Diamond Ring

Chapter 1 - Diamond Ring

(Jon Bon Jovi)
Diamond ring, wear it on your hand.
It's gonna tell the world, I'm your only man.
Diamond ring, diamond ring,
Baby, you're my everything, diamond ring.

Red, red rose brought it home to you.
Blood red rose, tells me that you're true.
Red, red rose, blood-red rose,
Like a fire inside that grows, blood-red rose.

When you're hungry, I will fill you up.
When you're thirsty, drink out of my loving cup.
When you're crying, I'll be the tears for you.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do for you.

You know, I bleed every night you sleep.
'Cause I don't know if I'm in your dreams.
I want to be your everything...

Diamond ring, wear it on your hand.
It's gonna tell the world, I'm your only man.
Diamond ring, diamond ring.
Baby, you're my everything, diamond ring.
Darling, you're my everything, diamond ring.
Now, you've got me on your string... Diamond ring.


New Orleans, Louisiana
Thursday, 10:14 am
November, 2020

Baby sat bolt upright in bed with a cry for Jack.

Spike clasped her arms lightly. "It's alright, rose. You're safe now. Nothing is…"

Her palm impacted his cheek with a crack that rang throughout their bedroom. "Where's Jack?" she said through clenched teeth. She could barely feel her son and husband. The impressions she received were misty, nebulous, and distant. But alive. Thank the Powers That Be and everyone above them, Jack was still somehow alive.

Spike licked the tiny bit of blood from the corner of his mouth where his tooth had ripped the inside of his cheek. "It's alright, pet. He's in Jean's room. He'll be fine." He didn't quite know what to say. She'd never struck him before. Not like that. He reached out for her.

She avoided his touch and slid from the bed. "He damn well better be."

René stood between her and the bedroom door, concern evident in his body posture. "Belle ange, Papa didn't…." She glared at René until he stepped out of her path. He'd never experienced her anger in quite that way either. He followed her down the hall, his father beside him.

She found Jean's room nearly filled with people but she only had eyes for Jack laid out on Jean's rich blue sheets. She paused long enough to accept an embrace from Remy before motioning Jean from Jack's side. Jean couldn't meet her eyes. He was too mortified by the feelings he'd experienced in the courtroom. Wordlessly he released Jack's hand and stepped away so she could take his place. She was vaguely aware of Wesley standing at the foot of the bed, murmuring in a language that she didn't understand, a large crystal ampoule of swirling light held in one hand. He shattered the vessel and the glowing mist covered Jack, sinking slowly into his body. "He'll be alright now," Wesley said with a tired sigh. "Give him a few moments."

Baby ignored her eldest son as she whispered his younger brother's name. "Jack. Wake up, baby. It's alright now."

Jack gasped and his eyes flew open. He was holding Baby faster than even René's eyes could follow. The whiplash of relief and joy from both of them staggered the vampires as it ricocheted through their various links. Remy sank down on the edge of Jean's bed and let his eldest brother wrap him in a protective embrace. Linked to Jack and Baby both, he and Wes felt the full force of that tidal wave of emotion. Jean felt it, too, and staggered back into René's arms. He'd never felt anything like that from his two lovers.

Jack was awash in his wife's inner turmoil. The hurricane that raged in her mind threatened to consume her. René felt it, too, and was moving to take her hand when his link to her shut down. Jack had blocked out everyone but him. He grasped her face, forcing her away from his chest. "Look at me! Stop it right now and look at me," he ordered. He'd had a decade of holding her together when that need to kill rose up inside her, when the grief and the fear of loneliness threatened to engulf her, when madness circled just beneath the turbulent seas of her psyche. He'd whispered in her mind every hour of every day for ten years. He knew how to keep her monsters at bay. As humans in a magic-free world, he'd still managed to link their minds to such an extent that they could exchange words as well as emotions. He was now restored to his vampire body, marked as her son and companion, and the connection between them was a bridge of burning steel cables that could never be broken. "I mean it!"

"Jack?"

He could feel the storm beginning to abate. "Mmm hmm."

"Jack?"

