Chapter Text
Bolt Out of the Blue
Chapter One
((disclaimer type stuff: this is an original fic using a few characters that are not mine. This is done not for profit but because I love the characters.))
Once upon a time, as my daughters’ books tend to start, there was a man who wanted to be a
Knight, and a beautiful Sorceress who needed help. The Knight found out later what she actually needed help doing was destroying the world.
Which goes to show that even as a kid I made spectacularly crappy choices in women.
So most of us survived the war and I figured out that the whole Knight and Sorceress thing was going to get people I was fond of killed. Namely, me. I changed careers and gave being normal a shot. I put away the gunblade, avoided SeeDs, and tried not to lob Firas at assholes who cut me off in traffic. I also swore off exotic older women.
That lasted until I met Solange. Solange was a dancer, not the cheap kind with a pole but the dedicated kind with the toe shoes. She was beautiful, flexible, free spirited, and horny. I was 20 years old and captivated. We spent all our time together in bed. Eventually, one or both of us slipped up and Solange got pregnant. I immediately proposed. She reluctantly accepted. That should have set off warning bells, but I was too far into the whole romantic fantasy to hear them.
Look at it from my point of view: this incredible woman was going to be mine exclusively and give me children. Constant sex, the foundation of our relationship, was a given. I was looking forward to the whole happy ever after thing.
Now that I’m older and it’s over, I can also look at it from Solange’s point of view. She was a career orientated professional ballerina whose life plan didn’t include taking a year off to give birth. She was adventurous enough to give it a try, but as soon as she realized the inconvenience of the whole deal, Solange wanted out. She didn’t want a baby. She didn’t actually want me, except on her terms.
What started out as my rose colored vision of the three of us living in domestic bliss quickly changed to months of me pleading with Solange not to terminate the pregnancy. She waffled until it was too late, and then bitterly blamed me for every discomfort, stretch mark, and ounce gained. By the time Morgan was born, we hated each other.
There are some advantages to breeding with a completely self-absorbed, utterly vain, beautiful, athletic bitch. Solange took excellent care of herself, exercised religiously, ate only the highest quality, freshest food, avoided all drugs, alcohol, and other toxins. I think she was in labor about 15 minutes. Morgan came into the world as perfect as any little girl can be, the most beautiful, wonderful tiny little bundle of trouble Hyne ever blessed. Solange took one look at her, muttered “Disgusting!” and handed our daughter over to me.
The other advantage of Solange’s utter lack of interest in anything not directly related to improving Solange’s status within the dance troop was that the divorce was quick, easy, and I got full custody of Morgan. I bought a little house in a small town with a good school, and settled down to raise my daughter alone.
Oh, Solange tried once in a while, when she remembered she was a mother. She sent tickets when her company was touring close by. I took Morgan, even though keeping a toddler quiet and entertained during a 3 hour ballet isn’t a task for the easily daunted. Afterwards we went around to the dressing rooms so Morgan could meet her mother. Solange, relieved to find that Morgan was not still toothless, red faced, and wrinkled, sank down to the ground in a rustle of white spangled... spangly stuff and held out her arms to our beautiful daughter. “What did you think of the ballet, my child?”
With the typical bluntness of a small child, Morgan sang out “Borrrrrr-ing!”
Morgan was bright and active and there came a time where I couldn’t really have her in a playpen in my office anymore. I looked into day care and preschools and found a place with a good reputation.
One of the volunteers was Jamie. She was one of those fresh scrubbed country girls who made her own yogurt and crocheted baby blankets for the homeless shelter. Jamie was an organized woman who came over for dinner and stayed to alphabetize my canned goods and wall paper the laundry room. Our house filled up with little hand thrown clay pots, colorful quilts, jars of homemade jam. Once Jamie had the house made over the way she liked it, she moved in.
Morgan never really took to Jamie. I thought she just needed more time. Jamie suggested Morgan, who was not quite three, felt I was replacing her in my affections with another woman. Jamie encouraged us to spend father daughter time together. That way she could keep redecorating without us underfoot.
