NOTE: This is another in the series of Tara and Willow fic that I like to write from time to time.
*****
His Mothers' Son
Don Bentley
"Lastly, the search for survivors from that charter jet that crashed into the Atlantic off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland will soon be called off in favour of a recovery and investigation operation. Though search and rescue officials in Halifax were quick to point out that the decision has yet to be made and until then the search for survivors will continue.
"After the break, Melodi will bring us the latest weather forecast for southern California. That's after the break, don't go away."
*****
*bring-bring*
Two rings, she thought to herself idly as she gave into the desire to roll over and ignore the phone. England. I must be in-
Willow Rosenberg was awake in a flash, her stomach cold and leaden, and her mouth awash with the all too familiar copper bloom of fear. Phone calls at, she glanced at the clock, at 3:37 in the morning are by definition never of the good. Transatlantic ones were even more so.
Snatching the receiver up, she answered. "Tara, what's wrong?"
"Willow, we're fine. Really."
Willow willed herself to relax, to dismiss the catalogue of evils and misfortunes, both demonic and the more mundane, that had flashed across her consciousness in the eternity she had just lived between waking and hearing her wife's soft, reassuring voice.
"Alex needs to talk to you, that's all. He's worried about you. Here, honey, it's Mommy."
"Mommy?" his voice was thick with phlegm. He had been crying.
"Alex, sweetheart. What's-"
"Mommy, you can't come home-"
"Alex?!"
"Make them fix your plane first, Mommy. They have to fix your plane so it won't crash too. Or, or don't fly over the 'lantic ocean. You can drive over the North Pole, see-"
"Mom can't see your globe, sweetie," prompted Tara from the background.
"Oh, but you can drive back, or, or fly back 'nother way, over 'nother ocean. Okay, Mommy? Please?" his voice was starting to quaver, and in her mind's eye she could see his expressive brown eyes tear up, the plump tears coursing down his cheeks.
Her own tears weren't that much farther off by this point.
"I will Alex. I'll make sure that the plane's fixed before I get on it, okay? I promise. Okay, honey?"
"Pro- promise, Mommy?"
"Promise, sweetheart. Could... could you put Mom back on for a minute, honey. Then you can tell me about what you did in school today, okay?"
"Okay, Mommy. Here Mommy."
"Willow? I'm sorry, I left the TV on during the news, and-"
"Tara, it's okay, really. Listen, uh, later, after Alex is in bed, could I call you back? I'm going to need to share a cry after this, okay?"
"Me, too. I'm going to need a cry, too. I love you."
"I love you."
"Here, honey. Don't be too long, okay?"
"Mommy? It was neat. We 'axplored' a rain forest, with snakes and monkeys and...
*****
*slam*
Tara cocked her head as the front door was slammed shut, immediately followed by the pounding of a single pair of feet across the hardwood floor.
"SHOES!"
The reminder usually had the effect of stopping the little dynamo in his tracks as he sat and pulled his shoes off, though a second reminder was often needed to get them put back in their assigned spot by the door.
This time Alex didn't stop until he burst through the kitchen door and wrapped his arms around his mother's legs, burying his tear streaked face in her lap.
The rather congratulatory air of the night before when she, when both of them, had smoothly calmed Alex's fears and concerns, evaporated as she knelt before her sobbing son.
"Alex-"
"Mommy, am I 'dopted?" he managed to force out between sobs.
"What? No, sweetheart, you're not adopted. You're our son. Mom carried you and gave birth to you. Remember? We've talked about this before," Tara pulled Alex into a tight hug, cradling his head on her shoulder, and started to rock gently.
To her surprise, her answer completely failed to reassure her son, who started crying even harder. It took a couple of minutes and a glass of juice before he had calmed down enough to talk clearly as he sat comfortably in his mother's lap on the family room floor.
"But, Mommy, Gretchen Jacobs says that two mommies can't have a baby, and that there has to be a daddy."
Gretchen Jacobs was a classmate of Alex at preschool, and the daughter of Tara and Willow's most recent bete noire. Portia Jacobs never wasted an opportunity to voice her disapproval of the Rosenberg household on grounds ranging from the moral dimension of 'traditional family values' to the way they maintained their front yard, a wild flower garden rather than the suburban issue grass lawn. The wife of a very minor municipal politician, she had high hopes for her husband within the California Republican Party, and clearly set a lot of stock in the 'holier than thou' path to political success.
