Sebastian watched until the door shut behind her, took several deep breaths, scrubbed his hands over his face and began his trek back inside. When he opened the door he was immediately assaulted by the sobs of his son’s distress. His own turmoil forgotten, he rushed to Jaxsen who reached out the moment he came into view. He held Jaxsen secure against him as he cried himself out. Jaxsen clung and clutched and cried. Sebastian held him, silent, and with each wail of the child’s pain, confusion, and grief shredded his walls little by little. 

Sebastian just stood in the center of the room, rooted to the spot, as he gently rocked back and forth. 

He wasn’t exactly sure when the police arrived, but they followed his cries and easily found him. A young female officer, no more than twenty-six, was the first in the bedroom. Officer Sam Whitlow, who was already in her fourth year with the New York City police department, and who had seen her fair share of bloody crime scenes, will forever be haunted by the scene she walked into that morning. The downstairs had been a disaster, multiple bullet holes in the walls, tables overturned and riddled with splintered wood from the speeding ammunition. Blood spattered up the walls, broken glass littered the light colored carpeting and the body of Glen Michaels behind the sofa, the pool of blood still spilling out from the six gunshot wounds to his chest, face, and abdomen. 

The bedroom, by comparison, was much tamer. The body of Sara Michaels lay on the floor in front of their king size bed, blood pooled under her temple. The part that disturbed the young officer was the small boy begging his mother to wake up. Officer Whitlow spurred instantly into action, picking the child up. He was bloody and upset but otherwise unscathed.  Initially after lifting the boy he fought, clearly distressed and afraid. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she told him, hugging him close. She noticed the open wall revealing a hidden room decked floor to ceiling with security equipment, monitors that flashed through the whole house. What they showed equaled horror movie scenes meets real life. She called to another officer to the safe room in the hopes that the perpetrators' faces would be on the video.  Officer Whitlow told the boy to close his eyes as they walked through the house to the outside. She could ascertain that the boy likely saw what happened from inside the safe room, but that didn’t mean he had to see it in living color. 

She walked to where a pair of EMT’s stood. “I need you to look him over. He’s got blood on him. I don’t think it’s his, but…” 

“Yes, Ma’am,” answered the older of the two. Whitlow attempted to set him down on the gurney outside the ambulance, but the frightened child refused to relinquish what bit of safety he’d found. He wailed in protest, begging not to be left alone. 

The hours passed in mostly silence, words not being needed or wanted for the moment. Sebastian held Jaxsen, not wanting to let him go, and not wanting him to see the self-harboring blame in the older man’s eyes. Jaxsen leaned into Sebastian trying to convince himself of things he was afraid to believe in. 

“Bastian?”

“What, sweet boy?”

He wouldn’t look at Sebastian’s face, but instead played with the dog tags around his neck. “Are you mad at me?” Jaxsen shrank into himself trying to make himself as small as he could.

“No, my love. I was never mad at you,” Sebastian answered, his voice heavy with barely concealed emotion, his heart breaking at the question.

He couldn’t help the tears that welled and chastised himself for being so weak. “But you…” He didn’t finish the sentence but closed his eyes.

“Jack…” Sebastian began slowly with a heavy sigh. “A long time ago when Nizhoni and I first met she hadn’t spoken in three years.”

“Because the bad people hurt her,” Jaxsen supplied, still playing with the tags around Sebastian’s neck.

“That’s right. Well, one day when we were about sixteen, some guy cornered her in the stairwell at school and grabbed her. By this time she had been speaking to me vocally for about a year. But only sometimes. Well, that afternoon she met me at my car because we rode together. I could see she’d been crying but wouldn’t respond to me. She didn’t do much more than you did today. And it scared me pretty good. She was in that state for hours. That’s how I got her to snap out of it. Jolting her shoulders like that. It’s not my favorite method, but it works. I wasn’t mad at you, Jack, I just…needed you to come back to me.”

“Promise you’re not mad?”

“I promise, my love. I wasn’t ever mad at you.”

They lapsed into another several moments of quiet, each lost in his own thoughts. 

“Bastian?”

Sebastian grinned over the boy’s head. “What, Jack?”

Jaxsen hesitated. “Do you think my daddy would be upset if I…wanted to call you Daddy all the time?”

