Chapter 81
What We'll Become

Noah Friar and his mother were both discharged and allowed to head on home the afternoon after his birth. This day had been marked on many a calendar as being Maya's due date, and even though he had been born a day early, now he was going home on this day they'd all made special ahead of time, so… Well, it all worked out, didn't it?

Right from when they'd woken up that morning, even if they were still at the hospital, it already felt like they'd been transported into another world the day before, and now… now they were back in the real one, where suddenly they were parents with two kids, and they would be heading out beyond the confines of the hospital with its doctors and nurses… It truly felt like they'd forgotten everything they'd learned in the past year for a little while there.

More than anything, Maya had remembered the difficulties she'd had in dealing with no longer feeling Elliott as part of herself, inside her belly. She'd woken up, looking down at herself and needing a moment to adjust to not looking the same as she'd done just one day ago. She would touch what remained of her belly and… it'd just be her. Oh, she'd learned from the experience last time, and she didn't foresee this time being as jarring, but she didn't think she'd just go and be completely unaffected either.

But here was Noah, her baby boy, in the bassinet next to her bed, as he'd been all night and every time she'd had to wake up to feed him. And there was Elliott, awake and sitting up in his sleeping father's arms nearby. If she just remembered, all would be well. She didn't have to be so afraid about being away from either one of them the way she'd been at the beginning, with Elliott. She'd hate it and want to get back as soon as possible, every time, but she'd be alright and so would they.

"Okay… We've got this," she whispered to herself as she got up. "Oh, I definitely tried to forget this part."

She woke Lucas up, she had to. She wasn't going to risk Elliott screaming bloody murder if he saw her moving around and not coming to get him because she had to feed his brother first. She didn't know exactly how long he'd slept. Knowing him, he would have stayed awake much longer than he should, just to keep an eye on all of them. He definitely looked disoriented for a few seconds, but even before he could orient himself all over again, his arms were still around Elliott and they looked like they knew what they were doing, which got the boy to turn back to look at him and start to push at his face with his little hands.

"I'm up, I'm up…" Lucas promised, his words coming as pressed as his face. When he yawned through this, Elliott squeaked. "Gonna go take a walk to in the hallway to wake up," Lucas told Maya, leaving her to tend to Noah in peace.

"I'm pretty sure I told your big brother the same thing when he was born, but just a heads up, me and your dad, we're going to be all over the place once we all get home. Don't worry though, it actually gets funnier in there when we're not sleep deprived."

The grandparents had come back around in mid-morning. From what Maya and Lucas heard, Pappy Joe was back at the house, awaiting their arrival. They took this to mean he was getting the place as clean and orderly as possible before they came back with the boys. They also expected him to have recruited a number of helpers, as was Santa's wont, the better to make up for the limitations of his leg and – whether he'd admit it or not – his age. As spry as he would still call himself, there was only so much he could do.

"The house was clean when we left, wasn't it?" Maya asked her mother as she remained in her wheelchair, as she'd been made to, with Noah in her arms, while Katy had Elliott. They watched as Lucas and Shawn checked and re-checked that both car seats were properly fixed and secured before they could get the kids in there. "I know I was there yesterday, but it feels like so long ago now and I don't remember. It's not like we didn't know we were going to be having the baby soon…"

"Didn't you guys all clean up around our house after I had Alex?" Katy countered, and Maya smiled. Alright, so she had a point. Sure, in their case, her mother had been bedridden, recovering from the C-section, while her father had the twins, and MJ, and baby Alex to look after. They had needed that extra help. For her part, it would be her and Lucas, both of them upwardly mobile, and Pappy Joe, too, with Elliott who could barely walk yet, and Noah who had been born as normally as could be.

"Are you driving us or is he?" Maya asked. All the grandparents had been in agreement that while she obviously wouldn't be driving, neither should Lucas, as he'd barely slept.

"Shawn is taking the girls to their gymnastics class, I'm driving," Katy nodded.

Maya wondered what her mother would think sometimes, about the way her daughter's life was shaping up. Maybe she was just projecting her own worries, but then this couldn't have been what she'd envisioned for her when they'd moved to Texas almost a decade ago, could it? She was twenty-two years old now, married, with two children, her education left sort of literally belly up since last year. She'd finished her second year of college, just barely, before having Elliott, but then very soon after she'd gotten pregnant with Noah, and now… Did she have it in her to somehow start up again in like four months' time?

She did want to go, did still want to teach art, but from where she was standing now, it was just… Well, it was… scary… It was overwhelming, toppling over with so many what ifs and more than anything this pull toward her sons.

This wasn't the time to sink down that line of thought, she knew, but then she was hardly surprised that this would be exactly where her mind would choose to go. Lucas would have his own thoughts, she was sure, especially with his finals coming up, but he had his own ways of coping. Fixing car seats for one…

When they'd arrived at the house and headed inside, there was a distinct feeling like the place had been invaded by woodland creatures and they'd all scampered off, giggling and twinkling a second before the door opened. On that notion, they would be willing to bet there would have been a woodland creature, or one girl sort of like that, Lucas' cousin Dora, possibly her brothers with her, and her parents, and then who knew who else Pappy Joe would have called upon. Either way, the house looked so spotless and orderly that it could have been featured in some interior design magazine as the 'after' photo series.

"Well, look who's home," Pappy Joe laughed, the familiar booming sound causing two very different reactions in his great grandsons. Elliott made a happy squeal of a noise and started to move in Lucas' arms like he wanted to go to his great grandfather and storyteller. Noah, who had just started to wake up from the ride, did not take kindly to the surprise and started to cry, which threatened to spill over in distress to his big brother, so Maya carried him off toward the kitchen for a bit of quiet. "Sorry about that," Pappy Joe told her and Lucas.

"It's okay, don't worry about it," Maya replied, her voice tuned for the baby's comfort.

"Just needs some time to get used to it," Lucas told his grandfather. "This one definitely did," he smiled, putting Elliott down on the ground. The boy immediately went about getting on his feet, teetering and tumbling his way toward Pappy Joe, who scooped him up when he could reach him.

"Would you look at this fella? You're getting good at that, aren't you?" he nodded, laughing when Elliott grabbed hold of his beard. "One of these days, you are going to yank that thing right off my face, aren't you?"

Katy didn't stick around, as she needed to get back to her own boys, presently left with Cory and Topanga to watch them. With Elliott in his great grandfather's care, Lucas moved into the kitchen to see how Maya was faring with Noah.

She was humming Kermit's lullaby to him, which appeared to work as smoothly on him as it had done on Elliott, and on Maya herself back in the day. She looked up, seeing him come out of the corner of her eye, and even as she kept humming, he walked up, adding his nearness as reassurance. Whether she'd told him out loud or not, he did get the feeling just from looking at her that things were easier than last year, coming home the first time, with Elliott, and then adjusting to their new life with him, but all the same 'easier' did not mean easy, and the experience of those other troubles would likely sit on her conscience as a possibility for what the future would look like once more.

"Should we give him the tour?" Lucas quietly asked. It gained him a smile from Maya as she adjusted her hold on the baby.

"I kind of really want to do his leaves right now. I should give it a few days, I know, and it's not like he'll look up and go 'hey, parents, where's my name?' if they're not up there right away, but I'll know," she admitted as they headed up the stairs.

"Would you accept a temporary placeholder?" Lucas offered.

"Like the plastic spoon at your parents' house?" Maya smiled, making him laugh.

"Something like that, except it's a cut-out leaf and we write his name on it, stick it on those trees until a painted one can be done."

"That… would be an acceptable compromise," Maya breathed. It would keep her from overthinking it and, frankly, she didn't think she even had it in her to break out the paint and be expected to trace any sort of straight line.

Maya set Noah down in the crib in hers and Lucas' room, under the tree she had painted there last year, with the handprint leaves pressed directly to the wall. It had all been here, waiting for him, and now here he was… It felt like a dream, almost, but then he was very real, this precious boy of theirs. They'd brought him home wrapped lightly in the new blanket she'd knitted for him. Elliott had his own, and Noah had this one, and maybe she was sort of projecting, but it did feel to her like the colors and the pattern fit him very well. Both boys' blankets, almost subconsciously, had been conceived from the names she and Lucas had put to them before they knew anything of them, back when they had been thought of like those small things… a sprout, a bee. Elliott's was done in shades of green and looked to follow that little sprout as it grew and wove around, while Noah's was done in golden, honey yellows and oranges, like a honeycomb… As much attention as she put in all that she did, she had to say, those blankets were her favorite things she'd knitted.

"What do you think?" Lucas asked and Maya turned to find him standing there with a pair of paper leaves he'd cut out. She laughed, taking them as he offered them.

"Pretty close to the other ones," she nodded appreciatively. "Just missing…" she started, only to be offered a marker. "His name," she smiled.

In the same clear, loopy letters she'd done on the others, Maya traced Noah's name on the two leaves. When she was done, Lucas went and stuck the first on their tree, near Elliott's leaf, before bringing the other to stick on the nursery tree, in the same position as the first. Returning to their room, he found Maya still stood at the crib, looking to the sleeping babe.

"You should try and study while it's quiet," she looked to Lucas as he joined her.

"I know," he sighed. If he was tired now, he didn't want to think about what he'd feel like in a few days, after they'd have a few nights of double trouble in them.

"Pappy Joe has Elliott, he'll be fine, and I'll be here if Noah wakes up," she stated, almost as much for herself as for him.

"Hey…" Lucas put his arm around her. "Talk to me. What's up?" Maya shrugged, shook her head. Lucas tipped his head until he could see her face better, which incited her to look back at him.

"I'm doing that thing again, I know…"

"Usually, for good reason," he insisted. "Whatever it is, that's what I'm here for, remember?" he showed his hand, his wedding ring. She looked down to her own, hanging from the chain on her neck until it would fit on her finger again.

"You already gave up what you were going to be because of… everything," Maya started, veering away from ever suggesting she'd say 'because of him' about their newborn boy, because it wasn't about him, not even a little. "If you fail because you were too tired, then where does that set us back? And I still don't know when I'll get to go back to school, or if I'll get to, or… or if I'll even want to anymore. Maybe I'm not supposed to be a teacher anymore."

"I don't know about that," Lucas breathed out. He'd seen this one coming, of course he had. "You would make a great teacher… I would make a great vet, probably. But, you know what, I'll do great working with my dad, too. And if it happens that you don't end up being a teacher after all… and I'm not saying you should give up on that yet… then whatever you'll choose to be instead, you'll be amazing at that, too. I could never doubt that, it's just not possible, okay?" She looked up at him, that look that said how he was being such a Huckleberry, and she couldn't help but feel the charm working on her. "You just had a baby, barely a day ago. It's normal for your head to be in a weird place right now. Give it time, okay? Until the end of the year maybe. And when we get there, then we can sit down and talk it over again. Whatever you choose, I'll back you up, all the way."

"Do you know what I'm thinking now?" Maya asked, turning to face him, as he kept his arm around her back.

"I'd say at least two or three things, knowing you," Lucas nodded, and she let out a breath that felt like clearing the slate.

"Always," she confirmed. "For one, I am starting to think maybe you should be a teacher, the way you talk to people sometimes…"

"It's mostly when I'm talking to you though," he smiled.

"I don't know, because I'm also thinking your clients are going to be so lucky to have you, too, when you start with your dad." She nodded over to his desk. "For that to happen though, you need to study, get through those finals, and the rest of your degree."

"And you?" Lucas asked. What about your degree?

"It's like you said," she nodded. "I'll think about it. End of the year… He'll be almost eight months old," she looked to the boy in the crib, his honeycomb blanket… "We should be sleeping mostly regular by then, right?" Lucas breathed out, laughing.

"I should hope so," he confirmed.

"Then it's a plan," Maya declared, and Lucas hugged her. "Please, go study now."

"Yes, Mama," he kissed the top of her head.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners