Steele Working it Out Part 10

Steele Working It Out Part 10 By Kristen McNeil
Disclaimer: See pt. 1

Author's Notes: I don't know anything about paternity tests or blood tests or whether or not they were even possible when Steele was a kid so please suspend disbelief for this fic OK?

****

Mildred was the first person to visit Harry. She wasn't the first person he had expected to see, but it wasn't an unpleasant surprise either.

He smiled slightly when she gingerly sat down next to him.

"Hey chief." She greeted. She couldn't believe how awful he looked. It was a miracle he was even alive! "The Doctor said we could visit one at a time. I thought I'd come first."

"What brings you to England Mildred?" He asked her curiously. She laughed.

"You do." Was her reply. "After you went missing Miss Holt called me in from LA to help find you. How are you feeling?"

"Sore. Tired. Weak. Glad to be alive." He paused a moment and met Mildred's eyes apprehensively. "You say Laura called you down here?"

"She did." Mildred agreed.

"So, she didn't think I had deserted her at the coffee shop." Harry mused to himself. He looked back to Mildred. "Did it ever cross her mind?" He knew it was wrong of him to ask Mildred to tell him, but he had to know if she had doubted him.

"Not even for a minute." Mildred assured him. "She knew with all her heart that you were alive and that you needed our help. I'm ashamed to say I wasn't as optimistic. I checked the morgues because Miss Holt refused to."

Harry felt suddenly re-energised despite the aches and pains that plagued him at the moment. He knew at some point Laura had realised he was in trouble...hence the daring rescue. He didn't realise however, that she had believed in him all along! That was a step forward wasn't it?

Looking at Mildred, he saw the worry and shame in her eyes. She felt incredibly guilty for assuming he might be dead. He gave her a warm smile to reassure her.

"What you did was very professional Mildred." He told her gently. "You looked at every angle and I'm proud of you for that. With a bit more training you should be ready for your license."

Mildred raised an eyebrow.

"Why not now?"

"Because there are procedures one must go through to obtain..."

"Procedures?" Mildred interrupted with a half smile on her face. "Like the ones you went through for your fake license?"

Harry's face went white.

"How did you....?"

"Miss Holt told me." Mildred said simply. There was no trace of bitterness or resentment in her tone. She admired this man, whoever he was, and felt that if he had lied about his past, there had to be a good reason. "I know you're a phony and I know you're a thief."

"I was a thief." Harry corrected. "I'm not any more."

"Who are you now?" Mildred wondered.

Harry sighed and looked forlornly at the far wall, thinking back to Dale Silver, the man who had killed his mother. Briefly, he wondered what his life would have been like if Daniel had never met Silver. Would his mother still be alive? Would he have had a normal, happy childhood? Would he know his real name? Most importantly, would he have met Laura?

There were still so many questions he had in store for Daniel...so many things left unanswered. Soon, he would know what he needed to know. After all, he had the rest of his life. Looking back at Mildred, he forced his thoughts to return to normal.

"I don't know yet Mildred." He told her simply. "But soon I will."

"I'm really glad you're OK boss." Mildred said once more as she stood up to leave. "By the way, did you know it was Daniel that saved your life when you were captured?"

"Daniel?" Harry echoed, visibly surprised. The Doctor had told him Silver died of a gunshot wound but Harry had not been aware of who had fired the shot. He had never known Daniel to be a killer. Silver must have provoked him beyond rational thought. Harry knew what it felt like to sink that far into the darkness of oneself. Just seeing Silver lay his hands on Laura, knowing what he had done to his mother, to Daniel and to him had made Harry want to kill the man himself. He hoped Daniel didn't suffer with it afterwards. If it had been him that had fired the gun he knew that his conscience would be damaged permanently after the fact. One's soul was not something to be taken lightly.

Looking to Mildred he smiled, as the realization of what Daniel had done for him hit him.

"I'll remember to thank him." Was all he said.

We'll talk later OK?" He nodded.

