Author's Note: Sequel to "Bulletproof". If you haven't read it yet, you should, or else this probably won't make any sense. I don't know what possessed me to write a sequel, and I'm so immensely proud of the original that I'm convinced nothing else I write can ever top it, but here you go. I hold no illusions about this piece.
I added bits and pieces that hint at Bianca's past in here. Since last night, we know more about her than we did when "Bulletproof" was written, but since I can't go back and re-write the story to fit current canon, I just made little hints at the trouble she must have gotten into before, especially when you consider she was mixed up, however indirectly, with gangs.
I don't own Degrassi, just Ryan.
Please REVIEW.
I.
It's been over a year since she's lost Ryan, and in that time, she's turned shit around.
She may not be the perfect mother, the perfect anything.
She's not perfect.
But she's changed, and she's proud of everything she's done.
She finished community college, and now has a full-time job at the tattoo parlor. She's completed all the anger management and parenting classes required by the court, and she's gotten the paperwork signed by the caseworker. She's done everything she needs to get her son back.
It's the only thing that's been on her mind.
II.
A lot has changed since then.
Before, she didn't care about anything. She didn't have a plan for her life, and didn't think it would be much worthwhile, anyway. She figured she would never amount to much.
But now, she has something to work for.
She's a mother now; everything she does isn't for her, it's for her son.
It took her a long time to realize that, and she fucked up a lot along the way, but now she knows that she needs to put everything she has into being the best mother she can be.
III.
But she's nervous about actually having her son back.
She's never been the wishy-washy type, but she can't help but wonder if wanting Ryan back is really what's best for him.
She remembers how it felt last year, when he was taken from her. How insane she felt, how angry everything made her, now she felt like she was losing her mind without her baby. It hurt so much, it was a physical hole in her body, and it was so horrible some nights that she felt like she would die, she was in so much pain.
She would have done anything to get him back with her then, just to make the pain go away.
But now, she wonders if she really is what's best for him.
What if she fucks up again?
IV.
That's the only thing she's ever been good at.
Fucking everything up.
As soon as everything in her life starts going great, she knows that's when it'll happen. She always messes it up. She always finds a way to ruin her life, getting mixed up in bad shit.
But, she tries to tell herself, over and over again, she can't think like that now.
She can't fuck up.
If she does, she will lose him for good, this time.
And then she really will die.
V.
She spent the time away from him trying to tell herself that Ryan would never be Kaitlin's; that he would always be hers, no matter who he was living with.
But she can't help it.
She's grateful for everything that Jonathan and Kaitlin have done for her since taking Ryan, but she can't ignore the seeting anger that shoots through her when she sees her with her son.
After all, Bianca is his mother.
Really, she's all he has.
(Or maybe, he's all she has).
VI.
She can't afford an apartment just yet, so she's moving in with her sister, Felicia, Felicia's husband, Mike, and their three-year-old daughter, Lara. They only have one spare bedroom, so for now, Bianca and Ryan will be sharing one room.
Bianca wants to do something to the bedroom, make it more personal than just a white-walled space with ugly brown carpeting and a single, boxy window. But as she stands in the room, staring at the peeling walls for inspiration, she realizes she has no idea what kind of stuff Ryan likes, and what he would want in his bedroom. She doesn't even know his favorite color, so she could at least paint the walls.
And that sends her into a flurry of panic.
She doesn't even know her son's favorite color.
What if she doesn't remember how to be a mom?
(It wasn't like she was ever much of one to begin with.)
VII.
When she tells Felicia, her sister snorts.
"Ryan's, like, two, Bee," she tells her sensibly. "They don't have favorite anythings at that age. They just like shiny shit and loud noises."
Bianca laughs, feeling the tiniest bit better.
Her sister touches the top of her head, running her fingers through her curls, like she used to when Bianca was a little girl.
"Get him some blue stuff," Felicia says, twisting Bianca's curls around her capable fingers like a child's hand. "Blue is usually a safe bet."
VIII.
What if he doesn't want her?
IX.
She's had regular visits with Ryan every few months since he was placed with Kaitlin and Jonathan, but they're infrequent and short, so he never remembers her in between.
This time, though, she brings her social worker with her, who is coming to observe the two of them together.
Ryan clings to Kaitlin's hand the entire time, not even responding to Jonathan when he tells the boy to come over to see her, and flat-out cries when Kaitlin tries to take him off her lap long enough to go say hello to Bianca.
Ryan peeks at her, terrified, from under his too-long curls.
"Who her?" he keeps demanding, pointing at Bianca wildly. "Who her?"
When the social worker finally explains it to him, Ryan cries even harder, and won't stop crying when Kaitlin picks him up, carrying him to his bedroom. Bianca can hear his wails as he ignores Kaitlin's attempts to soothe him.
Bianca sits still, wanting nothing more than to chase the two of them up the stairs. Crawl into bed beside her son; hold him and whisper into his ear that she's here, Mommy's here, that she's never going anywhere, she loves him, and she'll never leave him again.
