How Green Becomes Wood

"You are welcome." Dark replied, a bit surprised to have been thanked. He didn't really feel like he deserved thanks, but he accepted it when it was given. He buckled his seatbelt and then pulled out of the driveway, heading for home. They had used the word before, the twins, more than once, but... It still felt special whenever they referred to the house as their home.

He was somber on the ride home, the mood still heavy on him. At some point, he nearly smiled when the morbid realization hit about how that was the greatest first meeting he had with any of their biological family. But that was all.

He pulled into his driveway and exited the car, being careful to lock it after the twins got out, "You two should make sure you take some time to rest, okay? I know you need to cook and I am sure you have a million other things planned too, but... It is good to rest."
 
"Rest is for the old," Xander quipped as he headed for the house with a grocery bag. "We'll be fine, and there's not a lot to plan. Just when to start chopping carrots and whether to eat inside or out."

"Inside. Outside is too unpredictable," Alec said, following him. "And we have to decide what to wear!"

Xander glanced at him as he kicked off his shoes and briefly touched the salt. "I'm wearing clothes, aren't I? What's wrong with these? They're even black. I thought you'd approve of that."

Alec hopped on one foot as he couldn't get his shoe off. "I guess, but you could wear something nicer! We are having a guest." He got his shoe off, touched the salt, and followed Xander to the kitchen. "Guests count as special occasions."

"It's one persnickety aunt, how much could that count?" Xander complained as he started putting things away.
 
Dark followed them inside, amused by how brightly they were talking after so serious a time by the grave. He didn't care what they wore, not really. Not today. When he took off his shoes and touched the salt, he interjected just enough to say, "You should wear what would have made your mother smile, if you have anything you think would do it." For his own part, he planned to put on a purple tie. Orange was a colour not appearing in his wardrobe, but he liked purple, and he would add a bit to his outfit for the occasion.
 
The twins paused and considered.

"Black would not have made her smile," Xander stated. "I'll see what I can find after dinner's started later. I don't want to get stuff on my shirt and have to change it again."

"Are we forgetting anything?" Alec asked Dark. "I have no idea what we're doing, but I feel like maybe there should be something more than just a nice dinner."
 
"I am sure you have something," Dark said gently to Xander, "but it is smart to wait until after you have changed. As for forgetting..." Dark thought about it, "I suppose... Well, this is not her funeral, yes? Today is more about celebrating her life than it is about mourning her death. So... do you want music? You have some few pictures, you could set them out?"
 
"Pictures could be overkill," Xander warned.

"I like it," Alec smiled. "I don't have that many frames, but I could get out my favorites and then put the photo album on the coffee table."

Xander shrugged. "That could work, I guess. I don't think we have much music she liked. She liked old stuff."

"I might have some. I'll go look," Alec said and galloped up the stairs to their room to start searching for the right kind of music to play during the party. It had to be low-key enough to talk over, but not too quiet. Tara never listened to quiet music or sad music. She had once said there was enough sadness already, why would she want to feel more? Especially if it was someone else's. She especially loved Celtic stuff. He thought for certain he had some of that!

Xander watched his brother go and then started reading over the recipe again. He didn't need to start for a couple of hours, but he wanted to make certain he was familiar with the recipe when he was ready.
 
"Whatever you think is best," Dark said calmly, and gave them leave to decide for themselves. Then, after a few monents of quietly watching Xander, he reminded him where the printer was, and returned to his cleaning. To most eyes, the house would be spotless, but he was by no means satisfied. There was too much dirt, it wasn't clean enough. If Daizi was there, once again she would remark about how she had no idea how he'd survive a house with a baby, much less a toddler or a young child, but since she wasn't, he set about scrubbing everything down as much as he could.

Until, eventually, he remembered they still needed to eat lunch. Dark had been so consumed in his work, he had forgotten entirely how breakfast alone was not enough to sustain any of the people in his family, not for until dinner.
 
Xander sat at the end of the counter eating one of Dark's favored lunches. He had another portion on the counter at Dark's usual place, waiting for him. Alec was out on the back deck with his plate, watching the flowers as he ate.

"It's about time you surfaced," Xander commented to Dark. "I was beginning to think we'd find you scrubbing out the furnace with a toothbrush by dinner time."
 
"Ciara does not like taking her shoes off in my house," Dark remarked, going to sit with him. There was something sweet about the fact when it came to it, and they made their own lunches, they made something he enjoyed, "I thought, maybe, if it looks..." He waved one hand, "And maybe if I clean it very carefully now, and keep it meticulous, by November it will be so clean it will take a good few months to be messy. Although, saying it..."

He shook his head and then ate a bit of the lunch, "Thank you, by the way, for this. You did not need to... My home growing up was very messy, you know. It was small and cramped and just always dirty, no matter what we did."
 
Xander shrugged. "Something tells me Aunt Ciara would see dirt where there isn't any to be seen, but it's a good effort. I'll just let the other bit go." He smirked, knowing that once Dark had said the thought out loud, about thinking it would take a few months to get messy, he'd know how silly it sounded. But if that was what Dark needed to do to cope, Xander wasn't going to stand in his way. Unless it was to keep him out of their room. He liked it just the way it was.

"I guess there's two schools of thought for growing up in mess," Xander commented. "Your way of taking pleasure and joy in getting things clean, or thinking that's the way things are supposed to be and just not thinking about it much."
 
"It was just dust everywhere, from the sand. Our little windows did not have glass, and we had no running water..." He lingered on the memory, "No electricity, either, just..." Dark couldn't complete the thought, and he scratched his arm and pivoted the discussion, "Ciara sees dirt, and like you, I imagine she will, then she is welcome to clean what she finds in disarray... I wonder if her home, too, was messy growing up, and that is why. Daizi grew up with maids, so she is not so strong about cleaning. But also she never needs to look at dust, everything for her looks exactly as it did when she bought it. Which is nice for me, I will never look old to her."
 
Xander stared at him in silence for a moment. "You really live up to your name sometimes, you know?" he said dryly. "Maybe you should have picked a name like Happi or Lightbrite or Twinkle." He paused and studied Dark. "Nah, not Twinkle. That sounds like a rich person's little dog's name. How about Professor Sunshine?" He smirked teasingly and leaned back. "Nobody would ever think you'd lived anything other than a very nice and happy life with a name like Professor Sunshine, and I bet you'd even make a few friends."
 
Dark raised his eyes to meet Xander's, and then with a slight smirk confessed the dreadful truth of his life, "My original surname means 'dawn.'"

After making this revelation, Dark hoped Xander wouldn't immediately go and run to try to figure out what the name actually was. He still had no interest in hearing it again, at least not applied to him.
 
Xander chocked on his bite. "Seriously?" he coughed. "Irony is alive and well!" He snorted in brief laughter and gradually sobered. He glanced sideways at Dark. "When I was eight, I told people my name was 'Shadow' because I thought it was edgy and cool. I even got the teacher believing it for three months until I got in a fight and the principal made a call to home. That was fun. And we were living in one of those cheap long-stay motels at the time. There were cockroaches living under the sink. It's not exactly sand and no water, but the other kids thought it was even cooler than the name Shadow because I'd bring one of those bugs to school every day and pick a class to let it loose in."
 
"I am glad that ended before you came to my school, I would have had your head if you released a cockroach in my classroom. In one of the apartments Daizi and I shared before her father forgave her, we had a roach problem. I am not afraid of insects, but the filth... But unless the landlord is racist, which thankfully this one was not, I have a lot of sway over them, since people generally do my want to risk my ire, so it was remedied as a swiftly as those problems can be..." He finished his lunch and sat back in his chair, "I think it was a very good thing the little bit of English I knew, I had mostly learned from overhearing soldiers and wanted even then to have nothing to do with war, because otherwise I may have come to this country naming myself 'Tank Blood' or something infinitely worse than 'Shadow.' Although Tank Blood Dark is interesting because it would make my initials T.B.D., which, for a name selected without much forethought would be retroactively clever. But I like Dark. I would not change it. The baby will be Wahid-Dark. We are hyphenating her first name, too... But she will grow to be tall enough to warrant a long name."
 
Xander put his empty plate on its edge and spun it, catching it before it could slow and giving it another spin. "I don't know any Iraqi names, but you could do Taking Back Dark," he grinned. "Like taking back the darkness? Or how about Tall Big? Totally Big."

"What are you guys talking about?" Alec asked in confusion as he walked in.
 
"Be careful with my plate," Dark said flatly, and then to Alec said, "Discussing possible names to fill the initials 'T.B.D.,' although I am happy with my own initials. I could have been Tareq Bahar Dark. But, then my name would be 'Morning Star' 'Spring' Dark. Which is not quite right... The baby's---" He began to say, but stopped himself. It was only within the past week or two they decided on her name, and already he found it difficult to keep private, but they were dead-set on doing so. They didn't want to jinx anything, "Well, if she were a boy, we would have named him Tareq, I think. With some English name they give to boys."
 
"Ha, you have picked out her name! And you won't tell us!" Alec accused.

Xander snicked and stood, picking up the plate as he went. "We can't possibly keep a secret, can we? It's our own unreliability."

Alec pouted at Dark and took his plate to the sink. "I feel so left out. I love discussing names."

"Come on. Get your revenge by helping me destroy his kitchen making dinner," Xander grinned. "It's early, but we have a lot of cleaning and chopping to do."

"Theodore Bahar Dark!" Alec blurted.
 
"We only decided recently. And some things are better kept secret, because if at some point between now and November we decide to change it, it will not he a problem and nobody will know. But I do not think we will," He smiled slightly, "I really like it. She has one English name hyphenated with an Arabic name, and her middle name is Arabic too. And the English one sounds nice with your names, although that did not really have anything to do with choosing it. The Arabic one only sounds nice with your names if you say it first, then Xander, then Alec. Any other combination and the cadence is thrown off," He paused for a moment, considering how her middle name sounded in conjunction with the twins' names, "Her middle name works, though."

He left them, then, to their work, although he did take the time to acknowledge Alec's name suggestion with a muted, "I do not want to be called 'Ted,'" and then left considering how Daizi, how took great pleasure in creating names for the initials G.M., had dangerously influenced the twins to the same path.

But luckily, in a relatively short amount of time, Daizi came home, and brought with her all the lightness she usually had. She had spoken with her co-workers, who had reminded her that if she felt obligated to act extremely mournful to show support and empathy to the boys, it may have the opposite effect of making them feel they needed to comfort her. So although she did not enter the house cheerfuly, she did not enter it as if she were on her way to her own execution, "Hello, my darlings," She said, taking off her shoes, touching the salt, and then petting the dog, "Dinner smells wonderful."
 
Alec and Xander glanced at each other in faint confusion at Dark's comment about the baby's name. They then spent the rest of the time trying out their names in random order with any Arabic names they could think of and a few they made up. It soon had them snickering and giggling to themselves as they kept their voices too low for Dark to hear and was a nice distraction from the heaviness of the day. Once they had dinner in the oven, Alec "helped" Xander pick a new shirt - he agreed on a purple one - and changed clothes, himself, choosing to wear a bright orange shirt with the blue and white checkered pants Dark had helped him pick out. It looked a touch insane, but he knew it would have made his mother laugh. The solid-colored coat over top helped to tone things down a bit. Then he put up four pictures that he found in the photo album with Xander's help and left the photo album on the coffee table. After that, there was nothing left to do but wait.

Alec greeted Daizi with great relief. "Welcome home!" he called, running to meet her. A distraction from his own head!

"Daizi, do you agree we should eat indoors without the bugs and the sun and the wind?" Xander demanded from the hallway.

Alec scowled. "She's hardly even made it inside, and you're asking her that? Besides, I bet she'd rather eat outside where it's nice and warm and smells like flowers."
 
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