Hope is the thing with feathers | for Daniel

[tricktofalling]

The snow comes rather unexpectedly and Inej doesn't need to be told that it would be a generous, appreciated thing to do if she happens to appear at Daniel's door. So, after a task of bundling the twins--neither of them want to be put in their jackets and hats and gloves--she heads out to the nearest grocery.

There's plenty of people that are acting a little manic about the sudden snow, but Inej has been through enough storms in her life that she isn't too worried. It's mostly wrangling the twins, who want to do everything but stay close to the cart as they go through the aisles and she gets things for a few meals.

Once it looks like a manageable few days of meals, she makes her way to the register. That's a whole different task, making sure that the twins stay on her side when they're fussing, but after grabbing a candy bar and promising they can share it, they manage to focus long enough for her to finish the transaction, pay, and get everything together.

And then it's back out into the snow, the twins carefully holding onto her jacket and her arms holding the grocery bags. It's a slog through deep snow, almost as tall as the twins, from the grocery back to Dimera, but they all make it. The twins are fussy enough that she doesn't want to send them back to the apartment alone--and she knows that Daniel likes them.

She knocks on the door. If he's not in--she hopes he is--she'll come back with some food in containers later. The twins join in on the knocking, gently hollering as well, even as Inej tries to shush them.

Comments

[ssrsousa]

Daniel had been planning to go out and get groceries that day, but he'd woken up and seen the way the light was shining through the bedroom curtains and that had changed his mind. He pushed the curtains open to confirm, but he didn't really need to. He'd been through enough big snowstorms in his life that he knew what sunlight on a lot of snow looked like. And well, that meant he wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. This modern prosthetic was good, with the microprocessors in the knee and everything, but he was still gonna wait until things got cleaned up a little.

Since he wasn't going anywhere, he took things slow and he didn't bother putting his leg on after he showered. Instead he put on a soft green wool sweater and a pair of cotton plaid flannel pants that had a button on the outside of the thigh and two elastic loops on the hem so he could fold up the extra fabric to keep it out of his way. He made a pot of coffee and then was settling into his reading chair with a book when someone knocked on his door.

He wasn't expecting anyone, and he frowned, but got up from the chair and crutched over to the door. The knock came again, and he also heard more knocks much lower down on the door, along with two muffled voices saying "Dan-yell! Knock knock!"

Inej. It was Inej and the twins, and he didn't have his leg on. Damn. He couldn't leave them standing in the hall while he went and put his leg on, and also he wasn't going to hide in his apartment like he wasn't there. He took a very deep breath and then flipped the deadbolt and opened the door with a smile. He had no idea how this was gonna go. No one here had seen him not "all put together" as it were except Peggy, Tom, and maybe now Inej.

[tricktofalling]

There's a delay, but Inej doesn't press or push. She nudges the twins with careful feet, keeping them close, speaking to them in soft, dulcet Suli to get them to mind and stop knocking quite so much. And, after a moment or two, she hears the locks coming undone.

She smiles as well. Her eyes move swiftly, taking things in--the crutch instead of the occasional cane, the specifics of how his lounge pants are folded and pinned in such a way. And then her eyes are back on his face.

Before the twins can say anything (because they are almost two and it is a difficult day and they are prone to speaking out of turn), she holds up the grocery bags and speaks for herself.

"When I saw there was snow, I thought I could do you a grocery run and make you a few things that were easy to heat up. I hope you don't mind that I still have the twins with me--I don't mean to impose."

[ssrsousa]

Her eyes ran over him, over what was missing, but they didn't linger there. They were back on his face and she was smiling like she hadn't just learned something pretty damn important about him (and at the same time, not that important at all, he hoped). He appreciated that.

Jordie and Ana were kids, and so they stared, but he didn't mind it so much from little kids. They were just learning what the world was. There wasn't any real judgment in their curiosity, like there was with adults.

"Thank you. I wasn't gonna be going out in this," he admitted, and pulled the door wider in an invitation. "Come in."

His apartment wasn't exactly childproofed, but there was nothing dangerous at their level, and he knew that between him and Inej they could keep them out of the cleaning supplies, at least.

[tricktofalling]

"Came out of nowhere," Inej says, letting Daniel decide to let them in. The twins continue to look at him, curious but thankfully quiet now that they've arrived.

