How Green Becomes Wood

She swallowed hard, quickly wiping at her face. It didn't feel extreme to her, it felt necessary. She needed something to focus all of her energies on, and nothing else she had tried had soothed her, so she needed communion. "I'll eat," she promised, "after."
 
"Alright." Xander moved toward the door but paused and scratched his head. "I feel like I'm supposed to leave because this is personal, but I don't really get it. Like, what does this do? How does it focus on you? Or however you said. I mean, I can leave, if you want me to."
 
"You can think of it like meditation, or journaling," Daizi answered, picking up one of the pages, "only, I give it out, and energies greater than mine help carry it. So I was going to write out everything that I am not, and what I don't want to be," tears sprang to her eyes again but her head was tipped down, "and burn it. And use the ashes to write who I am, who I want to be. And fill the jar with all of the things that are good, and think on it every day until it's true."
 
Daizi unsuccessfully tried to bite back her words, "Because I'm tamed now, apparently. And if that's true, then I don't know who---" She stopped speaking, crumpling the paper in her hand as the smoke from her incense swirled around her.
 
"Because it's everything that I'm not. Everything I thought I wasn't. But apparently became, without noticing. I've given up a lot, but I didn't expect..." She fought to swallow so her throat opened back up, "I didn't consent to it, I spent... a year? In a body that felt less and less like my own, and for eight of them owning it less, sharing it more, and I agreed to that, I accepted that, but I thought the incoporeal parts of me, the parts that can't be taken only lent, would still be there. But if I've been domesticated, then they're not. And I don't know what's left." She took another deep breath to try to shut this box, "But I---I know that's probably not what you want to hear, I shouldn't be telling it to you anyway. You should go downstairs, they'll be wondering about you."
 
Xander stared at Daizi. "What the hell are you talking about?" he finally demanded. "Is this 'cause I said you were tamer or whatever? I didn't mean you were... like, barefoot in the kitchen under the hubby's thumb or whatever. Just that you weren't as wild. It's a good thing, too! You really think a real wild woman would be a good mum?" He paused to reconsider. "Well. Maybe. But not my point. You're freakin' Dr. Daizi Wahid, woman! You've accomplished twice as much as people with double the recourses as you at work. You're a legend! And then you got this whole Dracula castle thing that you do at least half the work to keep running. People without kids can't usually say that. And you're the best flippin' wife I've ever seen, all sappy and guarding and loving and all that jazz. And then, with all that, you yank a couple of disrespectful, ungrateful teen brats off the street and work your tail off to reform them no matter how hard they try to fight against you, and I'd say it worked, even if the brats are still rough around the edges. And then!" He stabbed the air dramatically with his finger even though she couldn't see it. "You cook up a whole freakin' kid like a turkey in an oven even though it nearly killed you, and then you mother her like a damned Olympic champ of mothering! Of course you haven't lost yourself! You've just changed! Like you teach us we can do. Like all people do. 'Cause you're a person who's gotta do things a little differently. That doesn't mean you've lost you, it just means you're exercising different parts of you. Like a runner versus a weight lifter. Doesn't matter what some punk kid says, you don't gotta take that. You're still freakin' Dr. Daizi Wahid, mum and wife and legend enthusiast and occult whatchamacallit practice thingy."
 
Daizi turned slowly towards him, for the first time since he had entered raising her face, which had gone slightly red from the strain it took to prevent from breaking down into sobs from the moment he had knocked on the door, but the longer he spoke the harder it was to hold it back. Hearing so much praise did help, truly, like a warm blanket and a soft bed on a rainy day, but she still felt disconnected. It wasn't even really just what he had said earlier, it was all of it. It was everything she was expected to be, all at once, and if she got any of it wrong, the world seemed near to collapsing around her. She didn't like letting her children know when she was struggling, because it didn't feel fair to them to put that responsibility onto their shoulders, "I just want to feel like myself, and not be blamed," she admitted, tears rolling down her cheeks as her chest heaved, "I want to feel like me. But there's not the time, and I have to burrow in to hold down the rest of you. And even then I'm always getting it wrong somehow."
 
Xander walked over and squatted down in front of her, still careful not to disrupt her circle. "Mama," he said in a tone that was a strange mix of gentle and firm, "no one has any right to blame you for anything. If they do, you tell them to go to hell. That includes us. The same goes for anyone telling you you've got it wrong. You've been putting us first ever since I met you, and we probably wouldn't have survived if you hadn't but you don't have to do that anymore. It's time to start putting yourself first sometimes. I get that you're feeling like you shouldn't, and I get that there's a lot of stuff I probably don't even know about, but we don't need someone who'd perfect at everything or even one thing. We just need you to be happy. Whatever that means."
 
