Day One Thousand One Hundred And Forty-Eight

Dear Diary,

Y'know, when I thought about therapy back in the day, I always thought it was about the big things. I mean, I didn't get too many sessions after my mom died, and most of those were with the school psychologist, who maybe shouldn't have oughta done that, technically, but she was a good sort who couldn't stand to see a kid hurting. So she stepped in and did what she could, which given my aversion to authority figures and people messing with my head wasn't as often as it should have been. Shit, if it weren't for those skirts and legs, I don't think I would have gone at all.

At any rate, I always thought therapy would be about the big traumatic things, talking them over and, I dunno, the therapist figuring out the magic words to undo the hurt I'd taken. To heal the trauma. But then, I think a lot of people think about mental health care like that, like a cut you can sew up, a poison you can take the antidote for, or maybe even an infection you can get the right antibiotic or vaccine to treat. At that point everything just heals naturally.

Thing is, there's a reason they're called therapists and not, I dunno, mind nurses or some shit like that. They're not there to apply triage, bandages, or medication, and I'm not even talking about the whole assed distinction between therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Which, given that I'm pretty sure she had the whole 'doctor' title, meant the school psychologist was actually a school psychiatrist, and I am now mad at my back in the day self for not spending more time with her, not just to get the good drugs or to stare at her legs hoping for a glimpse of heaven, but because some part of me still thinks that the advanced degree would somehow have taught her more magic words to make things right.

I'm also kinda chuckling at myself and not even wondering why knowing she's got her doctorate made me want that visual of her lady bits even more. Because you gotta be some kinda nerd to get a doctorate, and I think everyone knows exactly how I feel about nerds. And how often I feel nerds when I find one who's willing to let me feel them.

At any rate, therapy is just like physical therapy, or so I've come to think. It's not about one and done sewing things up, or even putting on a cast. It's more about that long, drawn out process of learning to walk properly again, rather than moving in a fucked up hobble that's all a body can manage when they're fucked up beyond all recognition. Yeah, sometimes our jury rigged family therapy is triage, sometimes it's putting a cast on something or sewing it up, sometimes it's lancing an infected wound. But just as often, maybe more often, it's that long, slow process of learning to function like a healthy adult individual.

Which I guess is important for kids to learn before they're actually adults, since learning how to adult after you're already an adult seems like learning to fly a plane at twenty thousand feet and falling.

So got home yesterday to find all the kids helping Marie pack up picnic baskets full of stuff. Paninis, pastelillos, pies, pretty much all self-contained stuff that traveled well. Which meant none of my favorite pastelillos, but I'm not gonna complain, because as noted, she picked ones that do travel well. Mostly the kinds with sliced up cold cuts and cheese grilled up before being put in the tortilla and deep fried, because as long as it's not like, refrigerated cold, it's still good.

She also managed to recreate something that I hadn't known I was missing. Not really.

She made chips. Not, mind you, French fries. But chips. I think I remember people in uncivilized lands where the food is a worse war crime than anything the Canadians ever thought up call them 'crisps'. But then, I'm a little biased. I'm from the bottom run suburb of the town where the mayor had to say 'uh, guys...' then took a bite of cheese steak and had his sign language interpreter finish his speech about how the whole fuckin' town was overweight.

Seriously, growing up on the edges of a town where it takes fuckin' Morimoto to hit 'oh, that might be better than the bodega down the street' sets the bar for 'good tasting food' somewhere in the stratosphere. Good for you? Get outta here with that. We're goin' to the afterlife with a casket full of Tastykake and cheese steaks, then bribing our way to the one we want.

At any rate, I was never a fan of 'veggie chips' until my Wifiest of Wifes made them. Carrot chips, sweet potato chips, yam chips... I think she even made beet chips or something like that.

She also made baskets and baskets of potato chips. Some plain with salt. Some salt and vinegar. Some with something not entirely unlike barbeque spices dusted over them. Some with a kind of creamy onion taste. Some that I'm not even sure how she got those flavors, but savory and salty and sweet and sour all at the same time.

I was very, very good. I had one modest handful of each flavor. I also told Menace that she couldn't have more than that until everybody else had their fill. I also made sure that everybody had at least one sandwich in them before they went to town on the chips.

