Chapter Text
When Nathan got the phone call, he was just about to open a can of beer and watch The Thing. It had been a tiring day of fixing up rooms and trying not to think of how he might be in way over his head. He needed to drink and try to get the smell of paint out of his nostrils, and the sound of you shouldn’t have bought a rundown hotel out of his head.
He thought about just letting it ring, not in the mood to talk to anyone, but his mind went to the worst-case scenario- like his sister being hurt, or his mom being dead. He let out a sigh and put down his cold beer.
“Hello, you're speaking to Nathan.” He said in the most pleasant voice he could muster, because one day this hotel would open and he didn’t want to be known in Midwich as the asshole guy who owned that creepy hotel.
“Nathan Freeling, just the guy I wanted to speak to.” A gruff, older voice said on the other line. “My name is Detective Oliver with Manhattan PD.”
Manhattan PD? What would they want to do with him? He’d never been to Manhattan... But what if he had gotten framed? Was Katherine from Manhattan? He tried to search his brain for information about his own sister. No, she lived in Brooklyn. Why would an officer from Manhattan call him? Midwich was an hour out of New York City.
Then he realized he hadn’t spoken for a while.
“Oh, shit... Sorry.” He replied awkwardly; he cleared his throat. “What can I help you with?”
The detective was straight to the point. “Are you familiar with a Ms. Young-Mi Jung?”
The name hit him hard; it felt like a blast from the past. The truth is, he hadn’t thought about Young-Mi, who had gone by an ‘easier’ and Americanized Mia in so long. He had never been exactly sure what they had been. They met in college, and she was everything he had ever wanted in a person: effervescent, funny, adventurous.
They had both bonded about being the disappointments of their families; he was never quite sure what he wanted to do and seemed to always make the wrong choice, and she had been cut off from her family when she left to live in America.
She was with him when he joined the first two cults during college; the second one had them selling homemade soaps in the rain and he could vividly remember her looking at him before saying, “Nathan this is so stupid.” They had laughed at the corner of the highway and called Katherine to pick them up because Nathan had sold his car to prove his loyalty to that cult.
The last time he saw her was four years ago. They had attempted something like a real relationship, but maybe it was mostly just sex; one day he had woken up and she was gone. Just like that.
“Y-Yeah, I know Young-Mi...” He replied, tightening his grip on the phone. “Is she okay? Is she in trouble?”
There was a pause, and the officer on the other end let out a sigh. Nathan could feel his stress through the phone; it had no doubt been a long night for him. “Mr. Freeling is there any way you can make the trip to Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan tonight? There’s no way to explain this to you over the phone.”
“Have I been framed or something?” Nathan blurted out, aware of how much of an idiot he sounded. “Like, am I under arrest?”
“If you were under arrest the local police would be there, and I would not go through the trouble of calling you.” The detective deadpanned. “Can you make the trip?”
Nathan nodded and then spoke. “S-Sure, it might take me a couple hours, but I’ll be there.”
This was going to be the longest two hours of his life.
Detective Oliver was waiting for him when he got there. He was not at all what Nathan was picturing in his head. Which was either a large man with a mustache, or an Elliot Stabler from Law and Order: SVU subtype. Instead, he was a tall, lean Latino man. He was maybe five years older than Nathan, with bags under his eyes and, judging the cup of coffee in his hands, he had been awake for far too long.
“Mr. Freeling, we talked over the phone.” He gave a weary smile.
“Um yeah, is Mia okay?” Nathan asked, wringing his hands together.
The man said nothing, simply placed a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and led him down a hallway. “Let’s go to a family room where we can talk a little more privately and we’ll go from there.”
A voice in Nathan’s head kept whispering: she’s dead.
Nathan felt a weird feeling settle in the pit of his gut, and it was terrible because it wasn’t quite sadness. He wasn’t sure if he loved Young-Mi; it had been a while. It was more like dread. Because, if she was dead, what if she was the only person he had? He would have to get a hold of her parents in Korea, and he would have to plan a funeral. He owed her that much.
He hadn’t realized they reached the family room until Detective Oliver cleared his throat.
Nathan mumbled an apology and took a seat on the sofa. It was scratchy; he took note of things as he dug his fingers into the material. He stared at the box of tissues on the coffee table in front of him. Oh God, this is where they took people when they gave them bad news.
“Is she dead?” Nathan blurted out, wanting to rip the band aid off now. “Is Young-Mi dead?”
The detective seemed taken aback but then got his bearings. “No, Ms. Jung is hospitalized but fine.”
Nathan let out a sigh of relief.
Detective Oliver put a file down on the table before him, and folded his hands before leaning, so his elbows were to his knees. He let out a sigh. “Mr. Freeling, I can’t quite find the words to say so I’ll start from the beginning.”
Nathan stayed silent.
“Today at about noon, Manhattan PD was called for a disturbance at Ms. Jung’s apartment. They heard some yelling, some banging sounds... and the sound of a child crying.” He explained. “When we arrived, we found Ms. Jung, she was with her boyfriend, and she claimed that they had a monster in the house and they had trapped him the attic and that the monster had once been her son...”
Nathan tried to follow his words. He tried to picture his Young-Mi saying these things. It was so hard to follow, and he was so tired from the trip. He was tempted to ask the detective if he could read the transcripts.
“Ms. Jung was disheveled, and when we went up to the attic...” The detective took a shaky breath, “there was a little boy about the age of four. He was severely malnourished, and he had a burn o-on his chest with what looked to be a cross.”
Nathan’s mouth fell open, but he shook his head. “I don’t understand w-what this...”