Jamie and I got married in the autumn before my 24th birthday. She made all the decorations herself, including the invitations and Morgan’s flower girl dress. We had a brief honeymoon and settled down to domestic bliss.
My life became something out of a woman’s magazine. Morgan was always perfectly groomed, beautifully dressed. Her room had artistically arranged collections of handmade spool dolls and antique fairy books - none of which she was allowed to touch. Days off were filled with slaving in the vegetable garden for Jamie’s organic dinners, building things like a kiln and dehydrator for Jamie’s projects, and doing approved family type outings like picking blue berries or attending a craft show. It only got worse when Jamie got pregnant.
Unlike Solange, Jamie loved being pregnant. She moved into maternity clothes when she was only three months along. She didn’t need to, she just loved the attention an expecting mother gets. We went to classes on natural childbirth, making organic baby food, and child proofing the home. My home office was sent back to my real office and the space became a shrine to The New Baby. Jamie wanted a boy so much she did the room in blue and puppies before she had the ultrasound. I was happy either way but figured a boy would be best, since I already had the most perfect little girl in the world.
Samuel turned out to be Samantha and in a hormonal fit, Jamie insisted we redo the entirely completed nursery in pink butterflies. I pointed out that blue was a nice color and puppies were pretty unisex, and was sharply informed that Samantha was not going to be a little tom boy like Morgan. The warning bells jangled and again, I ignored them.
Samantha arrived early and needing emergency corrective surgery. Jamie was devastated. I didn’t realize until then how deep Jamie’s need for the perfect Lady’s Magazine family was. She wouldn’t even touch Samantha at first. Jamie blamed me and my orphan genetics and I couldn’t exactly deny it - for all I know, my parents were brother and sister and Morgan was just a happy fluke. Jamie informed me in no uncertain terms that we would not be having any more children, so I got the snip. I figured, the odds were not good of me getting another winner on the third go around, anyway.
By the time Sam was ready to come home from the hospital, Jamie had reconciled herself to being the mother of a special needs child. Not that Sam was particularly special needs. I got Hyperion out of mothballs and went hunting behemoths for Regen. Amazing what a few spells can do for a tiny baby who is essentially still forming. So Sam wasn’t actually damaged, but she wasn’t perfect in Jamie’s eyes. Only in Morgan’s and mine.
Morgan really took to the idea of being a big sister, which was reinforced by the matching outfits Jamie made for the three of them. I spoiled the effect by referring to them as “Thing One, Thing Two, and The Crazy Cat” but was eventually forgiven.
Solange called one time, asking how old “The Child” was.
“Ours or my younger girl?”
“Ours, of course.” Of course. There was no way in hell Solange would have any interest in any child that was not associated with her.
“Morgan is coming up on six. She’s in kindergarten now.” I still sort of flinched over the ‘garden’ portion of that term.
“Oh, no, we are almost too late!”
“Too late for what?”
“To get her in school, naturally. Madame Floris has an opening, thank Hyne. She is the best. She taught me.”
Confused, I said, “Morgan is in school, Solange, that’s what kindergarten is.”
Jamie, passing by with an armload of laundry, paused to eavesdrop. I shrugged at her.
“Dance school, Idiot. You will have to move to Deling, of course. I cannot be responsible for the comings and goings of the child.”
“Hyne on the half shell. Morgan isn’t the slightest bit interested in dance. We can’t even get her to watch you on video. Besides, isn’t all that en pointe stuff bad for her feet?” Not to mention the fact that I was not going to close my business and move a couple hundred miles away and start over.
Jamie leaned against the wall and gave me the look known to husbands everywhere. The ‘You are talking to another woman and I am not part of the conversation and there will be hell to pay later’ look. I mouthed ‘Morgan’s mother’ at her but she already knew who Solange was.
“I am disappointed, Seifer. Very disappointed.”