"I'm right here." His hold on her became gentle, a caress instead of a restraint. This time there was no question in her voice when she cried his name. He let her bury her face in his chest and just cling to him. "It's okay. I'm here." He looked up at those gathered about as though noticing them for the first time. Spike was frowning as golden lights played across his blue eyes. René was staring in slack-jawed amazement. "What?" Jack asked as he ran a hand over his sire's hair. "She's okay now."

René shut his mouth with a snap. "Yeah. Seeing as I can't tell what she's feeling I wouldn't know." His canines looked just a tad sharper than they normally were.

Baby opened her eyes and turned so she could see René. He gasped as everything she was feeling suddenly exploded in his mind. He took refuge in Jean's arms. The splintered mixture of relief, joy, love, rage, and betrayal was enough to weaken his knees and set his head to aching. "Oh, I'm sorry, ange!"

Jack looked around. "What the hell did you do? What got her like this?" he snarled.

Baby sat back but kept a hold on Jack's hands. "They killed you." He felt her mental shudder at the memory. The fear and rage boiled up in her again. She glared at Spike. "And I really want to know why."

Wesley spoke up softly. "It was the only way to get you back. You were both the target of an assassin. Someone slipped you a Mickey. He used the drug Sunlight. Took me a bit but I finally figured out what it does. It's actually a magic potion. It sends your consciousness into other realities." He held up his hand when Jack started to speak. "Your consciousness, not your soul. It takes whatever it is that makes you, you. Everything. It's ingenious actually. It searches for a body that's fairly identical to the one you had-one that's about to die-and changes that one action so the host body lives and inserts the consciousness in the new body. It's also rather diabolical. If the new body dies, the old body turns to dust, leaving your consciousness trapped in the ether, formless forever."

Jack shivered as Wesley continued, "But the only way to free your consciousness from the new body is to kill it." He sighed. "It was quite a delicate bit of manipulation I had to do. I had to find a way to keep your vampire bodies intact when your human ones died, find your new bodies, create a portal to them, rescue your consciousness when your new body died, transport it here, and restore it to where it belongs." He smiled. "Luckily, I'm rather brilliant."

Baby nodded. "Thank you, Wesley." She was silent for several long moments before she took a deep breath. "It didn't take Wes long to explain that to me, now did it?" She never took her eyes from Jack as she said, "Spike, if you ever touch one of my children again without telling me why up front, I'm gone for good." Jack frowned a bit.

"Dove, I…" Spike began to explain but she ignored him.

"Let's go home, Jack," she said softly as she stood. She looked around the room, taking in everyone who was there for the first time. "Agent Monroe? How'd you end up here?"

"That crazy man dove through the portal before it closed," Jean said. "And before you even ask, I doubt we can send him back. Wes' spell was a one-time thing. He barely got us there and barely kept the portal open long enough for us to get you two out."

She sighed and exhaustion ran through her bond to Jack. "You'd better come with us then, SA Monroe."

Monroe tugged at the steel grip Paul Athanasius had on his arm. "I hope you're better at explaining what the Hell is going on better than this bunch."

Baby grinned. "We'll try. Paul? Take Agent Monroe down to one of the limos. We'll be right there."

Her vassal bowed and led the human away.

"Nina, Kevin, Joanna? Why don't you meet us at the house? We all need to spend a little time together." She waited until they were gone before she stood and reached out for Jack.

"Where do you think you're going?" Spike asked softly, though not without a hint of menace in his voice.

"Jack's house," she said coldly. She'd never been this angry with him. And she wasn't afraid of him. She never had been and she wasn't about to start now.

"Sweetheart," Jack said, encouraging her to calm down.