“We believe Ms. Jung has something called Capgras Syndrome, where you believe someone you love has been replaced with someone else...” He continued. “After some interrogating she confessed that the boy in the attic was your son.”
One time when Nathan and Katherine were little, Katherine almost drowned. Nathan was eight and Katherine was six. He doesn’t remember much about it, except for the fact that 1.she lived and 2. the ringing sound in his ears. It was almost like he had gone under water with her. He had felt like all the blood in his body had rushed to his head and no noise except for that existed.
That’s how he felt right now.
He was eight years old again, and Katherine was drowning.
“Mr. Freeling.” Detective Oliver called, pulling him out of the water before he could sink any lower.
He took a breath.
He could hear again.
“How do I-”
“You’ll take a DNA test.” He said calmly.
“Yeah, okay, I can do that.” Nathan said, hand to his chest. Was he having a heart attack? He felt like he was having a heart attack. “I can take a DNA test.”
That was one thing he could do. It was getting hard to breathe, but he could do this one thing, and then he could take another breath. He could focus on one thing at a time. Sure, the room felt like it was getting smaller and he felt like he was going to die but if he just did one thing at a time everything would be a-fucking-okay.
“Do you want to see him?” The detective asked.
“No.” Nathan answered quickly. Maybe too quickly. “N-Not until I know.”
Here was the thing about Nathan: he loved strays. If he saw the boy, he knew he would fall in love with him instantly. He could hear Aunt Rose’s voice in his head “You damn bleeding heart liberal.”
If he didn’t see him, and he wasn’t his father, he could leave here, and he didn’t owe Young-Mi or the boy anything. He could sleep at night and not feel like a deadbeat.
If he was the boy’s father...
One step at a time.
He stared intently at the poster in front of him. Cover your cough it read with various poses on how to properly cough without spreading viruses, Nathan read it repeatedly like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to this earth.
“Can you open your mouth for me, Mr. Freeling?” The lab technician asked politely, Nathan did so and looked down at her badge. Her name was Kim, and her last name was covered with a brightly covered sticker; she was smart.
“How long will this take?” He asked, picking a hangnail on his thumb. “Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to wait a week because I’m going to bite all of my fingernails off if that’s the case.”
Kim gave him a sympathetic smile and shook her head. “Well usually, DNA tests take quite a while, but since it’s a cheek swab and this is high priority, it should be about ten minutes.” She explained putting the swab in a tube. “We will just test this with A-” She paused, catching herself, “the boy’s DNA and then you will know.”
With that, Nathan found himself pacing in another waiting room.
Ten minutes.
It would take ten minutes to know if he was a father or not. Just hours before, he’d been Nathan Freeling the man who quit college, who had been rejected from a Rhode Island clown college, and the guy who managed to pants a priest during his confirmation.
He had just wanted to watch The Thing and drink a beer and now there was a possibility he was some boy's father; he could have been a boy’s father for four years and not have even known about it, while he lived his life and made mistakes...
Nathan sat down and buried his face in his hands.
The boy's name started with an A... Even if it wasn’t his son, he was going to always remember that now.
He tried not to think about it too much; about what his name could be, or what he might look like. He didn’t want to know if the boy wasn’t his son. He didn’t want to get attached to someone who wasn’t his to take care of.
Can you even take care of a son?
He gently smacked his forehead, as if to smack the thought away.
Nathan kept telling himself that he would cross all these bridges when he would come to them, but as the door opened and Detective Oliver stepped out with a piece of paper in hands, he knew that he was finally at that bridge.
Being told you’re a father is nothing like it is on television, it turns out. There is no big reveal and there’s no throwing chairs. There is no crowd to cheer you on as you scream about how that could not possibly be your child.
It’s just a cold statement: you share 75% DNA with the child, so you are in fact the father.
Nathan Freeling was a father.
He had always daydreamed about becoming a dad; how he would be the type to try to record the entire thing, or maybe he would faint (he would probably faint). Maybe he would get to cut the umbilical cord, and it would be the happiest moment of his life.
Instead, he saw his child through the hospital windows for the first time.
His name was Abaddon.
Which was a name that Young-Mi would choose for their son. Nathan looked it up in the elevator; he was supposed to be the angel of the bottomless pit or a demon. Something to be feared.
But as Nathan looked at the boy through the hallway window, he looked little and weak.
He was pale and malnourished, eyes sunken with dark rings surrounding them. His black, shoulder length hair stood in stark contrast with his skin. His tiny wrists were in restraints because he had apparently kept trying to pull the feeding tube out of his nose, and the tube looked so big on his little face that it made Nathan nauseous.
The thought of how anyone could hurt someone that little made Nathan want to vomit. He wanted to find Young-Mi in the psych ward and grab her by the shoulders and ask her why? Why their son? Why did she never tell him? If she thought he was bad or wrong, why didn’t she just call Nathan and give him away. He wanted to find her boyfriend that had stood idly by; the same man whose idea it had been to brand his four-year-old with a crucifix and he wanted to strangle him.
His little boy who looked so lost in the big hospital bed as he watched the nurse suspiciously, his dinosaur hospital gown too big on him.
Before Nathan could think he was pulling out is cellphone and pressing the first contact he could think of; the only person he would ever choose if he was honest.
“Nathan?” Katherine’s sleepy voice said on the other end. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Katherine.” He sobbed, and it had been a long time coming. It felt relieving to let it all out after everything. He could he the sound of Katherine standing up and grabbing her keys, ready to go wherever he needed her to be. “I really need you.”