How Green Becomes Wood

"Worse or different?" Dark asked, even though he supposed objectively being suddenly new parents was harder than suddenly having a new sibling, but that the same time, a little voice in his head kept saying how the twins were fifteen and had finally settled down with everything only to have it thrown out of place again, all at a time they needed stability. The two of them had grown up parenting themselves just about, and finally were in a situation where they didn't have to, only to be dropped back into it without much warning, "Just... Remember that how you're feeling matters to us, too. It matters to me, too. You do not have to be perfectly fine with everything going on for my sake."
 
Xander studied Dark speculatively out of the corner of his eye. "I guess more like different than worse, but this is all just temporary. Well, this hospital bit is. Later, everything will be a different kind of different. Hopefully less stressful. It'll be fine. I'll be fine." He faced Dark and flashed a smirk. "We'll get into trouble later to make up for being so quiet and out of the way now."
 
"We will all be fine," Dark said softly, keeping his eyes firmly on Xander, and when the teen made his joke about the future havoc he'd wreck, he smiled a tiny amount and said, "I completely believe you will. But if it happens while you are at school, remember I will not be there to bail you out."
 
"Right, you'll be on maternity leave. Or paternity. Whatever it is." Xander frowned. "And the getting into trouble was a joke. I don't plan those kinds of things. Usually." He nodded toward the hospital room. "Should we get back?"
 
"We can just say parental leave and skip the details. And even if you do not plan trouble, you can only last so long being perfectly behaved right?" He teased, but then his small little smirk fell, and empathetically said, "I do not mean you as an individual. Nobody stays perfect, okay? You do not have to be..." Dark looked towards the door and rolled his shoulders back, "We can go back in, if you are ready. If you still need a minute, I will lie for you."
 
"Nah, it's cool. No way would your lovely wife believe you, and Alec is probably wondering where I am," Xander said with a shrug. He didn't really want to go back, but he had the luxury of going home later. Daizi did not. Dark technically did, but he wouldn't take it.
 
"I know that he is," Dark admitted, and turned to hide the shy joy he took at the thought of Daizi. She had gone through so much for so long and now, because of her, they had a little daughter, who now lived off the milk Daizi provided, and to Dark it was unexplainable, but this creation deepened all of the feelings he already had for her and he hadn't believed it was possible to love her more. She was his lovely wife.

So, after being given permission, he opened the door to the hospital room, "I found him," he said. Cooger was holding Ivy, now, and she was in a rare alert moment, kicking her legs and throwing her arms as much as she had while in-utero. Cooger kept switching between laughing at the tiny actions and looking at Daizi in absolute horror that this menace had been inside of her.
 
Alec looked away from watching Ivy test out her skills and smiled in relief when he saw Xander. "Did you find anything fun during your exploratory trip?"

Xander meandered around Cooger and went to his brother, bumping shoulders with him gently. "Just a kid who's parents have the worst naming skills ever."

Alec frowned. "Worse than Alec and Xander?"

"Jaxson... with an X."

Alec shuddered. "Oh boy. That's terrible."
 
"Well, not everyone can come up with the perfect name for the worlds sweetest baby," Daizi hummed, "is it that same girl from yesterday?"

"I met her. She seemed sweet... She asked if I was a vampire."

At this comment, Cooger laughed, and the sound of it startled Ivy enough to make her cry. His eyes went wide and he said, "Someone needs to take her, I don't know what to do when she's crying."

"I kept thinking while I spoke to her," Dark said, going over to Cooger to relieve him of the crying baby, "that in a decade, Ivy and her friends will be that big."
 
"Yes, it was the same girl," Xand supplied, watching the Ivy swap between Cooger and Dark. "It's been decided poor Dylan and Jaxson are going to be friends with Ivy after they go to school together."

"How... forward thinking of you?" Alec said, looking a little confused. He stood next to Xander, his shoulder pressed into his brother's. "That will certainly be interesting. You are getting quite sociable."

"She started it," Xander grumbled. He didn't really seem to notice how close Alec stood to him.
 
"He was really sweet with her," Dark mumbled, adjusting how he was holding his daughter as he tried to stop her crying. In his gentle baby voice, he said, "Sssshhhh, Ivy-Qadira, hey sweet girl... Did you hear that, baby? It means that, when you are a little bigger, your big brother Xander is going to be so good with you! Uh-huh!" He kissed her tiny forehead while Cooger looked over at the twins with a somewhat amused, somewhat confounded look and he gestured to Dark, expecting some explanation. "Because he was so nice with a girl he does not know, and you are the sweetest little baby girl in all the world."

Daizi didn't find the way Dark spoke to their daughter funny, only extremely endearing. With the crying, though, she very carefully reached over to where her robe was lying, and put it on, "It's good she's already got friends in her future, although she may not end up going to the same school as them when it comes to it."
 
Xander reddened at Dark's comments, mumbling awkwardly. He hadn't thought he'd been particularly special or anything. After all, he'd made the kid cry the first time.

"They might if they stay in the same area," Alec mused. He edged over and sat on the little stool in the corner. "Or, if not, I'm sure she'll have plenty of other friends."

