A/N: Full lengthish chapter! Full lengthish chapter! I feel really bad about the two chapters before this because they were either less than 1k words or barely so... now I give you a long(ish) read! R&R!
Kishan and I finally get Ren to shut up, so we decide to leave the next morning. Nilima helps us pack up the Jeep with food, clothes, and diapers. Lots of them.
We leave just after lunch, which eliminates one meal we need to pack.
"Why couldn't you have brought the Golden Fruit with you, Kishan?" I complain jokingly as we carry another box of freeze dried food out to the car.
"Kells, I wasn't planning on feeding an army. I just thought we would need one box of food, at most. Not three," he responds, twitching his head in the direction of the three cardboard boxes full of sustenance.
"I know, right? I mean, I love Ren and all, but he does go a bit overboard, doesn't he?" I say just loud enough for Ren, who is coming out the door with a box of something, to hear.
"Yes, iadala. I am going overboard bringing a week's worth of food for a three day journey with two grown Indian men and a nursing woman. We go through food fast at our house with just the two of us. How long do you think this will last adding Kishan into the mix?" he says. He throws the box into the back of the Jeep, and comes up behind me to grab my waist.
"Hey!" I shriek. He puts me down only to pull me into a sweeping kiss, and I forget about going on another quest, and the fact that I should be pregnant right now, and that my brother-in-law magically showed up from the past. All I remember is the fact that I have been forgetting about my husband in the conflicting feelings of joy that Kishan is back and the grief for my child.
We don't move for a long time. When Ren pulls away and wraps me in his arms I notice that we are in the middle of the jungle, and it vaguely registers in my mind that I don't remember getting here.
I melt into his embrace, and for moment I am eighteen, outside the restaurant in India, trying to resist Ren's pleas to stay. I reach up on my tiptoes to kiss him one more time.
"We should probably go back."
Ren's arms tighten. "I don't want to."
"I don't either," I tease. "I said we should, not that I want to."
He sighs and his fingers fiddle with the tail of braid.
"I love you. So, so, so much, Kelsey," he says seriously.
"I know. And I love you more."
He sighs. "Impossible. But you are right. Let's go."
Our hands find each other, almost subconsciously, as we walk back to the driveway, and see Kishan grinning at us.
"Couldn't help yourselves, huh?" He says, waggling his eyebrows.
"Well, Kishan, we know that you still have tiger hearing, so we've been trying to be considerate, but it's hard when you're married. You should know; you have fifty-seven kids, right?" Ren teases his younger brother.
"Fifty-two actually," Kishan says jovially.
I shake my head. "I think you are trying to tease us. There is no way that any woman would agree to having fifty-two kids.
"Kells, it wasn't in a normal human life span. It averages about one kid every six to eight years. The previous child is a grown human by the time their sibling is born."
"Still," I grumble. "It's not natural."
"Kells, what part of my life has ever been natural? Even yours and Ren's. You were eighteen when your 'normal' life ended, Ren was twenty-one, and I was nineteen," he says seriously.
"I know. Have you guys ever wondered what would happen if we were all normal. I mean, like you guys were born in this century, and we were all human, no special powers or anything… What would have happened?" I wonder.
Ren lovingly kisses the tip of my nose. "I don't care. It didn't happen."
I sigh. "Thank goodness."
~TR~
Twenty minutes, we are all packed, and Kishan gets in the driver's seat as Ren and I slide into the backseat, on either side of Nik's car seat. As Kishan navigates the Jeep on the windy, narrow, pathway out of the property, I remember that he used to be a horrible driver.
"Hey, Kishan?" I call up while fiddling with my son's fingers.
"Yeah?" he responds.
"Where did you learn to drive?"
He laughs. "When I rebuilt India with Mika, eventually I had to tell her about cars. As soon as I built one, I just knew how to drive it," he shrugs.
"If only you had had that skill when you learned how to drive here," I say, sighing heavily. "Mr. Kadam never would have had to worry about his Rolls," I tease.
"Yeah, you would have thought that Kishan was a serial killer of little girls and the Rolls was Kadam's eight year old daughter, from the way he kept Kishan away from it," Ren says, joining in on the teasing.
"Hey!" Kishan protests indignantly. "I wasn't that bad."
Ren snorts. "Yeah, you were. Do you not remember running into the fountain?"
"That was one time," he says indignantly. "And it was almost five years ago. Why do you still remember that, anyway?"
"Because it was one of the only moments I have ever seen Kadam scared and furious. Oh, I have to battle the most evil man any of us have ever heard and die? No problem. Kishan is driving my Rolls? Oh, no. Not the Rolls," Ren says, pretending to shake with fear. "He almost did what?" Ren is now pretending to be enraged. "Into the fountain? He is never going to drive again on this property."
By now, tears are streaming down my face I am laughing so hard. "Stop! Stop, Ren! I can't breathe!"
He looks over at me to make sure that I'm having an allergic reaction to something, and then he keeps going.
"Oh, there's a new model of the Roadster coming out? I simply must buy it to add to my collection of sports cars in the garage!" he continues.
Bu this time, Kishan is in hysterics as well, and tells Ren to stop because he's going to crash the car.
"If you insist, Kishan," Ren says, keeping his impression up for one more quip.
I wipe the tears from my face, and watch Nik. He gurgles in laughter, and I freeze. I look up at Ren, and he has the same look on his face.
Kishan notices our silence, and looks back at us in the rear-view mirror.
"Is something wrong, you guys?"
Tears threaten to spill down my cheeks again, but not from laughter.
"Kells? What's wrong?" Kishan asks, more worried now than before.
"He's never laughed before…" I whisper.
Kishan, still having his tiger powers, hears me. "Really? That was the first time?"
I nod slowly, but keep my eyes locked on Nik. He toothlessly grins at me, and I smile back.
"Was that funny?" I coo at him, now that I am over my shock. "Was Uncle Kishan funny?"
He giggles some more, and Kishan is silent with us this time. I can feel the hole in my heart from my other baby healing a little bit more with every breath I hear Nik take, but I know it will never heal completely.
I push those thoughts from my mind, and look back at my son in his car seat.
I look up at Ren, and his face is lit up like a little boy in a candy store.
"I can't take him out, can I," I say sadly.
"We're almost there, so if you can hang on for two minutes, you can take him out," Kishan calls back.
I sigh, and Ren takes my hand that is not occupied with Nik's toes.
"If I didn't love you so much, I would fight you to get him first," he teases.
"And you would lose," I grin.
Kishan takes the car into a lapse in the thick jungle, and I don't waste any time in pulling Nik out of the car seat.
I hug him to my chest, and Ren comes up behind me. He hugs me from behind and then smoothes Nik's locks down with his left hand.
I look at Ren's ring; I picked it out, and kept his family in mind. Before I'd gone to the jeweler, I had checked with Ren to see if there was anything he wouldn't stand for, and asked Nilima to translate something into Hindi for me. The ring itself is a wide, brushed silver band, and on the inside, the words "Meri hridaya rehna tumhaara dwaara vah shataabdi," meaning "My heart is yours through the centuries," are inscribed. I thought that it would mean more to Ren if I inscribed it in Hindi instead of English, since I am the only person he is close to that isn't from India.
Ren and I are so focused on our son, that when Kishan says that he has everything from the Jeep unpacked, we are shocked.
"But we just got out, like, five minutes ago," I say, confused.
"Kishan smiles sadly. "You three have been standing there in your own world, bilauta. I figured that it would be easier to do it myself that have Ren grumble at me for the rest of the trip." He says this with an easy tone, but his eyes look so miserable, and I think I know why. I hold me son tightly, and take a deep breath.
"Kishan, did you hear your kids' first laugh?" I ask gently.
Kishan looks down. "No. They matured so fast that, while it was technically their first laugh, it was about a week after their birth, when they looked to be almost a year old and we had known that they would grow up fast, so it wasn't anything special. We never had the joy when your child smiles at you for the first time, because immediately, well, almost immediately, at least, after their smile, they would start laughing, and then they would start telling jokes. They matured so quickly that the sacredness of their first word was overshadowed by the sacredness of their first sentence, and then that was overshadowed by a speech. None of our kids know how to stop talking," Kishan says, smiling a bit at the end after wiping a tear from his cheek.
"I know I said that I had learned to take what joy I could, and then forget about the sadness, but it's hard. Especially with Anik being so young, and having his first laugh, and you three being such a close family. I know that I am just as close with my kids, and I know it isn't all perfect for you guys either, but Ren was right. I never got to see my wife in a rocking chair holding our child, looking like the Madonna. Almost directly after giving birth, Mika had things to do, and handed the child over to one of our servants.
Kishan looks up, and stops talking. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burden you with that." He picks up the largest backpack, which contains our tent, and stalks off in the direction of Phet's hut.
"No, Kishan!" I call after him, but he doesn't reappear.
I look over at Ren, pleading with my eyes. He nods tersely, and then picks up the other backpack while I hurriedly strap Nik into the carrier that goes across my torso. I sling the light backpack containing baby supplies over my back, and we dash into the jungle, not two minutes after our brother.