Daizi tried to wipe her face with the palm of her hand, "If I spend too much time with Ivy, I'm obsessed, if I spend too much time working, I'm neglectful. And I just..." She slumped her shoulders, "Tired. And it's not like I can just let it go, because even when I'm doing my best, they want to take her."
 
"'They'" Xander said, his tone making the quotes obvious even as he used his fingers to draw them in the air, "don't want to take her. One miserable old bat who hated her own life wanted to see someone else suffer. No one wants to take her, and if you're obsessed with her, GOOD. She's your little one-in-a-million fairy creature. Who can blame you? Might tease you about it, but maybe the teaser is just wishing they had that kind of attention at her age, eh? And I'd like to know who thinks you are neglectful. Hmm? Who's saying that? We all know, and you know even if you're too confused to see it right now, that anyone who thinks you're neglectful is full of sh**."
 
"I want to believe that," She told him, dropping her face back down, "but I remember being told it had nothing to do with ableism, but it did. I can't just move on from that, I can't move on from them undressing her to check for bruises and never knowing when they'd show up again." She scrunched her face up and pressed her forehead to her knee, finding her feelings too complicated to sort through to herself, much less something she could communicate. Her father worked too much, she knew how that felt. What she didn't know is if it had been nine or seventeen months since she last felt like she knew what she was doing, and some gentle voice repeated the kind things Xander had told her, but now she had been caught desperately trying to plug the dam, "I only have ten fingers."
 
"You can move on. You're the one who taught me you can move on from anything. It just takes time and effort, but you've been so tied up and twisted with everything, you haven't had the chance to," Xander told her. "Even if someone did want to take her, You've got, um, what's her name, Mrs. Smith or whatever to say she never once found any evidence, and you got Lance, and you got our aunt, all of them on your side. Besides all that, you really think either you or Ba is actually going to let anyone take her without burning down the whole town to keep her? It's not going to happen. Period."
 
"I try," She told him, hating how vulnerable she was being with him, it wasn't his job to comfort her, she wasn't supposed to parentify him, he was her child not her friend, "but every unexpected knock at the door makes my blood freeze. I can't remember the start of her life, only..." She shivered, her bones feeling a nonexistent chill. "All four of you are everything to me, but I don't have enough fingers."
 
"To plug into the dam," Daizi replied, "To keep it from leaking. To hold everything in. So it doesn't burst. But I only have ten fingers, and the water is rising." She gasped tiny breaths of air, not knowing how to express it. Xander was going to tell her that he had fingers too, and so did Alec, and Dark, but although her husband was so strong, sometimes he needed to be guarded too, and the twins shouldn't need to help keep things smooth. And that was for the entire family, there was so much she was losing a grip on just within herself. She loved her children with her entire heart, but she kept finding herself missing the days it was just her and her husband. When she could climb into his lap without worrying about who may come around the corner. When they could be spontaneous like Xander had pointed out she wasn't anymore. And how horrible was that? To wait and hope for so many years for children, finally get them, and despite adoring them, miss the time before you had them?

Dark had done so well the year before, when she needed so much support, but she, clearly, wasn't handling it well at all. She thought she was, she had felt mostly secure, she thought she was coping with all of the anxieties and fears and pressure, but all it took was being told she had been tamed to crumble. Why couldn't she just be solid? She didn't want her children to feel like they needed to soothe her, or like she couldn't was fragile. She didn't used to be fragile, and she couldn't even blame this on her hormones. She wanted to scream at her fragmented self, but with what energy?

"You're missing dinner," She said softly, "They'll be wondering about you."
 
Xander had to think about that for a bit. He wasn't positive he knew what the dam represented, but if it was him, it would mean the built up and pent up emotions. "Then... maybe you should let it leak a bit," he said at last. "Dams have water release systems. Maybe you should open yours. Maybe it doesn't need to be pent up. Maybe it needs to come crashing out and around and maybe cause a bit of damage at first, but then it'll all calm down, and you'll feel better. It's gotta be better than sticking your fingers in the holes, right? Maybe instead of trying to focus on finding yourself, what you need is a good-old Xander-style temper tantrum to let it all out and scream at the universe about how it's taking hidden payments or something. Believe me. Damming it all up never worked for me."

Since it seemed she wanted him to leave since this was at least the second time she mentioned dinner, he rose. "I'll head down and see what's left. I bet there's something for me to eat."
 
"Or I'll drown," Daizi murmured to herself, slumping back down, "You should've ate first, it's important you not go hungry." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand again, "Go eat, it's important."
 
"You'll never drown as long as you have someone reaching out for your hand," Xander told her quietly. He slipped out the door and headed downstairs.

Alec looked at him curiously, but Xander gave a slight headshake. He didn't even know how to begin to explain what had happened there. He did look at Dark and give a small but significant head tilt toward the stairs. Maybe Daizi needed to be alone, or maybe she needed someone. He wasn't sure, but Dark would know.
 
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