Character(s): Kwai Chang Caine

Time Period: During Initiation

Story: Kwai Chang Caine thinks about the discovery that Peter is alive.

Author: Alisa Joaquin

Disclaimer: All characters are borrowed except those created by me. All other characters (from KF:TLC and we know who they are) are property of Warner Brothers. I promise to give them back when I am done with them (of course I do not know how long that will be.) I give permission to archive.

Kwai Chang Caine woke for the second time that day in the hospital room. The young man who was there earlier was gone. It was as if he had never been. An aching feeling entered Caine's heart at the thought that what transpired earlier might have been no more substantial than a dream, but something else told him that it just had to be real. He had done more than just speak to the young man. Caine had held him in his arms and stroked the young man's hair. Caine brought his hands up and clinging to the fingers of his left hand were strands of dark curly hair. They could not be his own. He took the strands and examined them closely. A slight tingling sensation came to him and he realized he had not felt that sensation in fifteen years. It was unmistakable as if it was his very own. What he felt was the essence of his son, alive and whole. It had not been a dream. The young man whom he had spoken with, who stood in this very room, was indeed his son, Peter.

Joy filled him beyond description as he realized he no longer needed to search for his son's essence, thinking it was lost, for it had never been lost. The conversation that transpired between them played back in his mind. He could see the anger in the young man's eyes and he believed that old Ping Hai had lied. That may have been so, but only because he had done it to protect them both from a dangerous enemy. Peter had not been the only one that Ping Hai lied to after all, and Caine realized that. When Caine had looked into the eyes of his son, he could see the pain that was there mirrored his own at one time, and still did. Yet, Caine found he could not reach out to the young man in the way he had wanted him to. He had buried his pain too deeply, cloaked in the stoicness of the Shaolin priest. Peter was right. They would have a great deal of reaching out to one another, but one fear weighed heavily on the priet's heart.

Could he be a father again? Did Peter need him or even want him in his life? He had only one way of knowing. He must stay, and if Peter came to him, looking for him, as he once did when he was little when they lived in the temple, he would know. But even if Peter were to refuse him in the end, he would at least take some comfort knowing that his son was alive. Still, a small spark of hope kindled in his soul having remembered the feel of his son's embrace. That embrace did not hold rejection, but a longing that said, "I need you. I missed you. Please, stay." As Caine thought on it, it grew into a flame of renewed love, love for a son that he had thought lost to him for so long. He found he did not want it to end. And when Peter called him 'Pop,' in truth, he did not think he would ever here that word spoken ever again. It had always been a word he did not like to be called, and as always he had responded in kind, but deep down, it had been the sweetest music he had ever heard. "I just wanted to make sure I had the right father," Peter had said, and Caine had seen that love reflected back at him as his son smiled in response.

Caine laid back and replayed the events in his life that led him up to this point. Fifteen years. It had been a long time since he had shared his life with his son. He could barely share any of what had happened that night. He had told very few people about Peter, only those whom he felt a deep affinity toward. He had locked that part of himself away for so long that he wasn't sure if he could even begin to open up, to even tell his son of his wanderings. Perhaps he had been isolated for so long that he did not even know how to begin. Perhaps he would let Peter make that first step and learn from him how to reach out, how to express what he was feeling. It was always easier for Peter. His mother had been the same way. It was one of the reasons why he loved her.

Caine gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes to let sleep take him once again. A faint smile formed on his lips and a single tear of joy were the only expressions he allowed himself to feel for now. They were enough. His son had come home, not to the temple or to any other dwelling, but home to his arms and his heart. At that moment, Caine knew that he was finally whole.

End