"No," she said forcefully. "Understand me, all of you." She paused until she was sure she had the attention of everyone in the room. "From this moment on, Jack is off limits. I don't care who you are, if any of you lay a hand on him, I'll kill you." None of them had any doubt she meant it. She led a startled Jack out of the room. Remy followed. Wes paused for a moment, staring at Spike's shocked face, before he too decided to follow his sire to his brother's house.

~~~~~

Carole Monroe was desperately trying to figure out what had happened. One minute he'd been pursuing John and Abby Niemczyk's murderer across a courtroom at the Federal Building and the next he'd been in some sort of fancy sitting room. Just like that; no sense of time passage, no sense of anything except a flash of pain and nausea, and he was in a different room. Before he could recover from the shock, he'd been lifted off his feet. Deep brown eyes stared into his and a grip stronger than any he'd ever felt closed over his gun hand.

"Papa! We have an issue here," the man holding him said in faintly accented tones.

John's killer cursed softly before saying, "I don't have time for this right now, Jean. Wes! Do you have them or not, damn it?"

The man holding him shrugged and said he'd take care of it. Monroe's identification and weapons were taken. The man, apparently named Jean, sighed when he saw the badge. "He's one of Jack's people," he said, as though that explained a great deal.

Monroe found himself hustled up a narrow staircase and into a bedroom where he was shocked to see John Niemczyk's body stretched out on an ornately carved four-poster bed. Monroe was handed off to a bearded, dark-haired man with a brisk, "Keep him out of trouble, Paul."

Monroe's new guard half-bowed and said, "Of course, Your Highness." He dragged Monroe into one corner of the rather crowded room. The windows of the bedroom were shuttered and the room was rather dim but Monroe could see everything from that vantage.

Jean moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He lifted John's hand, clasping it between his own. "It's going to be alright, cher. You're going to be home with us soon, my Jacques." There was no mistaking the concern on the man's face. Monroe, who'd been concerned before, was now deeply worried. The man was talking to a corpse as though it could hear him.

Monroe got a good look at John as a second man turned on the lamp by the bedside and said, "Of course he will, Prince Jean. Dad's too stubborn to die." The jolt Monroe felt turned the worry to pure fear. The speaker was the mirror image of the body lying motionless on the bed. Monroe blinked and his heart rate slowed a bit. Not quite a mirror image after all, the speaker was at least ten years too young to be John Niemczyk. Likewise, the man lying on the bed was too old to be John. It was freakish how much they resembled John, though, especially the dead body on the bed.

An unbelievably beautiful girl came and wrapped her arms around the man seated on the bed. "Kevin's right, Daddy. Jack's too in love with life to go out without a fight."

A second woman, her green eyes bearing a strong resemblance to the two look-alikes, smiled wanly. "That's for sure. I don't know how many times Kev and I heard the 'never give up' speech." She snorted delicately. "He's right; Dad can't die from something like this. John Patrick Niemczyk is the most stubborn man ever born."

Jean laughed softly. "Oui, that he is. I wouldn't love him so if he were not."

Before Monroe could force even one of the questions that bounded through his brain into speech, another man entered. Monroe recognized him as one of the invaders from the courtroom. He held out a glass filled with glowing fog and began to mutter a chant of some sort. Monroe's attempt to speak was cut off by the vice-like hand that painfully gripped his upper arm. "It's best not to interrupt Prince Wesley's magics," Monroe's guard ordered in a voice as clipped and British as the newcomer's. "I have no wish to harm you but I can't allow anything to interfere with Lord Jack's awakening. Be quiet now."

Any retort Monroe might have made was aborted when Abby Niemczyk strode into the room. It was undeniably Abby, though she looked younger somehow and her hair was longer. She replaced the man at John's side and at an order from her, John's eyes flew open.

Monroe watched the resulting exchange in silence and disbelief. Older or not, Monroe now had no doubt that the man lying on the bed was John Niemczyk. His voice, mannerisms, facial expressions, and most notably the way he looked at Abby proved who he really was. Monroe couldn't quite grasp it. He'd seen them both die. He'd heard the horrible sounds of their necks breaking and seen their dead, open eyes. He wasn't sure how they'd faked that, though it was obvious they had.