Despite having only been inside his apartment once, Inej moves through it like she's familiar. She takes the groceries straight into his kitchen, Ana trailing behind him while Jordie keeps standing in the doorway, staring at Daniel--his leg, his face, back and forth.

Inej catches it, while ducking down to take off Ana's gloves and coat, as Jordie lifts up one of his feet in a curious sort of mimicry of Daniel's amputation. She calls out her son's name, short and cross, and then chastises him in her native language. He instantly drops his foot and toddlers over to her.

"Go sit with your sister and behave," she finally says, once both of the twins are out of their outdoor gear. Her face is deeply apologetic as she looks at Daniel.

[ssrsousa]

"Well, they got the sunny and clear part. They just missed the foot of snow before the sunny and clear part," Daniel joked.

Ana followed her mamae, but Jordie was still standing in the doorway, which meant Daniel couldn't close it, and he wasn't really sure how to encourage the little boy to come in. Jordie's eyes just kept ping-ponging back and forth between his face and his knees (or lack thereof), like he'd never seen anything so fascinating. He raised a foot slowly, like he was trying to understand what he was looking at, and Daniel heard Inej behind him.

Jordie knew what side his bread was buttered on, and he immediately left the doorway and went over to his mamae like she must have told him to do. Daniel closed the door behind him and pivoted to face his guests. Inej looked very apologetic, and he chuckled.

"Maybe he thinks I'm a stork?"

[tricktofalling]

"I don't think he really knows what to think," she admits. The twins had been too young to remember Kaz's own cane, and that was with two full legs, even if one of them was never all the way how it had been before the break. But Daniel is the first person that Jordie has ever met, like him, and it stands that a little boy would be curious.

She'll do her best to explain later.

"Will you help me get things started? It will make a bit of left over, but the prep work is faster with two people than just one."

[ssrsousa]

"And I don't know how to explain it to him," Daniel agreed. "I mean, if I tell him I got hurt, he might think if he gets hurt this is gonna happen, and I don't wanna scare the little 'nino."

The last thing he wanted was for Jordie to think this would happen to him the next time he fell down and scraped his knee or something.

When Inej asked him to start helping, though, he shifted a little on his foot. He didn't mind helping, obviously, especially since she was here making food she'd bought (and which he was gonna try to find a way to pay her back for, somehow), but he didn't think he could in his current state, or at least not easily.

"Actually, I think I ought to go change," he said. "It'll be hard for me to chase around these baixinhos or help you if I've got these to work around."

He leaned on one crutch so he could hold the other up briefly.

[tricktofalling]

"We can field that one together, if you prefer. He's little yet."

Daniel's insistence on changing makes Inej pause for a moment, thoughtful. She doesn't want to impede on his space, his time to be wholly himself and at peace. But it's an excellent point that standing, or grabbing the twins, might be impeded itself by the very physical limitation he's presented with.

After a thoughtful moment, she reaches out and touches his elbow. Just brief, a touch that she hasn't let herself have with almost anyone since Kaz disappeared.

"I'll get started," she says. "And whenever you're ready, I'll gladly take the help."

[ssrsousa]

"I don't actually mind answering questions about it, if people aren't asking because they're trying to be nosy," he replied, which meant he wouldn't mind a question from the kids or even from Inej, if she asked. He doubted she would, but he wouldn't mind it if she did. He also might not answer, but she'd understand. There were probably lots of questions she wouldn't wanna answer, if he asked them. He didn't plan on asking any of em.

When she touched him and then said quietly that she'd be there when he was ready, he smiled. Not too many people here actually touched him, and Inej had touched him maybe three times in the entire time he'd known her. He wasn't sure if that meant anything, but he noticed.

"I'll be right back," he said, and went off into the bedroom.

Donning his leg was something he was practiced at by now, of course, and it really didn't take him long. He changed his trousers, too, although he did make sure to put on one of his softer pairs of dark blue chinos. After he was dressed, he glanced in the mirror to make sure he passed inspection and then went back out in to the living room.

First he'd had one leg and now he had two. Jordie was gonna have something to say about that, probably.

[tricktofalling]

In the interim of Daniel being out of the room, Inej starts sorting through the groceries. Some of them go straight into the fridge. A diligent investigation of Daniel's bachelor kitchen lets her find the pots and pans she'll need to cook, a knife, a cutting board, and then all the things left to make a couple of meals all at once.

While her back is turned for half a second, Jordie does take advantage of being out from prying eyes. He abandons his sister and toddles away, adventuring, looking for anything that he can get his hands on or anything else.

When Daniel emerges, Jordie is standing right at the entrance from the living room to the other half of the apartment. He freezes like a deer in the headlights, looking at Daniel's face, and then his ankles, and then his face again.

Jordie points, and in that little, still learning voice, he says, "No. Where it come from?"

[ssrsousa]

He had heard vague noises of Inej pulling things out of his cabinets and hoped she wasn't looking for anything too crazy. He had all the basics in terms of both food and supplies and tools, but not anything beyond that. His cooking for himself was simple, filling, and usually fast. He didn't honestly know much about what Inej would have eaten before she was here. Her accent was a mix of a lot of places, and maybe her food was too. Or maybe it wasn't. He was about to find out, probably.

He stopped where the hallway ended and the living room started because there was a very tiny roadblock. That roadblock had opinions, just like Daniel knew he would, and he chuckled and crouched down to Jordie's level now that he could do that.

"The doctors gave it to me," he told Jordie, which was the simplest answer.

[tricktofalling]

"Why?" Jordie asks, looking at the prosthetic as best he can and then back at Daniel's face again. His face gets all screwed up, little voice and little mind trying to fathom everything about him.

The real unfortunate part, Inej would say, is that the twins were ultimately too young to remember much of their father. Had they had a chance to know him a little better, they would have at least been more familiar with the limp he had. Instead, Daniel is the first that either of them have ever really known, in their little lives, to have any sort of misfunction like that.

[ssrsousa]

"Mine didn't work anymore," Daniel replied. His not only didn't work, it had been a pulpy mess that would have killed him from blood loss, infection, or both if they hadn't done something about it. They'd been worried enough about that happening that they'd had the Padre give him Extreme Unction before they'd taken him in to surgery at the field hospital.

Jordie didn't need to know any of that, and he kept it all off his face. Instead he just made sure to look friendly and interested, which he was.

[tricktofalling]

Jordie considers this answer for a moment, looking at Daniel's legs again. The answer seems to be enough for him, for now. He nods, and toddles back into the living room with his sister.

Inej, from the kitchen, was watching, assuring that Jordie doesn't get out of hand or anything like that. When her son moves away, she nods a little bit, proud of him for sating his curiosity, and also glad that there were no more questions. She has a pot and a couple pans on the stove, slowly heating while she cuts vegetables and meat.

"I'm sorry about him," she murmurs when Daniel finally comes to join her. "I'd be surprised by his curiosity, but I was always a curious child too, so he comes by it natural at least."

[ssrsousa]

"I've been asked ruder questions by people with less actual interest in the answer," Daniel shrugged. Mostly that had happened before Darrow, when his leg had been a more obvious thing. Here, as long as he wasn't tired, the new prosthetic meant people maybe just noticed a little bit of a hitch in his step sometimes, and then they just figured he'd twisted his ankle or was wearing new shoes or something.

"How can I help?"

[tricktofalling]

"I'll let you take over the vegetables," she says, gesturing to the cutting board to her right and the array of onion, celery, carrots, and garlic. Some of it is already cut up, ranging from a small mince on the garlic to chunky, uneven dice for everything else. "Into small dice. We're starting with a soup my mother used to make."

She centers herself on the meat, cutting it into roughly bite-sized pieces. Cooking from her home, her memories, is always an intimate sort of thing. She's done it for very few people, and she finds herself very happy to add Daniel among them.

As she works, for a minute or two, in the quiet of the slowly heating oil and the cutting of meat and vegetables, she slowly works herself up to gently, quietly asking, "Do you talk about it? What happened?"

[ssrsousa]

"I can chop vegetables," he agreed, and pulled a chopping knife out of the knife drawer. Onion, carrots, and celery were the base of a whole lot of good soups and stews, especially if garlic was in the mix, or potatoes.

He glanced over his shoulder at the twins, but they were busy with a balled-up pair of clean black socks that had rolled under the sofa the last time he'd been folding laundry. He had more socks, so he hadn't bothered to get those socks back out yet.

"Depends on who's asking and why," he replied, and looked down at Inej as he did. "Is there something you want to know?"

[tricktofalling]

She considers. She does want to know, but her better nature tells her that she shouldn't ask if he doesn't want to talk about it, and her life as the Wraith tells her that she could probably just figure it out with enough stealthy nosiness. That latter part is less of a concern, if she's honest; she respects Daniel's privacy too much to make him a pigeon of any sort.

