A/N: AN UPDATE! FINALLY! Yup, I'm still alive! SO SO sorry for the slow update, I can just see you all virtually glaring at me XD. Hopefully this chapter makes up for it! This story's almost over, then I move on to other FOP wonders. ENJOY!
Wanda stole a glance across the waiting room, where Cosmo played with Poof on his lap, giggling and bouncing their son like nothing was wrong in the world. A soft smile graced her lips. For all his shortcomings and annoyances, his parenting still made her proud.
Her smile stuck, and she turned to look thought the window, where the doctor, Dr. Rogers, checked him over. Timmy was alright. Her first son, her world, her heart, was going to live.
When they got back in there, however, she knew there would be heck to pay. If Timmy knew about the divorce, he was going to give them a lecture worthy of a student who had forgotten a week's worth of homework. If he didn't know, well, she would have to tell him, obviously. Yes, she would have to tell him, because they were still getting it.
Right?
She didn't want to get a divorce. She wanted her husband back. That was clear, it was perhaps the most stable thought in her mind now. And, in any other situation, she could read Cosmo like a book. Sometimes she could tell just by a look in his eyes what he was about to say, or even what he was thinking. Mind-reading to him, practice-makes-perfect to her. She knew him inside-and-out, his likes and his dislikes, his pet peeves and his favorite things, his childhood and his future, his enemies and his friends. She knew him better than she knew herself.
Well, she used to.
Now, it seemed, over the course of a day, he had grown apart from her, wouldn't talk to her, and practically had women waiting at his doorstep! She scoffed under her breath. She could think of a few choice words for Melody, or, as she had informally dubbed her, Miss Violet Vile. Thank goodness they were all arguing in a different floor of the hospital.
"Poof!" Poof giggled as his father bounced him repeatedly, up and down, up and down on his lap.
Cosmo laughed. "Again?"
"Poof poof!"
Relenting, Cosmo began bobbing his son up and down in a repetitious, wobbly fashion. His eyes went from Poof to the other side of the room. Wanda stood deep in thought, like she was thinking hard over something. Probably him. She was probably wondering how soon she could get that final divorce paper and rid her of him forever.
Cosmo sighed. Of course, he would have to lose Wanda at some point. After all, ten thousand years is a long time to steal something, and he had committed the greatest theft of all – he had stolen Wanda's heart, it never belonged to him, and it never would.
Maybe his mother had been right all along.
"Excuse me?" Dr. Rogers interrupted Wanda and Cosmo's individual introspections. He smiled as though a someone just brought a new child into the world. "Would you like to see Timmy? He's quite groggy, but very excited to see you–"
Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof nearly barreled him down on their way into Timmy's room.
"TIMMY!"
Timmy sat, in bed, fewer wires poking out of him, and a smile on his face. "Hey, guys, guess who's finally awake!" His voice scratched and burned like fire, and he paid for the excited inflection of his voice, but as his family hugged him tight, he couldn't have cared less. His family was back home with him, and he could talk to them! It hurt like heck, but he could talk! "I've missed you guys." Tears streamed his face, and his lip quivered as his family held him. "A lot."
"We missed you too, Sport." Wanda rubbed her godson's back in slow circles, and her heart, it seemed, finally started beating again for the first time in weeks.
Cosmo drew back slightly, and Dr. Rogers left the room as she spoke. "Timmy, could you…hear us? When you were asleep?"
Blinking the bloodshot pain away, Timmy sucked in a scratchy breath. "Yes, I heard everything. And you're not getting a divorce." The very force he put on not pained Cosmo and Wanda's throats. "Ten-thousand years is a long time. Don't you guys love each other?"
Wanda's eyes stuck to the bed as she sat across from her godson. Now that he was awake, now that he was here, now that he was going to do everything to stop them, she wondered how they had ever gotten this far. "Sport, it's not that easy." She attempted to speak gently to her godson, not that she needed much effort, her voice cracked under the emotion on its own.
Was it that easy? Cosmo thought it might be. He still loved Wanda. He loved her, more than he suspected he was supposed to. Even as he sucked in a breath, he knew that he was a very stupid, idiotic man. "I do." He regretted the words the moment they hit the air.
There it was.
As silent tears collected down Cosmo's cheeks, Wanda's heart, new to beating, started pumping frigid blood at three times the speed of a healthy pace. "Co-Cosmo? What did…What did you say?" He couldn't. No. She couldn't get her hopes up. If she got her hopes up, only to have them crushed back down, she might die, she couldn't take that blow.