More and more, he was convinced none of this was real. The sense of unreality only grew when he was led to a waiting limousine. Inside the opulent interior, Monroe was seated directly across from Abby with his guard Paul on one side and the other Englishman on his right. John sat on Abby's right while a man Monroe had yet to identify sat on her left. This man was obviously laboring under some great mental strain. There was a gold shield clipped to the belt of his suit. It marked him as a high-ranking member of the New Orleans Police Department.

As the limo rolled out into the street and Monroe realized they were somewhere in the French Quarter, the man reached out to take Abby's hand and tried in disjointed jerky sentences to describe his deep fear that neither she nor 'Jack' would awaken.

"Remy," Abby said with such care on her face that Monroe frowned. "I'm so glad you're alright." She ran a tender hand over his face. "I was afraid the separation when you are so young would kill you. I don't even know how long we were gone. Kevin and Nina don't look any older."

"Two weeks," the Englishman on Monroe's right stated. "You and Jack were out for two weeks, Sire."

"It felt like forever," Remy stated.

John closed his eyes, shaking his head. He seemed to be in shock. Abby was only moderately better. "Oh Remy! I'm so sorry."

Her words of care unmanned the policeman and he laid his head on her lap and began to weep. "I was so alone, Sire. I couldn't feel you or Jack."

John, who everyone seemed to refer to by the name Jack, just as Abby had always done, reached out and caressed the dark head lying in his wife's lap. "It's alright, little brother."

Abby's hand joined Jack's in stroking the dark hair. "I can feel you now, Remy. You're not alone anymore. I'm so sorry, honey. Things like that shouldn't happen when you're only a few weeks old." Her fingers raked gently through his coffee-colored hair. "You've been so strong." Tired golden eyes looked from Jack to Wesley. "All of my babies are so strong."

Wesley reached across and added his hand to those already comforting the man lying across Abby's lap. "It was hard, Sire. Even for me. Being cut off like that, not able to feel you, is something I don't care to repeat. It reminded me far too much of when you were dead."

Her hand rested atop his. "I can feel you now. I can feel all of you." Her voice was strangled and she closed her eyes against threatened tears.

"Dearest?" The English magician dropped to his knees on the floorboard before Abby. "What is it?"

She didn't answer but folded her body over the man's in her lap. The magician frowned and looked at her companion for answers. "What happened, Jack? She's a wreck."

Jack rubbed her neck. "She knows exactly how you both feel. They separated us, Wes. She's been alone in a jail cell for three days."

Fire ignited in Wesley's hand to match the anger on his face. Monroe had never seen anything to compare. The Englishman's hand was just suddenly afire. Wesley seemed to feel no pain from the flames. Jack's hand closed comfortingly over Wes' forearm. "It's over. There's nothing to be done about it now."

The blue flames died slowly and that same hand reached out to smooth red hair. "No wonder she had a fit when Spike killed you."

Jack's eyes went wide and somewhat frightened. "Spike killed me?"

The nonsensical aspects of the question seemed to bother no one in the car but Monroe. Wes continued stroking Abby's hair. "Yes. He broke your neck. I doubt I've ever seen or felt her that angry. Even though I was fairly consumed with dealing with the portal, I could feel her rage. She staked Spike with a pencil. If it had been any other of us, we'd be dust."

Jack blinked. "Whoa, back up. Baby tried to kill Spike?" His 'why' died before it completely left his lips. He looked from his brother to his wife and started breathing hard. Monroe didn't understand the surprise on Jack's face or why the hand resting on her back began to tremble.

"She did indeed." Wesley smiled. "Rather amazing, actually."

As they pulled into the drive of a beautiful red brick mansion, Jack's hand slowly clenched in his wife's red locks. He didn't say anything as they all disembarked from the car and trooped up the white marble steps to the house where a large, dark-suited man held the door open.

Monroe found the interior of the house as elegant as the exterior indicated. It was cool, dark, filled with rich wood and classic lines. Within five minutes, Monroe realized it belonged to Jack as his former employee was greeted by those within the house. "Welcome home, sir," the large man stated. "Ma'am."

Jack was still having difficulty speaking. He simply nodded as he gathered Abby up and carried her down a hall.

"Jerrod," Wesley said. "Have Wilda make tea and bring it to Lord Jack's study.

A thin, middle-aged black woman in a black-and-white uniform stepped out of a hallway. "Yes, Prince Wesley."

"Lady Nina, Mr. Kevin, and Miss Johanna should be right behind us," Wesley continued. "They can join us in the study."

Wilda nodded. "Is Prince Devereau coming? I'll prepare something suitable if he is."

"Probably," Wesley answered. "Kevin already seems to be an outstanding father and Dev hates being away from him." The Englishman sighed. "Would God all of our lives turned out as happily as that young man's has."

