. He really wakes up at that. The door slams into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in his rush to get inside. The noise of it wakes her from her nightmare and she shoves the covers off herself, hair sticking to her forehead with sweat. He’s lurching forward, reaching both hands to get her in his arms, all forward momentum when she shouts, “No!” and he slides on his socks and trips to a stop.
“Claire, kiddo,” he soothes. “It’s me.” At his next hesitant step forward she jerks back and hits her head against the wall. He stops again, palms up to placate. Behind him he can hear another door slam - probably Ryland - but he ignores it in favor of watching her wild eyes and unsteady breathing.
“I know who you are,” she snaps. “I don’t want you.”
He brushes off the hurt there. Stubborn little assholes though they were as children, Colt and Ryland never got mean with him, so he’s unarmed and unequipped. He missed their ornery teenage phases and stepped right into it with this kid. He knows she’s grieving and that she’s lost everything twice over, that it’s silly the way his chest hurts a little with the dismissal, but he can’t help the way it does anyways.
“Okay,” he says. He takes two steps back. “Do you want one of the boys?” He looks over his shoulder and catches Colt and Ryland and Jody crammed into the doorframe, ready to help but unwilling to push. “Or Jody maybe?”
“No!” Claire shouts. “I don’t want any of you, I want my parents, I want Uncle Fitz! I want to go home!”
Her shouting peters right out into sobbing.
“Claire, honey,” Jody tries.
“Get out!” Claire snaps. Her little face is turning red with exertion. Court spares a worry for her heart and then one for his own, which feels like it’s being shredded.
“Jean-Claude,” Ryland says, and the dog pushes right past them all and into Claire’s lap. He worms his way into her arms and Court’s shoulders drop at the sight of her clutching him.
“Alright,” Jody says. “We’ll give you some space, sweetheart. You come get us when you want us.” She ushers Colt and Ryland out and then grabs Court by the sleeve when he doesn’t move. They get her a glass of water and a snack, the stuffed animal she claims she’s too old for but sleeps with half the time anyway, and an old sweatshirt of Colt’s that she wears obsessively even though it hangs to her knees. Jean-Claude growls ferociously at them if they get too close, so their offerings get left on Claire’s desk and her door gets shut.
He sinks against the opposite wall to the floor, head in his hands, and resigns himself to listening while Claire cries herself out.
Colt and Jody slide down on either side of him, leaned up against his shoulders on either side. Ryland leaves and comes back with pillows that he shoves behind Colt’s back and then in his lap, and then curls up with his head on it. Colt drags his hand through his hair and Ryland lets out a deep breath.
“You can all go back to sleep,” Court mumbles. “I’ve got it.”
“Fuck off,” Jody says immediately. Ryland lets out a hysterical little giggle, which sets off Colt. They both stop when Claire sobs again.
“This is torture,” Ryland says. His voice is muffled against the pillow in Colt’s lap.
“This is worse than torture. And I can say that because I’ve been tortured,” Colt says.
“You’ve WHAT?” Court and Jody both snap. He imagines the meter on a blood pressure cuff spinning around in distress.
Colt shifts guiltily. “Didn’t mean to say that.”
Ryland snorts into his lap.
“Did you know about this?” Court asks him. He sticks a finger in his side where he used to be ticklish and feels vindication when Ryland squirms.
“I know everything.”
“Don’t know how to walk without tripping over your own feet,” Colt says.
“You took all the grace in the womb. I got all the brains.”
“You-
“Just so you’re aware, you’re not distracting me from that. And we will be discussing it,” Court threatens. They both go quiet for a count of three before they start giggling again. Jody’s head drops onto his shoulder.
“God, you must have been the strongest and bravest teenager on Earth for dealing with these two as children.”
“Hey,” Colt says, offended.
“You want to hear some embarrassing stories?” he offers.
Ryland says, “wait-”
“Of course I do,” she grins.
Later, once Jody and Colt have fallen asleep against him and it’s just him and Ryland awake, talking quietly about nothing, Claire’s door swings open.
He sits up a bit. “Hi,” he says carefully, side-eyeing Jean-Claude. His teeth are all in his mouth instead of bared in his direction, which feels like a good sign.
Claire eyes him from the doorway. She’s wearing Colt’s hoodie and it makes her look impossibly young and small, the way it drapes past her knees and over her fingertips. He watches her back with baited breath. For a minute he’s worried she’s looking for an exit path to make a break for it, but after a loaded moment she steps over the spaghetti pile of legs in her way and crawls into his lap like a little kid.