"Alex, you do have a dad," twisting about Tara picked up a framed photograph from a side table. Their only formal family photograph, it showed Willow and Tara standing side by side, six-month-old Alex cradled in Willow's arms, and Xander standing behind, pulling both women into a tight hug, a bright smile on his face. "You just don't remember him, you were very young-"
"I know that, Mommy. Daddy gave Mommy some sperm so she could have me. But Gretchen Jacobs says that since my Daddy's dead," he whispered the word 'dead' and looked up past the ceiling. "That if, if anything happened to Mommy, like if her airplane broke like the other one did, then the police would take me away from you...."
A renewed round of tears and sobs racked the child's body as he hugged his mother tightly, burying his face in her breast.
"I don't want to go away-"
Tara calmly stroked her son's hair, whispered soft reassuring noises into his ear, and planned how to best dispose of Portia Jacobs' body.
"Alex, honey. No one is going to take you away. I mean it."
"But Gretchen Jacobs-"
"Alex, Gretchen Jacobs is a little girl who doesn't know anything about our family. I'm your mother and I know everything about us. Right?"
Alex stared at her as he wiped at his runny nose with the back of his hand.
"I know that Mom's favourite picture is the one you drew of us down at the park having a picnic. Right?"
He nodded his head. His mom had framed it and taken it to England with her so she wouldn't get too homesick when she was away.
"I know that you like peanut butter on Oreo cookies with a big glass of milk instead of cereal or toast when we have our breakfast in bed. Right?"
Another nod, this time with a hint of a smile. The first morning after his Mom gets back from England they always had breakfast in bed, then he'd cuddle up between them and tell her all about what he had done while she was away.
"Okay. Well, I also know where your birth certificate is, and right there on your birth certificate it says 'Tara Rosenberg is Alexander Daniel Rosenberg's parent.' No one can take you away from me, Alex."
Her voice hardened into steel, even as her hug tightened and her son squirmed happily in her arms.
"No one would even try."
"I don't have to be 'dopted?"
"No, sweetie, not the way we did it."
With that he fell silent for a long moment before looking up at Tara.
"I love you, Mommy."
"I love you, Alex."
*****
*thunk*
Tara pulled the toast out of the toaster, and after putting on just the right amount of butter and peanut butter set it down on the table in front of her son.
He was thinking.
His head was cradled in his hands, his elbows perched atop the table, and his eyes focused about a million miles beyond the opposite wall.
"Alex?"
"Could you have carried me?"
Stifling her sigh, Tara took her place at the table. She hadn't thought that this was over.
"Yes, I could have carried you."
"But Daddy gave Mommy his sperm. Did Daddy love Mommy more? Is that why he gave her his sperm?"
"No, Alex, but he did know Mom a lot longer than me. They'd been friends since they were your age. It just seemed the right way to do it if we were going to have you."
"Oh, okay."
Tara sipped at her coffee, patiently waiting for....
"Mommy?" he asked after a minute or so.
"Yes, Alex."
"I don't love Mommy more than I love you."
"Sweetie, I know that-"
"'Cause you coulda carried me. You said so. And you love me and Mommy. And Mommy loves me and you. And I love you and Mommy."
*****
*plunk*
Alex giggled then took the offered spoon from his mother's hand and fished the peanut butter covered Oreo cookie out of his milk.
"So, then we saw a-" he struggled for a moment then looked up at his mother for help.
"A lemur," whispered Tara as she idly ran her fingers through Willow's hair. The two of them were sitting up in their bed, Alex snuggling tight between them, the breakfast debris mostly abandoned, except for Alex's last cookie and his milk
"Oh yeah, a lemur. It looks like a monkey," he paused for a moment to take a bite out of his cookie. "But it's not. Mommy wouldn't take me into the snake place, but we saw some real monkeys, and two of them were wrestling."
Willow shot Tara a questioning look. She was answered with a nod, and a violent blush.
"Sounds like you had fun at the zoo," said Willow after her own giggles had passed.
"Uh huh, but next time you can come with us and it'll be even better, won't it Mommy? Oh, and Gretchen Jacobs showed me her mom's new wig. It almost reached my bum."
(End)