~~~~~

Jack settled Baby on the big leather couch and dropped down beside her. He felt disoriented. Baby's mental instability nagged at the edges of his mind but he'd felt that before. She'd faced bouts of severe psychosis, especially in their early days alone away from the family. Her mental illness had, in fact, led him to push and strive to re-establish their companion link. The only way she truly understood that she was not alone anymore was that telepathic and empathetic bond. He had pushed every mental and emotional ability he had to the limit but it had been worth it. Their bond was incredibly strong now. It had been years since he'd bothered to censor anything that went on in his mind from her or she from him. He wasn't going to start now but he wasn't sure what he was feeling himself at the moment.

It was beyond wonderful to be home, to have a strong, immortal body again, to be who he really was. It was so wonderful it felt dreamlike. The transition between that odd human life and this one had been too abrupt. He needed some time to adjust; so did his sire. They needed time alone. He opened his mouth to order everyone out of his house and met Remy's eyes. Jack closed his mouth, his order unvoiced. Remy had suffered severely while his sire was gone. Jack could see it in the new lines on Remy's face and new thinness of his body. Remy had been too young to face that sudden aloneness without consequences to his body and spirit. Jack tried to imagine being separated from Baby that way, being unable to see or sense her. He found he couldn't visualize it.

His heart hurt for Remy. He smiled at his friend. "Hey little brother. Come here." Remy sat down beside Jack as the older man continued with as soft a smile as anyone was likely to ever get from Jack, "So you missed me, huh?"

Remy smiled back, though there was an ironic twist to it. "Yeah. For an arrogant, annoying Yankee you sorta grow on a person."

Jack grinned. "You're not bad for a crazy Cajun yourself."

To Monroe's shock, Jack reached over and pulled the other man into a kiss that had nothing brotherly in it at all. Abby giggled slightly. "If you two start that, you'll squig Kevin out when he gets here," she warned.

"Too late! Already squigged," Kevin said as he led Nina into the room. "Honestly, Dad!"

"I think it's cute," Nina said.

Kevin shook his head. "You've lived with the Undead too long."

His sister laughed as she followed them into the room. It was good Kevin was starting to joke about it. Then Jo's gaze settled on Jack and with a tiny wail she threw herself at him. Jack accepted her into his arms gladly. He'd missed his children and worried about them. He was glad time flowed differently and he'd only been gone from their lives a short time. "It's alright, honey," he told her.

She thumped him on the shoulder with a soft fist. "Don't you ever, ever die on me. I couldn't stand it," she said between sobs.

Kevin agreed. "She's right. You need to work on that immortality thing a little better, Dad. It…" He stopped to swallow. "It was too hard seeing you…" He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Dad," he said in a choked voice before dropping down beside his sister.