(She hopes she's right)
But she stays where she is, sitting with the social worker and Jonathan, who gives her a dopey, embarrassed shrug from his spot on the couch.
Her son doesn't want her; she's the one he was trying to get away from.
V.
Bianca and Ryan move into Felicia's house (or does Ryan move into Bianca & Felicia's house? Should the two of them be considered a family yet? Ryan still doesn't call her Mama) and Ryan spends the first couple weeks in absolute misery. He cries nonstop for his Mommy, his Daddy, and says that he wants to go home.
Bianca feels just as miserable as he does.
The social worker warned her that this would happen; that Ryan was too young to understand what was going on and who she was, but she assured Bianca that after the" initial transition period", he would get used to her, and even start calling her Mommy after a while.
She's waited her son's whole life for him to call her Mommy.
The day can't come soon enough.
VII.
It takes a few months before Ryan stops calling her "Bee" and calls her Mama.
She cries herself to sleep that first night, not remembering the last time she was that happy.
VIII.
She wonders if Kaitlin hates her.
When she gave Ryan back to Bianca, Kaitlin assured her there were no hard feelings.
But she listens to Ryan call her Mama, and wonder, if Kaitlin could hear it, if she would hate Bianca.
Because Bianca remembers how much she hated Kaitlin when her son was taken from her.
IX.
She gives Ryan a bath one night, running her fingers through his just-like-her curls. She knows they're too long, but she can't bear to cut them.
She remembers, when he was born, he had a full head of curly dark hair.
Somehow, she connects the Ryan-Then with the Ryan-Now, and can't bring herself to cut that last remaining piece of the baby she had before everything went to hell.
X.
There are nights when all she does is lie awake and stare at him.
She can't help the thoughts that run through her head. It's like a carousel, going up and down and nowhere at the same time, circling endless laps to the same old tune. It keeps her up to all hours; usually, she goes to sit on the front porch in the freezing midnight, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the last of the paper to burn her thoughts away.
Her biggest fears used to involve cops, sirens, jail. The all-encompassing black mark on her record, following her around and tormenting her.
But now, her paranoia involves something much more frightening.
She knows that Ron-Ron was never mixed up with any of the deep shit; he was a criminal, but the worst he ever did was sell pot to some of the junior high kids, or make fake IDs for girls like her. But before she was with him – before she got pregnant – she knew people who had done much worse. She'd hung out with them, gotten in trouble with them, and saw the kind of trouble they could cause.
It was a lot worse than selling pot to thirteen-year-olds, too.
Getting pregnant got her out of that – even though, thankfully, she was never really in it to begin with – but she can't bring herself to forget her checkered past completely.
She hates this feeling of sleeping with one eye open.
She hates living like this.
XI.
"Bird!"
Bianca grins at her son from the sink, rinsing out the dishes from this morning's breakfast. She watches Ryan, enraptured with his cartoons, and wonders why, even after all the times Coyote goes after that damn Roadrunner, he still hasn't figured out that he'll never catch it.
Isn't that the definition of insanity, she wonders. Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
She watches from the cut-out in the wall, and wonders if Coyote knew the next time he fell off the cliff would be his last, if he'd ever Roadrunner again.
He should know better.
You go to the edge, and there's a good chance you'll never come back.
XII.
She figures, one night, when she's wide-awake with adrenaline surging through her veins like blood and can't seem to slow her frantic heart, that she owes her life to her son.
After all, if she hadn't had him, who knows what kind of deep shit she would have gotten herself into.
XIII.
She bumps into K.C. when she's out getting lunch one day, and the two of them randomly get to talking. He's about to move to Alberta, soon – after he and Jenna broke up for good last year, she took their son and moved in with her brother, and he stayed to finish his last year of community college.
Jenna told him that if he wanted anything to do with their son, he'd "better do something about it".
He's leaving next week, even though Jenna had agreed to let him see Tyson, nothing more.
"He plays soccer," K.C. tells Bianca. "Don't know how he can. He's barely four. But he does, apparently."
He rolls his eyes. "Of course, Jenna would pick the farthest thing from basketball she could."
She laughs. She wonders if Ryan would like soccer.
K.C. seems so much older and faraway than she remembers him being. She knew him as a dumb jock, not much going on in his head, and pretty clueless. But this K.C. is more worn and tired, with lines on his face and skin like wax paper.
He's old young, just like she is.
They've come so far in such a short time.
They're both lost love (though Bianca still can't bring herself to say she ever loved someone as pathetic as Ron – it's easier just to deny it than to admit the old hurt); they're both older than they need to be, they're both trying to settle down before they thought they'd be ready to settle; they're both parents.
(Or something like it, anyway).
They're both trying to move on.
XIV.
"Mama, I firsty!"
Ryan gestures wildly towards the juice boxes.
"Mama," he announces, "I firsty!"
He looks at her with pleading, liquid-brown eyes, the look she's helpless to.
"You want juice?" she asks, dissolving under her son's gaze.
