Fic: Quiet Sanctuary 7/14

[youngeratheart.livejournal.com]

Quiet Sanctuary
Chapter Seven
Word Count: 3,028
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Tim/Marion, eventually... Lou/Scott and Ty/Amy.
Warnings: Non-graphic discussion of child abuse.
Disclaimer: I'm never going to grow up. That means... I'm not legally responsible for anything, right?
Summary: AU. Heartland is a refuge, not just for abused and neglected horses, but for all.
Author's Note: I had wanted to include a bit of Lou's separation from Heartland, the way she felt she didn't belong there in the beginning, in the story. Lou in the books had lived for years in England and then in New York, and she didn't feel like she belonged at Heartland. The Lou here, having been away at a boarding school, had a few of the same issues.

---

The Promise of a New Year

 

"Lou?"

She turned to see her sister behind her. She forced a smile. She should have known that she'd be followed if she waited in the barn. She hadn't been able to sleep last night. All she could do was see her father there, hear those words over and over. She couldn't believe what she'd seen. She thought her father was doing fine, but she'd been wrong. They hadn't told her what was really going on. She'd been lied to, and she felt like a fool. She didn't know what to do.

Her mother kept trying to talk to her about it, but she couldn't face it. She didn't know how. She'd been gone for so long... She felt like a stranger in her own home, a stranger to her family. "Hello, Amy. What are you doing up?"

"I can't sleep. I've been having trouble since we moved houses."

"Moved houses?"

"Well, first it was into the new house, and then Grandpa's house so that we could all be together, and then it was back to the new house because you were coming home, and... I miss hearing someone sleeping in the other bed."

Lou frowned at that. She thought everyone was used to her being gone by now. "I've been gone for a year. Haven't you adjusted yet?"

"Ty used to have your bed when he first came. He needed to share a room. He had nightmares. Every night. He still won't talk about them. He doesn't talk about a lot of stuff," Amy explained. She shook her head. Lou didn't really know how to react to another reminder that the boy had taken her place here. Then her sister looked at her. "I still missed you. I did. I'm sorry about what I said."

"I know," Lou said, pulling her sister close to her. She'd missed Amy as well. She hadn't known just how much she was missing out on, not until she got back. "I missed you, too, Amy. I had no idea what... I didn't know what it was like here. With Daddy. I didn't know."

Amy went over to the stall where Pegasus was. Lou couldn't hardly bear to look at him. Her father was a different man because of that horse, and though she knew that she couldn't blame everything that was wrong on the horse, but she knew that things wouldn't be like this if her father could walk.

"He's always angry," Amy whispered. "Always. Some days he's not so bad. Some days I hear him laughing with Mom up in their room. Sometimes I think they'll be okay. Then he has a bad day, and I know they won't. Grandpa's always mad at Dad, and Mom likes to pretend that nothing is happening. At least Ty doesn't lie about it. Better he doesn't talk, right?"

"I don't know, Amy. I find it hard to trust someone who won't say anything about anything, about themselves... What do you really know about him?" Lou asked, and she saw a dark look pass over her sister's face. Great. She'd gone and made Amy angry. She hadn't meant to do that. She just couldn't help worrying about this boy. He was a stranger to her.

Amy reached for her hand, gripping it tightly for such a small girl, and she started dragging Lou out of the barn. "Amy, what are you doing?"

"Come on. You have to see something, and then you'll know you're being dumb about all this," Amy insisted, dragging Lou along, out into the field. They stopped in the low field, the section that had been left alone this rotation, and Amy pulled Lou to the side, over by the windmill tower. It wasn't much of a cover. Anyone could see past the pillars if they really looked. "Watch."

"Watch what?" Lou asked, but then she saw Ty leading Jake around the field. He had more energy than Lou remembered that old horse having. After a while, he stopped, and the horse came up to him. He started working on the horse's side. "What is he doing?"

"I don't know. I call it Ty's Touch. T-Touch. It's just something he does. The horses really seem to like it," Amy said. She had a huge smile on her face. "He's so good with them, isn't he? Mom says he has a gift. Like her gift. I want a gift like that."

Lou looked at her. She couldn't help a smile. "I think if anyone's going to be as good with horses as Mom is, then it would be you. It definitely wouldn't be me."

"No, 'cause you look like one of those pictures in the magazines," Amy told her. "You're too fancy. Like a doll you're afraid to play with because it might break."

Lou frowned as she picked up a part of her skirt. She'd dressed down, but even this dress was too fancy for real life on the farm. She knew better. She had just been in town for too long. She didn't know what life at Heartland was anymore.

She was going to have to learn it all, all over again. First things first, she was going to change clothes. And then... Well, she'd figure out something.

