The final peice of the second color trilogy. Enjoy~
Packing tape and cardboard boxes litter the home's small sitting room. Bubble wrap and tufts of half crumpled newspaper ribbon through the box-towers, a little river of packing material. In the middle of it sits a young blonde, nose deep in a thick textbook whose title reads Advanced Basics: Particle Physics and its Related Fields of Study.
"Ellis, are you sure you have everything?" his mother calls from somewhere down the hall.
"I'm sure," Ellis says, eyes still scanning the page.
"What about—?"
"Got it," Ellis says, holding up the backpack filled with new school supplies when Aelita's pink head rounds the corner.
"What about your books?" his father asks, Jeremy's head appearing just as Aelita's vanishes.
"Right here." Ellis points without looking at the box labeled 'textbooks.'
"Do you have all your bedding?" Jeremy glanced in the direction Aelita's call came from and then looks to his son, eyes reflecting her question.
"In the same box it was yesterday," Ellis answered, smile hidden in his book as he jerked a thumb at the pair of large boxes sitting against the couch.
"And your—?"
"Toothbrush?" Ellis finishes for her. "Yeah, got it."
When he hears the sound of boxes being shuffled Ellis finally looks up, only to spot his mother shifting one of the larger boxes, eyeing its tape seal uncertainly.
"Mom, don't," Ellis says before she can start trying to break into the box. "Trust me, we've double checked everything. Twice. I'm sure it's all here."
"I know," Aelita sighs, and reluctantly she moves away from the box. "But you're going to be so far away, and I would feel terrible if we left you all alone at that school without things you needed." Aelita's expression shifts with the thought, and the next thing he knows Ellis is being pulled into a hug. It's got to be the tenth one he's received today.
"I won't be that far away," he says patiently, hugging his mother in return. "Only two hours, and I'm going to be home again in three weeks! And you can always mail me things I need."
"He's right," Jeremy said, laying a hand on his wife's shoulder. Aelita tried her best to look convinced, but was failing miserably.
"It's just a lot for a mother to take in," Aelita said, wrinkling her nose at her two boys. "After all, my only baby is moving away to college."
"I'll still come home a lot," Ellis assured her, grinning and ducking when his mother's statement created a renewed sense of pride in Jeremy, which was expressed in an attempted ruffling of his son's hair.
"I know you will," Aelita told him. "But that doesn't mean we won't miss you all the time." Ellis whined playfully in response and Aelita, rolling her eyes, pressed a kiss to his forehead.
"Now that we know we've got everything…" Jeremy said, letting his sentence hang in the air as he gave Aelita a pointed look.
"Oh, right," she said. "We still need to get you to your school, don't we?"
"Sooner rather than later," Ellis agreed, excitement glowing in his bright eyes and eager smile.
"Alright," Aelita said, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips, "We'll get going then. But first, which of you strapping young men wants to help me load up the cars?"
Unfortunately Aelita's strapping young men were built more for strong and daring feats of the mental variety and more than once they had to pause in the car loading process for Jeremy to be reminded that he athletic powerhouse his wife liked to tease him about being. But eventually the boxes were all loaded up, split between their two cars, and then Ellis was leading the charge on his very first ever drive to college.
Two hours and one housing hunt later, and the boxes had once again found their way out and onto the floor of a half furnished college apartment. And they'd found friends.
"Do you think we remembered everything?" Ulrich asked his friends wryly as they stood in the middle of the living room, eyeing the ungodly number of boxes scattered around them. Somewhere down the hall their offspring were bouncing through bedrooms, engaged in the delicate art of claiming rooms—a delicate art that involved a lot of screamed 'I call this one's and quite a bit of wrestling from both the boys and girls.
"Do you think letting them live together is a good idea?" Emily asked, glancing over to Odd, only to frown when she spotted him lounging on the apartment's worn looking couch.
"Of course I do," Odd said, trying to smile placatingly. Standing beside Jeremy, wringing her hands, Aelita looked like she shared Emily's worry.
"Aelita, there's nothing to worry about," Yumi said, noticing her friend's distressed look. "They'll be fine here. They all lived together at Kadic, remember?"
"That's true," Aelita admitted. She wasn't sure why, but thoughts of her old school really helped to ease her worry. She smiled at her friend. "I just can't help but worry."
"Aunt Yumi's right," Ellis said, appearing at his mother's side. Aelita caught the smile that flashed across Yumi's lips at the nickname, despite how much she claimed to hate it.
"I know," Aelita said as she turned to her son, although she frowned when she got a good look at him. "You've only been here twenty minutes," she sighed, trying to both paw Ellis's mussed hair back into place and wipe a smudge from his cheek. Ellis dodged her ministrations playfully.
"Come on," he said, grabbing her hand. "Let me show you my new room!"
The gathered parents and kids spent the rest of the afternoon unloading boxes and decorating rooms, Aelita and Jeremy forced to admit that maybe they over packed while Odd's offspring kept finding things they'd forgotten ("How do you forget your toothbrush?" an exasperated Emily asked her son, before her daughter answered with a quick, "It's not forgetting if he's never used one in the first place!").
Eventually they found themselves standing in an unpacked apartment, surrounded by piles of crushed boxes that the assembled dads had universally agreed should be dealt with by their newly adult-responsible children.
Goodbyes soon followed, and suddenly kids who'd been razzing their parents to leave for hours were suddenly thinking of last minute things to talk about and 'can you just check this one thing for me's. The now grown warriors took it in stride, even less willing to begin their separation from their children, but all too soon there was nothing left to talk about or look at our any other reasons to stay. With barely restrained tears from their mothers and hearty pats on the back from dad, the kids were finally left to fend for themselves.
And then the parents were parting ways too, exchanging promises to meet for lunches or come visit for dinners and to get together for whatever other activities suddenly kid-free parents indulged in. Then, with a final assurance from Odd that the kids' apartment wouldn't likely still be standing in a week, they parted ways and all began their journeys home.
"Do you think he'll be okay?" Aelita asked after they'd been driving in silence for a while.
"I'm sure he will," Jeremy said. He could sense the uncertainty radiating off of his wife, and he glanced over to see her looking at her lap, lower lip pulled between her teeth. Her expression was a familiar one, one Jeremy had seen on his wife's face a thousand times.
He'd seen it one her face once, many years ago, right before he told her she would be spending her first Christmas back on Earth with his family.
Smiling, he reached over to twine his fingers in hers.
Back then she'd worried about the uncertainty of her own future. Now she worried about her son's.
"You know Ellis," Jeremy said. "He loved being at Kadic and getting to live where he learned. I know he didn't make a ton of friends, but he has his best friends with him, and he's friendly and polite. He'll get along with his classmates. And just like at Kadic, you know he'll email or call every day."
"I know," Aelita said. "I just can't help but worry." Jeremy glanced over and saw that she still looked uncertain. But he knew just what to say to fix that.
"And he'll be home for Christmas."
Ever since her first with Jeremy, being with family, even if it was a family cobbled together by friends, had become incredibly important to Aelita. More than once she'd told Jeremy just how glad she was Ellis hadn't accepted the school offers he'd been getting from other countries—even other continents—and had chosen to stay local. Local enough for holidays with his family.
"He will," Aelita agreed, and when Jeremy looked this time it was to see Aelita's worried expression had begun to soften. Now if only he could distract her just a little more…
"And you know, with Ellis gone again, we'll be able to do more with just the two of us," Jeremy said. He saw Aelita perk up from the corner of his eye.
"What kind of more?" she asked, something playfully dancing in her tone.
"Oh, you know," Jeremy said, feeling mischievous. "I might have a surprise planned for us."
"Really?" Aelita gasped, and when Jeremy looked her way it was to see her face lit with wonder, her eyes impossibly wide. Jeremy could do nothing to hide the grin on his face.
"Really."
"Oh Jeremy, thank you!" Aelita cried. She couldn't toss herself into the boys arms while he drove, but she clutched his hand tightly in both of her own, snuggling up against him.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"You're welcome," Jeremy whispered back. In reality he didn't have a plan, and he was going to have to scramble when they got home to pull something together that was worthy of his wife's excitement. But he wouldn't mind the effort, and he would never regret putting himself in a position where he had to do it.
The look of happiness, of wonder on Aelita's face, as familiar to him as her worried gaze or the excitement of finding her family on a cool winder day before Christmas, was worth it all to Jeremy, and he'd do anything for Aelita if only it meant getting to see that look one more time.