He shakes his head. "Milk!" he announces.
"No juice?" she asks, watching him still point at the juice boxes lined up on the shopping rack like building blocks.
He shakes his curls firmly.
"Milk!" he shouts.
Bianca rolls her eyes.
"Okay," she relents, not getting over the irony of beating some trash-talking bitch at the club to the ground, but getting pushed around by a toddler.
XV.
Nights are always the worst.
Nights are when the dreams come. When the Monsters Under The Bed and the Things That Go Bump In The Night crawl out of the darkness, and wear the faces of her past.
She dreams of guns, of knives, of leering faces and calloused hands. Eyes fondling her body, cooing and stroking her, then grabbing her full-force and throwing her down. Shiny metal and cold steel pressed into her hand, blades as smooth as skin, and the threat of the tang of blood in the air. Cold smiles and dangerous laughter, the smell of fear. Her fear, and their soulless, joyless pleasure.
That was her life. Before she got pregnant, before she got out.
She looks at her baby, fast asleep and untroubled in the crib beside her, and wonders what he did to deserve his mother.
He's too innocent to deal with someone like her.
XVI.
She loses Ryan in the grocery store once – briefly, hardly long enough for him to even be considered "lost" – but it's enough to send her into a panic, and make the fear she lives in everyday kick into overdrive.
Before she can tell the store manager to make an announcement about him, she finds him in the frozen food section, staring at the bags of chicken wings and fish patties. A woman stands beside him, holding his hand, and looks at Bianca when she sees her charging up the aisle.
"Is this her?" the woman asks, bending down to Ryan. "Is this your Mommy?"
Bianca scoops him into her arms, her heart pounding wildly. She's never been so terrified; she feels like she's sweating panic, the stench of her own fear rolling off her. Her head is spinning, and she leans against the freezing cold glass of the aisle, trying not to slip to her knees.
She lost him.
Again.
XVII.
"I lost him."
She's curled on the couch back at home. Ryan and his cousin are giggling outside, playing in the sprinkler as Mike shoots them with the squirts of water. The laughter torments her, reminding her of carelessness. Something she can't afford anymore.
Felicia sits across from her on the beat-up armchair offering a cup of beer, both an elixir and a condolence.
"It happens to everybody, Bee," her sister tells her. "Hell, I lost Lara once at the park. I freaked out. Thought she might have run into the road. Every parent loses their kid once. It doesn't make you a fuck-up."
"But I lost him," she insists, sitting upright. She moves to quickly, and her head spins again.
Felicia doesn't get it. She lost Ryan, again.
And the worst part was, she wasn't surprised it had happened.
The only thing she thought was, about time.
She always knew she would mess up and lose him again.
XVIII.
Some days she feels all right, and then some days, she's just so angry.
She keeps backtracking to being pregnant with him, feeling him kick. Somewhere along the line, she started referring to him as a "he", even though she didn't want to know what she was having until the baby was actually born.
She'd place her hand on her stomach, feeling it kick, and think, I guess I think you're a "he", now.
They were in this together, no matter where they went.
Now they're together again, and she can't help the anger she feels sometimes.
How could she have let things get so bad?
She never was the type to dwell on the past, or live in history. But it's caught up to her, changed her present and her future, and she can't stop hating those past decisions, the stupid girl she used to be, who did dumb shit and threw away chances to change and fucked up at every turn.
She wants to smack that girl into shape – and this one, too, the one that can't let go – and tell them to get over themselves, but deep down, she wonders if she'll ever get over her failures and her past.
XIX.
She has to face the facts. Her life is what it is, for better or for worse.
She's never been one to live in denial.
She'll get better. She'll be better.
It's not a choice.
Ryan needs her to; she needs to throw everything she has into him.
She has to.
XX.
She flinches every time she hears the doorbell, and still jumps when things go bump in the night.
She still dreams of shiny metal and tangy blood, still wakes up in the middle of the night, and still smokes on the porch on the bitterest cold days of winter.
She still looks over her shoulder, half-expecting the black mark of her record, the Shadow of her history, to be following her.
But there's never anything there.
XXI.
Thankfully, Ryan doesn't seem very encumbered by her own baggage and bullshit.
He's a happy kid. He's innocent. He's the best motivation and inspiration she could ever have to get her shit back on track, and the best change she could have ever asked for.
He gave her the push she needed to kick herself into gear.
Her son isn't just the sole purpose for her life; he's the reason she even has one.
XXII.
Her sister fights with the tangles, with the snarls, with the knots and the impossible length, while Ryan howls and fights her with spitting cat fury.
Finally, she throws the brush down in exasperation,
"He needs a haircut, Bee," she announces. "Like, three months ago."
Bianca nods. She looks at her son, his eyes barely visible under the unruly thicket of his hair, and knows it's time.
Picking up the scissors, she cuts her son's curls herself.
When she's done, he looks like a different child.
He's not the same baby she lost.
But then again, she's not the same Bianca.