How Green Becomes Wood

"I wouldn't rather you call me nothing," Daizi told him, barely above a whisper but it was the best she could do when she felt like her world was shattering, "I never had a problem with you calling me 'Mum,' I loved it, I just--" She pushed her hand through her hair, "Mama is special to me, too. My brother and I, we were the only ones who didn't have a mother, and then I was the only one in my family who couldn't have children, so it had never been a word for me, and..." She stopped, inhaling sharply, and forced herself to ask, "Why do you feel like I don't want you to use your word for me?"
 
"You told me so. Before Ivy was born," Alec said simply. It wasn't quite what she'd said, and it certainly hadn't been how she'd meant it, but when Daizi had told Alec that was what she intended for Ivy to call her was Mama and had corrected him when he'd said something along the lines of how Ivy would call her Mum, that was how Alec had taken it. Daizi had rejected Alec's name for her, deeming it less than worthy.

Xander glared at the floor. He was scared to look at Dark and Daizi in case he started yelling. They'd done this. Daizi had done this. Had caused this pain! When they were supposed to be their safety zones!
 
"I didn't--" Daizi said, desperately struggling to remember when she would've said anything like that. When would she have said something like that?

Then, suddenly, it clicked, and raising her head she said, "Alec, I was in labour. I was disassociating, I..." She clutched her hands to her chest to try to stop her heart from breaking.
 
"It doesn't matter," Alec said quietly. "Not really. You want what you want, and that's fair, it just..." He fell silent for a moment.

"Alec," Mrs. Anderson said carefully, "do you feel when Daizi told you that she wanted Ivy to call her 'Mama' that she was rejecting you?"

Alec nodded. "Yes."

"You don't feel she was just lost in emotions and pain from labor?" Mrs. Anderson asked.

Alec shook his head. "Well, I mean, yes, but that doesn't mean she didn't mean what she said. She said Mama was important to her, that they are going to have Ivy call her Mama and Dark Baba. She's their baby. She can call them what they want. They have a right to have her call them what she wants. She's theirs."

"And you are not?" Mrs, Anderson asked.

"No," Alec said firmly. "We're not. And that's okay. I'm not going to force anything on them. I've just been waiting for things to settle down."
 
"We have been wanting to adopt you," Dark confessed, still squeezing his wrist. "We just did not know how to ask." Daizi only mumbled more apologies, wondering for the first time if maybe it was right CPS kept coming to bother them if she could unknowingly hurt one of her children so badly. How was she supposed to handle anything if a single sentence she said could destroy all of them so utterly. She trembled, recalling the guilt she had felt when Ivy was born early. That had been her fault too, now this, and for all her good intentions all she managed to do was harm her children. Again, she felt the urge to scream, but again there was nothing.
 
She shook her head, trying not to collapse. Dark, looking over at her, finally reached back to her and put his arm around her to try to anchor her to something real. By no means did she actually want to say a word, but she knew it was what they were there to do, so through great effort she forced herself to say, "I love them. I love them so much it hurts, and for so, so many years I've wanted to be a mother so badly, and I thought it'd never happen. And now, I feel like I never should have been. I hurt her by having her too soon, and I hurt them by choosing what I wanted her to call me, and all of my instincts are wrong. I love them, and Dark's being honest, we do want to adopt them, but I ruined it. It's always me. I'm why we had miscarriages, I'm why our son was stillborn, I'm why Ivy was born early, and now I'm why they don't want us. It's my fault, and it's always been my fault, and I'm the real why we can't have a family. It's always been me."
 
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Xander burst out, nearly yelling. "It's not always your fault! Would you get over yourself? It's not-"

"Xander," Mrs. Anderson cut in firmly, "Xander, I recognize that you are angry. That is alright. It is perfectly valid. However, we need to express our anger in ways that are not hurtful to other people. Yelling can be good, but in this situation, is very hurtful. Understand?"

Xander hesitated, looking at Mrs. Anderson as if he'd never seen her before. Slowly, he settled back in the couch. "Understood."

"Thank you," Mrs. Anderson told him with a faint smile. "Now, Daizi has expressed herself, and to her, what she is feeling is completely valid and true. It is painful to her to express what it is she feels. It is not our place to tell her what she is feeling is wrong, but since you brought it up, can you tell us, without yelling, why you think it is not her fault?"

Xander shifted, glancing from Mrs. Anderson to Daizi. "Well, some things are her fault, but not like how she thinks," he said slowly, thinking about each word as he said it. "And maybe I'm - well, I definitely am - boised, uh, boun... that type of tape..."

"Biased?" Alec offered as Xander fumbled.

"Right, biased," Xander nodded, "I'm biased about Alec. If he gets hurt, I do blame other people, and I do blame her for her words hurting Alec because it took us a long time and it was really hard to-" he caught himself as his voice started to rise and brought it back down. "It was really hard to even think about them maybe being our parents. We never had a dad, not a real one, and that kind of actually made it easier with Dark and harder when Ivy came because now we had to share, but we got it. We really did. Daizi... we'd already had a Mum. She wasn't perfect, but I think she loved us, and we didn't want to replace her, Daizi was just... a different Mum. And we wanted her to be our Mum. So when she said she was a Mama, not a Mum..." He hesitated and shrugged. "It felt wrong, but I guess... Alec was right when he said it's her right to pick what she's called." He swallowed. "But Ivy... Ivy's not her fault. None of that is her fault. It's like blaming herself for being blind or saying it's Dark's fault that Ivy was born early. Fault is a choice, an action, you know? She didn't choose any of that, so it's not her fault, and she's got so much else already, why is she choosing to carry more pain?"

