Work Text:
The facts were these:
Annette Margaret Stevens was eighty four days, seven hours, and nineteen minutes old. She had been born with brown eyes, black hair and a prodigious pair of lungs. She was also, to the Pie Maker's surprise, still in the Pie Hole seventeen minutes after the Pie Hole had closed.
"Baby," Ned said.
"You don't need to call me baby, Snookums," Chuck said tilting her head and smiling from where she stood behind the bar carefully arranging the cups by the coffee machine.
"There is a baby," Ned said stepping back so Chuck could see the bassinet that had been left on the seat. She leaned over the child as Ned backed away a step. And then another. Then one more. Just to be sure.
“Oh, she’s adorable,” Chuck said.
Ned could no longer see the baby, he had taken one more step back, so he couldn’t really say whether or not she was correct. Children made Ned nervous. Children had made Ned nervous when he was himself a child and it had only gotten worse over the years. The smaller they were, the more nervous he got. Chuck, it appeared, did not have such problems. She was cooing over the baby and making faces at it. Her. Ned reminded himself that you didn’t call babies ‘it’ and she was a person, just smaller.
“She’s asleep,” Ned pointed out then a horrifying thought crossed his mind. His eyes got wide and he took another step back. What if she wasn’t? What was he supposed to do if she wasn’t? “She is asleep? Isn’t she? Just sleeping.”
“Yes, silly, she’s sleeping. And where is your mommy and daddy?” Chuck asked the baby even though the baby was asleep and far too small to talk.
Ned relaxed just a little bit though he was still standing well back, with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, when Emerson arrived. It was raining outside and he pushed in through the door and started dripping on the floor. The floor had already been mopped and Ned frowned a little at the puddle forming on the green linoleum.
“I need you to come down to the morgue,” he started then noticed Chuck standing by the “Is that a baby?” He pointed at Ned, then at Chuck, “Did you two go out and get yourself a baby? Why the hell did you think that was a good idea?”
“Not my baby. Not our baby. Left here,” Ned stammered out and then lit up and turned to look at Emerson. Staring at the edge of the booth that hid the baby from view wasn’t helping solve the problem but there had to be a solution, “You’re a detective, you can help find it - her - her mother!”
“Or father,” Chuck added.
“How much do babies pay?” Emerson asked.
“You cannot charge a lost child for finding their parents! Really, Emerson!” Chuck said. She had picked up the basket, though the child inside was still asleep. Ned took a step back as she got closer. Either because she didn’t notice or because she did, Chuck held out the bassinet to him.
“Hold her for a moment,” she said and he took it because he couldn’t think of a good excuse not to.
He held the baby carrier not by the handles but by the edges and he held it away from himself so that he was touching it as little as physically possible. He tilted his head down, slowly, if he moved slowly maybe he wouldn’t wake her. It was like tiptoeing past a monster in a movie.
He looked down and met her eyes.
The baby was awake.
For a moment they just stared at each other. The baby frowned. Just a tiny little crease between her eyebrows for a long drawn out moment. Ned returned the look of confusion and alarm. He stretched his arms out a little farther so they weren’t as close but it didn’t help.
She started to wail.
Ned’s immediate instinct was to toss the screaming bundle of purple blankets across the room and run. He couldn't do that. She. Person. Small. Breakable. Not to be thrown. Instead he tightened his fingers on the bassinet until his knuckles were white.
“Please stop, look on the bright side, at least you’re alive,” Ned said. She stopped for an instant. Looked directly at him and then went back to crying. He tried again, “I didn’t mean it like that. The little old ladies who live on the third floor are already in bed. You’re going to wake them up. Please stop screaming.”
But Annette Margaret Stevens did not care particularly about the neighbours. She cared that she was not where she wanted to be. The Pie Maker was not her mother, nor was he her father, nor was he Santa Claus or her babysitter. He was a stranger and she did not like him.
“Shush now, your mommy will be right back,” Chuck had finished or abandoned her argument with Emerson and came to pick the very angry baby up. Ned retreated again once the baby was out of the bassinet and he wasn’t responsible for not dropping her.
He didn’t put it down and he didn’t argue with Chuck that sometimes parents didn’t come back. Sometimes parents left you at boarding schools or died for good and never came back at all. He was pretty certain the baby couldn’t understand him but he didn’t want to make the crying worse.
Using some witchcraft, Chuck made the baby stop crying and then put her back in the bassinet. This time, Ned sit it down on a table and stepped back out of view so he didn’t make her cry again.
By the time her mother came back, Emerson had produced a hand knit blanket from somewhere, Chuck had told her storybook stories from memory and while all the crying hadn’t woken the little old ladies on the third floor, it had brought Olive Snook down from the second and Olive had sung her a song. Ned, for his part, had stayed carefully at least three steps away from her.
Her mother burst in through the door, looking panicked and bedraggled from the rain. Ned was the one standing nearest the door so she pointed her finger into his face and shook it:
“You kidnapped my daughter!”
“No, ma’am,” Ned started but then she caught sight of the baby and stomped past him. He turned to follow her passage with wide eyes. She scooped up her child and hugged her.
Annette Margaret Stevens, who had not been kidnapped when she was 84 days old, was a regular at the Pie Hole for many years. She and The Pie Maker were always a little bit wary of one another but he made sure that she got extra large pieces when she and her mother came to visit. On her birthday, he made her a cherry and apricot pie to eat all to herself.