Ficathon: Promises to Keep by Time Testudinem, green cortina
Title: Promises to Keep
Author: Time Testudinem
Rating: Green Cortina
Word Count: about 2600
Pairing: gen with mention of previous Sam/Annie relationship
Warnings: This supposes Sam’s death/disappearance about 1980. If you hate character death, please feel free to assume that he woke up back in the future, Gene locked him in the basement as a love slave, he has gone into hiding as the head if a major crime syndicate, or whatever.
Notes: The prompt for this fic was “the canal, crying!Sam, missing pants.” I have cheated slightly and used the American meaning of pants. Also, thanks to seileach67, without whom this would still be missing several sorely needed periods and semicolons. And to makeanewworld for answering my stupid question.
Summary: Young teenaged Sam Tyler meets someone he appears to have a lot in common with.
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me. I am well aware of that. No need for lawyers.
Sam walked along the canal. He knew his mother would rather he came straight home, but it was a beautiful day after a solid week of rain, and Sam wasn’t ready to go home just yet. He liked it here where the sun glinted off the water. It was quiet; a place a person could go to spend some time in his own head without the jeers of classmates or the unwelcome concern of adults. He had heard they were fixing up these places, making them someplace people came on holiday. Some of the boys at school scoffed at this. Said no one would ever choose to spend time on some dirty stretch of Manchester sewer water, but Sam supposed he could see the appeal. After all, he came here, didn’t he? For a moment Sam tried to see the future through the damp weeds, fallen stone, and the bit of old bicycle tire. He could almost make it out, but shook his head to clear away the image. He’d take it the way that it was now, flaws and all, because right now it was here for him to enjoy.
Sam walked on with a smile until he heard a small cry followed by a splash from up ahead. Darting around a rock and a few scrubby bushes he saw a boy pull himself up out of the water and sit dejectedly on the bank. He was about six, maybe seven, with light brown hair. His face still held a bit of baby fat, but it looked like he might grow up to be thin-featured. He was also soaking wet and not wearing any trousers. The boy looked like he desperately wanted to cry, but having spotted Sam he set his jaw and was absolutely refusing to do so. Sam admired the kid for that.
“Rough place for a swim.”
“Didn’t mean to take a swim”, the kid said with his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. “Just tryin’ to fix things, but now I made a big old mess and she’s gonna know for sure.”
“Who’s going to know?”
“Me mum.”
“Do you really think she will be that upset that you took a little dunk?”
At that the kid looked at Sam, frustration and a touch of anger in his eyes. “No, you don’t understand. It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?” Sam settled on the bank next to the kid and held out his hand. “My name’s Sam, by the way.”
The kid shook Sam’s hand, looking faintly embarrassed before mumbling, “I’m Eugene, but everyone calls me Genie. Stupid baby name.”
“Well, I could call you Gene then, if you like it better.” A bit of memory gave Sam an idea. “Or I could call you Gene Genie. There used to be a song by that name. It was pretty cool.”
“Really?”
Sam was relieved to see the kid look a little less forlorn. “Yeah, really. So if you weren’t taking a swim, what was the great Gene Genie doing that he ended up so wet? And where are your trousers?”
The new nickname earned Sam a giggle and a small smile before Gene dropped his eyes and looked embarrassed once more. “I don’t know where they are. I was trying to wash them out; it’s how I fell in.”
Sam said the first thing that jumped into his head. “What did you do? Piss your pants?”
The kid began to get up, nearly shaking with outrage. “No! I told you, I am not a baby.” As his new acquaintance got to his feet, standing there, dripping wet, half dressed, Sam was instantly contrite. He hadn’t meant to be hurtful; it had just slipped out, the kind of insult one might use when jibing ones mates. But Gene was already upset, and at that age, probably not far removed from when that might have been the actual truth.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. Gene, really.” The kid just stood there, saying nothing, but he didn’t walk away either. “If that wasn’t why you were washing them, what were you trying to wash out?”
Gene stood silent a moment longer before answering quietly. “Blood.”
A chill ran up Sam’s back.
“Blood?”
“Yeah. Well, there was other stuff too. Spit, and some of Jamie Donovan’s lunch, but I could have gotten away with that by telling Mum I was clumsy. But if she saw blood, she would worry.”
