A/N: Hey everyone! I was thinking, with most everyone isolated these days, I might try and do something extra on here along with the daily (and weekly) chapters. I wanted to do maybe like... deleted scenes. Like, if there are moments from throughout the stories in the main timeline of this universe, from 2017 up to now, as well as in this alternate timeline, that were not covered in chapters and people might have wanted to see played out, I could write them and post them as I do them. Let me know if that is something that would interest you and what you'd like to see! :)

Chapter 46
And I Am Home Again

"Hey, little man…" Lucas whispered, carefully lifting Elliott out of his crib. The sun was just barely rising outside the window, turning the many leaves on the mural tree different colors than the ones painted on the wall. "Who are we going to talk about today?" he asked the baby, who didn't so much point as move his arms as he would have done, question or no question. Lucas looked at the leaves and focused on the first one his eyes landed on. "Uncle Dylan, good choice. Plenty of stories about him for me to tell you, how am I going to pick just one?" he asked, sitting in the rocking chair.

That was how their mornings would start, whenever he had to work. Doing his best not to wake Maya, he'd get up for a little one on one time with Elliott, knowing he wouldn't see him again until he got back at the end of the day. About as soon as the tree had gone up on their wall, it had become tradition for Lucas to pick out a leaf, a person, and tell his son a story about them. Sure, he wouldn't remember any of it, but it was thirty, forty minutes with just the two of them. Elliott would be staring up at him as he spoke, and Lucas would be just as captivated by that little face, and it would start his day as brightly as he could hope for it to start.

Today, he told Elliott about a story of Dylan, back in their Ninja Turtles days. He had to hand it to Maya, she did a pretty good job pretending like she wasn't awake back in bed that morning. He couldn't say for sure whether she was awake for 'story time' every day, but he'd say that more often than not she was listening in… Not that he'd bust her on it. The way he saw it, she deserved to have a bright start to her day, too.

When she finally showed herself stirring, as though she was just now waking, Lucas got up from the chair, slowly walking back to the bed with the baby, so he might sit next to her.

"Hey, my two favorite people…" she beamed. As though the sound of her voice had alerted him to her presence, Elliott had started to make sounds as though he was about to start crying, and so Maya sat up, the better for Lucas to pass her the baby. "Morning, sprout," she turned that sunny smile to their boy, holding his small hand in hers.

Today was a bookstore day. He had three days there, and two at the pet store. He mostly worked at the registers on the ground floor, though they'd have him fill in on one floor or another whenever they needed the extra hands. That was not the case today, which meant that, on the whole, he didn't get too far from his register for very long. He did a decent job of generally looking focused on some thing or another whenever he didn't have anyone to ring through, though in his head he'd be off somewhere else and thinking about something or someone very much needing of his attention.

Right now, the list of subjects was on a constant and unbroken cycle: wedding, school, baby.

He and Maya were getting married in just under a month and a half. Much as they would both tell themselves that they wished they could just fast forward and go through with the wedding now, they did sort of need the time they had left, didn't they? They had done a fair amount of planning a few months back, but that had mostly been anything they could do back then, anything that needed to be done before Maya was too far along in her pregnancy… And then eventually all their energy had been focused on the end of the school year, and the move, and settling in, and then along had come Elliott. There was no part of them that was able, any part that was very simply awake enough to decide 'I'm going to work on wedding plans now.' It had taken weeks, and finally they'd gotten back on track, but now the clock was really starting to tick, making those last seven weeks feel like they would go so slow and so fast all at once.

As they entered this home stretch toward the day he and Maya would say their vows, Lucas felt… oh, he felt ridiculously happy. Much as they had probably never envisioned the two of them getting married as soon as they would be doing it, with him twenty-two and her twenty-one, it was just as they'd said, ever since he'd proposed to her. Whether they got married this year or five years from now, or more, they would have known all along that this was where they were headed. Yes, Elliott coming along had made them readjust their schedule, but the end goal had not changed. They had envisioned for a long time already that they would spend their lives together, that they would be making a family together. Now they had done that, and they would vow to carry on doing it, til death did them part.

He was nervous, too, but only really in the way that you'd get nervous in looking forward to something for so long that you just wanted it to get here already, and to all go smoothly. It was hard not to feel like ever since last Halloween they had been sent on a course that cautioned unexpected, whirlwind changes. One second they had been starting off their second year of college, moving along as they were supposed to, and the next they were preparing to become parents, to move away from Houston so they might be closer to their families, which meant leaving their friends behind as they all continued doing what they'd been doing… without them.

For him, it was going to be just a bit easier. Yes, he was going to be attending a new school, with new professors, new classmates, but he would be continuing otherwise unchanged on his path. And in two years' time, he would be rejoining some of his classmates from Houston as they started the next phase of their educational goals. It wasn't as though he would be going in there completely blind, as he was about to discover.

"Lucas?" He looked up, finding a familiar smiling face staring back at him from across the counter where he stood. It was familiar, definitely familiar, though it took him several seconds of staring at the young woman to pinpoint exactly where he…

"Ramona!" the name blasted out from his memories, and it made her laugh. "Wow, I'm sorry, I just… it's been a while."

"Don't worry about it," she told him. "I wasn't sure where I knew you from either for a second there, and then your nametag kind of helped me connect the dots. Though I could swear I heard someone say you'd gone off to school outside of Austin."

"I did, yeah," he confirmed, remembering after a moment that he was working. He pulled the items she'd set on the counter and started ringing them up. "Last couple of years, I was in Houston, but I'm back here now, transferred and either continuing or starting over, depending on how you look at it."

"Why'd you come back, wasn't working out?"

"No, it was great, but Maya and I wanted to be closer to our parents after we found out we were having a baby," Lucas explained, and alright, he was kind of happy to see that little look of surprise and excitement on his former classmate's face.

"What? Lucas, that's amazing, congratulations!" Ramona nodded. "When are you…"

"He's coming on seven weeks now," Lucas was ahead of her, pulling his phone from his back pocket and showing a picture. "His name's Elliott."

"He is precious…" Ramona breathed, taking up the phone to have a closer look.

"So what about you? You're going to school out here?" Lucas asked, taking his phone back and letting Ramona know how much she owed.

"Yeah, starting my third year in the fall," she nodded, taking her card from her wallet to pay.

"Shouldn't you be on your fourth by now?" he asked. The two of them were the same age, should have graduated the same year, and so she should have been ahead of him since he'd had his suspension…

"Should, yeah," Ramona nodded. "I took a year off after high school," she explained. "I had a chance to attend this program for a year, so I took it. But that's a good thing, because that's how I met my boyfriend. He goes to school in San Antonio, but if all goes right, we should end up in the same place sooner or later." As she went on telling him about her studies, and her 'medium distance' boyfriend, Lucas was left to realize something very important:

"We're going to be in the same program then?"

"Looks that way," Ramona smiled, clearly just as happy over this development as Lucas was. "Here," she took her bill when he gave it to her and gave it right back to him. "Write down your number so I can text you and then we'll be able to keep in touch before the semester starts." He did as requested, and she took the receipt back. "Great. See you around."

Watching her go, Lucas had been filled with relief. He at least knew one person at his new school now. Oh, he was sure he'd run into a bunch of his former classmates, the ones who would have ended up going to school locally instead of leaving the city, the state, or the country, but this one would be right in his classes. More than that, especially now that her year away had gone and put them back on the same level, he would more or less be back on track with that path he'd had to leave after his suspension.

They would have started school for nearly two weeks by the time he and Maya would be getting married. It might have been easier for the two of them to do this before he started classes, but even if it had been the middle of the semester, or the end of it, finals and all, he would have kept whatever date he and Maya had chosen as the one that was to be their anniversary together. And they had happened to select the third day of September, so that would be the day, their day. He might have actually started to dream about Maya in her dress. He'd never seen it, so he could only imagine what it might look like, and it didn't always look the same, but one thing never changed, and it was that he would look at her and oh… she would be so beautiful.

Now, in his dreams, when he would watch her walking down the aisle toward him, he would also see their baby boy. Sometimes he'd be in Maya's mother's arms, or his mother's, his father's… Sometimes Lucas had him right there in his own arms, like they were both waiting for Maya to reach the altar, reach them.

He kept his phone in his back pocket, solely in the event that Maya called him and told him anything might be wrong with the baby. Alright, sometimes, like today, he also took it out so he might show a picture of his and Maya's son, but that was on the rare occasion that he might run into someone who had not seen him – like Ramona – or that he… had a new cute picture to show one co-worker or another. That was slightly less rare, but he was usually pretty good about only doing this when there were no clients, or when they were on break…

Elliott was still so little, so it would be normal for him to miss him so much when he wasn't with him, right? He loved his boy… There were no words to describe how much he loved him, and had loved him, since before he'd even been born. From the day he had been brought into the world though, from the moment they had put that small, crying human in his arms, he'd felt that love take hold of him like nothing else he'd ever experienced in his life to this point. Maya had carried their boy all this time, and there was nothing that would replicate that feeling in Lucas, but to hold him for the first time, that… That had been something he'd waited on for months and months, and his expectations were far surpassed, in half a second. So, yeah, it was more than normal for him to miss his boy as deeply as he did whenever he was at work.

