Deliverance (Lucious/Cookie, Anika/Malcolm)

Chapter Four: Welcome Back, Lori Holloway

Summary: "And then...you met...Lucious." Cookie has announced Anika's secret to the world, but she's hiding a couple of her own.

Reference: "Malcolm must have remembered..." From Déjà Vu.
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No one could get Andrea to stop crying. Not Andre, her father. Not Jamal or Hakeem, whose singing/rapping shtick did nothing. Malcolm, bad-ass SEAL that he was, was practically hiding in a corner. The man did insurgents and soldiers and suicide bombers. He did not do babies.

"She might be hungry," Jamal suggested. In that case, only Rhonda could solve that issue.

"Nah. Hand her here." Lucious might not have been shit as a father, but Andrea Lyon thought that her grandfather hung the moon. Now that her bright green eyes were fixed on her first love, Andrea's crying ceased. Lucious snuggled the baby, breathing in her sweet baby smell. "See?" he told a table of impressed men as Lucious held his cooing granddaughter in his arms. "Nothin' to it." Having Andrea was almost like a chance to start over. "You're...so...beautiful..."

"One thing about that song," Malcolm remarked, a wry smile on his face. "It fits every occasion."

Was Malcolm trying to throw shade or was he cracking a joke? Malcolm tended to say everything in the same insomnia-inducing monotone. "Can you sing?" Lucious asked cautiously.

"Not a lick." Malcolm smiled. "I hope our baby gets his mother's musical talent. She says I'm tone deaf. I don't even know what that means."

Hakeem, who had been glaring at Malcolm with a quiet intensity all night, rose from the table and stormed away without speaking. He hadn't said a word to Hakeem since learning that Malcolm had married Anika. It was Malcolm's job to study things, and it was obvious that Hakeem once had a crush on his ex-future stepmother, now Malcolm's wife.

"Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?" Lucious had also taken note of his son's sudden departure. Andre and Jamal went to join him.

"We haven't talked about it yet, remember? I just found out." Malcolm still couldn't believe that he was about to be a father. "I don't think I can handle girls. My parents had three girls and I see how hard it was to keep them all on the straight and narrow."

Lucious nodded. "Right up until Cookie went to prison, we were trying for a girl. Cookie wanted a girl more than anything." Lucious paused, then added, "She was pregnant when she went to prison."

"I didn't know that." No wonder Cookie would turn away when Malcolm joked about them having a baby together. Sigonella. S-i-g-o-n-e-l-l-a. It popped into Malcolm's head out of nowhere.

Lucious kept his eyes on his gurgling granddaughter. "One thing I really regret is how bad I've treated the women in my life. Cookie, Anika, Rhonda, my mama, Cookie's mama...hell, I didn't even give Cookie's mama a choice in the matter. Just showed up and told her 'this is how it's going to be.'" Lucious kissed Andrea on the cheek, and she squealed with happiness. "I swear, if some man came into Dre's life and did to her what I did to Cookie, I'd kill him."

"What you do mean?"

"I mean getting Cookie pregnant, not even thinking about her future...sometimes I think the only thing ever held Cookie back from her full potential was me. I knew I wouldn't make it without Cookie. I still can't."

Malcolm couldn't come up with an argument for that. "I'm glad Anika found you, Malcolm," Lucious continued. "She deserves a man who'll be dedicated to her. I could never give my all to Anika, not really." When Lucious looked up, Malcolm was surprised to see genuine pain in his eyes. "I need Cookie, man. I need her to live. But Cookie doesn't need me," Lucious confessed. "That's a hard way to live, man." Like it or not, Lucious knew that Malcolm was his own man. Malcolm might have loved Anika, but he didn't need Anika to be made whole, not like Lucious needed Cookie.