Sam thought Gene’s mum was probably right to worry, but asked, “Where did the blood come from?”
“My nose”
Sam felt almost exasperated enough at Gene’s evasiveness to feel some sympathy for his own mother. Almost. “And why was your nose bleeding?”
“Because Billy hit it with the ball.”
O.K. An accident during a ball game could be a perfectly ordinary reason for the kid’s nose to be bleeding, but Gene’s behavior indicated otherwise. He had read about this in some of his police books; how sometimes people didn’t always want to tell you what happened, even when you were trying to help them. Sam thought getting Gene to tell him what happened might be good practice for when he was a detective. He figured he ought to start with something other than another question.
“Come on, Gene, sit down, let me take a look at that nose.”
Gene hesitated a second, but then sat back down next to Sam. Sam used his shirt to wipe the dirt and remaining canal water from Gene’s face. The nose was definitely swollen when he looked closely, and it made the little guy wince when he poked at it, but it didn’t look broken or anything. There was also what might be the beginnings of a black eye on the right side.
Sam put his hand on Gene’s shoulder before asking “Was this an accident , Gene?”
“No.”
Sam’s detective skills were starting to kick in. “So these boys? Jamie and Billy, wasn’t it? They did this to you on purpose?”
“Tommy Stone was with them too. He was the one who spit on me. Don‘t tell Mum.”
Three against one. Even assuming these boys were the same age as the kid in front of him, Sam didn’t like that one bit.
“So why did these guys do something like this, do you know?”
The kid nodded and stared at his knees for a moment. “Because of my dad.”
Sam was really starting not to like this. “What about your dad?”
“Because he’s not here.”
Oh, Gene. Sam was right. He really, really didn’t like this. His own heart was beating faster now and he almost hated himself for asking the next question. “Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
There was a long pause during which Sam’s heart ached both for the kid and for himself. Gene looked at him like he expected him to say something. Maybe taunt him the way those other boys had, the way many had, Sam was sure. Maybe offer the kind of meaningless platitudes that he had to often hear from adults. But Sam had no words to offer him for this.
When he realized that the older boy wasn’t going to respond, Gene went on, although now there was a hitch in his voice that spoke of unshed tears. “No one knows where he is. Mum says he’s dead, but Billy said that when your dad is dead there is a grave, and you go put flowers on it every week, like Jack Cooper does for his dad. My dad hasn’t got a grave. And my uncle, he sometimes talks like he might be alive. But I’m not sure. He drinks a lot, my uncle I mean, and he only talks about my dad when he starts to slur his words, and he calls him by all these girl names.”
Gene looked at Sam, and the tears that he had been holding back this whole time finally started to fall. “I don’t know, I don’t know where he is, or what happened to him, I just know that I miss him. So much.”
At that, the boy’s sobs choked off any additional words, but he didn’t have to say them. Sam knew. He also knew how the conflict with the other boys earlier had likely gone, the taunts they had used, their excuses for roughing up the kid. He reached over and pulled the crying kid into his lap. Oh, yeah, Sam knew, it was one of the reasons he was out walking by the canal alone instead of off with his own classmates. He hadn’t been in a fight like the one Gene just had in years, but that was because he had learned. Learned to keep some distance between the other boys and him, to prefer the company of his own thoughts. Learned to fight dirty when he had to, if others took exception to his ways.
Sam held the kid as he cried out all the frustration of the day, knowing there wasn’t much else he could do, and by the time the last of the sniffles faded, the kid’s weren’t the only eyes that were wet.
---
Surprisingly enough, once the crying was over, they didn’t have much trouble locating Gene’s missing trousers. They were hung up on a rock not far down from where he had tried to wash them. It would have been too far for Gene to reach, but Sam managed easily enough, only getting slightly damp himself.
He offered to walk the still wet, but now fully dressed Gene home. About half way there a thought occurred to him. “Hey Gene Genie, what’s your last name? If I am going to spin your mother a tale about how you’ve been safe and sound with your best mate Sam all afternoon, nothing to worry about here, and don’t mind that he is a little damp, right? Well, I ought to at least seem like I know enough about you to address her properly. Missus Gene’s mum, just don’t seem right.”
