SONS OF THE FATHERS

Chapter 20:  Birthing Pains (You KNOW a bit of angst has to follow those last 3 epis, now don't you? And you KNOW who does THAT the best of

all!!)

No one really noticed right at that minute that Maximus had gone alone down the hallway.  He stopped, bracing himself with his left hand against a wall, still feeling shaken from his earlier impact with the flooring.  Bunny was in this building... somewhere...giving birth to his son.  The muscle under his eye twitched.  By the gods, he would find them!
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Silently, still alone, he prowled the halls, the back stairways of the huge interior of the Opera House.  Where had Sid taken her?  He opened door after door, checked everywhere for passageways he might have overlooked.  Finally he came to the maze of corridors and  storage rooms beneath the Reception Hall.  Not trying to conceal his presence, he flipped a bank of switches, turning all the overhead lights on in the halls.  He inhaled deeply, pushing his hands into his face.  Sharp pains shot up from his jaw, spattering like fireworks behind his eyes.  He pressed his lips together, but that only served to open the deep cut in his lower lip and he tasted his own blood again.  He made a little wry sound, half snort, half strangled laugh as he thought how glad he was it was red and not blue.  Sid had taught him that...to be grateful for his blood's redness.  Never again would he take such a simple thing for granted.

Opening the nearest door, he found it to be a janitor's closet, stacked with brooms and mops, a deep, square sink, cleaning supplies of various sorts.  There was a small metal chair with two boxes stacked atop it. Setting them on the floor, he lowered himself heavily into the chair, folded his arms on the edge of the sink, and rested his forehead on them. A spider, disturbed by the moving of the boxes, crawled along the hem of his cape as it draped on the floor, not impressed in the least by the presence of the Commander of the Armies of the North.  

The taste of his blood had taken him back to the days when he'd lain captive in the abandoned shed and the horror of his discovery that his body had been stolen from him. He tried to imagine how it had been for Sid to walk amongst the rest of the cast, to lie in bed with Joimus, completely encased in that stolen form.  He inhaled deeply.  

 

Thank the gods Joimus had not...lain...with Sid.  But...Bunny had.  He felt somewhat of a flush rising up his neck at the thought of her intimate knowledge of his body.  To have one's outer being taken by force from one, then have it...used...to...to...join...with a woman.  It was not that he was a prude in any way or had not known women casually in his earlier years, it was the complete lack of...choice...on his part, the utter absence of his awareness that it was being done.  He still could not wrap his mind around the thought that his body had been so separated from him.  Despite all his strength of heart, it was a violation of his person nearly beyond the bearing, and a shudder took him.

And...now...someone else had become innocently involved in it all...a new life...a life sprung from the seed of his own loins.  How could he not care about that?  For years he had carried in his heart as an open wound the brutal loss of his first-born son.  His paternity had been pounded into the earth of Spain, had been hung up and burned.  How could he...ever...take such a thing lightly again?  Should he be expected to?  Tears stung his eyes and he pressed his face still harder into his forearms.  

"I'll be right back," Sid said, unlocking the door.

Before he could open it, Bunny looked at him in a way that made him take his hand off the knob and turn back to her and Livi.  She smiled, "Nothing can be more important than the three of us together right now."

His smile matched hers.  "It can wait," he agreed, coming to sit on the side of the canopied bed.  She handed the baby to him and as he cradled it in his arms, he leaned his face close to study it.  Now that it was clean and dry, it was easier to see the baby's features.  His smile broadened.  Livi was an exact clone of Maximus.  The resemblance was much stronger than Dess'.   Dess had been...diluted...somehow by Joimus and had lighter, more chestnut hair and those almost aqua eyes.  Livi, looking up unfocusedly, had seagreen eyes and coal black hair. Everything about his features bespoke a baby Maximus.  Sid stroked one forefinger delicately down Livi's cheek.  

 

"I knew you'd be perfect," he murmured.  He looked up at Bunny.  "You've done well, my dear.  I am...pleased."

Pleasing Sid was a thing very precious to Bunny's heart.  But, still, as she watched him look at Livi, she couldn't hold back completely a certain feeling of dread.  She'd never expected Livi would look so exactly like Maximus.  She'd counted on the gene pool tipping at least a bit in her more English direction, but this time the Spanish seed had not only invaded the English egg, but had completely conquered it and made it its own.

Sid covered the baby's chest with his hand, closing his eyes, obviously totally enraptured by the child.  Bunny couldn't help herself.  She loved this man with her whole heart and seeing him so happy just did stir her deeply.  She leaned forward, placing her palm over his, reaching out with her other hand to rest it on the curve of Sid's cheek.  She, too, closed her eyes.  It was a perfect moment, the three of them...together...a secure unit of love.

It was then that Maximus opened the unlocked door below the Reception Hall.  He had gotten wearily to his feet, continuing his way, opening door after door until he came to the last one in this corridor.  It had opened without a sound and he stood there, his hand still on the knob, looking into the well-lighted room.  There on the bed, framed by draping folds of white netting, sat Bunny, leaning toward Sid, the baby nestled between them.  Their eyes were closed and so engaged were they in their family togetherness, they remained completely unaware of his presence in the doorway.  

Maximus could not breathe.  He simply could not get his lungs to function.  It was as though the entire world had stopped turning and he had found himself a prisoner of a single, endless moment of time.  And the moment was sharp, unutterably sharp, and had impaled him through his chest, rendering his lungs inoperable.  Sid was holding the baby boy at such an angle that Maximus could see it clearly.  He would have gasped, or cried out, or...sobbed...but all those responses required lung involvement, so he merely stood there, frozen in this timeless void that began to press in on him as oxygen found no entry.  The square formed by the four posts of the bed began to waver, to change its form into the gates of Elysium.  He would have reached toward it, but his hand had become fused with the doorknob and would not move.  

Still unaware of the General,  Bunny murmured, "I love you Sid," and leaned still closer, so that her forehead rested on his shoulder.

Eyes still closed, Sid kissed the top of her head.  "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for my son.  Thank you for Livius Vitus."

Maximus managed to sqeeze his own eyes tightly closed.  Livius Vitus?  Did Sid not know the Roman meaning of the name?  Did he not realize the child's name encompassed the whole story of his conception?  Why? WHY had the child been named so? Had SID named the boy...this? Surely not!  His head began to spin.  He needed air!  He opened his mouth, trying to suck some into his lungs...but could not.  Somehow he pulled the door closed and staggered down the hallway toward the stairs, bracing himself on the wall as he went.  By the time he reached the stairs, he could no longer see yet still he made it up six steps before he collapsed, rolling back down into a heap at the bottom.

 

Shortly after he'd left them, the cast had become aware of his absence and had spread out through the Opera House, searching for both him and Bunny.   Terry and Bud had just started down a flight of steps to one of the lower levels when from around the sharp bend of the landing, they heard a series of noises.  Quickening their pace, they reached the landing,  gasping when they saw Maximus crumpled at the bottom of the steps.   Racing to his side,  Terry placed his hand on the General's chest.  "He's not breathing!" he hissed.  Immediately he started resuscitation procedures, but they didn't seem to be working.  

"Here," Bud said, kneeling and unbuckling one side of the cuirass, flipping it open. Raising his hand, he smacked Maximus' chest with the side of his fist...hard...and the General gasped in a huge burst of air. With a wry shrug, Bud said, "He was...stuck."

"Stuck?" Terry repeated.

"Yeah," Bud explained, "like some monkey wrench had been tossed into his gears and needed knockin' loose."  He looked at Maximus, whose bluish tinge was turning back to pink.  "Seems to have worked, eh?"

Maximus' lids fluttered open and for a moment he looked blankly at his friends, unable to focus or get his bearings.  Seeing the lack of recognition in the General's eyes, Bud said, "Shit! He's not gone and broken his gourd again, has he?"

Terry watched Maximus carefully.  "I don't think quite THAT level of angst is required again right now...I hope."

Maximus closed his eyes and just lay there, breathing deeply, gathering himself.  Finally he whispered, "I'm...all right."  He kept his eyes closed, though, as if afraid upon opening them the scene in the room might reappear.  The muscles in his face worked as though struggling desperately to contain something too large, really, to be contained. Terry and Bud exchanged worried looks across him.  

Terry lay a hand on the General's shoulder.  "Maximus?  What is it?  Did you find Bunny?"

Maximus said nothing.  He just folded his arms across his face.  

Terry looked at Bud.  "Go get Joimus," he said, his own voice nearly breaking.

He found her in the back seat of the second SUV, Dess asleep in her arms.  Leaning in past Aubrey and Rose, Bud said quietly,  "You need to come with me."

She knew instantly that only if something had happened to Maximus would Bud look at her with that expression on his face, use that tone of voice.  She didn't even ask. She just knew.  

 

"Rose," she said, handing the baby to her over the seat,  "watch over him," her breath caught in her throat a second, "watch over Maximus' son...until I return with him."  Rose took the still-sleeping baby, her eyes filled with understanding.

Aubrey struggled to rise, his cast making movement in the vehicle awkward.  "No, Jack," Joimus said, touching his hand as she got out of the car.  "Please just stay with his son. It makes me feel secure...knowing you are with him."  She smiled slightly. "Please?"

Rose looked at her gratefully, understanding she was trying to spare the Captain a long and painful walk with his cast.  "Thank you," she mouthed silently and Joimus nodded, then shut the car door.  

Jack smacked the back of the seat in front of him hard with the flat of his hand. "Damnation!" he bellowed.  He glowered at his leg.  "This bloody contraption has waylaid me long enough!" He turned, watching Joimus hurry up the Monumental Steps, Bud holding her arm. "Damn!"

As they walked, Bud explained to her how he and Terry had found Maximus at the bottom of the stairs in the lower area of the Opera House.  "He wasn't...breathing?" she repeated, hardly able to believe things had gotten that bad so quickly.  

"I...I...think he'd found Bunny," Bud added softly.  "I'm not sure.  He won't talk.  But I think he had."

As they turned the landing corner and she could see him at last, she halted briefly and took a deep breath.  Terry knelt beside him as Bud had said, and Maximus still lay quietly, his arms folded across his face. Seeing her, Terry stood and came up the steps.  He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then he and Bud went back around the corner, waiting at the top of the flight.

Soundlessly, she continued alone down the steps, her eyes glued to his form, watching the regular rise and fall of his chest with great gratitude of heart.  Circling around his boots, she knelt at his right side.  For a split second she remembered the feel of the deep Pennsylvania snow on her legs as she'd knelt like that beside him after the train wreck.  She sat over more on her left hip to be closer to his head.  Because of his arms, she couldn't see his face, only the top of his forehead and his hair.  He didn't seem aware yet that she was there beside him. The floor tiling was hard and chill, yet she lay on her side close to him, curving her right arm over his upper torso.  Placing her lips against his ear, she began, oh so softly, to hum the Emperor Waltz.  

Instantly she felt much of the tension leave his body and, though he kept his eyes closed, he lowered his arms, curving both of them over her arm. Kissing his ear, she continued with part of her wedding vows to him.

"Noble man, grown tall and strong like the oak, hewn from time and the earth to be constant, seasoned, and bold.  So shall our marriage be, ever growing, becoming full and ripe as the yellow wheat.  I rest myself against your serene strength that has weathered all the storms and not been broken by them.  You bring to my life a happiness that is beyond what I might ever have imagined.  I am in awe of this happiness.  It amazes, astounds me.  I used to think that perhaps if I were to sin in a manner that seemed to me unforgivable, and yet were to find myself forgiven, and to suffer in a manner that seemed unbearable and yet find myself surviving, then I would know this sort of happiness.  But you have brought it to me freely in your hands, in your eyes, your words, your heart.  You come to me as a single note of birdsong, a wind stirring in the trees, and move me as a fuller music could never do.  

You are my field which I sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. You are my board and my fireside.  It takes the two of us and in our presence things fit together, as my hand in yours does, as bread in the pan does, as grass to its sheath does.  You are old and new to me, as cowbells at evening are, as rain-wet streets are, as the silent mountains are.  I am dissolved and come alive in the time and the space of you.  I write on air, on dusk, on snow, the words not said.  It is enough to know that I am known by you, old and new.  I have gathered violets in April and watched the silent falling of a star.  The wind has touched my hair and I have laid my ear against the earth to hear the grasses whisper.  I have walked barehead in the rain and sat with friends at supper.  I have kissed my heart good-bye at nightfall, and I have loved...but deeply.  And still to sit in the sun, to know the breadth of tenderness deep as the earth.  And bread.  And sleep.  And waking after pain. To feel the hush of snow against my lips.  And still to love...but deeply.   I have only one way, my love, and that is with you.  I offer you all the days before me, freely taking you as my husband. I vow myself and all that I am to you and none other.  Maximus, as I have life, I  join that life today with yours.  Wherever you go, I will go, whatever you face, I will face.  I offer you here my hand, my heart, and soul, and trust utterly that they will be safe with you as we walk as one."

As she repeated the words to him, he turned on his side, facing her, pulling her close, wrapping his arms tightly about her as though he could pull her into himself. She planted little kisses all over his cheeks, tasting the salt of his tears.  He found her mouth with his, kissing her so fervently and desperately that his cut opened again. The taste of his blood mingled on her lips with the taste of his tears and his being was such a part of her that his pain flowed between them without barrier and she began to cry.  He just held onto her even more tightly and the tracks of her tears merged with the tracks of his so that her words, "whatever you face, I will face," took substance and form in the air around them.  

Terry slipped quietly back to the landing to make sure they were all right.  He stood there silently a moment, his chin quivering with great emotion, then he turned and went back up, suddenly filled with a great need to find annsmac.