There was no way for Sebastian to explain the undiluted joy that surged through him at the question. “No, Jack. No, I don’t think he would be upset at all.”

Jaxsen nodded and sat up in his arms finally meeting Sebastian’s gaze and asked, “W-would y-you be upset?”

Sebastian sighed and lightly rested his palm against the boy’s cheek. “Jaxsen, I can honestly say that nothing would overjoy me more, or make me happier than having earned that title from you. If you want to call me Daddy, baby boy, don’t think for a second that it’s not wanted.” He paused, dropping his hand and smiling. “I’d be honored, Jack.” He pulled Jaxsen in for a hug and held him tightly for several moments. 

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, sweet boy.” He pulled back to look Jaxsen in the eye. “I really am sorry, Jack. If it happens again, I’ll go about it differently. But I am very sorry, sweet boy, and hope that you can forgive me.”

Jaxsen nodded. “It’s okay, Daddy. Just…don’t do it again?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I swear to you, Jack.”

Jaxsen nodded and leaned in for another hug. They sat for a moment embracing each other before Sebastian said, “Come upstairs with me. I wanna show you something.”

When they reached the bedroom they were greeted by Nizhoni who was just coming from the attached bathroom. The steam roiling out from the open door indicated she was fresh from the shower. She was dressed in a long, black t-shirt that had the phrase ‘Got Balls’ on the front. The shirt was an old one of Sebastian’s that he’d gotten at a pool hall called Slick Willies in Southeast Texas. She also wore a pair of cotton work-out pants, her long raven hair sticking together in combed, wet clumps. She smiled amiably at them as she stole a quick, chaste kiss. 

“I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving. "Up for a fast,” she checked her watch, “albeit a bit late dinner, boys?”

Jaxsen said, “I’m hungry, Zhoni.”

She smiled. “You’re always hungry, my little hoover.” He smiled at her levity. She knelt down in front of him as Sebastian moved toward the closet located on the eastern wall of the bedroom. Gently, in a mother-like fashion, she smoothed his bangs from his eyes. “You doing better, Yanaha?”

He nodded slightly and looked down. “A little.”

She kissed his nose, enticing a small giggle from the boy before hugging him. Sebastian pulled an old duffle bag from the back of the closet and dragged it over to the bed. “Go see what he’s got for you. I’ll go whip up some dinner.” She kissed his cheek causing Jaxsen to lightly blush. “I love you, Yanaha.”

Jaxsen watched her vanish down the stairs before turning and taking a seat next to Sebastian. Without taking his eyes off the duffle bag Sebastian said, “This, and all its contents, were collected by either your dad or myself from all the places we traveled to together. The bag itself is Glen’s. We traded bags before he went home on our last mission. He took everything we’d collected, split it up and mailed the rest to Ellie for safe keeping.” The bag was a large green duffle with USMC stenciled to the front. It had a simple drawstring with a plastic sliding lock and a handle on the side for carrying. Slowly Sebastian pulled it open, the opening at the top of the bag widening like an attacking shark, all it was missing were the rows and rows of teeth.

Slowly he withdrew a chain with two plates, metal in material, with words Jaxsen couldn’t quite see well enough to read. Sebastian looked at them a moment before placing them in Jaxsen’s hand. “This was your dad’s. He gave it to me for good luck before shipping it back to the States. He told me that he’d still have my six if I had them with me.” Sebastian smiled lightly. “I think he was right.”

Jaxsen looked at his father’s dog tags. He traced each letter with the tip of his pointer.

 Michaels.

Glen A. O POS

426-91-6702

USMC            L

No Preference

Jaxsen stared in fascination. “I asked him about these once,” he began. “I hadn’t ever seen them in anything but pictures. He told me that he had to leave them with the best friend he’d ever had so he wouldn’t get into trouble without him. That was you, Daddy…?”

Sebastian smiled and nodded. “Yeah that was me.”

“What else is in there?” Jaxsen asked as he slipped the dog tags around his neck. He smiled when the metal tags clanged against his chest. He felt as if he were just a bit closer to the father he mourned that day.

They dug through the duffle bag together, pulling out item after item; Sebastian shared with Jaxsen a memory every individual item provoked. They’d made it through half the contents inside the duffle when Nizhoni called them down for a later dinner.