for you there'll me no more crying

[bossymarmalade]

Ramsey rolls over in his sleep, curling more tightly against Kate’s side, murmuring something unintelligible in his dreaming before sitting up suddenly for no real reason. His dark hair is puffed out around his head and from underneath a mess of curls and thick eyelashes he drowsily looks over and up at his mother’s reclining figure. “Ma…ma,” he begins, sounding almost drugged, before he throws himself around her waist, burying his face in her stomach. “Mama!”

Kate has been reading, not quite able to get up out of bed for more than a moment or two. Someone’s left a mass market paperback of The Massacre at Fall Creek by her bedside—whether it was a person or one of them, she doesn’t really know or care—and so she’s been reading, off and on, finding her attention gets easier to corral with every passing hour.

Kate notices Ramsey moving, and if she weren’t half dizzy herself yet, would probably be alarmed by the way he sounds. She reaches down, strokes his hair gently. “Mi’jo.”

Ramsey is very likely teary-eyed against the sheets around Kate’s lower body, but his voice is too muffled to make heads or tails out of it. “Mama ah mithed ooh,” he murmurs, little shoulders relaxing as her fingers thread through his hair. He looks up—yes, those are tears making his brown eyes into little watery mirrors—and his lower lip quivers slightly. “Did they put a machine in you, Mama?”

Kate can just feel her eyes well up too at his first statement, but she bites her lip, clears her throat, smiles softly down at him just a little. “I missed you too, niño,” she says quietly. “I tried to get back to you as soon as I could.” She frowns a little, then, trying to figure out how she can tell him without breaking the…curse or whatever it is on her that keeps her from talking about it. She doesn’t want to scare him even more. “I don’t think so,” she says finally, biting back a cough.

Kate pauses, brain finally catching up, as she remembers what she saw, and she reaches to graze her fingers against the bandage Ramsey’s sporting still. “Sweetie…”



Ramsey looks down at her fingers against the stark-white bandages, and shakes his head so hard the curls flop back and forth. “Don’t tell Mr. Bruce, he told me to keep them on,” he murmurs, holding a small finger up to his lips before he reaches back down and tugs the bandages free. The clean scar is there, the little crescent moon nearly alight in the shaded room. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have cut them out,” he admits, shoulders sinking a bit, “I think I scared Pa and Mr. Bruce…”

Kate tries not to laugh at ‘Mr. Bruce’, because it tickles her a little. She clears her throat instead and examines the scar—it looks oddly familiar for a moment, and she can’t put her finger on why—and impulsively bends down to kiss it better, just a faint brush of her lips. “Sometimes there are things here that aren’t…right,” she says. “Everyone has been doing strange things, dulcito. Things they didn’t mean to do. Do you know what I mean?”

Ramsey nods his head again, although this time it’s more subdued. Kate’s cool exterior seeps into his own instinctive calm nature, and he seems much less agitated as each moment with her passes. “Pa put needles in his eyes, and Connor’s been coughing a lot, and Mia’s acting weird, and Roy hurt his face a little and got stuck in a…an…enseminator..” he frowns, immediately knowing that’s not the word he wants. “Lian’s fine, I think, but her doll is creepy, but Lian says she protects us, and she’s seven months older than me,” he shrugs, immediately agreeing to an understood rule of older family members and the worth of their wisdom.

"Incinerator, Ramsey honey…" The correction is automatic, and she smoothes down his hair a little bit more as she takes in what he’s telling her. "Sweetie. I want to tell you things but I can’t say them," she says finally. "And some of it is all messed up in my head still. Confused, like when your room is messy."

Kate reaches for the composition book that Bruce has left by her bedside—the fact that it’s a Cachement brand one bothers her, but there’s nothing else to be done. She opens to a new page and prints very neatly. /Sometimes you saw me, didn’t you./

Ramsey squints one eye in his best inadvertent mimicry of her critical look. “Why me? I’m only nine,” he says, no self-deprecation in his tone, and he slips his little hand into hers, leaning his head on her shoulder as he looks at the book she’s reading, not particularly interested in the words themselves. “It’s okay, Mama, you can just stay here until you remember and then you can tell Pa and Mr. Bruce, and they’ll help you,” he says decisively, watching her hand scribble on the page. He nods against her shoulderbone. “Tres madres,” he remembers telling the two older men the day before. “You told me about the machine.”

Kate says aloud, giving him a soft squeeze, “Because some of it you need to know too, dulcito. Nine or not.” She knows he’s her son, after all. “And I will tell them, I promise.” She turns back to the page and writes, /that wasn’t me, sweetheart. the/ She pauses for a very long moment. /beings in charge of this place, some of them like to play tricks. which make people think things and do things./

Ramsey thinks about this for a moment, trying to understand what would be so important about this place that he would be trusted with it, but coming up blank. His hand comes up as she speaks about the “beings,” and for a moment it looks like he might suck his thumb, but at the last second he just settles for chewing at the skin on the side of it. “But…if it looked like you, Mama, isn’t it good? I—” he looks back down at his arm and the moon scar, “I hurt myself because you told me to, but then Mr. Bruce helped me and told me he was Batman and Pa said you two love him, and you and Dad and Momma Julie always say love is good, so it was good, right?”