“Yeah, I imagine you are. Look, Solange, the wife only allows me to talk to beautiful women so long before she goes ballistic.”
Even a minor compliment always distracted her. “You are so bad. Why did we ever part, my wicked lover?”
“Because we kind of hate each other?”
Solange made the phhft noise. “As if that matters in bed.”
After she hung up, Jamie said, “Beautiful women?”
“Kind of hate each other,” I reminded her.
It took some schmoozing but I managed to stay off the couch.
Jamie was a great, if obsessive, mother and things smoothed out and went well until Sam was toddling. The house was about as decorated as it could stand, the larder was full of home canned goodies, and Jamie was bored. I suggested she go back to school; maybe get a degree in something she enjoyed like decorating, culinary arts, clothing design, early childhood education... She snapped it up and went for it.
Jamie started with night classes. I’d come home from work, hand her the car keys, get dinner out of the oven and feed the girls. We’d clean up, play some, and all be in bed by the time Jamie crawled in beside me. In a way it was a relief not to have to constantly perform to Jamie’s high standards. I know the girls had more fun. The warning bells were jingling away.
By the time I caught Jamie in bed with one of her instructors, I’d already figured out the girls and I could survive without her. She moved out to go fill his house with country kitsch and I filed for divorce. I got the kids and her student loans and Jamie got a new life and several truckloads of handmade crap. Morgan gleefully donated all the antique toys she was never allowed to play with. Sam moved into her big sister’s room for security and comfort. I got my office back and swore off women forever.
***
“Daddy!” Morgan waved wildly and ran to the truck. She looked a lot like me in coloring - blond and green eyed, with her mother’s careless grace and delicate bone structure. She insisted on wearing the boy’s uniform of navy slacks white polo shirt, but consented to having her hair in pigtails. She clambered up into the truck like a monkey and crawled over her sister’s car seat to give me a quick peck on the cheek.
“Hey, Boss. How was school?”
“It was school.” She rolled her eyes and struggled with the seat belt. I reached over to help and got a warning glare. I held up my hands in surrender and Morgan finally got the stubborn thing to click. “Where’s Sam?”
“I traded her to gypsies. For a puppy.”
“Daaaaad.”
“I thought you wanted a puppy. All little kids like dogs, right?”
“I’m not a little kid and I like cats.” Oh yeah, Morgan was 7 years old and very grown up. We had stuff in the freezer older that this kid. “Anyway, if you traded Sam to gypsies they would want the car seat, too. Does Momma Jamie have her?”
“Yeah, she wanted to have some sort of mother daughter talk with Sam about Hyne knows what.”
“Probably the importance of saving the jam jars or matching your socks to your blouse.” Morgan said darkly. Kid always was quicker on the uptake than I was.
“So tell me something you learned today.”
Morgan thought for a moment. “Mr. Leon is light in his loafers. ...What does that mean?”
I kept the truck on the road with difficulty. Why don’t kids come with some sort of instruction book? Not the kind that tells you what to feed them and when to call the pediatrician but the kind that tells you how to explain alternate lifestyles to a seven year old while negotiating rush hour traffic. I fell back on the standard parental stalling technique.
“Where did you hear that? It’s not a nice thing to say, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. I don’t even know what it means, that’s why I asked.”
“But where did you hear it?”
“Some of the teachers were talking in the break room. I was room monitor so I got to get the math exercise printouts from the office and I overheard them. Miss Bloom wanted to take Mr. Leon home and tie him to her bed but Mr. King said he was light in his loafers.”
And maybe I’d have a little talk to the Principal about teachers fantasizing where kids could hear them. “Which one is Bloom? Or Leon? Or the other one?”
Patiently, Morgan said, “Miss Bloom is the nurse. Mr. King teaches 4th grade and wears too much cologne. Mr. Leon is the one I had for self-defense last summer, now he’s a substitute for Mrs. Nash since she started crying in class that day and had to go home.”
“That wasn’t our fault, was it?”