Xander stood with his hand resting on Aelc's shoulder. "Some kids are like that, sure, but maybe she'll end up all moody and brooding. She has two roll models for that."
 
"We were talking about putting her into school into the city, at least until she's in full day school, because the museum has daycare in the building so I could visit her on breaks and take her to lunch with me," Daizi explained, finding it very strange to be talking about these plans now that they could actually happen, "I guess when we put her into first grade we might move her here, and then she'd have a chance to meet those other babies. We've not thought that far."

"You are not going to be brooding, are you hummingbird?" Dark asked, forcing himself to smile big for her sake. The baby-voice came naturally, the smile still made him uncomfortable, but he knew it was good for her to see, "No, you will be a happy, happy girl, right? Yes you will, uh-uh, you will." He looked over at Xander, letting his face and voice fall back into their normal, comfortable position, "She has role models for not being brooding, too. And maybe if I hide my true nature for long enough, she won't know about it." The corner of his mouth gave the tiniest flicker in response to his own joke.

"I don't know, my brother," Cooger said, mostly just hanging out, "I give you six months before all this smiling you've been doing breaks you and you start telling the kid war stories when you put her to bed."
 
"Six months?" Xander snorted. "I wouldn't give him six weeks before he's teaching her all about how trade routes shaped certain cultures and things like that."

"It'll fit the kind of stories her mother will tell her, too," Alec agreed with a faint smile.
 
"Oh, certainly, by six weeks she'll be getting an education in history," Cooger agreed, "but it'll be six months before he starts sharing his own experiences. He's a private guy, you know that."

Dark rolled his eyes, rocking his daughter who was beginning to allow herself to be soothed, "Xander and Alec have lived with me for almost a year and I have not told them much about my actual experiences in the war, and they are old enough to contextualize it. I am not going to tell them to a baby who cannot process them. Even if they are, technically, her history."

Cooger chuckled, stretching his legs out, "Ya know, Xander, you're right, he is humorless."

"Oh, be nice," Daizi cooed from her spot in the bed, because it was not a day where she felt at all like getting up unless it was necessary. She had been playing it cool, but the afterpains she had been experiencing were definitely worse than they had been, so being super active sounded like hell, "he'll ease her into it. Six weeks broad history, six months Eurasian history, six years Arab history... Then, when she's ready, the rest. Probably when she's sixty."
 
"That seems like an accurate timeline," Xander agreed, glancing down at Alec, who smiled and nodded. "Meanwhile, Cooger can teach her how to repair car engines and paint rooms. I guess it's up to me to teach her to growl and glower."

"I'll teach her to read," Alec said promptly. "We'll read all the books together."
 
"Dark can teach her how to read Arabic," Daizi said, "I'm probably not great at teaching anyone how to read or write. I can read braille in two languages, but your alphabets..." She shrugged, "but I'll teach her music like how I taught you music, and train her in witchcraft and soup."

Cooger's eyes went wide, "Holy shit, she'll learn how to make the soup? There are going to be two people who know how to make it?"

"Well, yeah, because it's--"

"See, that is the best news," Cooger said, hopping up to go look at Ivy with newfound appreciation, "because now if you get sick or detained, we aren't all doomed. We've got a soup VP. You're paying for yourself already, kitten."
 
"Ivy is worth a good deal more than just her inherited right to learn to make soup," Alec said severely.

Xander glanced at him. "You're still annoyed because you want to have more of it, aren't you?"

Alec sniffed. "It's good soup," he said primly. "You are lucky that you've never tasted it because then you aren't haunted by the flavor. But she's still worth more than that. She gets to continue on her parents' legacies! That's a big job. She has to somehow meld playfulness, seriousness, whimsy, practicality, witchery, and groundedness."
 
Dark looked down at Ivy's tiny face, still searching to find bits of his face and Daizi's in Ivy's, "She is worth more than soup. She is worth more than just being our legacy, too. Her job is just to be who she is, or who she is going to be, and that's enough." He fell silent, not tearing his eyes away, just watching this tiny, tiny person. He turned his back to them the majority of the way, and after a few moments, there was a slight tremble in his shoulders.

"All three of you are our legacies," Daizi said, trying to scoot to the other side of the bed to be nearer to her husband, but the movement was far too uncomfortable, so she gave up, "regardless of what you do."

In this new, heavier atmosphere, Cooger shifted uncomfortably, not quite knowing how to handle it. Tugging lightly on his beard he said, "Why are we all talking like we're dying tomorrow? Come on, everything is just starting! Xander, you gotta hurry up and get sick so Daizi can make you that soup. Well, I guess you better wait a few months so your sister's got time to grow an immune system and she's got time to get her life and health more in order."
 
When Daizi remarked that they were all three their legacy, Alec sadly murmured so quietly only Xander heard, "No, we're not."

Xander frowned but turned his attention to Cooger, glad he wasn't the only one who found all this incredibly awkward. "Sorry, but I don't get sick. Ever. So, I'm just doomed to miss out forever."

"You are just tempting fate when you say that," Alec said dryly.

"Hasn't turned on me yet," Xander replied cheerfully. "Hey, Cooger, those two look pretty tired. Could you give us a ride home whenever you're ready to leave? We're in no rush, just planning ahead."
 
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