---

"Then he's fine, right? The fall didn't... hurt him?"

Scott looked over at Lou. He didn't recognize her again today. She didn't look at all like she had yesterday. The fancy clothes were gone, and her hair was coming loose from a bun instead of in a bunch of curls. She looked like she'd been working hard, and her apron was covered in something he couldn't identify. She did seem worried, but if she was so worried, why wasn't she up with the rest of her family in Tim's room instead of down in the kitchen with Scott?

He'd ended up accompanying his father again, though admittedly, he had more reason to this time. He could see his friends while he was out here, and there was... Well, he wasn't going to think about that. He wasn't really sure how he'd ended up alone with Lou, but he did know it wasn't going to last for very long. The others would be down soon, and probably Amy first of anyone. "Your father? I wouldn't know. You have to ask my father about that. He's the doctor."

Lou stopped in the middle of wiping down the stove and turned back to face him. "You're... not here because you want to be a doctor, too?"

Scott shook his head. "He wants me to be a doctor, so that's why I'm dragged from house to house within the county, but no. He's... I'm... I'm not good with people."

"All I seem to know is manners. The polite way to do this, the correct etiquette for that... I don't think I learned one useful thing last year, and I thought I'd learned so much," she began, and then she laughed harshly, like she was mad at herself. "Then I get home, and I find it's all pointless. Oh, sure, maybe I'd catch some boy's eye, but what good is that when my dad can't walk and my family's having such a hard time with the farm that they're taking in strangers?"

Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes got wide. "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just said all of that out loud!"

Scott smiled at her reassuringly. "It's okay. You look like you could use a bit of break, though. Maybe a few minutes rest?"

She looked at the chair and sat down with a sigh. "I suppose I'm making a big deal out of nothing. He seems like a nice enough boy, I guess."

"You mean Ty?" Scott asked, frowning. He supposed it had to be weird for Lou, coming home to someone else in their home, but Ty was... He was a decent little kid. Scott liked him, despite the differences in their ages. "Trust me, he's harmless. He's... He's a bit skittish, but it's worth getting to know him, as much as he lets us, anyway."

"Do you know where he came from?"

"No," Scott answered, and he knew that wasn't what Lou wanted to hear. It couldn't be easy, wanting her father to walk again and the doctor couldn't give a definite answer on that and Ty kept his past to himself. He didn't blame her for worrying, but she didn't have to. She just didn't know that yet. "Give him some more time. I don't think you'll worry about him after that."

"You know him pretty well?"

"I was the first person outside your family to meet him, and I sit next to him at school. Pratt hates him, and that's partially because he's smart. He's smart and quiet, and that just drives her crazy. She keeps asking him stuff expecting him not to know it. Then he does, and it just makes her mad. It's fun to watch, actually."

Lou smiled a little. "As fun as when you moved the wood closer to the stove so that when she went to add more her skirt caught on fire?"

Scott stared at her. "You knew that was me? No one knew that was me. She still hasn't figured that out, and it's been years."

"I saw you do it," Lou admitted. She shrugged. "I didn't say anything."

"Oh, well..." He could feel his face getting red. He shifted his feet. "I guess I'm glad you didn't say anything."

She smiled at him, and then she rose and started pacing again. She went back to the stove, but then she saw it was clean and sighed. She looked so lost, and Scott felt a bit sorry for her. "You want to take a walk?"

She hesitated for a moment, but then she nodded, following him outside. He looked around at the farm and shook his head. "I used to wish I had a place like this. I know it's a lot of work, but sometimes I think it would be better than life in town. I mean, just look at the land here. There's something really special about it, you know?"

Lou took a deep breath. "I was starting to feel like the town was my home. Like this life out here was just a dream or something. It's a hard life that no one in their right mind would choose, or so it seems when I'm sitting in town, listening to the headmistress go on about the life in the city. I think that I could be happy there."

Scott shook his head. "I'd never be. There's too much out here, and the land holds something for me that I know my family doesn't understand. They all see Matt playing with Father's instruments and think it's great, that he's so adorable. He'll be a great doctor someday. Then I see them look at me, and I feel like they're all wondering why I'm even there. I'm not what anyone thinks I should be."

Lou looked at him, pushing some of her hair back from her face again. The wind was blowing the loose strands around in the slight breeze. "At least you're not sure what they expect of you. My family sent me off to a school, and now that I've been there, I don't think they want what I've become. They don't want me here."

"That's not true," Scott disagreed immediately. "It was all Amy could talk about for a while, and since Amy's around Ty a lot, and Ty's my friend, I got to hear all about it. Your mother's plans, the way your grandpa was looking forward to your cooking... It wasn't hard to see that Ty was worried about it. I guess he thought you'd come home, and they'd make him leave."