“No, Miss Bloom said she was under a lot of stress and needed rest. She also told Mr. Leon that Mr. Nash was dating a stripper. Isn’t a stripper a thing, not a person?”
“What? I guess some people might think - Oh, you mean the paint stripper like we have in the garage? The kind of stripper a man cheats on his wife with is a dancer. “
“Like my mom.”
“A stripper is to your mom like leftovers are to a full fancy Yule dinner. But yeah. So we learned to never tell Miss Bloom a secret. What did Mr. Leon have to say when she tattled to him?”
Morgan shrugged. “Whatever.”
I laughed. That brought back some bittersweet memories. “Ok, first, light in the loafers is a not nice way to say a man would rather date another man than a woman. Like your mother’s dancing partner, Arien, remember him?”
“Yes, is he light in his loafers, too?”
“Well, Arien is a dancer, so he’s very light footed and graceful, and that’s probably where the expression came from, since a lot of people think all male dancers only want to date other men. Which isn’t true, you can’t lump people together like that.”
“Is it a bad thing, to date men? If you are a man, I mean?”
“It’s not that it’s a bad thing, Boss, but that it really isn’t anyone’s business. It’s like discussing someone’s poops. You just don’t, it’s rude.”
“But it’s not rude to talk about it if they are dating a stripper?”
“Look!” I said brightly. “Clown burgers, let’s have take out for dinner!”
Jamie’s new husband, the Professor, didn’t even have the balls to walk Sam up to the door. He just pulled into our driveway and honked once. By the time I handed the controls to Morgan (with the instructions that if she ran my chocobo off the cliff I was going to sell her to gypsies) and got to the porch he was driving away. I think he’s scared of me or something. Can’t imagine why.
“Hey Lady Bug, did you have a good dinner?”
Sam shrugged expressively. “There were a lot of vegetables and the bread was hard to eat. We had cheesecake for dessert, that was ok.” My little one had curly red hair, possibly from my side of the family, and Jamie’s big brown eyes. She wore little round corrective lens and for some reason, Morgan decided that made Sam look like a cartoon lady bug.
I guided her inside before Morgan killed my chocobo and declared herself the winner by default. “What did your mom want to talk to you about?”
“Can I get contacts?”
Fuck Jamie and her hynebedamned perfect family ideal. “You won’t need them. By the time you are old enough to stick your finger in your eye, your vision will be fine. Doesn’t Dr. Fisk say every time you go see her you are better than before?” That reminded me, I was getting low on Regens. Have to schedule a camping trip in the near future.
“I guess so.”
Morgan looked up and caught my eye. She set the controllers down and slid off the couch. “C’mon, Lady Bug, if we do the bath and jammies thing fast enough, Daddy will make us cocoa.”
“I want peppermint in mine!” They raced down the hallway - Morgan let Sam win- and I obediently went to make cocoa. With peppermint.
The girls didn’t come back, so I arranged a tray and carried it down to their bedroom. Cocoa in bed was a treat, even though they would both have to get back up and brush their teeth again. There’s a ton of sugar in that crap.
Morgan was brushing Sam’s hair, which meant Sam was upset. In her defense, Sam had things to be upset about, but on the other hand, she was a drama queen and Morgan spoiled her. At least they got along. My few memories of childhood involved a lot of fighting, but maybe it was different for girls.
“I have brought peppermint cocoa as commanded, ladies.”
“Momma Jamie is having another baby,” Morgan said. She was great at dropping bombs like that out of nowhere.
I should have known that when Jamie said ‘we would not be having more children’ that did not mean she would not be having more children.
I set the tray down. “Is that what she wanted to talk to you about, Sam?”
“Why does she want another baby? She hardly even looks at me.”
What could I say? The truth wasn’t going to help, that Jamie had issues and this new baby was probably going to be abandoned as well, only Sam at least had Morgan and me whereas the poor new little bastard only had Professor Prick to fall back on. “I think she really likes changing diapers, Lady Bug. Anyway, maybe it’s Professor Perfect who wants the baby.”