"Only if you don't mind talking about it," she finally says, because she can't ask these things if he's not given an out. He's been graceful in not asking about her past, and she'd like to be graceful about his. Especially since he didn't turn her away before he was fully put together.

"It must have been a very serious injury."

[ssrsousa]

His first instinct was to downplay what Inej said about it being serious, mostly because other men had it worse and he'd met them. Other men had lost both legs, or a leg and an arm, or not come home at all. But she wasn't wrong, either, and he didn't need to minimize what he'd been through because other people had it worse.

"Serious enough for them to send a priest to talk to me at the field hospital," he agreed, and paused. "I don't remember what happened, exactly. I could tell you about where I was, what I was doing, could make some good guesses about what hit me, but I don't remember it. The docs say I might never remember, and that's fine with me."

[tricktofalling]

She sees that, the moment where he almost plays it off. She's grateful that he doesn't. Instead, she listens. She considers. She knows Kaz remembered the break, and she remembers every time she's been hurt, can detail every specific knife or gun that hurt her. But their experiences--her experience--is not the same as Daniel's.

She's grateful, for the honesty and to know that he is not left with the lingering memories that might hurt him more. She reaches over, careful of the knife, to collect the cut vegetables he has already and get them in a pot to start cooking.

"It's good you were given rites," Inej says softly, "but I am glad they weren't needed in the end."

[ssrsousa]

"So am I, on both counts," he replied, and paused to let her hand scoop up the vegetables he'd already cut before he started cutting some more.

"It was cold and foggy. I remember that. I came to and, well, I'm no doctor, but it doesn't take a fancy diploma to know when something's really not right. We both know that."

She'd had a hard life that they didn't talk about, but he was certain she knew what it looked like when someone had a serious injury. He didn't need to know what injuries those were or who'd had them. And he'd been in theater for awhile by that point and had seen other injuries on other men.

[tricktofalling]

Inej gives Daniel another smile, small and tender and, indeed, understanding. To go through life was to experience both small and large hurts. Some of them lingered more than others. But she's glad he's well--and that he's been treated well to take care and improve his life.

"We do," she says, a quiet acknowledgement as she looks from him, to her children, and then back. Cold and foggy, gruesome hurts of all varieties, the knowledge of how these things lived in them later.

She works on a little bit of everything all at once, the more basic soup coming together slowly, and, once it seems it can take care of itself, a bowl that already has flour in it.

"How do you feel about dill?" she asks, a shift in the conversation because she has what she needs: a truth that speaks of trust. "My mother always used dill in fry bread."

[ssrsousa]

He'd always thought it was interesting that the people who actually seemed to care the most about his answers when he was talking about his leg also didn't ask a lot of detailed questions. They asked because they cared, not because they were fascinated by the story. It made a difference.

"I've never had fry bread, but I'm fine with dill," he replied, since she had changed the subject. "About the only spice I try to avoid is cilantro. Tastes like soap."

Not everyone thought cilantro tasted like soap, he thought, but he did, and he wasn't a fan.

[tricktofalling]

"I am terribly sorry that you are very incorrect about coriander," Inej says with a bright smile and a laugh. Still, she'll keep it in mind for the rest of the things she's making with him, not wanting to give him a big mouthful of an unpleasant taste.

The frybread, however, doesn't need to have anything like that. Flour, salt, bicarb, and a drizzle of olive oil before she sets the whole bowl aside. She takes the rest of what he's cut, and throws that into a pan separate from the first pot, getting that cooked down.

"My mother was more of a baker, such as it was in the caravan," she says contemplatively. "My father did most of the cooking. Every once in a while, he and my uncles and cousins would hunt a boar or an elk, and we would pit roast it. Mostly it was fish and bird, though."

[ssrsousa]

Daniel chuckled too, because maybe his taste buds were incorrect, but he didn't think they were gonna be changing any time soon, either. And either way, he didn't like eating soap.

"My mother did all the cooking unless my Pai went fishing or got a lobster. We knew people who had traps and it wasn't fancy people food back then like it is now. But I know how hard it would be to bake on the move. I never had decent bread unless we were somewhere near a mess hall when I was over there. Started to crave it worse than I missed fresh veggies."

Towards the end, he'd been almost worried he was gonna get scurvy he missed vegetables so bad.