I still kinda wish I could taste them properly. Yeah, everything's still muted. Not as badly, I don't think, but it's hard to tell.

I also helped Marie hide the extra baskets for tomorrow's lunch. I didn't even eat any of them. Which got me Murder Mittens pie for desert. Yes, bribery with carnal delights makes behaving like a mature adult less onerous, but that's why they call that kind of behavior 'mature' and 'adult'.

Or is that films?

Anyhow, when everybody was up and had some food in them for breakfast, and Marie had the Docs in residence, I stood up to get everybody's attention.

Kinda funny that now and then I think of talking to the fam as 'public speaking', but as I've noted my 'nuclear family' is now pushing two dozen people.

"Okay everybody, settle down a sec." Yeah, Anise, Felicia, and Isnomi had been poking one another. They get that way sometimes. "I've got something serious to talk about. Health and safety stuff." That got everybody's attention, especially those three. "As your sister Aisling can confirm, I've been talking with the Norns."

"You doin' that 'gain?" asked Menace.

I smiled and nodded. "Yeah. Again. But I found out more about what I asked them last time, and I think we're gonna have to deal with what they told me."

"So what did they tell you?" Bless Doc Glass for his knack for leading questions.

"That some kind of weird fractures in time and space have been making stuff happen around me on a recurring basis. Some of it is just weird, like the past couple Tuesdays. On the other hand..." I looked over at the Docs, then shrugged. "It's kind of an open secret that I came here from another world."

Doc Z blinked, but Doc G nodded. "I'd heard."

"Well, it's true. I can talk with you guys about that later if you've got questions, but the important part about that is that every hundred days since I arrived here, kids have wound up in danger. Sometimes it's been you guys, like with Lyssa or Loviatar. Sometimes it hasn't come anywhere near you, like with Marie Pesce. But always, every hundred days, I wind up coming across some kids in trouble. Kids I have to help."

Daya raised her hand. When I nodded she asked, "like the babies you brought to Lancaster House?"

"Exactly like that. I found them on my four hundredth day here. Sometimes it's just one kid, like Lucas. He was born on my five hundredth day here. Sometimes it's a lot of kids. We can talk about each time later if you guys want, but for right now, the moms want to talk with you and each other about how we're going to handle things going forward."

I saw Menace get her worst growly face on, and she said, "I'll..."

"Lyssa." I hated doing that, but she had to start thinking, not just emoting, or shit would go sideways in the worst way when she least expected it.

She shut her mouth, pouted, then said, "kay."

I nodded. "Yeah. It won't always be something we can prepare for. Heck, it's not always something we can fight. No amount of hitting someone would have helped Lucas. Or Marie Pesce."

Maze piped up. "So what do we do?"

"For one thing, we're all gonna talk about how to respond to emergencies. Like how to get everybody out of the House if it's on fire. Or how to get everybody into the house if there's a tornado or some big monster attacking."

They all looked serious, like they had ideas, although when I said 'big monster' Isnomi and Alex both looked like they wanted the response to be 'all available kids set to kill'. Which wasn't happening just yet, with Alex barely being... Well, shit, she was getting as big as Saffron maybe. Growth spurts from way more good nutrition, I guessed. Then again, it had been years since we adopted them all, way back at Lancaster House. For all I knew, all of them had been malnourished, and we'd just put the miracle grow in their water supply.

"But for right now, when we know one of those days is coming up, everybody is gonna be extra aware." I sighed. "I can't... I can't guarantee that nothing will happen to any of you. I can guarantee that the moment I know what's going on, I will act to stop it, to protect you, to Heal you if we need to. Just like I did with Lyssa."

At that point Jack kinda poked a sore spot when he said, "why not?"

I took a deep breath. Let it out. Smiled at him so he knew I wasn't mad. "Because I don't know what it will be until it hits. Maybe I'll think it's a big monster, and I'll kill it and Marie will make monster mash out of it, and then we all get food poisoning because it's some weird poisonous mutant variety nobody's never seen before." After a second I realized that I had the perfect example, and all of them had been around for it. "This past cycle it was Bonnie. She went into early labor, and I thought maybe that was the problem. I went there to save her; Aisling and Hailee and Isnomi came with me. But that wasn't the danger. The Child in danger was Aisling, who had a panic attack when Bonnie miscarried. If Menace and Hailee hadn't been there, the Lancaster nannies might have killed her."