When the day was done and he left the bookstore, Lucas was quick about getting his errands done, which included a diaper run, before heading on toward home. He knew they were still a long way from it, but Lucas already found himself imagining the days when he would come home and Elliott would be there, excitedly waiting for him, running for him with that bright smile he would have, so like his mother's…

Instead, for now, he did get as close to that feeling as he could expect to get from the boy who wasn't even two months old. When he came along and found him lying at ease near Pappy Joe as he watched television, he crouched into the baby's line of sight, and the way he looked at him… It genuinely felt to him like his son saw him and his brain lit up. There's my daddy. Lucas smiled, lifting Elliott into his arms and feeling like all was once again as it should have been.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Maya had taken the opportunity, with Pappy Joe looking after the baby, to call and check in with Kermit and Abigail back in New York. In two days' time they would be sending Sam and Cara to join their siblings in Austin. As worried as she'd been for how it would go, having just two of them at first, on top of the baby, it really hadn't been so much of an issue.

Sure, her siblings were in camp, and she had Pappy Joe there as her back up with the baby most of the time when Lucas was at work, but even so it hadn't always been a breeze. She never minded relying on Pappy Joe when Elliott was at ease, but then every now and again he would pitch a fit and then it would fall back to her, had to, and by the time she'd get him to settle down again, she'd just be exhausted. But then she'd look at her son, and she wouldn't mind so much the exhaustion. And she would hear her siblings' stories from camp when they'd come home, or she'd listen to what they were excited to be doing in the morning, and she'd know they'd made the right call having them come over when they did.

From what she heard now, Sam and Cara could not wait to make the trip, too. All their stuff had been packed, and they couldn't really help much with what was left, so they'd be hanging out around the house most of the time, not doing much. They'd already had to say goodbye to their friends, who were either off on vacation with their families, or at some camp outside the city, or in some cases seemed to have forgotten about the two of them now that they were going away. It got to the point where they had started to campaign for an earlier flight, but Kermit and Abigail maintained that the two of them would stay until the morning after next, as planned.

"Maya!" Wyatt's voice was heard calling, not a minute after she'd hung up with his parents.

"Up here!" she called out, taking the laptop back to where it usually sat, on Lucas' desk. Turning upon the sound of a couple feet landing after a hop, she found her little brother standing there with what looked like half a paper plate, with holes for eyes and a string attached at either side, to create a mask. It had been decorated with paint, and glitter, and other odds and ends. "Friend or foe?" Maya 'gasped.' The masked 'stranger' lifted up the colorful thing until it no longer covered his eyes.

"It's me!"

"I thought that tooth gap looked familiar," she pointed to her own mouth, right about where her brother was missing a tooth. He'd lost it just a couple days ago, which had been bloody for a moment but overall a momentous occasion, especially with the promise of the Tooth Fairy's visit. The 'fairy' had made sure to safeguard the little thing to hand it over to Abigail when she'd be coming to Austin. "Put it back on, let me see," Maya came up and crouched before the boy, who did as told. "Superhero?" He nodded, which lit up a glitter-encrusted section of his mask. "Got a name?"

"Green Wizard!" he announced.

"I like it," Maya declared with a pronounced nod. "Powers?"

"Magic!"

"Sure, sure," she nodded. "Well, I feel safer already," she smiled, pulling him into a hug, which he happily returned. "I just talked to your mom and dad, and we were talking about how Sam and Cara will be here soon." Wyatt, to no surprise, was possibly the most anxious for his older brother and sister to be in Austin already, and the reminder that this reunion was getting closer was received with great enthusiasm. He had commanded the effort to make space in the nursery/guest room for the incoming occupants just last night, after dinner and before bath time.

"Can we make something for them?" he asked as they pulled apart and he lifted the mask off his face, leaving sweat and a bit of glitter on his face.

"What kind of something?" Maya asked, casually wiping this away and fixing his hair.

"Cake?" Wyatt suggested after a moment's thought.

"You have my attention," Maya grinned.

The welcome cake became a leading subject as they all sat to dinner soon after this, with everyone pitching their own ideas for flavors, design, decorations… After they'd finished and the table had been cleared, Eliza had suggested Maya might draw their ideas into existence. So paper and pencils were taken out, and with her brother and sister standing on either side of her chair, Maya had made a cake sketch artist of herself, following the cues given by her siblings.

The next day, while they were at camp and Lucas was at work – the pet store that day – Maya and Pappy Joe had gone off on an errand for cake materials along with Elliott. It was almost too funny to see Pappy Joe in the middle of those aisles of molds and tools, sprinkles and colors, especially whenever he'd point to something and go 'what's that for?' and she'd have to explain.

Back at the house, Maya had put 'Nappy Joe' to work as her assistant in making the cake batter, the frosting, all so the thing might be baked and frosted and assembled by the time Eliza and Wyatt came back from camp. She also made some of the decorations that required a bit of sculpting, all so that they could get on to the decorating part once they were through with dinner. After that, it would be early off to bed for the kids, who would miss morning at camp so to go to the airport and pick up Sam and Cara with their big sister.

