A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!


February 11th 2021

Chapter 42
Our Hopes For Reality

They didn't spend nearly as much time awake once they reached the apartment as they'd envisioned. By that point, it really got to feel as though their exhaustion meters were being covertly filled, and by the time they actually walked through the door, the suspended weight of it all was transferred back on to them for bearing.

When they came through the door, with Maya's key, they found Katy asleep on the couch, Shawn equally dozing, though with Marianne still settled against him. Seeing her, both Maya and Lucas felt as though magnetized toward their girl, but they resisted, long enough to go back to the guest room and change out of their formal wear, transforming back into something closer to themselves before they could finally get their daughter back. By the time this was achieved, the noise had apparently managed to awaken both Shawn and Katy, now waiting for them and rising to embrace 'the woman of the hour.'

"Welcome back, Cinderella," Shawn teased, even as he passed the sleeping Marianne back into her mother's arms. Maya felt nearly rattled with relief at holding that little body again, feeling her breath rise and fall, feeling the way her little fingers almost grappled at her shirt. She kissed the blond head even as she turned toward Lucas. She knew he wanted to hold her too, deeply so, but he would let her have this moment, and she would thank him by handing their girl over as soon as she felt able to release her.

Both Katy and Shawn were looking to Maya now, it felt, like the grown version of how she looked at Marianne upon their reunion. They had been hit with so much happiness and pride for their eldest that night, as they got to see her on their screen several times over. And when she'd gone up on the stage the first time, for her solo award, oh… Katy confessed how they had rewound the whole thing and watched it a good five or six times already. Neither Maya nor Lucas struggled to believe this as the truth.

They ended up rewatching the televised version of the show, at least the categories where Maya was in any way concerned. It wasn't the first time she'd been seen on a television, as she'd appeared with the band several times on local morning shows over the years, but this really felt so different, and it was hard not to feel taken with the sight of it all. There they were, both of them… They actually fit in with everyone out there, didn't come off like they had a neon sign over their heads revealing them for being impostors of some kind.

"She was asleep when you won. We tried not to wake her up, but it was a lot, you know?" Katy smiled, her whole face looking like she'd been crying on and off since it had first happened, so overtaken with happiness as she'd been.

"Did she cry a lot?" Lucas asked, reaching out on reflex to touch his daughter's back.

"She didn't, actually," Shawn replied. "It was kind of funny, I wish I'd been filming…"

"Don't worry about it," Maya promised. She had a pretty good idea what they would have looked like all by herself.

"But yeah, she didn't cry one peep. I had her at the time, and I felt her move around when she woke up, but she just kept holding on. Almost looked like she was listening, huh?" Shawn tipped his head to check if Marianne might have woken up again, but she just slept on. "One day, you'll have to show her. It'll probably still be out there, won't it?"

She really liked that idea, to think about Marianne when she'd be a little older and sharing all of this with her. What would she think about her mom then, huh?

"I don't think I can sleep," Maya hummed, as she lay down on the guest bed while Lucas settled the baby down for the night, or however long she'd actually stay down.

"You sure about that?" he returned to the bed after turning off the lights, pulling her into his arms even as he lay down at her side. She eagerly pulled herself nearer at that.

"Mm mm," she nodded, leaning to kiss him a moment later. He didn't have to be incited in any way to reciprocate, even as he could just feel her drifting off to sleep. When she became still, and her breathing evened out, Lucas smiled, lightly kissing her once more before carefully getting them in a better sleeping position. He was down for the count in no time.

It was one of those nights when they were sort of on auto-parent, as Maya would call it. They were aware of waking up when they needed to, when Marianne woke up and called for attention, and they dealt with it, got her back to sleep, and then they carried on, too. The next time they genuinely felt awake was when morning came for real, and they started going about their day. They were spending this one in Los Angeles, still, though they mostly stayed at the apartment and relaxed. They went out for lunch, and then for dinner, and then they packed up so they could hit the road in the morning. As they'd previously decided, they would be driving back to Austin rather than flying.