"Why?" Alex sounded really upset by that idea. Not that I blamed her.

"Because Aisling was killing Lucas. Not on purpose. But they didn't know that. So that's two Children in danger."

"... sorry ..."

If everybody hadn't been hanging on my words, I might not have heard it. But I did. I stepped over and scooped her up. "No, Aisling. That was not something you need to feel guilt over. You were hurt and scared and you panicked. You apologized already. As far as I know, you haven't had another slip up like that, have you?"

For once she didn't whisper. Instead, her words came out filled with wonder. "No?"

"There we go." I turned back to the kids. "So that's what we're gonna talk about today. How we can be ready for stuff. Also, we might get a trial run on Tuesday."

Ria tilted her head. "Why? It is not a hundred day anniversary of Lyssa's attack on the Homestead."

"No, it's not, but there are more cycles than that. Apparently, weird stuff has been happening on Tuesdays."

"Dangerous?"

I sighed. Shrugged. "Last Tuesday, some really poorly advised Pirates attacked the gathered Alliance fleet and our new Pirate Allies. That was more silly than anything, but it wasn't exactly safe. The Tuesday before that..." I trailed off, realizing that I hadn't thought about it since the Pirates showed up.

"Mother Domnu." Saffron managed to put just the right amount of sympathy and control in her voice to let everybody know that I really did not want to be talking about that.

But we kinda had to. "Yeah. So you guys understand, sometimes the problem will be stupid and small. Sometimes it will be insane and huge. There's... There's just no way to predict it that I can tell."

"Then how do we prepare?" Siobhan actually sounded worried.

"We talk over what's happened, we figure out things that could have helped, we think of weird things that could happen, and figure out things that would help with those. We look for things that help in lots of situations, and make sure we've got those prepared. It's like," just then I got the best way to explain it to her. "Stabilize. Also Heal Injury. Neither of them fixes everything, but each of them fixes a lot of stuff, or at least holds things together until somebody can fix it properly. Get it?"

She smiled and nodded. "That makes perfect sense."

So... We brainstormed. We talked it through. The kids came up with... Not exactly a 'buddy system'. Something closer to an old plan I saw at school about a 'phone tree', where everybody had a couple people they needed to call in emergencies. Like, archaic pre-internet stuff, but here and now it kind of worked. They each had one or two 'buddies', each of those groups had a group they'd check on when they were safe, and each group knew who to come to for each kind of emergency. Monsters were me and Marie. Healing was Siobhan and me, which surprised me a little. Weird magic stuff was Saffron... Or me. Again, so weird that with three Archmagi, they were putting me as the point of contact for magic stuff. Then again, 'weird'.

I kinda wound up a little overwhelmed, when everybody was putting me on every contact list, so I was grateful when Doc Glass pulled me aside.

"You look a little overwhelmed."

I snorted quietly. "Yeah. That's an understatement."

"How are you feeling?"

I opened my mouth, and surprised myself with the word that came out. "Guilty."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "I... I can't... I don't want to put my kids in danger, but I think Lyssa proved that the shit is gonna happen whether I'm near them or not. But I still feel like if I weren't here none of them would be in danger."

He nodded. When I shot him a 'wtf' look, he quietly said, "most of them would be dead. Save those who would not exist at all."

That hit me like a gut punch. "What..."

When I trailed off, he quietly said, "from what you've told us, Isnomi would have died on our first Equinox here. The five children you adopted with Marie would likely have died during the plague. None of the kits nor Aoibh would likely exist. Jack and Karen would likely have died when the Spartans tired of them. Aisling would have died at the New Year's celebration."

I snorted. "When you put it like that, you make it sound like the whole every hundred days thing is a Final Destination thing, and fate's tryna right itself or some shit like that."

He shrugged. "Perhaps. The fates have done crueler things."

I let out a long, whistling breath. At his raised eyebrows, I said, "the Norns told me that somebody, at some point in the future, destroys the Moirai." After a pause, I whispered, "for my kids?"

I did not expect smooth, calm Doc Glass to almost hiss out, "as it should be."