"Bye Mildred." Harry said as she left the room.

****

Daniel was the next one to nervously enter the hospital room. The sight of his son lying on the bed, weak from the gunshot wound intensified the guilt he'd been feeling ever since this ordeal began. He had failed to protect his son and now that Harry knew his secret, could he ever forgive him?

"Are you just going to stand in the door way Daniel or are you going to come in?"

Daniel shook himself out of his thoughts and nervously stepped into the room. Harry wasn't showing any contemptuous or hateful feelings towards him, which only served to confuse him more.

"Hello Harry." He said as he sat down next to his son. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than the other guy." Harry replied in a weak attempt to be glib.

"I'm sorry about what happened." Daniel told him. "I never wanted you or Laura involved in any of this. I'm just glad that you pulled through."

"Thanks to you Daniel." Harry told him.

Daniel gave him a curious look, as if he wasn't quite sure what Harry was talking about.

"I know what you did for me Daniel." Harry said simply. "I know that you killed Dale Silver. I won't thank you for murdering a man, but I will thank you for saving my life...and Laura's."

"I never wanted to shoot him." Daniel said softly.

"I know." Was all Harry could think to say in return. "Oh, and if you could, please try and contact Annabell Patterson and tell her Dicky's killers were identified and dealt with. I don't know if it will help her find peace at all, but at least she'll know."

"I'll do that Harry." Daniel promised.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Harry spoke again. "So, what do I call you now? Daniel? Father? Dad? Mr. Chalmers? Which is best for you?"

"I suppose you want some answers." Daniel stated. Harry merely nodded. Daniel sighed.

"When I found you on the streets, picking my pocket, I didn't know right away that you were my son. All I knew, was that I felt a strong kinship with you and I couldn't logically figure out why. So, after I took you back to my apartment and cleaned you up I decided to ask a few questions about your heritage."

"I remember." Harry said softly. His mind drifted back to that day on the street when he'd first met Daniel. He'd been a different person then. He was bitter, angry and unwilling to trust in a single soul. He'd been convinced that the whole world was against him. He'd felt inadequate, and not very
bright. Daniel had shown him who he really was.

He had taken that frightened scarred boy and introduced him to a world full of intrigue and excitement. It was a world that Harry was good at and he took great pride in what he did. His confidence in himself was restored to the point where he ventured as far as to put all his trust and admiration into Daniel, the man who had essentially saved him.

Rejuvenated as he was by this new life, the bitterness he felt towards his unknown father still remained. Daniel had tried to bring his father up once or twice, but Harry refused to hear it. He could never understand why Daniel wanted so badly to revive his unpleasant past. Now, he knew.

Daniel continued with his story which was more or less a rehashing of events that Harry was already familiar with. Now, however, they carried far more meaning.

"As soon as I asked your real name, you lashed out at me! I couldn't understand why. I knew that you weren't named after all those movie characters like you claimed to be, so I decided to call you what Annie and I would have called our son together...had we known him."

"Harry."

"Yes." Daniel replied. "You seemed to accept that and far be it for me to test your anger again. You were such a volatile young man. Over the weeks that I got to know you, I began to see such amazing similarities to Annie, both in face and in personality. I thought at first, that I was just missing her immensely and falling into depression as I often times did at that point in my life. Yet, soon I realized that the similarities were too blatant to ignore."

"How did you find out?" Harry asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Well, curiosity got the better of me. It was then about a month after our initial meeting and I decided to broach the subject of your true identity and heritage once more. Again, your anger overtook you and you ran out of the apartment. You were gone for hours. Finally, worry got the better of me and I went out to look for you."

"I had gotten into that street brawl with one of the local gangs." Harry murmured, lost in the memory. "One of them cut me up pretty severely. I remember Daniel."

"Yes my boy," Daniel continued. "You were unconscious when I found you and there was blood everywhere. The cut was fairily deep as I remember. I panicked. I couldn't understand why in the world I would have so much affection for a dirty street urchin who had attempted to pick my pocket. Still, I took you to the hospital just to make sure the stabbing wasn't overly severe."

