So, it's Mother's Day here, and I'm not with mine, and I'm not exactly overly sad or happy about that, but still this happened. It was half 6 in the am when I started this in a failed attempt at going to sleep and I finished it at about half 10, promptly fell asleep lol and am only posting it now (it probably shows in the writing, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, and I don't usually focus on Serena so that's new at least), but like it and I hope you do too…
A/N: Generally whenever 'she' is used it's in reference to Serena. It's basically all from her p.o.v, but there are others involved at various stages, so I hope it's not too difficult to follow who's talking when and where and the like. If it is please let me know and I'll try to rectify it for future readers. Thanks.
Title: The Gift of Love
Disclaimer: I own nowt, as per – except one ickle character :)
Summary: Maybe the problem wasn't that they didn't have enough love to give; maybe the problem was they just didn't have the right person to give it to… until she came along.
.
"What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now."
Unknown
.
She can feel the change overcome her before she's even 'officially' become a mother. Only it's not so much change as a push to be all she's ever had the potential of being.
It becomes pretty obvious fairly early on that all she really needs to be is better than her own parents to feel even remotely fulfilled in her own role as one. Except even when she realises simply being there for her child puts her higher on the scale than both her mother and father, she still wants to do more for her own child. She still wants to be more for her own child.
As soon as the doctor confirms it she tells him; tells him she's pregnant with his child and that one time? Yeah, it had consequences.
Of course it did, when does it ever not?
Only this time it's the nine-months-and-then-a-lifetime-after kind of consequences.
So she tells him he either has to be there for her, for them, completely – now and forever; or not at all. She's made her choice, now it's time he makes his.
He chooses her, her and their baby. Tells her, "Of course, I'm with you on this. I couldn't leave you to deal with this on your own. I'm as much a part of this child as you are; I'm going to be responsible for it – and you."
She allows a smile to curve her lips as she lets him finish and then says, "Well, in that case, you can start right now. Baby has a demand for ice cream, and I demand you fill it."
He laughs, and she knows she'll never tire of hearing that sound; wonders if their child will have his hearty jingle or her timelessly young giggle. "Are you sure it's not just you who wants the ice cream and to watch as I mess up your order repeatedly because you can't just settle on one thing, and then when you do you insist on whispering it in my ear instead of just telling them yourself?"
She shakes her head, biting her lip mischievously, eyes twinkling and replies, "What baby wants baby gets, and right now what baby wants is for you to get me some ice cream that we can all enjoy."
He gives in easily, because he's never really been able to refuse her anything and she lets out a squeal of delight. It's a comforting thought that some things remain constant even when everything else in her life doesn't, and she's glad he's one of them.
She falls asleep in his bed not so long after they return, pints of craving and a surpassed quota of hilarity having her yawn a sigh of happiness as he pulls the blanket up to her chin and sweeps the hair from her forehead, dropping a kiss to her temple.
"Of course I'm with you on this, Serena," he tells to the night as she lies in its presence. "It's always been you. It's always going to be you."
She reaches for him across the space, and they find each other in the darkness, his fingers curling around hers as she tugs him towards her. He complies easily with her wishes and lies down next to her. With his head sinking into the pillow next to hers, he breathes in the familiar smell of her shampoo, perfume and natural fragrance and smiles as he closes his eyes. He's missed the scent of her on his sheets, on his skin.
Their fingers, still entwined, unconsciously come to rest on her stomach, where their child lies sleeping alongside its parents.
There are no words for this moment, she realizes, no way to describe this feeling. Except to appreciate that this moment, this feeling; this must be what it means to be whole.
.
"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are."
The Alchemist
.
When her daughter is born, she looks down into those fantastically blue eyes and sees perfection blink and then stare right back at her, holding her gaze like the tiny fist wrapped around her finger (her heart): in a vice grip, so it couldn't be more clear; her daughter has no intentions of letting her go. She has never had the intention of letting her.