Lou looked ashamed. "I haven't exactly... been that good about him being here. I don't know what to do. He's in my house. With my family. I suppose I'm just... jealous?"

"From what little I know of Ty, there's nothing to be jealous of," Scott began. "Yeah, he's got things pretty good here with your family, but before that... Whoever he was with before that hurt him badly. I've never seen bruises that bad before, and I've been with my father on a lot of calls."

Lou sighed. She looked back at the house. "My dad... He's not going to walk again, is he?"

Scott shook his head. "I don't know, Lou. Honestly, I couldn't say."

She nodded then, and he saw a determined look come into her eyes. It was like the doubt and fear fell away, and there was nothing but firm resolve. She was a strong woman, Lou Fleming. "Fine. Then we'll just do what has to be done."

Seeing her like that, Scott finally understood why Ty had seen yesterday. Of course, it was already way too late to stop it.

---

"Ty?"

The boy didn't look up when Jack called his name, and he cursed himself for waiting until the doctor was about to leave before he found him. He should have listened to Marion. She'd said that something was wrong with the boy, that he wasn't eating enough, and she'd wanted Doc Trewin to take a look at him, but Jack had been working and then trying to find out if his fool son-in-law had injured himself when he fell out of bed the night before all while trying not to strangle said son-in-law for making his daughter cry. He'd let the kids take care of themselves, though now that he saw the way the older Trewin boy was looking at Lou, he was regretting that decision.

"Come on, son, if you're tired, there are better places to sleep than in a horse's stall, or haven't you learned that yet?" Jack teased gently, opening up Jake's stall and moving towards the small lump in the corner.

He picked the boy up into his arms, still not getting any response from him, and he cursed under his breath. Exhaustion was one thing, but he was pretty sure this child had gone and gotten himself sick, with all that eating he wasn't doing.

Jack was half way back to the house when the boy's hand caught his shirt. "Please, I'll be good. Really good. Just let me go home. Please."

Frowning, Jack looked at the boy. No, Ty was still out. He was either dreaming or talking in a fever. He certainly had no idea where he was. "I promise you, son, if you wanted to go home, if I could take you there, I would, but I don't know where your home is."

The boy muttered something else, and Jack realized that in the last five minutes, he'd gotten more out of him about his past than he had in the months he'd stayed with them. He shook his head. What he knew didn't make much sense, but then if Ty blamed himself for some reason—it sounded like maybe he might—for whatever had happened, maybe that was why he wouldn't talk about it.

"Dad?" Marion asked, opening the door and coming out onto the porch. "Oh, no, Ty. You poor thing. Why didn't you tell us you weren't feeling well?"

"Maybe he thought you'd make him see the doctor," Scott offered, and Lou looked at him with a frown. Amy pushed past her skirt and over to Jack's side.

"He'll be okay, right? He's not bad sick, is he? He said he was tired, and I know he was, but I didn't think he was sick."

Something pushed at Jack's chest, hard, with a surprising amount of strength, and he nearly dropped the boy on the ground. Ty opened his eyes, panicked at first, and then he studied them all with a frown. "What are you doing?"

"You fell asleep in Jake's stall, and I couldn't wake you. We thought you might be sick."

Ty shook his head. "Just tired."

"I think we might let the doctor look you over anyway."

"I'm fine," Ty insisted, trying to squirm his way out of Jack's arms. Jack held onto him, knowing that he couldn't let the boy's stubbornness or fear keep him from getting looked over. There was a loud crash upstairs, and Marion took off running, followed by both of her girls. Amy had hesitated for a moment, not wanting to leave Ty, but now that he was awake, she seemed relieved and was willing to rush up the stairs. Scott, for his part, stood there and looked uncomfortable. It wasn't the best situation for anyone involved; Jack had to admit.

Ty finally managed to get a blow into Jack's stomach that left him winded, and he dropped the boy onto the ground. He started straightening his clothes, annoyed. Jack sighed. The boy looked fine, but he had a bad habit of saying he was fine when he really wasn't. He rubbed absently at his shoulder, and Jack exchanged a look with Scott, who nodded.

"He was favoring it yesterday, too."

Ty glared at his friend, who shrugged helplessly. Jack stared him down. "You want to show us what you did to your arm?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "I didn't do anything to my arm. It doesn't like the cold."

Jack was about to ask him about that when Amy ran back into the room. "Ty! Grandpa! Scott! You'll never believe this. I can't believe this!"

"Believe what, honey?" Jack asked. "Did your father fall out of bed again?"

"Daddy didn't just fall out of bed. He fell because he was trying to walk! Daddy's going to walk again!"