Kate is a little startled at the sudden statements—in Ramsey’s voice—of Bruce’s alter ego, of their love, of Ollie being Pa (though she knew that one, by instinct). She takes a moment, then writes, /sometimes they would use my face as a game sweetheart, once they found out I had come to see you all. the cutting wasn’t me. I’m so sorry, caro./

Ramsey teeters back and forth as he considers this last written statement, finally nodding his head decisively. “Okay, I won’t talk to her anymore,” he nearly chirps, now too excited by her presence, recovering health, and the promise of a new father figure to think about the implications of it all. “It’s okay, you didn’t do it, and now I’ve got a cool scar and Pa agrees that Mr. Bruce can be my dad, too, so it’s all okay.” He teeters a little too far forward, falling forward face-first into the bed, and looks up sheepishly at his mother. “Now that you’re back, will you cut my hair? It’s gross, and Lian keeps braiding it…I don’t want to tell her I don’t like braids all that much…”

Kate nods firmly at him. “Just be careful,” she says, shutting the composition book, because this she can say aloud. “Don’t trust what you see, mi’jo. Remember that. Always think twice.”

Kate startles a little at ‘Mr. Bruce can be my dad too’, blinking a few times, then says, “Sure, I’ll cut your hair. But what did Mr. Bruce say about being your dad?” She’s very curious.

Ramsey nods solemnly. “Okay, Mama, I’ll work…” he tries to remember what Damon is always saying, “I’ll work harder, work smarter. It’ll be easier now that you’re back. Pa says we’re stronger as a family.” His head tilts to the side and he sits back up, straightening his little back out. “I dunno, he said I only had dos padres and dos madres and Pa said no, tiene tres padres and dos madres and then I fell asleep…” He looks up at her. “He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to, I just like having family and Roy and Mia aren’t related to mebut they’re my brother and sister so Mr. Bruce can be my dad if you love him. That’s all a family needs, right?”

Kate nods at this long and incredibly complicated explanation—and god, what the fuck did she miss in interpersonal relations when she was There, there were going to have to be explanations. She leans in to kiss Ramsey on the forehead. “I do love him. And love is very important,” she agrees, because like fuck is she going to lie to her son. Not here, in this place where lies are woven into the fabric.

Ramsey leans his forehead into her lips, closing his dark eyes momentarily. “He doesn’t have to if it’s weird to him. We’re a weird family,” he giggles after he opens them back up. “Lian says we’re not but I’ve never met a family like ours and I live in two different countries now, so—” He cuts himself off, staring at a ladybug on the windowsill. “Can I still sleep with Mia? Lian comes to our room, too, sometimes.”

Kate laughs a little, softly. “He’s pretty weird too,” she says, amused.

Kate continues, “So if he wants to, then yes. Or maybe he already is. And you can still sleep with Mia if you both are okay with that.”

Ramsey blinks. “I’ll ask her,” he concedes, although there’s a good likelihood he won’t follow through. He can’t put his finger on it, but something’s different with his stepsister, and he promised Lian he’d be her best friend. Best friends don’t leave their friends with weird-acting stepsisters. Or creepy dolls, for that matter. “Do you want some food?” He looks over at the empty bowl on the nightstand. “I can get you some more soup!”

Kate is really desperately hungry, though she’s been trying to ignore it for the last hour or two, in an attempt to not gobble more down. “Are you sure you’re able to pour the hot soup by yourself?” she asks Ramsey with a lifted brow. Everything she’s found out from him, from her conversation with Ollie and Bruce, from just being solid and real again, is twisting around in her mind, tangling, making her a little dizzy.

Ramsey nods eagerly, standing up fully on the bed so he can hop off the edge. “I’ve been helping Mr. Bruce, we made bread, I can do it,” he blurts excitedly, tugging his sneakers onto his feet. “Stay right there, I’ll get some and I won’t talk to any other mamas if I see them.” He tears out the door, excited to be of use to his mother, and runs full-baby-force into the Longhouse, skidding slightly through the hallway. He sees the group assembled, and his interest is slightly peaked by the soft mewl he hears from the bundle in Damian’s arms, but he ignores it as he moves to the kitchen, scooching the wooden stool into place and grabbing a nearby bowl. Carefully, he stirs the simmering broth and holds the ladle with both hands as he empties it into the bowl on the counter. A little splashes off the edge but Ramsey doesn’t really mind as long as the majority goes in the bowl.

Oliver finds Ramsey pouring broth into a bowl — at least, mostly into a bowl — and moves over to hold the bowl up closer to the rim of the pot. “Taking some soup for your mama?” he asks, even though the answer’s obvious. “She must be so glad to have you taking care of her, moppet.”

Kate calls, “Be careful,” after Ramsey, though it’s likely he didn’t hear her. After a moment, she closes her eyes, brow furrowing, as she tries to think for just a moment before her son returns.