She fell in love with her daughter the moment she felt her presence inside her, but this, holding her, this is so much more. Feeling the weight of her precious body in her arms is like an anchor securing them together, like chains holding them forever in place as one.
She watches as her daughter falls into a blissful sleep, thumb tucked neatly between baby pink lips, fat little cheeks puffed out in contentment, long eyelashes curled and fanned out over her delicate newborn skin.
And suddenly she realises that no matter what her mother has done for her, no matter what progress they have made; she will never be able to understand the woman, will never be able to relate to her as a mother. She doesn't have to put herself on a pedestal, doesn't have to prove all the ways she is not the elder and how and why, because she knows, as her mother does, as they all should.
She just can't comprehend how the woman did what she did.
Sure it was years ago and maybe she's moved on, maybe they all have (maybe deep down they never will) but it still manages to simultaneously astound and horrify her. She simply cannot fathom how the woman could look down at her child, at both of her children; see such gorgeous beings looking back at her (only wanting her to be there with them for a short while, to show them she cared even a smidgen, to hint that she loved them after all) and then simply turn and walk out the door? How the woman could just leave them without so much as a backward glance? How the woman could abandon her children for so long without her heart even measuring their absence?
Maybe her mother lost her heart years ago? Maybe when she was born and then her brother, maybe their mother gave her heart to them, to have and to hold, and then simply lost her way? Maybe her mother forgot, was too blind and deaf and dumb (numb), to realise that when she'd given her heart to them she'd inadvertently stolen mismatched pieces of theirs, and then the woman had run away across the globe where they had no hope of reaching her, no way of putting themselves back together, no chance at being whole again.
She wonders if her mother's heart grew back when Chuck became part of their family; used the pieces of hers and her brother's to stretch across the years of scar tissue and fashion together something that functioned as a base layer for all he wanted from her. Only their mother gave to him first, so her and her brother's hearts spread further, and then he offered her a piece of his and they offered her more and soon everything was different. She was there, their mother, and she cared and she loved them.
It was nearly two decades longer than it should've been and their family wasn't even close to the one they'd started out with: too many surnames and too many differing bloodlines, too many bodies to be anything but the same; except it worked. They work and they're a family and her mother is… a mother.
Only she's not a mother anymore, she's a grandmother now, and all that love the woman had or might've had or could possibly have; it is reserved for the youngest of them all. Packaged up in a heart-shaped box to match its contents and tied securely with a blood red ribbon and delivered with a flourish like one would expect from its previous owner; from the moment she told her mother she was having a child of her own, the elder's had it sitting, waiting, ready to be handed over.
And when she hands her daughter to her mother, it's like she can see the transfer taking place. She watches the amazement mark its course across the elder's face, progressing to acceptance with the ease of the proud and uncontainable smile that absorbs everything else. There is only this moment and these two, together.
Her mother lifts her daughter to her chest, cradling her close, and with eyes only for her newborn grandchild gifts her with all the love she was never able to give to anyone else.
.
"Love is all we have, the only way we each can help the other."
Orestes
.
It's Mother's Day and her daughter is snuggled into the space between her and her mother looking up at the elder and requesting with bright eyes and a tried smile, "Tell me about when Mommy was born, Grandma. Was she little like me? Did she have big blue eyes like mine?"
"Oh, she was so little, and she had the biggest, bluest eyes of all the babies around," her mother indulges her granddaughter easily, turning to give the girl her full attention; my how things have changed indeed. "I held her in my arms and when I looked down at her I just couldn't believe that I had made this tiny human being; that she was mine."
"Are you sure you had the right baby? They didn't give you the wrong one, did they, Grandma?" her daughter scrunches up her nose at the elder's words and she smiles at her girl's interpretation, because it is her own. A mother should simply know her own child, should not need her eyes or her arms to be able to feel what's in her heart: that this is her child and she loves it with everything she has to give.
