Felt So Lonely In Your Company

They had to have gotten him confused with somebody else. The voice on the phone had been so sure that they’d gotten hold of the right Marc Fraser but in the pit of his stomach he’d known there was no way they could have done … until he’d walked into the station. Seeing the girl sat in the station, with her mom’s dark chestnut hair and his dark eyes. Even then he might’ve balked but she’d looked at him and in Ria’s eyes there’d been no mistake.

He was a father … and Toni had kept it from him.

That sick feeling had slipped through his stomach as he’d tried to pull together the shattered pieces of what had happened the last time he’d been ‘home’ in his mind. Toni hadn’t been there, she’d dumped his stuff outside instead, knowing he’d been coming home that day. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to talk it through with him, probably expecting the argument that inevitably would’ve raged. Hadn’t been able to subject their unborn child to that. Christ. Light headed, unsure what to do, he’d taken Ria back to his apartment. He’d tried to piece it together from what she’d told him but it was all insane, all swimming around in his brain.

Then she’d arrived.

Something the Mystic Falls’ cops must’ve put in the system had notified Toni wherever she was. Opening the door to her had been a kick to the gut, one he couldn’t react to with Ria sitting right there in the apartment behind him. Biting his tongue, Marc had tried to batten the hatches down on his temper when it wanted to spew. Years of lying by omission, raising his daughter somewhere until she’d come here and something had turned a little kid into a teenager overnight. All of them had to have been shellshocked by it but the only one giving orders had been Toni as she’d taken Ria from him. He’s stayed up for two days afterwards, his brain fighting sleep, fighting everything he thought he’d known about it all. Leaving him pacing the apartment all night long, walking through the kitchen remodel he’d been hired for the next day.

Glancing in the rear view mirror of the truck as he got out Marc breathed a faint sigh of relief. At least as a wolf he never had to worry about looking exhausted, his healing took care of that at least. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since, trying to adjust to Toni being in town, trying to be a father to his daughter. The word squeezed his heart like it was clamped in a fist, as it always did when he used the word now. His daughter, the person he was here to discuss.

Marc huffed a faint breath of amusement as he entered the park through the gate. He could already see Toni sat on a bench, legs crossed, one foot tapping in a way he’d learned to be wary of even when their marriage had been solid. Dragging a hand over his face, he approached. ”Hi,” he managed hoarsely as he dropped onto the other end of the bench. Hunching forward, Marc propped his elbows on his knees as he glanced sideways at his wife. ”Is Ria in school?” Of course she was, that was part of the reason why Toni had chosen today. Day time, a public place, witnesses in case that switch flipped into his head and he tumbled back into being that angry, frustrated, hurting man who didn’t want to let those words out of his mouth. Who couldn’t. ”We could’ve done this at my place…” He wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t backslide into that place, even though the bigger part of him blamed Toni for hiding this for all those years.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 635

Toni hadn’t been living in their home in San Antonio. Even though he’d left it for her, taking his stuff and practically heading out on the road immediately, she hadn’t settled back there as far as he’d known. Friends in the neighbourhood had been in contact from time to time but they had to have known enough about what had gone on, maybe watched of it enough from behind lace curtains that day he’d come back to find his stuff on the yawn to know as well as he did that the house was more than likely scorched Earth for them both. Marc swallowed hard as he caught sight of his wife in the park, that feeling of a fist around his heart tightening until he was almost breathless with it. He’d intended to go back, to somehow track her down, after all of this. When Niklaus Mikaelson had given him some control back over his life, a way of dealing with the Krakatoa like emotions that bubbled away in the centre of his brain.

He’d planned to. And the universe had shown him the error of his ways like it always did. A grenade in the midst again, tearing apart what life he did think he had here with the news that Toni hadn’t just hidden from him, she’d hidden their daughter from him too.

That wasn’t just an oversight or a little white lie, it was a skyscraper size elephant in the corner as he crept into the park and made his way towards her. Marc swallowed back the rush of acid up the back of his throat as he approached and settled on the other end of the bench, keeping that blanket of civility pulled tight around himself … for Ria’s sake. It looked like Toni wasn’t expecting him to manage it either. She let out a breath as he asked about Ria, almost like it was a relief that he hadn’t come in swinging. He bit his lower lip, bobbing his head slowly. Brown eyes ticked away from her paler ones, sweeping the park before returning to hers. ”How’s she settling in?” he asked quietly.”it’s gotta be a big change for her.” For all of them. Marc Fraser, king of the understatement.

