Case Reopened

Fear of The Future

It's taken me a while to get back to you but here I am! Thanks for waiting! 

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"It was your idea," Carter said empathetically.

"No, it wasn't," Donovan said evenly.

"It was so. I would never come up with something so idiotic."

"At the time I believe you said it was ingenious."

Carter leaned forward. "Idiotic is what is was."

"Yet you still agreed to it."

Carter looked at Donovan and smiled softly then laughed. "I did. I guess that makes us both idiots in this equation."

"But luckily our intelligence cancelled out any damage our idiocy could've created."

Kennedy sat back in her chair, watching her parents across from the dining table. Two empty wines glasses next to their plates. Kennedy could count on one hand the times she'd ever seen her parents drink. But after being gone for a week helping a small midwest town deal with a brutal murder, Donovan said they both needed a single glass to help them relax. Kennedy couldn't even describe her parents as tipsy because playfully arguing was their natural state of being most of the time.

The truth that the wine had any effect on them was the fact that they were sharing the story of how they'd willingly gotten themselves captured so they could get into a criminal organization's compound. A compound they preceded to blowup in order to escape after stealing all their data.

Kennedy might have doubted the legitimacy of the story if she hadn't heard hints of the case by other sources, most of them being her uncles and once Mason. But where her uncles hinted at it to tease Kennedy at her parents extremely adventurous nature, Mason had used hints of it as a basis proving her parents were actually stupid to a dangerous decree.

Hearing her parents tell the details how they'd both been chained upside down, her father even receiving a few punches, before disabling their capturers then breaking themselves out of their bounds, all Kennedy felt was overwhelm.

She lived with her parents, she'd known them her entire life. Her mother would willingly do crossword puzzles in the morning while drinking coffee. Her father could sit for hours reading a book. They took morning runs together. They could appear as the most basic and unassuming people but then these glimpses of their other life poked through and Kennedy felt as if she didn't know them.

It wasn't that she didn't know this was always who they were, but very rarely did she hear about the insane situations they'd been in. She knew they were strong, capable people but listening, they felt like something about of a superhero story. They seemed unreal. And yet were real, had experienced all of those things.

"Townsend was so mad," Carter said, laughing.

"He said do whatever it takes," Donovan said, grinning at the empty win glass he twisted between his fingers. "And we did. Not our best plan."

"Not your best plan," Carter said, staring at him pointedly.

"Right, not my best plan. But do you want to talk about your bad ideas?"

At the teasing look Donovan gave Carter, Kennedy knew there must be many. But Carter glanced at Kennedy and Kennedy felt the vault door, where all the classified cases they'd taken part in, get sealed again. She smiled but Kennedy saw how it wasn't the same at a moment before.

"I think that's enough for tonight. Let's do dishes and go to bed."

She stretched and Kennedy heard something click. The slight noise felt contrary to the still vivacious woman in front of her. Yes, she was a mom and had been for seventeen years but Kennedy felt like her mom never looked like the mom's of her friends. There was nothing soft about her mom, she was all lean muscle and undeniable strength.