Everything is going to be FINE!!!... (Peter, Charles, Lydia, Aly, Baby Thomas)

[father-peter.livejournal.com]

Peter was still feeling mostly normal by Friday, though he was starting his radiation therapy on Sunday and he knew he wouldn't feel normal once that began. In fact, he was most likely going to feel absolutely shit, so he wanted to take advantage of his health while he could. While he had it. Which was why he was headed to the store to buy lots of pie. With a beanie on his head to cover his odd bald spot. And luckily for Peter, his daughter was there to inform him that was not a good idea.

"Oh my god, Dad..." Lydia jumped up from the living room sofa where she had been reading the second Peter entered the room. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to the store to get pie!" Peter said cheerfully. He felt like eating so much pie he might cause a pie shortage. This was what happened when you didn't eat while things were stressful. You eventually realised you were hungry and you overloaded on pie. "Would you like to come? I'm not driving." He assured her, in case that was why she looked worried.

"But you are going to wear that?! Dad, nothing says 'lack of sexy' like a beanie..." Especially with Peter's hair, which was sticking out haphazardly from under the beanie as if it was trying to escape.

"I wasn't trying to be sexy, I was trying to hide the bald patch on my head. Beanie's better than bald patch, right?" Peter asked, eyebrows raised because Lydia would know better than he would.

"Daaaad, just comb your hair over it! It's long enough, it'll cover it!"

"You...you want me to comb my hair?!" Peter looked flabbergasted, as if the idea of combing his hair was completely foreign to him. "I look like a used car salesman when I comb my hair! A game show host! I can't comb it!"

"You look like a very tall, very silly fifteen year old with that on your head, give it!" Lydia jumped up onto a chair and from there she yanked the beanie off his head.

"Hey! Awww..."

"You'll thank me when you don't get strange looks." Lydia said, shoving the beanie into the drawer of an end table.

"Do you think I could wear a fedora?" Peter asked hopefully, and Lydia giggled. Before she could answer, the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it!" Lydia said cheerfully, but Peter was far too used to terribly shocking things just showing up and ringing his doorbell lately, so he jumped forward to get there first. "Okay, you get it then, Flash Gordon." Lydia murmured as Peter shot past her. She followed him anyway.

"You don't know who it is!" Peter explained and then he opened the door on Father Charles which resulted in both of them staring at each other for nearly an entire minute before Peter broke the stunned silence by uttering a terribly obvious, "Charles?" to which Charles grunted in response.

"Er..." Lydia looked back and forth between her father and the priest and she decided Peter would probably need her here for this one. The second she made a noise, Charles turned his eyes on her and Lydia started up at him. There was something about his expression....realisation, slight contempt, maybe a little shame... Lydia wasn't used to being looked at like that. Her father, family and friends never looked at her with anything other than love. Was she supposed to feel ashamed too? She didn't.

"So this must be..." Charles said, pointing at Lydia.

"She's my daughter, Lydia." Peter said firmly, though he did have to work to keep his voice from shaking. He looped his arm around Lydia's shoulders so he could pull her close to him. Peter had worked with Charles at Melk Abbey. Lydia was the reason Peter had been told to leave Melk Abbey. To Charles, Lydia was a symbol of shame. To Peter, she was anything but. However, he had still spent the first ten years of her life away from her, denying her existence. And Charles' presence here would only remind Lydia of that. It would be easy enough to feel ashamed when reminded of those circumstances.

"Your...your head, Peter?" Charles pointed to his own head where Peter was sporting a bald spot.

"Just...nevermind that. Can I help you, Charles?" Charles had been one of his closest friends in Melk, but the last time he had spoken to the man, Charles had not been kind to him. Being forced to leave the priesthood because you had a secret daughter hadn't been exactly good for his reputation, even when Peter had explained that Lydia's birth had taken place after Peter had left Downside Abbey and before he had entered the seminary. To the church, Peter had never officially left it. To Peter, he had. Twice now. It all depended on your point of view.

Charles looked into Peter's face then and he shook his head. "I'm here to help you, Peter. I...I apologise for the way I treated you when we last spoke. Brother Rolf knew you to be a good man and I should know better than to question brother Rolf's judgment."

Peter's lips thinned at that, because 'Brother Rolf's' judgment wasn't necessarily the most sound thing in the world these days, but he had been right to think Peter a good man if he did say so himself. "Thank you, I suppose..."

"Is it alright if I come in?" Charles asked, glancing around nervously.