"Tell you what, that is one good looking cake already," Pappy Joe declared that afternoon as he sat at the kitchen table, the baby held against him. Maya looked up from where she was scanning the whole structure in search of spots she might have missed.

"But how does it taste?" she gave him a look, finding he was munching on the bits she'd cut off to level the layers.

"Won't have trouble finding takers to eat the thing, I'll tell you that," he nodded, making her laugh. "I'm serious, you should do this more often."

"I'll just add it to all the things I said I'd do while on leave and never got around to," she shrugged, stepping back and nodding to herself. There was no more frosting to do. Now she had to get this thing in the fridge…

"You've got a newborn baby and the other kids to look after. Once they've moved in to their new house you'll be able to do something about all that," Pappy Joe promised her. "Need a hand with that?"

"I'm good, you just keep doing what you're doing over there."

Eliza and Wyatt were in proper round-eyed awe when they saw the blank assembled cake. It was just as they had envisioned it so far and they couldn't wait to decorate it. Without a doubt, it was the fastest dinner they'd had, from plates served to plates emptied, and the rest of them could only do their best to keep up. Finally, the table was cleared, the cake was brought out, and the decoration could begin. Much as they had envisioned the whole exercise to be something of a mess, they got through it with hardly any spills. When they were done, the completed look was met with approval all around. It was a perfect way to say 'welcome to Austin!' to Sam and Cara.

As prompt as dinner had been, bath and bed time had been the same. Coming back across the hall into their room after wishing Eliza and Wyatt a good night, Maya found Lucas was getting Elliott into a fresh diaper and onesie after his bath. Coming up to the changing table, she breathed in that clean baby scent with a smile.

"At the risk of you laughing at me, I swear I had a really good 'mom day' today," Maya declared, as Elliott gripped at her finger.

"Oh, you did, huh?" Lucas just smirked.

"I was so on top of everything, nothing could stump me."

"Some guy tried to pick up too many bags of dog food at once at the store today. He dropped them, the bags burst, and I spent most of the afternoon cleaning up the floor and finding more of the stuff that had rolled away," Lucas countered, with playful envy. Maya bit back her laugh. "Yeah, exactly. Here," he picked up the baby and passed him over.

"Hey, sprout," Maya took him into her arms and brought him over to sit on the bed while Lucas picked up around the table.

"Oh, hey, do you remember Ramona from high school?"

X

The next morning, Maya and Lucas suspected that if not for the baby ensuring that they'd be awake very early, they would still have been asleep when Eliza and Wyatt came barging in. They wanted to get started with breakfast, they wanted to go to the airport as soon as possible.

"You want to go right now," Maya asked the both of them, after they'd finished eating and Lucas had left for work. They nodded. "You want to go right now, even though the plane won't arrive for like three hours after we get there," she elaborated. Eliza looked like she was reconsidering; Wyatt nodded. "Right… We're going to need some games or something."

She was getting much better about keeping her cool whenever she'd leave Elliott behind when she had to go out. It still didn't make her feel a hundred percent at ease, but compared to the first time, when she'd needed to be looking at him over Skype the whole ride out… Now she'd taken it down to feeling just a bit anxious and eager to be back. She knew that sooner or later he'd get old enough to understand she was going away from him, whether or not he also understood she'd be coming back. When that would happen, she might have to deal with his crying himself out and that would take her anxious feelings up to new heights again. That wasn't now. She had to remember that.

"Okay, I need… an action verb," Maya turned to her siblings as they sat and waited at the airport.

"Uh…" Eliza considered, as Maya casually drummed her pen against the back of the mad lib book she kept close to herself, to preserve the surprise of the finished result.

"Fly!" Wyatt offered. He loved mad libs, and he was getting very good at finding words. Maya could just see him showing up in class when he'd start school, ready to impress.

"Okay?" she asked Eliza, who nodded. "Fly… well, flew," Maya scribbled the word on its line. "Now give me a…"

"Is that their plane?" Eliza cut in, pointing outside. Every time she saw a plane coming in for a landing she would ask the same thing. But now…

"Uh, actually, I think so, look," Maya pointed to the board.

The mad lib would have to be completed later, as the trio went in wait of their arriving brother and sister. It had been easy for all of them to get lost in what they had going on in Texas and in New York, but now that they were about to be reunited, Maya had a feeling her four young siblings had never been so aware of how much they loved one another and wanted to be together. When they spotted one another, two here and two there, no power in the universe could have kept them from running to each other. They landed in a big pile of arms and voices piling up over one another, and Maya captured the whole thing, for her own benefit but especially for that of their parents, back in New York.

Maya: Four down, two to go. Can't wait for you to be here with us!

Kermit: You and me both.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners