How Green Becomes Wood

When they offered to take the jar from her, this time she pulled it close to her chest and turned away with a heavy frown. It was her jar and even though she was getting bored, she didn't want to give it away.
 
"You can keep it, but we need to go to the kitchen," Alec told her. He picked her up and carried her with them to the kitchen.

Xander started looking for things she could have to catch her attention, not offering them, just putting them out and messing around to make them interesting.
 
Xander waited until she was distracted and then took the butter and stuck it in the fridge so it could finish solidifying into butter.

Alec sat on the floor and played with Ivy merrily.
 
Upstairs, Dark hung up his phone and sat silently on the edge of his bed for a few moments with his brow furrowed. During the call itself he had been pacing but at the termination he had to drop down, staring at the wall. Tapping his phone against the side of his leg, too many thoughts raced through his mind and he couldn't focus on any of them.

Finally, he got up and knocked on Daizi's door, needing to tell her what had happened. They didn't speak for long, just enough to help settle him. Then he went downstairs to rejoin his children.
 
Alec looked up from sitting on the floor with Ivy, but his smile dimmed a little when he saw Dark. "Hi, Ba."

Xander frowned from where he sat at the table looking through one of the few cookbooks they owned. "Hey," he said. "What's happened?"

"It wasn't my fault! I don't think," Alec said.
 
Both twins stopped as they tried to decipher that. It took them both a moment to realize what Dark meant by that, at first both trying to figure out what organization might have brought Dark to their current neighborhood.

"The organization that brought you here to the United States?" Alec asked cautiously.

"What did they want?" Xander asked, closing the cookbook. It was in Arabic, anyway, and he was having to look up more words than he could read.
 
"Yes, them," Dark replied, sitting down on the floor, feeling mostly within his body but not entirely, "It has been twenty five years. A quarter of a century." He paused, letting that sink in for him, "They want to check in. That's what the program was about, seeing if they gave support... They did an interview at five years. They want to do one at twenty five."
 
"Twenty-five years is a long time," Alec said softly. He reached out and put a hand on Dark's forearm, pressing it gently.

Xander shifted in his chair to face them better. "Are you going to give them an interview?"
 
"A very long time." Dark agreed, not quite reacting to Alec's touch. Tristan only would have been four years old when he arrived. "I do not know. I have not decided, but I told them I would consider it. I suppose I owe them that much, after everything. They told me a bit about their intentions."
 
"How long would it take?" Xander asked. "I guess you could owe them a few questions and stuff, but not like a full day of torture."

"You don't have to, if you don't want to," Alec said softly, "but we'll do our best to support you no matter what you choose."
 
"They did not say, but they wanted to ask about my life in Iraq, what it was like adjusting, and what I have been doing now." Dark replied, rubbing his thumb up against the back of his hand and stopping in his tracks as his baby daughter crawled into his lap and snuggled in. He hugged her gently and said, "It would not be until after Christmas. That much I know."
 
"I'm sorry, Ba," Alec said quietly. "I know you don't want to live through that again."

"It's good information to have, but it sucks how they have to get it," Xander said bluntly.
 
"Thank you," Dark said softly. Ivy wiggled in his lap and then stood, reaching upwards until she managed to grab his beard, digging her little fingers in. Holding her steady, he lowered his head to make her goal more easily. His pretty baby. "I support the idea of it. They are important stories to be remembered. But it is different when it is your own."
 
"Can we sit with you?" Alec asked. "We can take Ivy instead, if you want, but we," he glanced at Xander for confirmation of that plural and got it, "would like to sit with you."
 
Dark's eyes softened nearly imperceptibly at their offer, "If you would like to. Daizi is just beginning a new project at work, she cannot end her day early." He rubbed Ivy's back, letting her do as she liked, and glanced towards the kitchen, "I still need to cook dinner."
 
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