The day Callie Cartwig met Lexa was when she realized that her whole life, her choices, the path she took, was all for that moment; the moment that the little girl, with the curly hair and the green eyes, looked at her defiantly from the hospital bed. A drug runner from one of the gangs in the city, the ten year old had wanted to escape them and go to school, but had found out that the Azgeda didn't agree with her choice.
"Got off lucky," the officer had said to her, "could've been worse."
She had wanted to disagree, to tell him that broken ribs, a broken arm, and a contusion weren't getting lucky; but she knew Azgeda. She knew that little Lexa could've ended up as one of their sex workers or dead in a ditch with no one knowing who she was. Just another victim of gang violence.
When they met, Callie was a social worker, a young woman with a degree in child psychology who wanted to change the world. When they met, Lexa was a tiny thing in a bed who had dared to dream, and now was afraid. When they met it was simply Callie entering the room and meeting one of the loves of her life; the moment she saw the curly hair and the angry green she understood Storge, the love for family. Not that Callie hadn't cared for her parents (though they've been good, there was always a distance between them), but the moment she met Lexa it was all consuming. She always thought she would birth her children, never thought she would meet them in a hospital bed.
It took time, weeks, to get Lexa to trust her, months to dare and ask her to live with her, to request to be her mother; but the day she did those green eyes lighted up and a smile burned on her face. The little family spent the rest of the day crying... and cried harder when, months later, the judge congratulated them and called them mother and daughter.
Meeting Raven was the same and different.
They moved to Arkadia after the adoption was finalized; Lexa was still scared of every corner, waiting for the Azgeda to still come for her. Callie was sure that they already forgot about her, but her daughter's monsters were more real than usual. In the end she decided that a change was good for both of them, and when Marcus Kane, an old friend, offered her a job as a counselor for the clinic in the town he had made his home, Callie took it as a sign.
The move proved to be auspicious, the clean air and forests around Arkadia were healing for Lexa. She found some friends, joined the Trikru, a scout's troop, played sports, and was completely different from the small nine year old that had to run drugs to survive. At eleven Lexa had found her north in soccer, and, thanks to that, had earned a best friend in Luna, a mentor in Anya, and the nickname of Commander from her teammates.
Callie's heart couldn't be fuller, but still found more space in another hospital.
Raven Reyes, was proud girl with dark hair and brown eyes, and a severe frown that spoke of mistrust and defiance. She had ended there after another fight between her parents; her father, while drunk, had pulled a gun to shoot her mother. And one of the bullets hit the hiding girl's back, paralyzing her right leg, and condemning her to wear a brace and years of pain and physical therapy.
Callie was one of the few people that had medical knowledge and a fostering license, and she was weak against the pleading of Vera Kane.
"She has no one, Callie. The closest group home with an on-call nurse is in Polis, and I don't trust them to have the resources to care for her beyond the basics; just until we find better placement."
She had been afraid getting home. Lexa was nice and caring, but serious, and she didn't know how her Raven would take to her first daughter. she was too defiant, too unstable because the people that were supposed to love her only showed her pain. She knew her daughter well enough to know she would understand, about the girl being injured, about the need for shelter; but still she feared about introducing them.
A silly fear, a useless fear as it came to be.
The moment the two girls sized each other up, everything changed in Callie's life again. Lexa, small as she was, had helped Raven to the couch and to the movie she was watching while Anya babysat her, and simply said to her:
"I'm watching Nemo; it's my favorite, after you can choose one."
The feeling that filled Callie the first time she met Lexa overflowed her again. By the end of the day, with Lexa and Raven napping together while the tv was showing the Lion King, Callie called Vera and asked to find her a judge, she had just met her second child.