"Five more minutes?" Katy asked, showing so much resemblance to the little Hunters and making her daughter and son-in-law laugh. She was finding it hard to let Marianne and them go, and they couldn't blame her. Sooner or later though, they were going to have to get on with it, whether she liked it or not, and she knew it, too. Finally, she let out a sigh and got up, allowing Lucas to take the baby and get her settled in her car seat. "Drive safe, alright? Call us when you get there," Katy went and hugged her baby girl.

"We will, I promise," Maya hugged her back just as tightly. She hated being away from her all the time, she did, and most times she could deal with it, had been doing so since she'd left home before college, but as ever it was that much harder to go back after a visit, especially after a long separation. With her parents out here in California now, the separations were always long. "You know, it might help make the drive better if I knew whether Doctor Jenny and Doc…"

"No," Katy laughed, gesturing toward the car.

"Hey, I tried," Maya kissed her mother's cheek before moving to say goodbye to her father. "Thanks for the tip, with the photos," she told him, realizing she hadn't done it before.

"Always happy to be of use," he nodded.

"Then you'll be happy as long as you live," she doubled down with another hug, and the way he tightened up, she knew it had meant a lot for him to hear it.

Much as she would have liked to stay up front with Lucas for the first stretch of their trip home, Maya was of a mind – and so was he – that she'd be most needed sitting in the back, where she could attend to Marianne. The ride would be very long, and rather than stopping for a night anywhere, they would just split the driving halfway and keep going, allowing whoever was playing passenger at the time to doze off if they so needed.

"Is she sleeping?" Lucas asked, a couple of hours into the drive, after Marianne had woken up howling. Maya had broken out every trick in the book to get her calm again.

"No, she's just staring back at me," she smiled, holding their girl's little hand in her own, leaning to kiss her fingers. Marianne poked and prodded back at her face, which Maya welcomed gladly. "And now she's giving me that look…"

"Which one? Diaper time? Hungry? Sleepy?" Lucas called from the front, sounding like he was inspecting their surroundings for the safest place to pull over.

"Gas…" Maya scrunched up her face, only to break into a laugh.

"Oh…" Lucas laughed, too, before relaxing and carrying on.

"When she's older, when she can actually remember it, I want us to do the New York to Texas drive with her," Maya stated now, looking on to their carefree babe. "Somewhere in the summer… I'd like to share that with her."

"Yeah? We should," Lucas nodded, catching a glimpse of her in the backseat, smiling down to Marianne. "We'll remember, right? When she's, what, nine? Ten?" Maya made a face at this, and Lucas couldn't say he was too far off from her on that. Maybe they shouldn't start looking that far ahead. Better to stay and focus on enjoying this time with their firstborn when her smiles were generally a sign of gas more than anything else.

Reaching the halfway point of their return home, the mission had several steps. They needed to stretch their legs, and go to the bathroom, check Marianne's diaper, see about feeding her, and get food for themselves beyond what snacks they'd packed along for the ride. And they never left the car unattended, both of them at the same time. Paranoid or not, the trophies were in there, each in their boxes, and it felt more prudent to proceed this way.

"All good to go?" Lucas asked, when Maya returned with Marianne. He had the bag with their lunch/dinner sitting on the hood of the car, along with a couple of soda cans.

"I think you'll find your backseat partner a lot more chipper now that she's all clean and fed," Maya nodded with a cheerful smile.

"She is, huh?" he grinned, taking the baby, and pressed a kiss to her cheek even as he brought her closer into his arms. "Always better, isn't it?" he asked her. He was vaguely aware of Maya snapping a picture of them together, though he didn't tear his eyes from Marianne for a beat.

"Hey, so I was thinking. I know that we will have been on the road for… almost a whole day by the time we reach Austin, but while we're at it, how do you feel about continuing on to Houston while we're at it, go and check-in with everyone out there? We could just go home, too, I mean by the time I'm through with my part of driving, I won't say no to a giant nap, so…"

"No, I think we should," Lucas nodded. "I'm sure we can crash out there for a few hours if need be before doubling back again. I'll reach out while you're driving."