"I spent a week in that hospital."

"Yes," Daniel agreed. "I apologised for prying into your personal life and promised never to do it again. I broke that promise Harry, the minute I left the room."

"How?" Harry wondered.

"The nurse asked me if I was your father." Daniel explained. "I didn't know what to say! Finally, I just said yes so as not to cause any problems. That got me to wondering. I knew it was a long shot, but suddenly my curiosity overtook me. I sought out one of the other nurses on duty and requested that they do the necessary blood tests to see if you were indeed my son."

"But Daniel those tests wouldn't have been accurate." Harry stated, feeling suddenly nervous and unsure that Daniel was indeed his true father. What if he'd just misunderstood? "How could you be sure?"

"I couldn't." Daniel replied honestly. "Even though the test said there was a good chance I was your father, there was no way to be one hundred percent sure of it. I believed it in my heart so strongly however, that I simply had to have proof."

"What did you do?"

"You remember the trip I took to Ireland Harry?" He nodded.

"You said it was to pull a very advanced con that I wasn't yet ready for." Harry remembered. "I was very hurt that you didn't trust me enough to bring me along."

"I wanted to Harry." Daniel admitted. "Believe me I did. I was going in search of your past though and I knew how reluctant you were to relive that. I left you in my apartment with enough money and food to keep you occupied and prayed the entire time that when I returned you would still be there."

"I almost wasn't." Harry confessed. "I was so bored on my own and to be honest, I missed your company. I thought of leaving more than once. To be honest, I'm not sure what kept me there."

"It was something I had to do Harry." Daniel apologised. "To find out who you were, I returned to the one place that held the most painful memories of Annie. It was her parents house. It was the place where they had told me she was dead."

Daniel took a shuddering breath as the long supressed memories coursed through him. Harry wanted to yell at him to hurry up, but he knew better than that. This was a painful topic and it was one Harry knew Daniel had to handle at his own pace.

"Her parents hated me. They blamed me for Annie's death. For a time, so did I. They refused to let me see any of Annie's personal belongings, so I snuck into her old bedroom and went through her things. It was then I found what I'd been looking for. I found your birth certificate, baby photo, blood type, as well as...this."

Daniel reached into his pocket and held up a small, ratty blue blanket. Harry recognized it immediately.

"My baby blanket."

Daniel nodded. He pointed to the spot of the blanket where the corner was ripped off.

"I remembered finding the missing corner of it when I first washed your street clothes. You were so protective of that item, I knew it held some significance. When I returned from Ireland, I pieced the two together and knew for sure that you were the son I had searched for all those years."

"That piece of blanket was the only clue I had as to who I was." Harry told Daniel softly. Daniel nodded.

"I kept the blanket to myself. I had already decided that if you turned out to be my son, I wouldn't tell you. I felt it was fate that we were brought together again and I didn't want anything to happen that would break us apart. I had lost you once already."

There was silence in the room as Harry took everything in. All those years of wondering. All those unanswered questions about his past, about who he was. At this moment, he felt he should be feeling total and utter inner completion. He knew who he was, who his father was! Shouldn't it be a bigger deal than this? Shouldn't his real name be of the utmost importance?

"What's the matter Harry?" Daniel asked him, fearing he'd lost his son's respect. "I'm truly sorry for deceiving you. I know it was wrong of me, but I felt I had no other choice. Later on in years when you actually expressed an interest in finding out who your father was, it was too late for me to
tell you. That's why I stole the gold watch and gave it to Patrick to give to you. I wanted you to have something from your father to hold onto. I knew at that point a ratty blue blanket corner simply wasn't enough."

"Neither was the watch Daniel!" Harry exclaimed, wincing from the pain raising his voice caused. "I wanted my father, I wanted my roots! Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to go your whole life living a lie? Do you know how painful it was, to watch other children my age go home to their families? I felt like I was lying to everyone without meaning to! I felt like I failed Laura by not being able to give her what she needed the most....my name."