Timmy smirked. Yes, even with death begrudgingly leaving him alone, the young boy smirked at his success. "Cosmo," His voice softened, and his smile grew kind and gentle as he put his hand on his godfather's shoulder. "Do you love Wanda?"
Cosmo's shamrock eyes, laced with tears, shot up to meet his godson's gaze. "Sh-should I?" He held Wanda's heart in his hands.
A slight, kind yet mischievous smiled graced Timmy's lips. He pulled Poof into his lap on the bed. "That's up to you, Cosmo."
The wand quivered in Cosmo's hand as he struggled to catch his own words. "I…I…"
"OH, YOU DUNDERHEAD!" Wanda exploded, her winter magenta eyes blazing with passion and desperation. "I LOVE YOU!"
Even Timmy's heart monitor, Poof thought, stopped for a moment.
Cosmo's jaw unhinged, his cheeks white like a silver shroud and his hands clammy to the touch. "Huh?" His monotone voice overflowed against the silent air.
As Timmy's senses traveled back to his mind, he leaned down to Poof. "Hey, Poof, I wish they were at their favorite place in Fairy World."
Giggling, Poof waved his rattle as his cheeks finally blushed with giddy joy. "Poof poof!" Not a second after, Cosmo and Wanda vanished.
Timmy turned to Poof. "Hey, wait a minute, what happened to that fifth paper?" It seemed a miracle that the one element to their destruction disappeared moments before he woke up, just buying them the seconds of time they needed. Almost too convenient…
"Poof…" Timmy's questioning tone, paired with a smirk, betrayed Poof's secret. "Did you have something to do with that paper?"
Poof giggled, flushing lightly. "Poof!"
"You're the best, kid."
A way off, somewhere in Fairy World, the sun hung limply in the sky, as if had tired from the day's tiresome turmoil. Cosmo and Wanda, somewhat unwillingly, had been poofed on the border of a lake, where memories floated just at the shore.
Wanda, silent and nervous, allowed her wings to relax, and her feet sunk into the damp, sweet sand.
Where he proposed…
The memories flooded back to her mind, unwanted yet desperately sought for.
That crack in the worn, pink chalked-painted bench endured, from where he jumped and hollered after her response.
The cedar tree, where their names, carved into the old wood, remained, surrounded by numerous other couple's names.
Her lips twitched as a watermelon, glossy lipstick came into her view. The tube protruded the grass, worn, dirty, and etched with ten-thousand years of time. She was amazed that it had survived that long, through all the pressures, the storms, through everything, it stood tall. Battered, but proud.
Finally, she moved her gaze towards her husband. His eyes, still shocked and wide, like a child, betrayed the calm frown on his lips. He stood us a few paces off, the bench between them. "Cosmo…"
Cosmo's head perked up his wife's voice. Was she talking to him?
Wait.
That tiny, miniscule, near-insignificant lightbulb inside Cosmo's mind flicked on for a moment. Wanda had told him she loved him. His wife, the love of his life, the woman he loved more than he loved the whole world, still loved him back. Was it luck? It had to be luck. Only luck would allow him to have this woman still love him.
"Cosmo, I know that we..." Cosmo halted Wanda's words, walked slowly over to her, intention and mystery that she didn't understand washing over in his eyes. "What are you doing?" He stopped short in front of her. The silence, swirling around them, confused her. It wasn't like Cosmo, especially in such tense situation, to quiet his own thoughts. Was he alright?
Finally, Cosmo broke into a smile. "Wanda, I really, really love you."
Before she could react, Cosmo had her waist in his hands and his lips on hers.
She hadn't kissed him in weeks. She had forgotten the taste of the kiss, the way he always held her gently at first, then, as if gathering courage, deepened it, and held her tighter.
When he withdrew, Wanda found her face hot for several reasons; the kiss, the redness of her own husband's face, and the fact that she knew her eyes were positively dazed as if she had just taken a bite of Godiva chocolate.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, almost angry at himself. "I just…I thought…"
She smiled softly at his stuttering. "Cosmo, look at me." She took his hands, letting his gaze slowly float up to hers. The invigorated sunset's light shone off his tears, trickling down his face and onto the grass. "I love you, I never stopped." Resistance to her own tears was impossible.
"But…you…I'm not…" His excuses, once clear as glass in his mind, existed as mere stuttering and nonsense out in the open as his wife gazed lovingly at him.
She leaned forward, pressed a kiss on his lips, and smiled. "Cosmo, honey, you've never looked cuter."
He blushed, and his gaze shot back down to the ground. "Promise?"
She tugged on his tie, magenta eyes blazing with passion and promise. "Forever."