"I had the right baby, I couldn't mistake my daughter for another if I tried… you know, when your mother was born I didn't think it was possible to love a person too much," the elder tells the younger, with words meant for the one in between, and the laugh the elder breathes out in a sigh tells of a naivety that was never supposed to be hers "But then your Uncle Eric was born and I knew… I just didn't have enough to go around."
"What did you do?" her daughter asks, wide eyed all of a sudden and conclusively curious; the girl has never heard such a thing before, can't quite comprehend how such a thing is possible. This is the way it should be, she thinks; because her daughter is loved above all else.
"Nothing," her mother breathes out and there's an apology in the regret of her tone, as the elder looks to her and then back to her granddaughter with a consolation smile that she can only take for what it is; continually lacking wherever she is concerned. "They loved each other enough when I couldn't."
"Oh," her daughter says, and then with a smile, wide and bright and youthful and more than any of them deserve, follows up with, "But now you have enough of your own, don't you, Grandma? You have enough to love me, don't you?"
"Most definitely," is her mother's instant, effortless response; because it really is that simple and true.
"How though?" comes the next series of questioning in all its childlike glory, "Did you hide some away before? Did you find a secret pocket like Aunt Blair did for me and keep it there like I do with the stashes of candy Uncle Chuck gives me before we sit through a really long flight or a reading or a game – "
"No," the elder answers, and allows herself the moment to laugh breezily at the antics of her family rather than dwell on the implications of her granddaughter's words and her own responses to them, "Unfortunately not."
"Then how, Grandma?" is the insistent, impatient reply from the third-generation blonde slotted in neatly between the two that came before.
"Because your Mommy and your Uncle Eric and your Uncle Chuck and everyone in our family – they all gave me their love," says the elder to the younger and that too is true, and when put like that she realises it's how they all survived, by giving up their own hearts to save hers, to save each others.
"And now you have enough to love everyone," is the summation from the youngest of all, because love is all her girl has ever known, how she knows all is right with the world. A life shouldn't be lived twice over, once is enough and the next time you don't need prepare for the mistakes, because you're already out there preventing them from happening.
"Now I have enough to love everyone," her mother's echo reaches her as her gaze does, before turning back to her daughter with the words, "Now we all have enough to share, because you came along and you love us."
"So I'm extra special then?" her daughter beams from mother to grandmother. "And we all love each other, yes?"
"Yes," her mother tells her girl with a smile that was designed just for her. "We all love each other."
She'll never be able to understand the elder, not then and not now. She'll never be able to comprehend why the woman did what she did, be able to fathom how she could do what she did. At least this, she thinks, this is something they can agree on; that they can share.
"No," she says instead and meets her mother's eyes, before looking to her daughter and telling her truthfully, "We love you most of all."
Her daughter's smile could light up the whole world and indeed it has, over and over; because her girl gave them all hope, breathed a new lease of life into their family; showed them the love they'd been missing their whole lives.
She is love.
.
"I love you much (most beautiful darling)
More than anyone on the earth and I
Like you better than everything in the sky."
E.E. Cummings
.
The End.
A/N: So I have a confession, well it's probably quite obvious if you've ever read any of my other fics – notably the next gen ones – I don't *actually* have a preference for guy for Serena. I love the notion of her and Carter, all that history and wild journeys across the globe and can he/she tie the other down? And I thought Dan and her were cute and he'd been in love with her since he hit puberty and caught a whiff of her golden scent and she always seems to go back to him, even when there's massive obstacles like shared siblings between them. But then there's Nate, and I adore the idea of the NJBC pairing off lol and they're ridiculously sweet together too and he thought she came back for him and … yeah… so while I love the NJBC and the characters on their own, I just don't have much of a pull to one particular guy for Serena – I generally go with what fits my fic.
And basically the point of all that was to explain why I never *exclusively* name the father, so jus pick whoever you want depending on your preference lol :)
Also, I really do like Lily, although it may not seem like it at times in this – we'll call it character-speak, not writer-speak ;)
Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think
Steph
xxx