So, off they went again, with Maya at the wheel while Lucas sat in the back with Marianne. They were headed into the evening/night portion of this trip, and Maya could just see how his reflex was right there, for him to offer to take that half of the drive, back when they'd left Los Angeles, so she wouldn't have to be driving through the night. He had resisted it then, she imagined, because he knew full well that she could handle this, that she was actually better suited to night drives than just about anyone he knew. Sometimes, Huckleberry had to bow to common sense.

Once the sun went down, Marianne was very easy to keep slumbering along in a moving car. Lucas did his best to stay awake, to keep his wife company, but he definitely dozed off at some point. One moment it was still dark, and the next thing he knew, the sun had started to come up.

"Where…" he asked, yawning.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? We're going to New York," Maya spoke from the front.

"Wait, what?" he startled. She broke into laughter, and now that his brain was a bit more awake, he understood she'd been joking. Looking out the window, he recognized exactly where they were. Another ten minutes or so and they'd be at their old street, where they'd lived through their college years, where their friends had made their home, their families.

"How's she looking back there?" Maya asked. "Gonna need to feed her about as soon as we get there, I think."

"Looks like she just woke up," Lucas reported, smiling. "You like it in here, huh. Not like that plane last time, no. More comfortable here, isn't it?" Marianne just stared up at him; it was all he needed. "How are you doing? Tired?" Lucas turned his eyes up to his wife at the wheel.

"Hanging in there. Pretty sure I got my second wind when we passed the state line," Maya reported.

"I think I dreamed you were singing," Lucas shared, his brow furrowing, like he wanted to recall the context of the dream but had already lost it.

"Yeah, that might have just been me," Maya told him.

"Were you trying to keep her sleeping, or me?"

"Wasn't like that," she laughed, and after a beat, he figured it out.

"You had a song idea?" he asked. She held up her hand as though to say, 'hang on' and, when they got to a red light, she passed him her phone.

"Latest voice memo," she guided him. "It's a bit rough, obviously."

When he found it and played it, he had to smile right away, first for the sound of her voice, and then for seeing how Marianne immediately reacted to hearing her mother singing. She knew who that was. As to the song, the bits and pieces that he got here at least, it definitely felt like her work, but at the same time he could tell this was not something she'd written for the band, or Ree, or… The more he heard of it, he had to wonder…

"The Marvelers…" he spoke when the memo was over. He caught her smile in the rear view mirror. "I figured you'd think of something before summer, but…"

"Hey, I never thought it'd come that fast either. Anyway, it's nowhere near finished. I can take my time with it, make it into something. Convincing Sam to help me with the demo is going to take months anyway."

"Sam?" Lucas laughed.

"What, I need a guy's voice, to really see, and it's about time I got him in the Hex."

"You could probably talk him into it if you said Marianne wanted him to do it," he joked, looking to their daughter, clinging to his finger. Maya laughed.

They stopped to pick up breakfast for everyone on the way to the house, to meet Sophie, Chiara, Asher, Ray, and little Giulia. Sweet Jujube had spent the night with her dads, and as the Friars arrived, they found the trio making its way across the street to join them. Both Asher and Ray were so eager to congratulate their friend on her big night, the awards. When they headed into the house, Sophie and Chiara were eager, too, though in their case it almost seemed like they were over-compensating for something, and it took a minute or two for anyone to put two and two together, but as soon as they did, the rest was very easy to understand. They'd been left conflicted, wanting so much to show support to their friend, to focus on her just now, but at the same time…

Maya only had to catch Chiara's eye, as she held her daughter in her lap, and she knew. They'd only just found out, Sophie and her, hadn't even told the guys yet, but they did, then and there. The procedure had gone well, and now everything had taken hold. Giulia was going to be a big sister. Maya and Lucas had never been so glad that they'd chosen to drive a couple hours more, so they could be present, so they could share the news and the cheer.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners