A Story of Us
by Kadi
Rated T
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. It's just my favorite sandbox to play in.
A/N: As always special thanks to my amazing beta deenikn8 who always goes above and beyond.
This was presented to me as an A/U challenge story. Basically, to write something where the end of the Raydor marriage was not quite as clean as it is being portrayed. Oh, and while I was at it, could I do something about all of the babyfic that is popping up around the fandom. Well... what follows is nothing short of my usual brand of long-winded insanity.
All I can do is apologize profusely, but I hope you find some measure of enjoyment anyway.
Prologue - The Present
"What is a family? What do you think it means to be part of a family?"
Rusty Beck thought he understood the answer to that question. Now he wondered if he was just saying all of the right things. Saying what was expected of him. Now he was beginning to realize that knowing the answer, and understanding it, were two very different things.
What was the definition of a family? How was it formed. That seemed pretty basic to him. How did all the songs put it? We're here because two people fell in love.
That wasn't always true. He knew that. Sometimes we're just here because two people fell in drunk. Or high. Or were just irresponsible in any number of other ways. That was the only definition of a family that he really had until about two years ago.
Nothing that he experienced with his mom and her seemingly endless string of boyfriends, or with any of the foster families he was with after she left him, could have prepared him for the reality of an actual family. It wasn't like TV or the movies either. Family wasn't built on fairytales.
It was made of real people, with real flaws, and a lot of real feelings.
Rusty knew that people weren't perfect. Oh yes, he knew that all too well. That didn't mean that they couldn't be good. That was another lesson that he learned along the way. Even good people made mistakes. They said the wrong things, and they did the wrong things. They tried to do better, and to be better, and generally they were better.
It wasn't until it looked as if he was going to lose his family that he really began to appreciate it. He didn't know that then, though. He didn't realize that his stark terror at being sent away had more to do with being sent away from them than any general sense of being shipped off to who knew where as part of some idiotic witness protection program. He made mistakes. Plenty of them. Hiding the letters from Douglas Grand was a pretty big one.
Once it was over, when he could finally breathe again. When he knew a little bit better who he was and how he fit, he began to realize that no one had ever fought for him the way that Sharon had. It wasn't about the case. It wasn't even just about keeping him safe. She fought to keep him.
"Whatever happens, know I love you."
For how many days, weeks, and months had those words echoed through his mind? How many people had ever told him that in his life, and actually meant it? He was sure that his mom did. In her own way. But to the rest… No, Rusty didn't really think so.
She could have sent him away. She probably should have sent him away. He knew others wanted her to. Sharon wouldn't do that. She dug her heels in and she fought. People called her stubborn, and she could be. Rusty knew just how stubborn Sharon could be when she had her mind made up about something. There was no changing it. Not without a lot of logic, reason, and convincing. Even then, it could be a long shot. She wasn't just being stubborn this time. She wasn't trying to prove a point. She wanted him. No one ever wanted him like that before.
"My son stays with me. This is his home."
Sharon didn't know that he overheard that. He never told her. Never told anyone, actually. It freaked him out at first. Then when he really thought about it, he started to realize that maybe he loved her too. Maybe she was right. Maybe he did finally have a home, a place where he belonged.
Then his mom came back and he thought everything would change. It didn't. Sharon wasn't sending him away. She wasn't making him leave. He was eighteen, but his home was with hers… for as long as he wanted it. She wanted him to go to school. To be successful. To be whatever and whoever he wanted to be. She really only had two rules for him. For all of them, actually.
"Be safe and be kind."
He wasn't so good at the first one, but he was trying very hard with the second. Rusty was trying very hard at both of them, really. He didn't want to be in danger. He didn't want trouble to find him. Sometimes that just happened.
Like now.
This time the trouble had very little to do with him, but it was trouble just the same. He felt as though his world was falling into pieces. His family was coming apart at the seams. The glue that held it together was missing.
Sharon.
She wasn't gone. He knew where she was. They all knew exactly where she was.
She was slipping away from them. Much too quickly for them to really grasp the hows or the whys. Minutes ticked by into hours, which felt like days.
Rusty wondered if this was always inevitable. If he was always going to lose her. If just when he really began to appreciate, fully, what he had… it was going to be torn away.
"I was always afraid this would happen, but I never really believed it would."
Those were Emily's words. Rusty could scarcely believe it himself. No, he hadn't been with her as long as the others, but he was with her every day. He knew the risks that they took. The things that they faced. He heard about it and saw more of it than he ever really wanted to. It felt like, maybe after a while, he started to think that they were invincible. That She was invincible. Nothing could touch her. She was Sharon. She held them all together, she protected them, and she looked after them.
If Sharon was gone, who would do that for them? Who would keep them together.
Rusty realized that he probably shouldn't be thinking about it, but he couldn't stop himself. The thought was there, from the moment they told him that she had been shot and was going into surgery, it just seemed to put itself on repeat. Like a never ending loop in his head.
It was a loop that had been on constant repeat for hours now. He was trying not to listen to it. He wasn't the only one. When the silence became too much, they began talking. Ricky and Emily. Telling stories. Trying to focus on other things. Trying to remind themselves and everyone around them why it was that life kept moving. That things got better. Than an end could be a beginning.
Rusty didn't know if it was working. All he could do was listen. There was nothing that he could contribute. He wasn't part of these stories. They happened before him. But as he listened to them, he realized that it was more of a history.
This was how his family came to be. This was the shape that it took.
He looked over at the man beside him. He had been silent for a long time. He was lost with out her. Adrift. As uncertain of himself and the world around him as all of them were. When he began to speak, quiet and a bit distant, Rusty felt himself hang on every word. It wasn't usually like that with them. Rusty didn't let himself get close to many people, but he was close to Sharon. He wasn't alone in that, he knew. He clung more to her, maybe because she was the mother that he'd never had, or because the idea of a male figure in his life was so abstract. He didn't know. Rusty didn't know that he could ever define that.
What he did know was that he was seeing a man with a very large part of himself missing. It was something to finally draw them together, because while he had tried to comfort Emily and Ricky, it was him that this man had stayed with all these hours. Shared fear. Shared grief. Maybe both of them were adrift in this suddenly uncertain world.
What was Andy without Sharon? Rusty didn't know the answer to that. He didn't want to know. Instead, he listened to every word of the story that began years before he'd ever heard of any of them.
The story of them. This family. But just maybe… it was his story too.