“Thank god,” he heaves, abandoning subtlety. He jostles Colt and Jody with how fast he moves to wrap her up in his arms. She’s all bony knees and elbows, too big to be held like this but small enough to fit under his chin all the same. “You doin’ better?” he asks. She nods. Ryland sits up from Colt’s lap, and Claire wriggles around in his grip until she can reach across for his hand. Ryland grasps it with both of his own, a crinkly little smile on his face.
“Sorry I said I didn’t want you,” she whispers. Court ducks down to kiss her forehead.
“It’s okay.”
She shifts again so she’s closer to him. “I do want you. I was just sad.” Court closes his eyes and sighs.
“That’s okay,” Ryland says. “We’ll always be here when you need us, and we’ll still be here even when you don’t. That’s family.”
They sit with that for a bit, breathing together, until Court’s legs start to go numb under Claire’s weight.
In his sleep Colt says, “fruit salad on ice? I want the police,” and Claire breaks into a peal of hysterical laughter that finally startles Colt and Jody awake. They both groan.
“I’m fine with the cuddle puddle,” Colt says, “I really am, but could we move to literally anywhere other than the floor now?”
“Old man,” Claire teases.
He frowns at her. “I broke my spine.”
“Back in the olden days walking to school uphill in the snow-”
“I’ll have you know a crazy man tried to kill me -”
“Okay,” Court says. “That’s enough.” He gets to his feet with the kid in his arms and tries not to laugh when Colt and Jody slump towards each other without him to hold them up.
He drops onto the couch with Claire still in his arms just to hear her screech in alarm, and then stretches out and lets her curl up on top of him like a human mattress. Everybody and the dog pile in until they’re all squished together. He’s got the kid on his chest squeezing the air out of his lungs and Colt’s foot over his leg and it’s too warm and too crowded and it might be the best sleep of his life.
He wakes up in the middle of the night from his own bad dream a week later and heads for the kitchen. He’s surprised to find Colt there already, elbow-deep in a bag of pretzels he knows without asking belong to Ryland and also knows Colt will deny knowing the whereabouts of when Ryland realizes they’re gone.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Court asks.
Colt shrugs. “Bad dreams.” He rolls up the pretzel bag - there’s mere crumbs left, he just knows it - and tosses it back on the shelf. He has a headache already from whenever they inevitably start bickering about it.
Colt fidgets across from him, nervous energy and exhaustion all over his face.
“Want to go for a drive?” Court asks. It’s an old trick but a good one. Get some of that energy out like a pressure valve releasing and everything else will be okay.
Colt bumps him with his shoulder on the way to grab his keys, an easy smile at the edge of his mouth. They take a drive by the beach, circle around town a bit. Colt’s got music playing quietly, the windows down, his hands patting the steering wheel or fidgeting with the knickknacks Ryland and Jody have stuck to his dashboard.
A few miles from home Colt takes an odd turn. “Gotta stop for gas,” he explains. Court hums. He watches him hop out of the truck and head for the pump. Something about it feels off. He peers into the side-mirror and studies him under the fluorescent lights flickering from the bugs that circle them and tries to put his finger on it. Colt’s got one hand on the pump and one on his hip, propped against the side of the truck. His hair’s all messy from the windows being down and with the way it’s getting long again, touching the back of his neck and always getting in his eyes the way he hated as a kid.
Colt shifts. It’s a little thing, hard to miss, and Court chalks it up to back pain. He’s gotten better at reading when it’s flaring up. Colt will shift, crack his back, prop himself up so there’s less pressure on his spine even when the bad posture should really be making it worse. Sometimes he absently rubs at it with his hand, other times he gets a blank look on his face Court's learned means he’s trying really hard to focus on his surroundings but the pain is so bad he can’t.
He notices Colt’s shaking hands just as he’s about to relax. It’s faint, a barely-there tremor he wouldn’t have even noticed if Colt wasn’t usually so wholly and completely steady. He sits up and turns to lean out the window to really look at him. He’s gone very, very still. Court follows his line of sight and finds he’s staring at nothing, into blank space over the meter.
The meter that tells him in the few minutes they’ve been there Colt has only put three gallons in the tank. His hand is lax around the nozzle. He’s just standing there.
He clambers out of the truck just as Colt’s breathing picks up. “Hey, hey,” he says. “What’s going on?” He catches his shoulders in both hands and tugs at him.
Colt’s wide-eyed expression has him turning to check their surroundings, but it’s just them. There’s a young man at the register inside the store and nobody else at all.
“Colt.”
He flinches and takes in a shuddery breath. “Sorry. Just the smell of the gas. Don’t like it,” he says, and then his breathing starts picking up. “Sorry. I’m good. I’m fine.”