He lifted his hands, running both of them over a jaw faintly stubbled. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and it rasped against his fingertips. Marc dropped his head slightly, staring at the ground beneath his boots. He wasn’t blaming Toni for wanting to do this in a public place, especially since the last time they had been together had been another of those window rattling fights. Her begging him to open up, to let her in to what was happening in his head and him not wanting to bring an ounce more of that darkness and pain home to her. ”Maybe,” he managed hoarsely, looking around again, fixing on a coffee stand in the centre of the park. ”I wouldn’t…” The words were hoarse in his throat though, edging on a lie. He didn’t know if he would’ve blown or not. Still didn’t know but it was less likely to happen here.

A huff of humour rolled out of him, his mouth curving as he straightened up and looked at her. What did he want to ask? Marc let out a sigh, his head shaking again. What didn’t he want to ask. ”What happened?” he asked hoarsely. ”Did you know when I came back and decided not to tell me? Did you find out afterwards? She’s mine … I know that … but … why Toni?” Why had she hidden his daughter from him? The little voice in his head had warned that it was because she didn’t trust him around their child over the last couple of nights. A bitter tirade from that devil on his shoulder, hammering away at his shattered confidence, making it clear just what the cost of that trip to Madagascar with the team had been … for both of them.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 675

A daughter. The words had stuck in his throat when he’d told the officer on the phone that he didn’t have one. The guy had asked if he was sure like it was something that could’ve slipped his mind. Like he would’ve forgotten, pushed it out of his head, if Toni had told him in the first place. Instead that was his first introduction to Illyria. Sitting in the Mystic Falls police station with just her parents’ names. Someone at the station had recognised his and called and even if she hadn’t been his kid Marc had known he couldn’t let a kid sit there alone anyway. He’d never imagined … he pictured her now, lifted a hand to scrub over his eyes to try and erase the member of that first shock. Eyes as dark as his daughter’s ticked over to her. ”What do you mean gotten into your house?” He’d known they were staying put for a time but house? That sounded permanent. Another lift of his mouth and he was rubbing the back of it over his lips, trying to will back the thick feeling in his throat. ”I want to see her too … if you’ll let me.” As much as he wanted to argue that she couldn’t stop him now that the cat was out of the bag but he wasn’t stupid, he knew that Antoinette had full custody, no court in the land would decide anything else.

She could’ve cut him off entirely. Scooped their daughter up and gone straight back to their life … the one they’d had before Ria had been snatched. Toni hadn’t though, he tried reminding himself of that as he sat there, fighting not to let the nerves jangle beneath his skin. Marc swallowed, staring at the coffee truck until he let out a long breath. ”It was for the best,” he breathed, knowing that she was telling the truth. She knew him well enough, even if at the end he’d sworn she was seeing things, that she had no idea what he was feeling.

Because he hadn’t told her. And she hadn’t told him.

She opened the flood gates now and despite every ounce of anger inside of him wanting to spill out as he had the opportunity to ask Marc tried to keep that battened down inside of him. His voice was reasonable enough as he’d asked her what had happened … why she hadn’t told him or let him be a part of his daughter’s life for a handful of years. His throat ached as she started in with the bald honesty she was always better at than he was. ”You were OK though, she … Ria was OK?” Of course they had been, they were both here now and safe but the ache in his chest at the thought of them not being when he could’ve been there was squeezing like a vice.

Christ. She had been so close to him that night. On the other side of the door. Ria nearly ready to be born and because he’d been so locked down, so unwilling to share how broken he’d been after he’d seen his team blown apart, she had decided to keep him from it. Marc rocked forward, elbows on his thighs, his hands over his face as he bargained with himself to keep the sudden burst of temper under control. This was why it was here, why it wasn’t in his apartment when he would’ve been on his feet already, pacing in time with the jack hammer of his heart beat and thoughts in his head. ”You didn’t think I had a right to know or had a chance to come around. You cut me off because I couldn’t cope then.” For better, for worse. In sickness and in health. The thought of the vows they’d made choked him now.

Pushing his way to his feet, he went to walk but he stopped. Hands dragging up over his face, lacing at the back of his neck as he stared at her and shook his head. ”Were you ever going to tell me I was a dad? If they hadn’t taken Ria and brought her here and…” Whatever had happened to turn his little girl into … almost a grown woman … had happened. ”I would’ve gotten help. For her … for you. When you sent me the ring back and threw me out of your life I thought that was it but … if I knew you weren’t done … if I’d known about Ria. I would have done it sooner.” It. Found someone to try and rewrite those short circuits in his brain. Not Niklaus Mikaelson, he hadn’t been changing people then if the rumours were true but some way … to fix him. ”I can’t … I need … coffee …” He stared miserably at the cart as he dropped his hands. A distraction, some way to burn all of this out of him before the hurt flipped that trigger in his head and he said something that would cost him them both forever.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 853