Ramsey nods. “She’s reading a book, and we talked about the not-mama,” he clarifies, remembering how Ollie and Bruce both told him what Kate later repeated. “Do you think,” he begins, carefully ladling another scoop into the bowl, “if there’s a not-mama, is there a not-Ramsey? And a not-Pa?”

Oliver doesn’t like the idea one bit, but he’s never really been one to lie to children much. Not about the important things, anyhow; they usually had a pretty good idea of how shitty and scary life could be. He’d known, at Ramsey’s age, and all the people who’d lied and told him that things would go back to being okay after his parents were killed had only made it all worse. “There might be,” Ollie says, moving the bowl away when Ramsey’s filled enough soup into it. “So we’ll all have to be extra-aware of things, because the not-Us-es will probably seem weird, if we’re paying attention.” He hands the bowl of soup to the boy and kisses his head. “Now go take that back to your mama and tell her she better eat it all up!”

Ramsey takes the bowl with both hands, balancing it carefully in front of him. “Okay, I will!” he chirps, and takes off walking awkwardly back to the bungalow, running forward then a bit backward to avoid spilling the steaming liquid inside. He carefully returns to the room, putting the bowl on the nightstand triumphantly and crawling back into the bed with his mother. “Pa says eat it all up,” he parrots, and then leans against the headboard, looking at the book she’s reading again.

Kate snorts, a shadow of her usual expression, but real regardless, and shifts over across the bed so that she can eat the broth without slopping it all over. It’s a serious effort not to gobble all of it down like a ravenous beast, but Ramsey’s an effective limiter. “He does, does he,” she says, after a few spoonfuls. “Well, once I’m done, maybe I’ll send you back with a message for him that he doesn’t need to worry about that.” She notices the way Ramsey’s looking at the book cover, and lifts an eyebrow at him a little as she downs more soup. “You find anything to read here, dulcito? This is a pretty grownup book, I’m sorry.”

Kate is, frankly, very worried that the kids are living too much inside imagination and perception. Books might help. As much as anything would. “It’s probably safer than playing outside, reading.”

"Yeah, I’ve been reading…" he pauses, then goes to the other room, retrieving something he had left there last night, holding up a yellow hardcover book, "I’ve been reading these Hardy Boys books. Sometimes I read parts of them out loud to Lian, but she gets bored so then we play something else." He decides the comics are probably a topic for a later conversation, since now it’s become clear they were not-mama’s doing. "I like how they think stuff out to find out who did it."

Kate squints at the book cover, then smiles a little. “Not bad,” she says, though it doesn’t surprise her that Frank and Joe and Chet might bore Lian—who the hell was named Chet, anyway—and she’s trying not to laugh a litlte at the mental image. “You know what, Ramsey? That’s what you should do. Think stuff out before you do things, here.”

Ramsey pulls his legs up to his body so he can rest his chin on his knees. “Okay, Mama, I’ll try,” he promises, pausing for a moment, “Do you think Thor is worried about me?”

Kate has eaten more of the soup. “You could pretend you’re Joe,” she says. “I liked Joe better, when I was a kid. Frank was too bossy. As for Thor…” she slurps a little more before replying, “he’s your dog, mi’jo, he’s there to look after you. I’m sure he’s worried.”

Ramsey buries his chin a little harder into his knees. “It’s been a long time. I bet he thinks I left him. I hope Rose takes good care of him. She hugs him and Kiki when she thinks no one is looking.”

Kate nods very seriously. “I’m sure Rose is looking after him just fine,” she says, finishing the soup, and the answer is cliched but honest. “And I’m sure he’ll understand and forgive you when we get back.”

Ramsey finally asks the inevitable: “Do you think we’ll be able to go home soon? They gave you back, so now we’re all together again. Is that good enough?”

Kate frowns, trying to gather up threads in her mind, knot or weave them together, and eventually can’t come up with a real answer. “I don’t know, Ramsey, dulcito. I’m sorry,” she says, and gathers him in against her for a hug.

Ramsey hugs her back, little fingers burying into her dark brown locks. “It’s okay, Mama, I promise I’ll stay with you no matter what,” he murmurs, snuggling his cheek against her neck. “Lian’s been teaching me to throw darts since my…you know, since that’s gone…I’m not very good but I’m getting better.”

Kate nods a little. “I promise to stay with you too, okay, little man?” she says in reply. “Powers or darts or whatever.”

Ramsey makes a soft noise of agreement, eyelids already fluttering closed. Being held this close to his mother for the first time in weeks sends him to sleep like a newborn. “Oh…kay,” he mumbles drowsily.

Kate gently pulls him up onto the bed as best she can with her faint strength, so that he can rest properly. “I’ll wake you up in a little bit, okay?” she murmurs to him, though she’s pretty sure she’s close to dropping off herself.

Ramsey half-nods, hand finding hers and gripping the four main fingers, letting the thumb rest freely, pulling it close to his face as he falls asleep.