Court rolls his eyes. “Yeah? Take a deep breath then.”
Colt sucks in a breath and then chokes on the exhale and devolves into a gasping, heaving panic attack.
Court manhandles him so he’s tucked sideways into the passenger seat with his legs out, untied boots dangling on his feet, and gently guides his head between his knees. He steps in between him and the rest of the world, even if there’s nobody here to see them.
“You’re alright,” he murmurs. “I’m right here. You’re just fine, Colt. Take your time.”
He traces a hand up and down his spine for a while. The gesture feels inadequate and strange, the same way he always feels trying to remember how to be kind instead of dangerous. Eventually Colt sits up, teary eyed but breathing steady.
“Sorry,” he says. Court huffs at him.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“‘S stupid,” Colt says.
“I’m sure it’s not,” he argues. He pats Colt’s legs until he swings them into the truck. “Shut the window and pull your shirt over your nose, okay? I’ll fill the tank. We can talk about this when we get home.”
Colt nods. He wipes his face inside his elbow and pulls the door shut. Court turns back when the window opens again. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here,” Colt says simply.
Court feels a pang of grief for every panic attack and heartbreak and bad day he’s missed over the years. He steps over to lean into the window and kiss the side of Colt’s head, ruffles his hair.
“I’m glad I’m here too. Now shut the window before you set yourself off again,” he orders. Colt does, and then he gets a few minutes to pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers and stare into the night. It’s a rare moment to let the grief press into his chest uninterrupted. He closes his eyes and pictures Colt the last time he really saw him, when he was nine, and imagines scooping him up into his arms one more time, an opportunity he lost in the chaos of that night.
He feels phantom sensations - Colt’s perpetually sticky kid-fingers on the back of his neck, ankles crossed at his back, his little hummingbird heart against his own. He can turn around and go hug the man in the truck behind him who’s just as much his brother, but he’s still grieving the kids he left behind. He saw their personalities develop from infancy. He watched Ryland and his cautious, thoughtful nature and the way he studied the world around him with wide eyes from his crib and then with a million “why”s as a toddler and then from behind piles of library books as a kid.
Colt was always a little more physical. He wanted to touch everything, feel it in his hands. He was a nightmare as a toddler with the way he’d grab anything and promptly stick it in his mouth. As a kid he taught himself how to do backflips in the back yard while Ryland cringed behind Court’s back, too nervous to watch and too scared to look away.
He can see how Colt’s physicality brought him to a career like stunts but he should have been there to see it. He remembers moments between missions, recovering from injuries, when he’d watch Colt’s movies, over and over. He’d rewind action scenes with his eyes glued to the screen like maybe he would catch a glimpse of him through the makeup and costuming and the way they were purposefully trying to conceal him. Mostly he saw a lot of Tom Ryder, but every once in a while there would be a moment where he’d swear - the nose, or the particular way he carried himself - he’d swear it was Colt.
He had nothing of Ryland. He should've been there to see him defend his PHD, and he’s a little sad he missed the UNESCO conference where he apparently lost his patience and his mind. He always was a force to be reckoned with when he was on a roll. He still has no idea how he went from one career to another, or what it was like for him, or how he feels about it now. Aside from a few self-deprecating comments here and there he never mentions it. Court doesn’t know how to ask. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed.
He got to be there for the beginning of their lives and he gets to be here now, but there’s a million in-between moments he’ll never be privy to. And now the suntanned, scrawny little kid he knew wholly and entirely in childhood is a thirty-five year old man having PTSD induced panic attacks for reasons Court doesn’t understand because he wasn’t there.
The gas pump shuts off. Court slumps into the truck beside his brother and peels out of the parking lot. He rolls the windows all down and blasts the air so the smell doesn’t linger and focuses on getting them both home safe.
He plans out the talk they’ll have in his head on the way home, but by the time they get there Colt’s dead asleep in the passenger seat, so he lets him go to bed, and then Colt seems to make sure they aren’t alone again for a while. Court takes the hint and doesn’t make him talk about it.
It’s a mistake.
After that Claire’s nightmares pick up. Colt keeps flinching at strange times and then shaking his head like he’s remembering something bad and he needs to physically shake it off himself. Ryland comes out of his self-imposed shell enough to fess up to his feelings of guilt for ‘killing him’, and then starts showing up to the kitchen in the mornings with bags under his eyes like he’s not sleeping.