Jack, who'd learned the importance of physically expressing his love from Baby's excellent parenting, reached out and enfolded his son into the embrace that already held his daughter.

~~~~~

Baby turned her golden eyes on her former hunter. "I suppose you have about a million questions, Mr. Monroe. I'm not sure how many I'm up to answering," she said as she fed Devereau a cookie over Nina's protest that the little boy didn't need sweets.

"That would be a pretty fair summation, Mrs. Niemczyk," the agent answered.

"Mrs. Niemczyk?" Kevin said. "Why are you calling Lady Roxton Mrs. Niemczyk?"

"Because she went and married your daddy," René said as he stepped into the study. He looked at Jack with an expression that was impossible to interpret. "I saw these on your hands, back there, in that other world. Thought you might like to have them back." He took Jack's hand and dropped a pair of gold wedding bands into the other man's palm. "I reckon that makes my belle ange your step-mama as well as your mama-in-law," he said to Kevin with a coldness that had nothing to do with his son-in-law.

Jack stood slowly. "Yes, I married her. Is this a problem?"

René shrugged. "Depends. You marry her because you had to or because you wanted to?"

Baby stood as well. "René…"

Jack ignored her. "Wanted to. Not that it's any of your business."

"She's my wife. That makes it my business." René was acting oddly and Jack didn't like it one bit. The Cajun pulled Baby to him. "You ain't even said hello to me." There was no mistaking the edge of anger and hurt in his voice. "I thought I was gonna lose you." This time there were tears under the anger. "I thought you was gonna turn to dust. And then you can't even say hello to me. I…" He turned and strode out the door. Baby hurried after him.

"René! René, wait!" Baby called as she hurried after him.

"Why? You made your choice pretty clear," he said without slacking his pace down the hall and out the door. He headed for his car.

"René! Damn it! Stop," Baby said as she reached for his arm. He jerked it away and she stumbled into the noonday sun with a cry of pain.

"Ange!" René grabbed her, heedless of his own safety, and swept her back under the portico. He patted out the smoldering spots in her hair. "You got to be more careful!" He ran a thumb over a blistered patch on one cheek, anxiety ringing through his link to her. Teal eyes met golden and René crushed her to him, lifting her from her feet so he could grind his mouth against hers. Her hunger matched his and she held him as tightly as she could. It took him a few minutes to realize she was crying. He set her on her feet but didn't loosen his hold on her. "Ange?"

Her hands were now knotted in the front of his shirt. "I'm so sorry," she murmured over and over.

"Précieux?" He frowned down at her. "What you sorry for?" She wouldn't look up at him. "Ange?"

"I gave up," she finally said. "After you didn't come, I gave up." She still wouldn't meet his eyes.

"You gave up thinking I'd come for you?" he said in confusion. "You know better. You know I'll come for you anywhere." She wouldn't answer him. "You gave up on me after a couple of weeks?"

She leaned her forehead against his chest. He could feel her cool breath with every word. "Not a couple of weeks. I gave it a couple of years."

Realization hit him like a steel bar to the head. "Years?" Fear settled into his gut. "How long were you gone, ange?"

"Ten years," she whispered.

"Ten… mon Dieu!" His hold on her was crushing. "You were alone for ten years? Oh cher belle!" He simply held her for a moment but her sense of guilt kept bleeding through their link. "Ange? What's wrong? Why you feel this way?" Slowly, an unpleasant thought crept into his mind. "But you wasn't alone, was you? You had him."

She nodded. "I always thought I'd die without you, René. I honest to God thought I'd never be able to live in a world without you."

An unseen hand grabbed his heart and began squeezing it. "But you did. For a long, long time." He took a deep breath. "Because you had him."

She nodded. "Yes. I'd have died or gone crazy before too long if Jack hadn't shown up when he did. I've never been happier to see anyone in my life."
René didn't say anything but he began to breathe heavily.

"He saved me, René. He gave me a reason to open my eyes in the morning."

"I used to be that reason," he said bleakly.

He tried to pull away but she wouldn't release him. "Jack kept me from losing my mind. He kept me together when I didn't have anyone else in the whole world." She pulled at René's shirt. "Do you see why I can't let anyone hurt him? Do you understand?" She finally looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "You're my heart, René, but he's my sanity."

René looked toward Jack's shuttered windows. "I'm still your heart?"

"Always," she answered. "I love you more than anything."

"But you love him, too." It was a statement, not a question.

"I do. He has been completely loyal to me, René. He hasn't had a thought in the last ten years that wasn't for my benefit. Jack has lived his life for me for over a decade." Her face was serious.

Something occurred to René that he never thought he'd ask. "You been married to him a long time?"

She nodded. "Pretty much the whole time we were gone."

He ran his tongue over suddenly dry lips. There was one other thing he suspected but he had to know for sure. "So, you married to him for ten years. For those ten years, you ever sleep with anybody else?"

She drew herself up, ready for whatever came. "No. Not ever."

René drove his fist into the hood of his car hard enough to leave a substantial dent. "Motherfucking son of a bitch!"

Baby flinched but didn't say a word.

"He had you all to himself for ten years! The Powers That Be won't let me have even a day." He screwed up his face as he fought to control the rage and pain. "God damn but they hate me." He went silent and still, not speaking for several minutes before he took a deep breath. "You really would kill me if I tried to hurt Jack, wouldn't you?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "I can't live without him."

He smiled painfully. "But you found out you can live without me." He looked back toward the house as if he could see through the walls to where Jack stood and was still and silent again. His decision came easily enough, though. "I hope he lives forever then, 'cause I still can't live without you." He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. "He took good care of you?"

She smiled and knew that whatever else, loving him wasn't wrong. "The very best."

"I suppose I got to thank him for that." He snorted and sighed in resignation. "That don't mean I like him. He's still an arrogant prick."

Baby laughed and pulled René down for a kiss. "Yes, he is. But he's mine. Just like you are."