"Hmm? Oh! Dreadfully sorry. My...manners seem to be the first thing to go when I'm...erm..." He was going to say when he had brain tumours, but he didn't feel like talking about it. "Strange..." He finished off lamely and then he stepped aside so Charles could proceed further than the front stoop.

"Thank you very much." Charles said and then he took in Peter's home with awe. "This is a beautiful house..."

"It was my mother's." Peter explained, leading Charles to the living room. "Would you like some tea?"

"Tea would be lovely. White with one?" Charles looked to Lydia, as if he expected her to fetch it and she returned his look with an incredulous crossing of her arms.

"I'm not your servant!" Lydia hissed.

Peter glanced back and forth between his daughter and Charles and he sighed. "I had intended to get it myself. I'm not in the habit of making my children serve me." Peter reached out to let his fingers brush against Lydia's cheek because it always brought a smile to her face. "Would you like something, Lydia?"

"To go upstairs?" She asked, her voice sounding desperate.

Peter just refrained from snorting, but he managed to nod. "I'll come up in a little while. If you start on your history work, I'll look it over?"

"Okay!" Lydia raced away as quickly as she could.

Peter shrugged as he led Charles into the kitchen where he busied himself with the kettle. "She's not used to being looked at as an object of scandal." Peter said, giving Charles a pointed look. "So I'd be obliged if you'd just...like...you know...cut it out!?"

Charles looked slightly ashamed then. "I'm sorry, Peter, I just can't...I still can't equate the thought of you having children..."

"Well you'd better equate away then, because I have seven." Peter's expression was one that dared Charles to have a problem with that.

"Se...er...congratulations." Charles cleared his throat. "It's just...you with children... You were always one of the brightest stars at Melk so to find out that you...it was a shock."


Peter chuckled at Charles and then he brought the man some tea to soothe his nerves. "Well that is my shame to bear, if you so choose to see it that way. They are innocent in this. Not all of them are biologically mine, Charles, but I don't love them any less for that."

"Ah, of course. And how is dear Annaliese Roemer?" Charles knew that Peter had adopted the little girl from the children's home in Melk whom the late Abbot Erich Brunhardt had been victimising. Peter had put a stop to that the moment he had found out about it (thanks to his prophetic dreams) though Charles had no way of knowing that the reason he had adopted Anna was that he had found out that she was an angel and he couldn't leave her there in the children's home with no one who would understand her. He had to give her a home where she would be safe and happy and where people knew what she was.

"She's very well." Peter said warmly, always happy to talk about his kids. "Adorable, sweet, kind, open, loving. Everything one could want in a daughter. Her English is fantastic. She does well at school. She gets on very well here. Charles...you said you were here to help me?"

"Right..." Charles took a deep breath, and then he took a sip of the tea in order to stall. "When Rolf left the Abbey he warned me that people might come looking for him. Priests. Some sort of...secret order? He didn't tell me much about it, but he said if they came asking for either one of you, or Robert McGavillary, I was to tell him at once. Only, I tried St. Francis' and he wasn't there. He said he was going to work for you, but he always stays at St. Francis'."

"He has a home in my hospital now. Er, that sounded odd. He works there, yes. And he lives there too. Like a live in chaplain. This...secret order. Did they ask about Robert MacGavillary?" They had to be Templar. If they were asking about Robert when they knew he was dead, as they had killed him themselves, then something very strange was afoot.

"They only mentioned that they knew he had been stationed at Melk. They asked for you and Rolf, however, and they accessed the files. It was a direct order from Rome not to impede on their investigation."

"Of course it was." Peter said bitterly. "Tell me...was a man named Alessandro Dragonetti there with them?"

"Not...not that I know of." Charles shook his head. "They took the files on you, Robert and Rolf with them and they left. I did exactly as Rolf told me to do."

"Well thank you, Charles. Knowing they're looking in to things can only help."

"Peter, what is going on here? Why do they care about this? Especially now? You were defrocked and that was the end of it. They already know you had a daughter, what else could they possibly be after?"

"Oh...proof I pulled off miraculous things, no doubt." Peter muttered. He was, at least, happy in the knowledge that nothing like that would appear in his file as he was very much not miraculous in the least. His file would read like the driest of dry books until they got to the part about him having a daughter and even that was hardly very scandalous, as everything remotely interesting had happened ten years prior to that and not at all since then, at least at the time of the files being written. Damn vows.

"Miraculous...Peter, honestly. What is all this fuss?"