It had felt like the right thing to do for him. Cut free from his marriage, from the job, adrift from the only ties he’d had since he’d left hie entire family and the town he was meant to live out his whole life in, struggling with his temper and the full moons like a fifteen year old. This town had held what felt like the only promise of hope. Maybe some tie to his team here if the rumours that drifted through the tattered net of the military he still had left were anything to go by, maybe some way to get control of it all again. If he could’ve done that, maybe he could’ve tracked Toni down, convinced her to give their marriage a second chance. Marc wanted to laugh about it now, felt it like bubbles bursting beneath his sternum. All such foolish hopes, all had seemed so damn real and possible, while she’d been living an entire life somewhere else … with his daughter.

Marc’s expression and voice remained reasonable but there was something resolute in it. She could’ve gone again, taken their daughter back to the only life she’d known. Few courts would’ve sided with him considering his circumstances since Madagascar. ”I would’ve gone too,” he admitted, his knuckles fall away from his mouth for his hands to knot together again. Marc was bobbing his head slowly in time with his thumb circling on the backs of his other knuckles. ”I’ve got space … the two of you could’ve stayed with me, saved a little more money.” Money Toni had been providing alone while he’d been in the dark. Given the way he’d been before the last deployment some part of him couldn’t blame her for leaving, for wanting to keep him at a distance from Ria, but the biggest part … it still hurt.

A horse kick to the pit of his stomach, a sucker punch that still left him breathless when this slipped from his thoughts for a moment and rushed back with that shock again. Like an explosion in the pit of his stomach, that still moment that stole all the air.

Why?

The answer should’ve been pretty obvious considering the way he’d been but Marc asked all the same. He needed to hear it from her, to hear the real truth rather than the twisted version of it that had been floating around in his head. Despite the hair trigger he’d had the last time they’d really been together like this she’d given it to him all the same. A softer punch to the gut this time, an understanding that hurt but didn’t bubble with anger at the edges. ”I always hoped you were doing OK, wherever you were,” he explained hoarsely. There’d never been the bite of hatred, only that lingering sadness and grief. That need to do something to try and dial the clock back, even if it took years to get there.

And it had, four in the end to get here. Four years for his daughter to be born and grow up into this teenager who’d suddenly appeared in his life with no warning. Maybe not all the anger that had burned in him after his team and his life had been blown apart was gone. Rolling forward with the feel of it, he dragged his hands over his face, trying to will it all back. ”One chance, that was what you gave me,” he managed hoarsely, his fingertips pressing into his temples. ”No, I wasn’t ready. I was still suffering, I was still hurting. You think I would’ve thought of her as some sort of band aid? No. Christ.” Marc sat back, hissing out a breath. Maybe Toni was right, maybe it seemed like it would’ve been for the best but how the hell did any of them know that now? All he could see was that he’d lost those years with Illyria. Maybe if he’d been there she wouldn’t have been in a position where she could be snatched. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Those questions always chewed him up.

The little voice in his head warned him he still had his family now. After years of being adrift they’d come full circle, he had at least. Ria had always known who he was, had recognised her dad when he’d walked into that station thinking it all had to be some huge mistake. Up on his feet, his hands laced behind his neck as he stared at his wife, Marc laughed, just a little. ”When she was six or sixteen or thirty six. I still would’ve been blindsided,” he admitted. Because the mess he’d become had driven his wife to sever all ties with him, for her sake and the sake of their daughter. Marc let out a sigh that felt like it came from the soles of his feet, his weight shifting again as he looked anywhere but at Toni. ”You’re still done…” he murmured, knowing that there wasn’t going to be any magic fix for this. He almost broke, about to tell her what his had been but he couldn’t get the words out past that he would’ve done it sooner.

Fixed on the coffee cart, Marc stumbled over this words. He took a few steps back towards the coffee cart. His top lip tugged, rolled between his top teeth and his tongue. He needed something to occupy him while he got this out, something to stop his hands knotting up. A distraction. ”Can we get some coffee?” he asked, already taking a couple of steps backwards towards the cart. ”Just a cup of coffee … and I’ll explain why I was here in the first place. Please?” The word felt rusty in his throat. He hadn’t used it all in those last couple of months of their marriage, it’d stuck in his throat every time. Some part of him unable to beg for what he needed, what he’d so desperately wanted.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 997 (sorry!)