“It’s because I wear glasses, isn’t it? That’s why she doesn’t like me anymore.”
“That’s not it at all, Lady Bug. First, parents love their babies, forever.”
“Solange doesn’t,” Morgan pointed out. She never called her mother by any endearment or nickname. Solange would have been shocked if she had. Momma Jamie was a compromise since Morgan felt no need to fan Jamie’s maternal urges, either. That was probably my fault.
“Solange does, she just shows it funny because... because she’s Solange. And Jamie wouldn’t care if you had two heads and a fish tail,” I lied. “She just wants to build a new family with her new husband. Remember I love Morgan to bits and I still wanted you.” I handed out the mugs of cocoa, glad I’d put the candy canes in for stir sticks as an extra treat. “Look at it this way, Sammy, here you are the youngest but at your mom’s you are the oldest. Not many folk get to have it both ways.”
“Am I going to stay the youngest, Daddy? What if you get married again?”
“No fear of that, I’m not going to father any more kids. Anyway, I’ve sworn off women forever.”
Morgan sipped her cocoa and gave me a speculative look. It would come back to haunt me, later.
Life went on. We went camping and I managed to get a couple Regens. I was afraid I’d have to kill the behemoth but it was sufficiently young to be repulsed by the Encounter None I set at camp. The girls never questioned the gunblade or the monster hunting or the occasional spell; I guess it was just something Dad did.
Mrs. Nash recovered and returned to work. I forgot all about the light in the loafers Mr. Leon until Morgan bounded to the truck one Tuesday afternoon. Sam was busy giving me a lecture on not storing my plans and stuff in her car seat.
“It’s mine, Daddy. Would you like it if I kept my dolls in your easy chair?”
“Lady Bug, I’d be so thrilled you picked them up I wouldn’t care where you put them.”
“I put them where they are, they get lonely-”
“Daddy! I can play rugby! Say yes! Can I play rugby? It’s fun!”
“Wait, what? Lady Bug, all over the house is not an acceptable location for your dolls. They are massing an army and going to take over and make us eat plastic food and live in an all pink world soon.”
Sam rolled her eyes.
Morgan hauled herself into the cab and wiggled past Sam to sit in the middle. She elbowed me sharply. “Rugby, Daddy. Mr. Leon is coaching and there’s a meeting and I want to sign up, say yes.” She thrust some papers at me.
“What’s rugby? I want to play!”
“It’s like soccer only you get to tackle people.” Morgan’s eyes glittered.
In tones of horror, Sam asked, “Don’t you get dirty?”
“Boss, isn’t rugby kind of violent?” I got a well-deserved look for that, but I had to try. “Let me read this over and think about it, ok? There are factors, like money, insurance, and scheduling I have to take into consideration.”
“You get a shirt, ours is blue and green. We’ll be the Rascals. There are shin guards and cleats.” Morgan said in the same reverent tone Sam would use for ‘fairy princess gown and tiara’.
“Hyne on the halfshell. Give me time to read all this and we’ll talk after dinner.”
Morgan grinned. She already knew she’d won.
I couldn’t make the meeting, but the paperwork explained it all. Practice was two days a week, immediately after school, and Saturday mornings unless there was a game. I spent Morgan’s college fund on shoes with cleats, shin guards, head guard, and uniform. Then I spent Sam’s college fund on some sort of Pink Fashion Doll Mermaid Underwater Palace thing. Kids keep this weird sort of tally going of who got what and Hyne help you if one of them feels shorted.
Sam insisted we wear blue and green to Morgan’s first game to show support. I went with jeans and green shirt; she crafted an ensemble out of damn near every blue or green item she owned. My baby, the bag lady. Ok, that was unfair, she actually looked pretty cute. We settled on the bleachers with the other parents and siblings while down on the field a man with too long dark hair tried to calm down what looked like a million insane little girls.