"Charles, I'd often wondered that myself." Peter heaved a heavy sigh. "I don't think it would be right to tell you. There's too much and..." Peter shook his head. "It's not good for one's faith to hear it." Peter had told Robert and it had been the catalyst for Robert's loss of faith. To this day, that was one of Peter's biggest shames. He knew what it felt to lose ones faith. It was like a deep chasm opened up inside and never really filled back up again. It stayed raw and it ached every day. Perhaps that ache was partly why Robert had so readily accepted Rolf's charge to be a double agent on the side of the Templar, a charge which resulted in his death. If he hadn't lost his faith, he might very well be alive today, and Peter would still have his friend. Peter couldn't do it to Charles too.

"The devil has many ways of testing ones faith, Peter Kemp. But God will emerge triumphant in the end."

"Dear Charles...I wish could understand. But the cost is far higher than I'm willing to pay."

"Are you in some kind of trouble here, Peter?"

Peter sighed and he leaned back against the kitchen bench. "There is always trouble, Charles. I've gotten pretty good at getting around it. This holy order...they're trouble of the worst kind. But they were dealt a critical blow a few months ago. I believe this may be it's death throes. And I will not be taken down by throes, as it were. Don't worry."

"You sound like a warrior." Charles commented.

Peter bit his lip and he looked back up at the man who had been his friend. "I wish to God I didn't have to." He said honestly. "But this is the way it is."

Aly Kemp entered the kitchen then and she looked at Charles quizzically. "Er, hello?" She asked, her eyebrows raised. Unconsciously, at the sight of a priest, she pulled the baby Thomas closer to her body to protect him. Thomas noticed none of it, of course, and he just grinned at the man he didn't recognise as he usually did. Thomas was, quite easily, one of the happiest babies around.

"My name is Charles." Charles said to Aly, cordially. "Charles Hollister. I worked with Peter at Melk Abbey."

"I see... Aly Kemp." Aly offered, but she didn't shake his hand as her own hands were preoccupied with toddler.

"Is he hungry again?" Peter asked warmly, stepping forward to help his wife with their son.

"He's Mama's little Hoover." Aly grinned and she kissed Thomas' head as she strapped him into his high chair, which Thomas immediately began drumming against with his hands.

"He certainly is." Peter touched Aly's arm gently to impede her progress to the fridge. "It's okay, I'll get it." And he moved to get his son something to eat. "The tiny one's name is Thomas." He informed Charles.

"He's a beautiful boy." Charles admitted, because Thomas was. His eyes sparkled and he smiled happily. "And your wife is beautiful as well, Peter." The idea of Peter with a wife was even more strange than the idea of Peter with kids, but Charles was now too weary to deal with that. So he simply accepted it and moved on.

"Ah, both very true statements." Peter pulled out a little container of baby-friendly lasagne and he moved to heat it up.

"Don't tire yourself out." Aly warned him.

"I'm alright." Peter soothed, and he kissed her forehead. "Charles was just informing me that Rome invaded Melk and took my files as well as Robert's and Rolf's."

"Well fuck!" Aly hissed and then she turned to the priest and blushed. "Ah, sorry, Father. Mea culpa and all that. But you know...uhm..." Eventually Aly settled on swearing in Spanish.

Peter raised his eyebrows, but he knew better than to ask what Aly had said in front of Charles. "Indeed." He simply agreed. "But now that we know, we can take care of it."

"You mean Rolf can take care of it and you can rest." Aly said firmly and then she pushed him gently out of the way so she could get the lasange and feed Thomas.

Peter sighed and he gave Charles a frustrated look. "Never try to argue with a Spanish woman." Aly simply looked triumphant as she pulled a chair in front of Thomas and she fed him a bite of his dinner.

"Yum yum!" Thomas announced after swallowing.

"And why...why do you need to rest?" Charles asked, worriedly.

"Brain tumour." Peter pointed to his head, finally explaining the bald spot there.

"I...I need to sit down." Charles informed Peter and he did just that. Charles had known Peter not two and a half years ago when his family had consisted of his sister Liz, and a secret daughter whom Charles had known nothing about, believing Lydia to be Liz's daughter and not Peter's. Now he had a wife and seven kids, with a secret holy order after him and he was suffering from a brain tumour. Sitting down didn't seem quite a big enough gesture. "Dear God, Peter."

Peter just shrugged and he grabbed an apple. "I feel fine." He said, loudly enough so Aly could hear. "Everything is going to be fine." Peter just wouldn't have it any other way, dammit. "Stay for dinner, Charles. Then I can take you to Rolf."

Aly cleared her throat and Peter didn't miss a beat. "Then I will ring Rolf and have him come here."

"There you go." Aly said, and she winked.

"She's the boss." Peter admitted, and his expression showed that he didn't have a single problem with that whatsoever, as he took a calm bite of apple.