Hope lodged painfully under his ribs, like he’d tried to swallow a rock. He’d been foolish to think that maybe this was the turning point for them all. A daughter, a chance for them to patch their marriage up once he’d proven to Toni that he wasn’t the man he’d been when his life had been torn apart. The man who had watched his team slaughtered in a village hadn’t disappeared, but those cracks through the centre of him had begun to heal at least. Those outbursts of anger, the ever present reek of fear pouring from his own pores diminishing.

Marc’s lips pressed together, dark eyes focusing on his hands, the press of bone against the pad of his thumb as he preoccupied himself with the tiny movement. A low sound rumbled in his throat, his eyes cutting to her for just a moment to take in that smile. ”You can’t trust me yet,” he said simply, no accusation in it. ”It’s gonna take time, proof, for you to see that I’m not the way I was.” No question to it, or a plea. A deep breath, another convulsive swallow to try and wash away the husk of that hope. ”Let me help you at least … I should be paying something.” He had 16 years worth of child support to make up for at least, so much more than that too. So much of his daughter’s life had been spent without him.

It was stupid to believe that him being there would have changed anything for them. If the team hadn’t gone on that last mission, if he’d been able to pull himself together afterwards, there was still a chance something would’ve hurt their daughter. Even if there wasn’t … there was no turning the clock back, they’d both learned that the agonising way. It didn’t stop it from weighing any less on him as Toni took him through all that had happened since he’d walked away from the house, leaving her behind pregnant. Marc huffed out a breath through his nose, his hands sliding back until they were clamped over the top of his head as he sat up. His jaw flexed, the answer sticking in his throat. ”You couldn’t but you could’ve given me the chance to try and prove it. I might have failed, you might’ve been right, but maybe you wouldn’t have been. We could’ve …” Been a happy family, with him exploding at the drop of a hat, waking up in the night, hollering at the feel of that bullet slicing through his shoulder, mortar crashing at his feet, the whole world bloom with fire and agony.

He’d just begun to get a grip on his own life again. The mental and psychological scars starting to flatten but still there. Maybe by the time Illyria would have come looking for him they would’ve faded entirely but that had all been taken out of their control and instead he’d stood in that police station feeling as though his world had crumbled beneath his feet again. His mouth twitched a little in response to his own words. ”I think we both are,” he finally managed hoarsely. The only thing they could do now was try and pick up those shattered pieces and find a way for him to be a dad. Niklaus Mikaelson had been his one hope for ridding himself of those scars once and for all, to take back control of his life.

He couldn’t do that without telling Toni, this wasn’t about just him anymore, it was about them too. Desperate for something he’d pushed to his feet, heading towards the coffee cart, asking if they could grab some. It was a distraction, a delay, but that was what he needed now. The plea stuck in his throat but Toni was getting to her feet anyway, retrieving her purse as they headed towards the cart. ”The same,” he asked. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, he moved restlessly as he waited for them to set the coffees down. The minute he had his in hand he was holding onto it like a life line. Marc waited for Toni to doctor hers and then was moving away from the cart again. ”There were rumours about someone here in Mystic Falls,” he managed hoarsely as he stepped away. ”Someone who could … help me.” His teeth gritted tight as he gestured at his head, like that would explain. ”Have you heard of the Mikaelsons? The Original family?” Both Toni and her brother had been Kitsunes, a part of that supernatural world from birth, just as he had been himself. The Mikaelsons had never been mentioned in his town but there was a chance Toni had heard about what he hadn’t.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 796

He’d wanted to slip back into his life. To shrug off the horrors of what had happened. Desperately. With pleaded words to Toni and his superior officers, words muttered to himself as he’d dropped to his knees in the house, hands over his ears like he could somehow block out the memories of everything that had shattered his life. There was no erasing it though and both he and Toni knew it. Marc couldn’t do anything but nod, lips pressed together against the pleading words that wanted to roll out now. He’d had to crawl back towards that life, even if he’d gone from where they’d once lived to do it.

What had he expected to do when he was able to go back again? Show up on the porch, every apology in the world on his lips. Knees hitting the floor for a different reason. Pleading. Begging to be let back in. He hadn’t known that it likely would’ve been his daughter who rushed out to open the door to him. Time and his own mind had gotten away from him but it was still Ria throwing open that world to him.

All that time Toni had to have been raising her alone. Sixteen … no … it hadn’t been that long since he’d gone … four years. That sick swirl of thoughts again at how twisted things had become in this town. Providing a house for her, clothes, food, schooling. He might’ve grown up sheltered in a town that basically functioned on its own but Marc knew raising kids wasn’t cheap. ”You’re not making me do anything, Toni. I want to do this.” There was a grit to his voice but Marc tried to bleed it out as he sighed. Trying to push it into her hands was only going to nudge them closer to a snapping point again. He didn’t want to argue, not over Ria. She’d said when he spent time with her, not if, that was what he was gonna have to hang on to for now.

