Summary: She will wonder. A brief glimpse into the world of Mrs Van De Kamp, the woman who adopted William. An experiment in future tense. Written for the Harem Late Season Women challenge.

Wonderment
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2003

RATING: PG.
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
ARCHIVE: Sure, just keep my name and headers.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: William post-ep.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Vignette.
SUMMARY: She will wonder. A brief glimpse into the
world of Mrs Van De Kamp, the woman who adopted
William. An experiment in future tense.
MORE FIC: http://fiction.deslea.com
FEEDBACK: Cherished, and slowly but sincerely replied,
at deslea@deslea.com.
NOTES: Written for the Harem Late Season Women
challenge, celebrating the expansion of XFMU.



She will wonder.

In years to come, she will think about her son and the
woman who gave him life. She will look over her
shoulder and wonder whether she is there. The closed
adoption was not her choice, and it is no longer the
norm, and the woman's insistence upon it frightens
her. Who was it that she didn't trust? Herself? The
father? Someone else?

She will wonder about the people who knew her son, all
those months before he came to their home. She will
wonder how the woman broke it to them, and how they
felt and what they thought. She will wonder if they
got to say goodbye.

She will wonder if they hate her.

She will see tearful reunions on afternoon TV shows.
Long-parted birth mothers and their sons. Mine, she
will whisper, at one with discarded caretakers, who
gave their lives to children surrendered through no
fault of their own. Mine, she will whisper, because
she has earned the right to say so, earned it tending
his blood and his tears and her own empty womb.

In her kinder moments, she will think of the woman
with empty arms and hold her close to her heart. She
will wonder who mothered that woman, or if anyone ever
did, and she will shed tears for her, this unknown
woman who bore her son.

When her son is a man, there will be lights in the
sky, a religious revival, a treaty. Stories will
emerge from disparate cults of a chosen child, a lost
changeling who foreshadowed their coming. There will
be darker stories, too - stories of a threatened
invasion, overthrown by the efforts of a courageous
army, among them the changeling's mother and father.
These will become the fairytales of a new age. She
will dismiss the stories, and laugh when her son tells
them to his children, but she will dream that she sees
the lights in his eyes.

She will never know the truth of it. She will make
inquiries, but she will learn that the ones who
brought him to her were killed, and after that she
will never ask again. Some truths, she will decide,
are best left untold.

She will love him as no other, this changeling of
hers, covet him like the purest of gold. She will
think of the woman who gave him birth, and she will
think of her sacrifice, and she will face her daily
trials with strength anew, determined that this
unknown woman's loss should not be in vain. When she
ends her days, he will be at her side, and she will
grasp his hand and say, "My son," and he will smile
through his tears and say that, yes, he is hers.

But all of that is in the yet to be. For now, she
watches him, sweet baby bathed in the light of the
moon. She smiles to herself as he reaches out, ready
to take life in his chubby little hands. She will
wonder, oh, yes, she will wonder. But not tonight.

She switches off the light, and leaves him to sleep,
for tomorrow is yet to be.


END


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for a Harem challenge to write
about a S8/9 woman, to celebrate the expansion of
XFMU. I decided to combine this with an experiment in
future tense. Not so sure how well it works, but it's
out there for whatever it's worth. Visit the Harem at
http://harem.deslea.com and XFMU at
http://xfmufic.tripod.com.


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"I'm tardy, but I'm sincere." ;-)
Procrastinating email since 1996!