~~~~~

Jack looked down at the rings in his hand before closing his fist around them. He didn't unclench his fingers as he poured himself a drink at the wet bar. He could feel Baby's upset and he hated it. He silently downed the liquor. No one said anything. Even Monroe was quiet. Jack sighed as he realized he was going to have to adjust to a lot of things now that he was back home. He felt calm descend over his wife's mind and figured she'd made up with Beaumont. He downed a second shot of whiskey. "It's going to be hard not being her husband anymore," he said to no one in particular.

"You planning on divorcing me, Jack?" Baby said from the doorway. "That's a hell of a way to treat a woman after ten years."

Jack looked at her without really comprehending what she was saying. He'd always known that if they ever got back where they belonged, their marriage was over.

"Not unless you don't want me anymore, Jackie," Baby said in answer to his unspoken question. "You vowed that you'd be mine forever. Well, I swore that same oath."

Jack looked at where René stood, not happy but not threatening to tear anyone limb from limb either. "What about…"

"We'll adjust," Baby said. "You've always known how I feel about René. Well, now René knows how I feel about you."

"I ain't gonna pretend I like it," René growled. "'Cause I don't like you. But I ain't ever been able to tell her what to do. Besides, she said you been taking care of her for a long time now. She said she probably wouldn't have made it without you. Ten years is a long time to be alone. I know that for a fact." He didn't complain when Johanna came and wrapped her arms around his waist. "And it ain't like she didn't stay here half the time, anyway." He sniffed. "I got my own place. She can come to me there any time she wants for however long she wants."

Jack nodded. He hadn't thought about how Baby would divide her time between her husbands.

René shrugged. "Not that she's gonna live with me. I figure she'll settle here. I figure this is as much her house as yours."

"This is her house as much as mine," Jack agreed. He thought for a moment. It was true. This was her home for however long she chose to make it so. He thought of the rings still clenched in his hand and how hard it had to have been for Beaumont to bring them to him. "I don't want you sleeping with her here because I don't think I could stand it, but you can come and go as you please. I'll see you have a key and a password for the security system."

"Fair enough," René answered.

"It doesn't mean I like you," Jack stated. "I still think you're a punk."

"And I still think you're an arrogant Yankee bastard," René stated, ignoring the glare Johanna gave both of them.

"Good. Just so we understand each other." Jack slid an arm around Baby's waist. He opened his fist and looked down at his wife. "So, you want this back then?"
Baby plucked the man's ring from his hand. "Only if you want this one back."

Jack grinned. "They'll have to cut it off to get it away from me again."

Baby looked down at the diamond band and the ruby band already on her left hand. Neither really looked like a wedding ring somehow, though she claimed the men who'd placed them there as husbands. She watched as Jack slid his simple band onto her finger. Each ring somehow seemed fitting for the men who'd given them to her. White diamonds from Spike, clear and sparkling and complex; pigeons blood rubies from René, rich and rare and extraordinary; and plain gold from Jack, pure and uncomplicated and precious. She leaned heavily on Jack. All the vampires in the room felt her exhaustion.

"Maybe you should put her to bed for a while, Jack, yeah?" René said. "I think she's had enough for one day."

Jack agreed. "Carole, I'm sorry. I know this is all confusing, but your questions will have to wait. René's right. Baby's exhausted and I have to admit that I am, too. So is Wes. We all need to rest. Paul will show you to a room. Please don't try to leave. I promise, we'll answer everything tonight. Just let us sleep until the sun goes down. I'll answer everything I can tonight." Jack smiled suddenly. "The night… I can't wait to see the night again. God, I've missed it."

Remy smiled softly. "It hasn't changed. It still glows. And I think maybe tonight, it'll glow a little brighter for all of us. I think maybe the night missed you a little bit, too, Jack."

Wesley nodded. "Of course it did. Jack's part of the night now as are we all." He gripped his newly returned brother's shoulder. "Without you, a part of us all was missing." He smiled at his sire. "But tonight, tonight we are complete again. And Remy's right, tonight will glow just a bit brighter."

To Be Continued....

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