"I know Harry." Daniel replied, his eyes down cast. "I handled it wrong, I know that. But when you were a child, you were so angry..."

"I was angry, yes." Harry told him. "What young child wouldn't be? But children mature Daniel. Eventually I knew that I had to know where I came from. I was so sick of playing games, of pretending to be people I wasn't."

"Can you ever forgive me Harry?" Daniel asked him quietly. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but none I regret more than hurting you. You are my son and I love you more than life itself. I know I've never told you that before, because as a mentor it would seem rather odd. I'm your father and I'll always be here, whether you still want me in your life or not."

"I do Daniel." Harry decided. "I know you did what you thought was right and I can't fault you for that. I may not welcome you with open arms right away, but I don't want to lose you again. Maybe, in the coming years we can get to know each other all over again. This time, it will be as family."

Daniel smiled.

"I'd like that Harry."

"There's just one thing I want to ask you Daniel." Daniel motioned for him to continue. "My name...Harry...was that just what you were GOING to name me, or was it the name on the birth certificate?"

"That was the name on the certificate." Daniel told him. "Harrison O'Neil. The flight attendant told Annie's parents that she kept whispering that name. So, out of respect for Annie they named you Harrison...Harry for short. If only Annie had lived, you would have been Harrison Chalmers."

"Daniel?" Harry ventured in a questioning tone. A realization was only now dawning on him. He knew his real name! It was something he had been searching for all his life, something he thought he needed to feel complete, yet now that he knew it he found he didn't feel any different at all! In
fact, the name, Harry O'Neil felt very wrong. The only name that felt right to him, was one taken from a type writer and a football team...Remington Steele.

"Yes?" Daniel questioned in return.

"If you don't mind, I don't want to be a Chalmers or an O'Neil."

"Oh?" Daniel said curiously, with no anger or hurt in his voice. He already knew what his son was about to say. "Who do you want to be?"

"A Steele." Harry replied. "Remington Steele."

****

He didn't think Murphy would come to visit him, in fact, he was pretty sure Murphy had most likely left town already.

Strangely enough however, the next person to walk through the door was Murphy Micheals.

"How are you feeling Steele?" He questioned.

"Well, I am getting exceedingly tired of people asking me that particular question." Remington replied. "Other than that, not too bad. It hurts to move or talk too loud, but I have after all been shot so I guess I should be grateful nothing got amputated or that I'm not paralyzed."

"Or dead." Murphy added.

"You're a regular ray of sunshine today aren't you Micheals?" Remington joked.

"Hey I just wanted to see if you were OK Steele." Murphy said, throwing up his hands. "And I wanted to call a truce."

"Oh?" Steele said curiously.

"Yea." Murphy replied. "It occurs to me now, that you just may be a permanent part of Laura's life and if I want to keep in touch with her. Or say if someday the two of you get married and she starts inviting me for Christmas dinner, I don't want there to be any animosity between us that
would upset Laura."

"You're really serious!" Remington exclaimed in surprise. Murphy shrugged somewhat embarrassed.

"You took a bullet for her." He continued. "When we waited for news in the waiting room, I realized then I never had a chance. Although I still think I am the better man for her by far, it's in her best interests if the two of us bury the Hatchet."

"We don't have to be friends do we?" Remington asked.

Murphy shook his head.

"We are far too different to ever get along." Was his honest reply. No, not friends Steele, but I'm certainly sick of being enemies aren't you?"

Remington shook his head.

"I agree." He told him, extending his hand for Murphy to shake. "Truce."

"Good luck." Murphy said as he exited the hospital room. There was only one person left that Remington hadn't yet seen. He hoped to God that he said the right things.

<Just say what's in your heart Steele.> His mind told him. <For once forget about being afraid.>

"OK." He whispered to no one in particular. Picking up his remote control, he waited for Laura to enter the room.

****
End Part 10. One more to go...

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