TO FIND YOUR WAY BACK HOME

by Lindariel

 [Some introductory notes:  This story is the 19th in my Beauty and the Beast AU series, which picks up after the Season 2 episode “A Kingdom by the Sea” and then goes in a different direction.  No Hollow Men, no Paracelsus abducting and then masquerading as Father, no mental breakdown for Vincent, and most importantly, Catherine is never abducted by Gabriel (I deal with him in other ways) and therefore DOESN’T DIE! And Elliott Burch doesn’t die EITHER!! 

My previous stories for this AU in chronological order (these are posted under the name Lindariel across both versions of CABB Tunnel Tales and on Archive of Our Own) are The Last Straw …?, Pay It Forward, Arthur’s Gift, The View from Here, Do You Happen to Have the Time?, Happy Umbrella Day!, A Fine and Private Place, His Own Kind of Nobility, Walking Unfamiliar Ground, Songbirds of North America, A Second Harvest, What Cuddly Beast, To Find Your Way Back Home, The Ache for Home, No Way Up!/The INsiders, Blame It on the Mets, Sunflowers for Thankfulness, A Late Harvest, and A Special Surprise (which is a glimpse into the future). This story follows a few days after the epilogue for The Ache for Home.

For readers who are jumping in with this story: Stan Kaczmarek is Elliott Burch’s birth name. After his father was murdered in “A Kingdom by the Sea,” Elliott basically hit rock bottom, did a lot of soul searching, and decided to “go back to the beginning” to figure out where he went wrong.  He put his business in escrow, took back his birth name Stanislaw “Stan” Kaczmarek, moved into his Dad’s ratty apartment close to the docks, took a job as a longshoreman, and started over. Finding new meaning in some volunteer work at a local soup kitchen, Stan then runs into a desperate Kipper on the street who is being chased by some gun-toting goons because Kipper saw them transporting women being trafficked into the commercial sex business. They escape, go to the police, and Catherine is called in to help talk to the eyewitnesses.  In the process of getting Stan and Kipper to a safe house, the three are attacked and escape into the Tunnels, where Stan/Elliott finally meets Vincent, the man who won his Cathy’s heart. Stan’s experiences in the Tunnels and his growing fondness for Kipper, who reminds him of himself as a kid, help provide him with a new direction for his talents, wealth, and ambition – a complete reimaging of low-income housing.  In concert with his former adversary Luz Corrales, the activist who helped bring down his Burch Tower project, Stan establishes the Mathilde Kaczmarek Innovations in Housing Foundation, named after his late mother.

The Juniper Street building referred to in this story is Stan’s first project with Luz; a building renovation that will incorporate a grocery store and community center on the first floor, office space for Stan’s foundation on the second floor along with other community services, low income apartments on the 3^rd and 4^th floors, and a loft apartment for Stan, an apartment management office, and a community kitchen and dining room on the top floor, plus a rooftop community garden and private patio space. Stan is in the process of applying to become Kipper’s legal guardian with the intention of eventually adopting him. Enjoy!]

* * *

Moving day was fast approaching for Stan Kaczmarek. The Juniper Street project overall was a full two weeks ahead of schedule, and he couldn’t wait to start living in the top-floor loft apartment he’d so meticulously designed.  The new furniture would be delivered in two days, so it was finally time to pack up his dad’s apartment and say goodbye to his childhood home in this old rundown Polish tenement near the docks.

The keepsakes from his mother that he’d managed to salvage after his dad’s drunken, grief-stricken, smash-and-destroy rampage after she’d died from cancer were at the storage facility with the rest of his belongings from the penthouse he’d sold weeks ago. He’d already packed up most of his own belongings here; he hadn’t brought much besides clothing and a briefcase with him to the old apartment. Today, he finally had to face the closet he hadn’t bothered to open since the first day he’d stepped back into his dad’s place as the new tenant.

He’d donated all of his dad’s clothing after . . . well, after the explosion that had robbed him of any chance for reconciliation with the father who’d died still hating him. Aside from the necessary paperwork to close out his dad’s pension and life insurance and transfer the apartment tenancy, everything else, such as it was, he’d just packed into two boxes and shoved into this closet on top of two other old boxes of…whatever. Now, it was time to look at the past.

He could hear Kipper in the kitchen, clearing out the cabinets and boxing up anything that could be useful to William Below.  The rest would be donated to Mrs. Draper’s thrift store, the Helper who was his new neighbor across from the Juniper Street building. She was a gem!

He reminded himself quietly that he had friends, and a new, secret family Below, and a “nephew” who was quickly becoming a son in his mind. And Luz. What could he call Luz? A colleague, yes. A friend, certainly. But she was something . . . more…something just out of reach. Oh, let’s face it, something he probably wasn’t ready for right now.

But there were people in his life who cared about him, who mattered to him deeply.  He could do this.  He could face this…pain. This reckoning.

He set aside the first two boxes, already knowing their contents – mostly the detritus from the sitting room, old magazines, racing forms, a bowling trophy. Most of it could probably be tossed; he just hadn’t been up to making those decisions back then.  The unknown boxes, however. They scared him the most, so therefore, they needed to be excavated first.

The first box shocked him. Photo albums. His mother’s photo albums that he’d thought had long been destroyed in one of many drunken fits of rage. His dad had actually saved every single one of them. Pictures of relatives back in Poland, many long dead, most with no names, but the faces…his mother’s eyes here, her dimpled cheek there, those dark, natural Marcel waves so unmistakable everywhere he looked. Her family. They all looked so much like her!

He didn’t even realize he was weeping out loud until a quiet voice called out, “Hey, Uncle Stan, are you OK?”

“Yeah, Buddy,” Stan answered, wiping his face on the back of his sleeve. Sheesh, now I’m picking up Kipper’s bad habits! “Come look! I found my Mom’s photo albums. I thought they were long gone.”

He paged back to a photo of Mathilde Kaczmarek as a young woman, smiling in a group photo with the rest of her family. “There she is,” he whispered, pointing reverently to a lovely dark-haired woman. “My mom.”

“Wow,” Kipper murmured. “She sure was pretty. You got her curls and her eyes.”

“Yep, I sure did,” Stan answered, staring longingly at this happy scene from his mother’s past.

“What’s in here?” asked Kipper, as he opened the other box. “Oh, wow! Look at this! It’s some sort of uniform!”

Stan reached gingerly into the other box and drew out an old Merchant Marine uniform. “This was my dad’s,” he said softly. “He joined the Merchant Marines as a young man because it gave him the opportunity to travel the world. He met my Mom while he was on leave visiting family in Poland. He mustered out not long after they got married and settled here in the city, worked as a longshoreman for a while before getting a job as a city sanitation worker. I never knew he’d kept his old uniform.”

Underneath the uniform, they found a collection of photos and postcards from all over the globe, his dad’s discharge papers, and what appeared to be a hinged jewelry box of some sort. Inside was a handsome compass on a chain, and on the back, an engraving – To Find Your Way Back Home. Love, MK.

“Oh my God,” Stan whispered, clamping a hand over his mouth as tears began falling again. “My mom must have given him this when they were first married, and he was still deployed with the Merchant Marines.”

Kipper gazed at the newly discovered heirloom in wonder. “You should carry this,” he whispered to Stan. “You should carry this always, as a way to remember them both.”