It was hard to let the past and the old arguments go. Over four years ago they’d done this dance and he’d been the one tagging out of it in the end. Leaving Toni behind without knowing that a part of him had been left with her. The minute she’d arrived to reunite with Ria he’d dropped back into it but it wasn’t the same, couldn’t be. There was no such thing as a time machine and if there had been he’d have gone back further than that broken man. Each word out of Toni’s mouth was met with a bob of his head, tiny movements that pressed against his hands until he released them to drop back to his lap. ”I’m trying to,” he promised with a strain in his voice. ”I’ve been trying for a long time.” Fatherhood was new but his attempts to claw his way out of that pit had been going on from the moment he’d been left that ring. Half way across the world he’d gripped it in his palm, used the cold press of it to give him the courage to walk from the job, now it was in his dresser draw in the apartment here.

That was admission he choked down as emotions bubbled up again. Unable to sit and talk about this like there wasn’t gonna be a single bit of fall out, he’d pushed to his feet, asked to head to the cart for a coffee. Marc didn’t need the caffeine, even if it had an effect on his system it would’ve been lost in the rest of that rush of restlessness through him. Cup in hand, he had no excuse anymore. Strolling next to his wife, ex-wife, Marc began to admit what had drawn him here. ”I wanted him to change me. It’s … horrific … but I’ve been through horrific before and this was meant to give me control again. I was meant to be able to get all the rest of the stuff out of my head and come back.” There was a faint crack in his voice. Marc frowned, gulped a mouthful of the coffee down, even though it scorched his throat, left him hoarse for a second. ”But I still need something, right? I never got back to how I was, not all the way. You know there’s no miracle cure for what I was going through.” He’d needed her, and more. That was the one thing he hadn’t admitted to himself before she was gone though and suddenly he was staring down at the torment all by himself.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 776

There was give there. More than there had been since his phone had rung that last time. The brittle cage life had started to become when he could no longer stride through it the way he had done suddenly stretching. He bobbed his head slowly, his hands knotting up between his knees as he glanced down at them. ”I want to,” he said quietly. She wouldn’t take it for herself in any way, shape or form, that stubbornness he’d always loved despite what it had cost him making alimony a non-subject. Whatever he scraped together would be Ria’s alone. No real substitute for sixteen – four - years without her father there but another small step in that attempt to bridge that gap.

God it felt huge. Another of those gulfs in his chest that meant him standing on one side of it all with his heart shaking like a leaf in his chest and his feel slipping like he was about to tumble right into it.

Marc felt it there, almost lost his breath thinking about it. Pushing to his felt helped. Coffee wouldn’t do much jitters but it was something to keep him moving, something to bleed off some of that pressure that was building inside before the whistle blew and he boiled over in a way he hadn’t in a long time. A white knuckled grip on life had kept it simmering, not gone, but under control at least until he found out that everything he’d been moving towards probably wasn’t going to work for him to get out of this. How did you tell your ex-wife that you were preparing to essentially die. It wouldn’t matter that he would come back. He’d be a walking corpse, burdened with a hunger that wouldn’t quit and maybe the sanity he’d needed badly enough to taste it.

Eyes on the cup in his hands the confession stayed stoppered in his throat. Marc pressed his lips together, glancing sideways at her as that soft tone slipped out. He swallowed hard, shaking his head as he glanced at her. ”I’m still the person you knew. Under all of this, I haven’t changed.” Her words cut though, a quick stab to the chest that was gonna be bleeding for a while after this. They had been good, for years it’d been a solid relationship, a marriage that would have led to kids and a quiet retirement once he was done with the team. It had been right there, close enough that he could’ve closed his fingers around it … until the attack.

A muscle jumped in his jaw, his eyes darting away again. They fixed on the trees ahead, the words refusing to slot themselves into some order that would make sense in his head. ”I don’t want to be like this anymore … especially not with Ria. I want to be a good father to her.” He didn’t want to flinch at every loud sound or claw his way out of dreams breathless and drenched in sweat, his heart feeling as though it were being crushed in his chest. He didn’t want Ria seeing him that way. There was a desperation in his eyes as he looked up at her, a plea. ”Then what do I do? How do I fix this?” How he fixed them was another question entirely, one he hadn’t wanted to look at until those cracks inside of himself had gone. Toni had been the one who’d always pieced him back together before, until that last wound had come close to shattering him entirely.

Tagged: TONI FRASER * Word Count: 596