He feels a little like he’s being pulled apart in three different directions. Claire needs stability and Colt needs affection and Ryland needs . . . something. Therapy, probably, but Court knows he couldn’t actually talk about half the things he needs to, which is at least in some part his fault. The last thing he needs is attention drawn to him and Claire, and surely a therapist would raise a brow at a dead brother who never died and instead was a shadow operative for the CIA.
So he does his best. He can never figure out who’s going to crack next, or anticipate what they’ll need from him, or better prepare himself for next time. He meant it when he told Fitz that he didn’t know how to care for people but he’s finding it’s not a complete loss - more like atrophied muscle. He remembers more than he thought. What he remembers never feels like enough, but he does what he can with what he’s got.
Jody is a blissfully blank slate. She didn’t even know he existed before he came back, so it’s a bit like making a new friend. He’s never had a lot of those - none without ulterior motives or complicated history - so he revels in it a little.
They let Claire pick an album and play it over the speakers in the kitchen while they cook together. Behind them, Ryland sits at the table and watches whatever nonsense Claire and Court get up to while they wait. It ranges from play-fighting to dancing to elaborate performances of their favorite movie scenes.
He and Jody chop vegetables and talk about everything - the young woman a few houses down who keeps trying to flirt with Ryland despite his clear disinterest, books they’ve been reading, places they’ve traveled, childhood memories.
He tells her about Ryland’s sleep terror phase when he’d wake up shouting nonsense in the middle of the night while she laughs.
“Usually it was something Colt had done throughout the day. Like he’d wake up talking about converse and I’d know Colt must have borrowed them that day without asking.
“What made them stop?”
“I’d let him sleep in my bed when it got bad.”
Jody pats his arm. “They were lucky to have you. Then and now.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says. Jody shoots him an incredulous look. Over his shoulder he can hear the prolific real-cursing and fake-cursing that means the twins are losing Mario Kart to Claire. He chops a carrot and rolls around the feeling he’s been stuck on - how it feels like the three of them are reaching for parts of him that just aren’t there anymore. “I feel like I’m failing them. Like they all need more than I can give them.”
Jody pauses, grabs his arm to turn him to face her. “They don’t need anything from you except you, Court.”
“I don’t know who I am,” he says. It’s freeing to admit to. Spending an entire life simply trying to survive doesn’t lend itself to developing personhood. He’s been going through the motions like a music-box machine, and now nobody’s telling him what to play, and he’s gone silent and still. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to be a brother or a parent or a friend. I don’t know what I like or how to relax or what to do with myself.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else, after all you’ve been through,” Jody says kindly. “And I think the best gift you can give us all is letting us help you figure that out.”
He nods. In the other room, Claire says something under her breath that makes Ryland let out an atrocious snort of laughter, like he’d tried to hold it in but the force was too great. It makes Colt laugh in response, that same and forever one-two step. He lets it wash over him.
“What if it never comes back? What if it’s permanent?”
Jody raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
He laughs. “The twins had to get it from someone.”
“Court, they’re all so happy you’re here. That’s all you need to be. Everything else will fall into place with time and patience and a little bit of love. You’ve just got to let us in instead of trying to carry everything by yourself.”
He gives in right away and lets the tears fall that he otherwise would have held back. Jody’s whole face softens and she reaches for him, arms around his shoulders. He squeezes her back.
“I’m sad I missed out on their lives. I don’t know how to ask about it. I don’t know how to stop being afraid all of this is going to get taken away.”
“Talking about it is a good start,” Jody says.
“Easier said than done.”
“You’ll get there. Maybe we’ll work on your ability to express yourself through fashion first. Claire would love a shopping trip,” Jody whispers into his shoulder conspiratorially.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he says again, empathetically.
She lets go of him and pats his shoulders. “God knows the rest of us have our own trauma to figure out. The whole point of us being together is so we don’t have to figure it out alone, right? So don’t do it alone.”
“You make it sound really simple,” he says.
Jody laughs. “Nothing is simple about any of this. We’re in the worst of it now, but we’ll take it one day at a time.”
It sounds pretty good when she says it like that. He pictures a future where the nightmares slow down, and the grief is a familiar and comfortable companion rather than a crushing weight. He imagines more nights cooking with Jody, and reading to Claire, visits to set to watch Colt kick ass, hikes with Ryland rambling incessantly in his ear. He’s been looking at these people like fires to put out instead of family to muddle along with, together, holding each other through it until everything makes sense again.
Jody goes back to making dinner, and Court leans out the kitchen door to check in on Claire and finds her squished between the twins on the couch, stuck right in the middle of their bickering laughing so hard it looks half-painful. He thinks about himself at that age, or at the twins’ age, and lets himself feel grief for what he missed, and joy for what he gets now, and lets it all run together.