"Daizi carries so many loads," Alec said softly. "Some are things she needs to carry, but not this one. She shouldn't blame herself and hurt herself. It's as bad as taking a razor to your own skin, but inside where no one can see."

Mrs. Anderson nodded slowly. "This kind of pain cuts very deep, and it goes beyond the realm of logic and understanding at times," she said gently. "I agree that it is not Daizi's fault, but just because facts may say one thing, that does not make the pain instantly go away. I am personally terrified of spiders. Logically, I know that very few spiders can cause me harm, but I am still frightened. That is a very surface-level example, but do you undersaand what I mean?"

"No... but, yes," Xander said slowly and Alec nodded along.

Mrs. Anderson turned to Daizi. "Your pain, Daizi, is an understandable one, and one that is deeply complicated. Thank you for sharing your pain with us so that we can try to understand on any level."
 
"I didn't choose to hurt you, either," She said blandly, like she everything inside of her had been sucked out and now she was hollow. She didn't even flinch when Xander raised his voice at her. "but I did. And I didn't even know. I ruined our family in a sentence, in two words. I would never have chosen that. Just like I would never have chosen to have her early. But I did."

"Spider..." Dark said softly, but again Daizi didn't react.

"No," She murmured, shutting her eyes, "The one thing I never wanted to do was harm them. But I did, and because of me, because of what I said, Alec does not consider himself part of our family, anymore. And if Alec, then Xander..." She vaguely shifted her weight, "I made you feel unwanted and unloved. I do want you, and I do love you, but I'm not... good, enough."

What Daizi was saying added to the already present anguish on Dark's face. He had seen her like this before, he knew. He looked at her, then at the twins, then back at her. He wasn't ignoring Mrs. Anderson, but she was by no means his focus, "For godsakes, Daizi," he murmured, "You were in labour."

"But we had already decided what terms we wanted--"

"We decided them thirteen years ago," He said, squeezing her shoulder to keep his hands from shaking, "and if it had come up when you were not in such a fragile, draining state, I have no doubt you would have said it differently."

"I don't even remember how I said it," She replied, the words coming out forced and choppy, "I barely remember it at all. I spent most of that day outside of myself, until the pains got really got too severe, and so much of it is a blur. It's one of the worst things I've ever done, and I can hardly remember it. All I care about is our family but I can hardly remember the moment I destroyed it."
 
"We never meant to make you feel like you weren't good enough," Alec blurted anxiously, trying to force his tears to stay back. "Really."

"I'm sorry I get angry with you," Xander said. "I get mad because you are a good person, both of you, and I just can't believe that it's true. That you're real people. So, when you carry pain that I don't think you should, it makes me upset because you don't deserve that pain. At least, I don't think you do. I guess shrink lady is right that I don't get to decide how you feel, but I don't like seeing you in pain. Even when I'm mad at you for hurting Alec."

Alec let go of Xander's hand and hugged himself tight. "I just... I wanted to be a family with you so badly. I still do. But I don't... I thought that you didn't feel the same way. That you did on the surface, but not deep down. That you could be happy with just Ivy. I wouldn't blame you for that. Not one little bit."

"Neither of us would," Xander confirmed.

"But I just... Mama is important to you, but Mum is important to us, and I don't know if we fit." The tears finally started to win and trickle out. Alec swiped them away angrily. "Like a relationship where you care about the other person but just don't work as a true relationship."
 
"It's just a name," Daizi said, not exactly defeated or worn down. If anything, she was more determined, "I care more about you than I care about being called 'Mama.' It's important to me, but not the most important. I wouldn't be happy with just Ivy because we know you, now. We had you before we had her, I need you just as much. I love you just as much. Yes, it means a lot to me to have Ivy call me Mama, but if it comes down to that word or the two of you, I would choose the two of you any day, that is not a question for me, it is not a sacrifice. Losing you hurts so much more than losing that word, it's just a word."
 
Alec looked down, suddenly wondering if perhaps he was in the wrong. If perhaps he should have been the one to realize that it was, as Daizi said, just a word. Had he been wrong to try to force a name that was already taken by one person and put it on another person? He wasn't sure. Perhaps. But it had meant so much to him, so much, but was Daizi truly telling the truth? That she didn't care what she was called as long as she had them?

Suddenly, he slumped over against Xander with a sigh. "I'm tired," he whispered. "I'm so tired of getting things the wrong way about and fighting and... I'm just tired."

Xander put his arm around Alec and held him close, biting his lip worriedly.