The Rascals were playing the Tornadoes, who were in pink and grey. I wasn’t too up on the rules, so Sam and I just took turns yelling encouragements. As far as I could tell, the game consisted of running like a nut, falling down, and occasionally kicking the shit out of each other. There was a ball, too. Someone’s mother wrestled large cards with numbers on them into a frame to show the score. The Rascal’s number was higher at the end, so Sam and I assumed they won. We joined the other family members hooting and waving our arms.
The girls and several parents mobbed their coach, but Morgan broke away early to run to us. She had mud from her ankles to her chin, grass in her hair, and had skinned her elbow. She was grinning from ear to year.
“Hey Champ, congratulations! Good job!”
“Did you see? I got a conversion!”
“I did,” I lied, having no idea what that was. “You were awesome, wasn’t she, Sammy?”
Moragn turned to her little sister, who had been shouting herself hoarse moments ago in support of the team. Now Sam was giving her sibling a serious once over. “You aren’t going to ride in the *cab*, are you?”
One of the things you learn to do as a parent is plan. You plan your kid’s future, you plan your free time and the kid’s activities and you always make sure you have a backup plan because the first one never works right. Especially if kids are involved. So, although I like to pick my girls up in the afternoon from Preschool and School-school, if I can’t make it, I have an alternate plan.
Today I was not going to make it. I was stuck midway up a hynebedamned mountain in a monsoon and the road washed out. Granted, that’s why I was on the mountain - I’m a civil engineer and my construction firm was asked to see what we could do to prevent exactly what happened. Nothing like the government waiting until the last possible second to call in some help. The only way down was to turn around and go all the way to the top and creep down the other side, which turned an hour trip into a six hour experiment in terror. And no guarantee the road wouldn’t wash out on this side as well.
Backup plan one is to have my secretary pick up the girls and take them to my office. That was a no go since she was sitting next to me in the truck. Backup plan two was to call Jamie and grovel. This would lead to snide comments about my parenting skills, but it was a small price to pay.
Except Jamie was not answering her damn phone. I left several increasingly irate messages, and then had Lani, my secretary try her on the off chance Jamie was just pissed at me. No go.
I called Morgan and Sam’s babysitter, but she had the flu and was barely coherent. Solange, of course, was nowhere around and would forget to pick the girls up even if she was in town. Even my lawyer, who in theory should be available 24/7 in case I got arrested or something, was off in Trabia on vacation. Fuu and Rai would do anything for the girls, but it would take three hours easy for them load up their own kids and drive down to our dinky little town. Longer if they had to deal with roads like I was.
Sam’s Preschool would keep her until they closed at 6, but then what? Meanwhile, Morgan would be done with rugby practice and have nowhere to go.
“Maybe one of the rugby mom’s will look after them until you get there. Or one of Morgan’s friend’s parents? Someone who can get Sammy, too?” Lani, at least, only had an incontinent mop dog to worry about.
“Some of those team moms are batshit insane. But yeah, at least they don’t come across as kidnappers and perverts.” I hated trusting my babies to strangers but it was looking like my other choice was child protective services. I called Morgan.
“Daddy, you are late!”
“I know, Boss, I’m sorry. Are you ok? How was practice?”
“It was cancelled on account of rain.”
Hyne, of course it was, where was my brain? “Where are you now? What did you do?”
“We played basketball in the gym until everyone’s ride came. We played in our socks, it was fun. Sliding makes dribbling easier.”
And taking off your cleats saved the hardwood floors, too. “Who’s still there with you?”
“Just Mr. Leon, he stayed because your number said ‘Not Available’.”
“It’s the mountain, it jacks with the reception. Morgan, let me talk to Mr. Leon, ok?” She liked him and he was dedicated enough to stay with her. And teachers had background checks, so hopefully he wouldn’t be a huge prick.
“Hello?” a smooth cool voice said, and my brain stuttered. “Seifer?”
Mr. Leon my ass. It was Squall Leonhart.