At this Gene laughed outright, as Sam had intended, and it took a minute before he could answer. “Tyler. My name is Eugene Christopher Tyler. I think it’s too long.” Gene looked over to see what Sam thought, but Sam had stopped walking at the name Tyler, and was standing behind him wearing a stunned expression. “your name is Tyler?”
“Yup.”
Gene was starting to look a little worried, and Sam couldn’t have that, so he smiled instead. “That’s just brilliant. Now I know we were made to be mates. My name is Tyler too.”
“Do you think we’re related?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t have any other family on my father’s side, and it is a common name.” Gene looked a little disappointed, so Sam continued. “But I bet if we told people we were brothers, no one would say different. We even look a little bit alike.”
Gene’s smile at this was so sweet, that Sam knew he would be spending a great deal of time with the younger Tyler. “That would be so cool. Thanks Sam.”
“Don’t thank me yet, I still haven’t figured out what to say to your mum.”
---
Annie had held herself together tonight the same way she had for over two years now, by concentrating on Genie. She got him washed and into some dry clothes, made him dinner, and sent him off to bed. Once she was alone she poured herself a hefty measure of scotch and downed it in one. Her second glass was raised in a mock toast to the man staring back at her from the wedding portrait on the wall. “You knew, didn’t you? Bastard. Fucking bastard, you knew.” The second whiskey went the way of the first before the angry silence was broken when the glass shattered against the picture frame.
She remembered it all so vividly. Sam hadn’t reacted very well when she had first told him she was pregnant. He had gotten that old far-away look and started muttering on about the future. Stopped sleeping much, and when he did sleep, he would wake up sweating from the nightmares. Annie’s old fears about his mental state started to resurface. All their old friends believed that he had left that “funny stuff” behind him long before their wedding, but she knew that he had just gotten better at hiding it. Still, she had always appreciated the effort. But with a baby to think about, she had begun to worry that she had been foolishly and willfully blind.
Then, one day, Sam had just snapped out of it. Came home from work with flowers and a mute apology. From that point on he was all smiles and excitement over the coming addition to their family. He had promised her that whatever happened, he would always find a way to look out for their son. That their boy would never be left to face to world alone. He had always been so certain that it would be a boy.
In the time since he had gone from their lives, she had never been able to forgive Sam for breaking that promise to his son. Tonight, facing a boy with an achingly familiar smile as he promised her that he would “look out for the little guy” she was forced to confront the possibility that he hadn’t broken it after all. That perhaps it was never really a promise in the first place, but a simple statement of facts as he had known them to be. For the first time since she lost Sam, she realized that it was only her own naiveté that had assumed that Sam always being there for little Genie, had also meant that he would be there for her.
The whole idea was insane, impossible, completely devastating, and so very very Sam. It hit Annie like a ton of bricks, unleashing over two years of pent-up tears that her anger over broken promises had kept at bay. She sank weakly to the floor amid the broken glass beneath the portrait of two happy people as they exchanged their vows. She wept over the thought that she had demanded of Sam that he give even more than the promised “till death do us part”, and that only Sam would have found a way to do just that. That night Annie finally began to grieve.
---
Annie watched as Sam played football with Gene. He insisted on Gene now, refusing to let her use that “stupid baby name” anymore. The older boy was patient, carefully showing the younger one how to shift his weight and turn his body just so to get the most force on the ball. She had been watching them together, when she could, for a while now. Sam seemed eager to spend time with Gene, even over the company of kids his own age. He stood up for Gene when he thought it was necessary, and encouraged Gene to stand up for himself. She might not always like that, but then she was his mother, and she would baby him forever if he would let her; that was her job.
She put her hand in her coat pocket and took out a small box. Opening the lid, she looked at the St. Christopher’s medal inside. An exact duplicate of his father’s she had thought when she found it in an old pawn shop last year. She had been planning on giving it to Gene as soon as he was old enough that she could be sure he wouldn’t lose it. Now she thought it might be a better gift for someone else. She shut the box and put it back in her pocket as the boys spotted her and began walking in her direction. It was Sam’s birthday next week, and she had a feeling he was going to need it.