"Blending a family like this is complicated and takes time," Mrs. Anderson said, making a couple of quick, tiny notes on her file. "The important thing is to know if you want to blend the family or not. Daizi has stated she thinks of you as her son. Both of you. Dark has commented that he would be willing to adopt you. How do you feel? Putting aside what you think other people are thinking or feeling, how do you feel about becoming one family?"

There was a long moment of silence as the twins sat huddled together, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally, Xander went first.

"I want it if Alec wants it," he finally said. "If he leaves, I'd go with him, but... I want to stay."

Alec gave a tiny nod. "I want to stay, too. If Xander left, I would go with him, but I want to stay."

"Do you want to be a family?" Mrs. Anderson pressed gently.

Both nodded. "Yes."
 
Dark hung his head, and after a moment, exhaled and audibly cried. It was just one single audible sob, but it was a lot from him. It was too many emotions so quickly. He couldn't process them fast enough. These teens had said the scariest thing they ever could have said, and then Daizi slipped into a version of herself he hadn't witnessed in many brutal years. And now he didn't know where they stood. He tried to find something to say and only gestured in a way that accidentally showed the deep crescent shaped indents in his skin from where he had been gripping his wrist.

Daizi hugged him back, and holding him close said, but not exactly to him, "That's all we want."
 
"What happens now?" Alec asked weakly.

"Damage has been done in this relationship," Mrs. Anderson said, glancing between them, "but damage happens in every relationship. What happens now is you decide where you want to go next. Do you want to put in the work to heal the damage? Or do you want to walk away? Both are valid choices, and neither can be chosen for you or forced upon you. It has to be your choice."

Xander took a deep, shaking breath. He wasn't crying like Alec, but he could feel the burn inside his chest. He swallowed a couple of times before saying cautiously, "If it can be fixed, then I want to do it. Or try, I guess."

Alec nodded, still leaning on Xander. He sniffled and mumbled, "I just want to be a family, and I'm sorry I hurt you guys. I thought it would hurt less to leave than to stay. I just... I want to be with you."

"I think now that we've cleared the air and the problems are now out in the open, progress can begin, as will healing," Mrs. Anderson said gently. "I would suggest talking after you've had a chance to rest a little and to discuss things like names. Daizi, I know you feel it is your fault and that your instinct is to say it is just a name and it does not matter, which is true to an extent, but I think the importance of the word used - Mama, Mum, Mom, or any variation - is important to both you and Alec. You are a new family, all five of you, and as such, perhaps it is time to consider a new word and see if that suits you better. You may still end up using Mum or Mama, but I think it will be important and a bonding time between you to explore the alternatives. Dark, I think you should be involved in the process too. Normally, something like the word a child uses for their mother happens organically, but I think in this case it might need a little bit of help to at least get started in the right direction. What do you think?"
 
"I want to be with you," Daizi told Alec, exhausted and pained.

Dark raised his head again and looked at Mrs. Anderson through old, traumatized eyes, "I do not know. What suggestions?" He wanted to help, but he didn't know... how, or what she wanted from them. After a period of silence and thought, he did allow himself to admit something, "Baba is important to me. Not more important than the two of them, but... It is important to me. It has never been a good word for me, I want it to be."
 
Mrs. Anderson smiled gently and nodded. "That is a good name. I want you to take your time and think about the names you want for yourselves and to call each other. Perhaps you could each make a list independently and then compare them. But most importantly, take your time to rest. And to talk to each other. Just take your time. You are a blended family in multiple ways, so this is a unique situation." She checked the clock placed discretely in the corner. "We still have a few minutes left of our session. Is there anything anyone would like to say before we finish? Dark, why don't we start with you?"
 
"I am sorry," he said softly, "I do not know anything to say." Intentionally withholding anything wasn't his goal, but expressing himself was difficult in the best of times, and this was not those times. There was a lot on his mind, but speaking up about it seemed impossible. Similar to Daizi, he feared this was what he was doomed to, that there would never be a time in his life where he could have a family that was only a safe, comfortable place. That it would only ever be difficult. He didn't want to keep secrets, but he didn't know how to talk about it.
 
"That is perfectly okay. Thank you," Mrs. Anderson said gently. "Alec? Would you like to say anything?"

Alec sat up but hesitated, twisting the edge of his shirt. "I... Yes. Daizi, I love you the way you are and wouldn't have you any other way. I think you are a good parental figure. It's just... me. I feel like it's me. I'm too fragile."
 
Daizi listened, and got up from the couch to sit more closely to him, since she had been on the opposite side of Dark. It was all difficult, and she knew it was going to stay difficult, but she didn't want him to take the blame onto himself, "The most painful and brutal lesson I have ever learned," She told him, "is that I am deserving of love and that there are people in my life who do genuinely love and care for me. You're still being taught it."
 
Alec shifted over and leaned into Daizi, careful but suddenly wanting to be near her. "I'm sorry, Daizi. I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Anderson smiled at the pair, pleased to see a bit of progress already. They had a long ways to go, but every step forward was noteable. "Xander?" she prompted after a while.

Xander hesitated and almost said he had nothing he wanted to say. Then he looked over at Dark. "This is the safest I ever felt. Even when things are going wrong. I'm safe with you." His voice was low, barely audible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top