The Love You Bring

Posted on Fri Jan 27th, 2023 @ 8:30pm by Kindra Graham & Kinmont Armstrong

Mission: Home Sweet Wonderful Home
Location: Hospital, Three Hills
Timeline: November 16, 2517, after 'Nice Place For A Showdown'

Kindra was pretty sure she'd passed out at some point after Alden had picked her up and brought her to the shuttle. She recalled Jacy's firm, competent hands, and her practical voice saying something about dulling the pain. Next thing she knew she was on a gurney passing through a hospital's double door and she was handed off again. She regained consciousness to the sound of her own heartbeat on a monitor and someone tuning a guitar. "Alden?" She opened her eyes to find herself in a hospital room, an IV drip in her arm.

And Kinmont was sitting in a chair next to her hospital bed. "Where's Alden?"

"The Hospital waiting room, I'd imagine. Probably grumbling 'bout the fact he's not sitting in this chair just now, 'stead o' me." He gave the strings of the guitar - borrowed from behind a nurses' station - an experimental strum, grimaced, and gave two tuning keys slight turns. "Hospital staff decided being as I'm your father, I'm your next of kin." He plucked the strings one at a time, and Kindra could hear they were tuned before her father gave a satisfied nod.

"Drake's man – is he alive? Was anyone else hurt? Where's the doctor? How much longer 'til they discharge me…" Kindra sat up. The pain was... dulled, and her head spun, but she examined the tube stuck in her arm, contemplating how to remove it.

"Hold yer horses, miss Kindra, we're in no rush to leave. Drake's man Kyle is in another hospital room here, he will recover. James and two of his men are dead, the other two captured. Doctors did scans of your torso that've been sent to a specialist to verify no internal bleeding or serious damage. Most likely, what you have is a few cracked ribs and bruises that'll heal with time."

It took Kindra several beeps of the monitor to absorb all that. All this trouble and danger she'd brought Fortune's Echo. Would Alden be angry with her? Then she gasped. "Poor Margaret."

Kinmont opened his mouth to give her some reassurance and closed it again. Where could he even begin? After all these years of watching his daughter from a distance, finally they were in the same room A hospital room. She was so like Siobhan, beautiful even with the black eye, thinking always of other people, that his heart splintered all over again. Finally, he said, "There's a song I used to sing to your mother." He plucked the opening bars, then in a rich tenor she almost remembered, sang:

"Baby, you've been going so crazy
Lately, nothing seems to be going right
So low, why'd you have to get so low?
You're so
You've been waiting in the sun too long "

It was a song Kindra knew well - her mother had often sung it to her. She joined him in the first chorus, wishing she had her harp, and sang harmony.

"But if you sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
For the love you bring won't mean a thing
Unless you sing, sing, sing, sing
Colder, crying over your shoulder
Hold her, and tell her everything's gonna be fine
Surely, you've been going too early
Hurry, 'cause no one's gonna be stopped
Now, now, now, now, now
But if you sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
For the love you bring won't mean a thing
Unless you sing-"

Tears filled Kindra's eyes and her breath hitched. That song brought back so many vivid memories of her mother, holding her and singing to her as a child, radiating encouragement and support. Kindra wanted to sing the rest, but her throat was too tight, her vision blurred. She buried her face in her hands.

His own cheeks damp, Kinmont put down the guitar, and carefully sat on the bed with a tentative arm around Kindra's shoulders. After an awkward moment, Kindra turned toward him and leaned in, letting him enfold her in a fatherly embrace of shared grief - for her mother, for his wife.

After long minutes, Kindra pulled away. Kinmont handed her a box of tissues from the nightstand, keeping a couple for himself. Kindra leaned back into the bed's pillows. "It's been seven years, and I still miss her. So much. Every day. And then Walter, seven months ago." She wiped her face and handed the box to her father. "Margaret needs to know. She was afraid of James, but he was her son, and she loved him. Even after he killed Walter. Even after he killed Mum."

"Walter never told me the precise circumstances of Siobhan's-" his throat closed up. He'd suspected, but at the time Siobhan had been so sure James wouldn't kill her. "I didn't know how your mother died. And I don't believe Margaret knew either. She and I… we both loved your mother."

There were nuances of her parents' unusual partnership Kindra didn't understand until she was older. As a young child she'd known each of them loved her, and that was enough. Kinmont and his place in their lives had been the missing piece in her adult understanding of the puzzle. "Walter left me a datarod to give you. There's vid of you and Mum on it, meeting at Liddesdale. And at the end, James holds a gun to her head and-" Kindra shook her head.

"Ah." Anger welled up in Kinmont, but thankfully, James was dead. He took Kindra's hand and gave her a half-smile, sad and chagrinned. "I, uh, snuck into your shuttle and found the datarod. Watched that vid, but Jonas and Alden caught me there and stopped it before the end." And now he understood why. Another debt he owed Jonas. "I owe you an apology for that. I owe you an apology for so many things. I should have been there for you. I know I have no right to be your father, and I have no right to ask for your pardon now. But, I hope you'll give me a chance to earn your forgiveness. Please."

Kindra regarded the old man she'd been looking for these past months, a man she had believed abandoned her as a child, a man her mother had loved and had died to save. Walter was the only father she'd known, and yet this man was her father in a different way. "You are here now, and I'm grateful for the chance to get to know you." She settled back into the hospital bed. "I'd really like you to tell me everything you can remember about my mother."

"It would be my honor and pleasure." Kinmont rubbed his chin with his free hand and recalled a different hospital room twenty-seven years ago, when his baby daughter was born.

Kindra looked at him with half-lidded eyes. "Then I want to hear all about you, Kinmont. The truth."

A small shake of his head, and a shrug. "There are things about my past I can't repeat. But I promise what I do tell you will be the truth and I'll be truthsome about skipping parts. I want to hear all about you, Kindra. Who you are. Your hopes, dreams, and plans. Everything."

She gave him a wan smile and squeezed his hand. "We'll see."

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