Chapter Text
Victoria Potts (nee. Schmidt) had always wanted to be a mother. When adults asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she'd simply said "a mom". She had always been the girl who pushed her baby doll everywhere in its stroller, and in high school she'd been known as the kind, gentle girl who babysat everyone's younger siblings. She loved kids, all the way from them being cuddly infants to moody pre-teens, she didn't care. She loved them all the same, and she'd been over the moon when she became pregnant at 24, with the love of her life's child. She knew that he'd be a boy from the moment she tested positive and she positively glowed throughout her pregnancy. When the other soon-to-be moms were suffering back aches and morning sickness, Victoria hardly even showed.
Victoria was just wired to be a mom.
She wasn't, apparently, wired to give birth.
Ricky's birth had been a violent affair, nearly two months early and full of blood and anguish. She'd nearly died, he'd stopped breathing twice, and he had to stay in the NICU in Saskatoon for the first four months of his life.
But Victoria loved her son more than anything. She loved his innocent little smile, loved his wild imagination, and loved how kind he was to everyone he met. Ricky spread peace and love everywhere he went, and she wouldn't trade him for the world.
That being said, she wanted more children.
She'd always wanted a big family. She had been an only child herself and it had been boring and lonely at times. But when she brought up the idea to her OBGYN when Ricky was three years old and relatively stable, she was shut down immediately.
"The fact that you and Ricky survived is nothing short of a miracle," the doctor explained with sympathetic eyes. "But lightning rarely strikes the same place twice. Your body can't handle another pregnancy."
So Victoria and her husband, John, were left with a big house with far too many empty bedrooms. They loved their Ricky, of course they did, and they wouldn't trade him for anything, but they both agreed that their family was too small for their liking.
Surrogates were discussed, but they were expensive and in short supply in Uranium City, so they resolved themselves to having a single-child household.
And they were happy like that, ignoring the hole in their hearts, until Ricky was four years old.
Victoria had been chopping vegetables for spaghetti sauce when John called her into the living room. He had the daily newspaper spread out in front of him, and was pointing to the headline. Victoria's stomach dropped.
LOCAL COUPLE DIES IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT - LEAVES BEHIND FOUR YEAR OLD
"It's not someone we know, is it?"
"No, they were a few years above us in school," John said. "But look."
He pointed to a line in the middle of the article and her heart leapt.
There was no one to take the child in, no family, no friends. She was going to be sent to the city for fostering unless someone volunteered to take her in.
"We have to," John said. "Darling, we have to."
"I know," Victoria whispered. "Call the number, I'll get Ricky ready."
Sometimes Victoria loved living in a small town, because the judge knew her and John and was all too happy to allow them to take in the child, given that they got their foster care licences in the next three months, if it meant that the child was able to stay in her hometown.
The four year old ended up being a little girl named Penelope "Penny" Lamb. She had beautiful golden curls and a small scar across her neck from where the seatbelt had choked her in the crash.
Penny didn't talk much, but her file claimed she'd been diagnosed with ASD barely two months before the car accident, so Victoria suspected she might have always been on the quieter side.
They had been worried, at first, that due to her diagnosis she wouldn't be able to communicate when she was upset about something, but they needn't have worried. Penny had no problem telling them when something was wrong.
"Too loud," she would mumble, covering her ears as she pointed to the TV. Or: "no, thank you," over and over when she was offered a food she didn't like.
Ricky, thankfully, adored Penny. He would lead her around the house, chattering on and on, showing her all his toys and offering to share. He told everyone he met about his new sister.
Victoria knew she should discourage him from calling her his sister (legally, this whole arrangement was temporary), but Penny always looked so happy at the idea of being a sister that she kept quiet. She'd burn that bridge when she got to it.
As comfortable as Penny was with being Ricky's sister, she refused to call Victoria and John "Mom" and "Dad".
Ricky would refer to them as "our parents" and Penny would quietly correct him to "your parents".
It was always "Ms. Potts", or "Mr. Potts, or sometimes "Vicky" and "John", but never Mom and Dad. And it made Victoria's heart ache, just a little, but she wouldn't force the issue. The poor girl had lost her parents only a few months ago, the Potts were just the people who had been taking care of her since then.
Penny was a very well-behaved child, but that wasn't to say that she never got overwhelmed, or never threw tantrums. She was four, of course she did.
Her tantrums (which usually occurred around bedtime), were full of pouts and teary eyes, but they didn't last long. In fact, Victoria was almost happy when they happened; thrilled that Penny felt safe enough around them to test the boundaries. Healthy resistance, just like the parenting books said.
Her meltdowns, however, were a whole different beast. The most random things set her off. Cooked carrots, raw peas, Ricky's favourite velvet pillow, even the feeling of her favourite dress on bad days. They all sent him into a whirlwind of emotion that only Penny understood.
But Victoria and John were determined to learn the rules Penny had to live by. They would cut her carrots into sticks, cooked a small batch of peas for her specially at dinner, and made sure Ricky knew to keep his pillow out of the forts he and Penny built in the living room.
There was one thing that was guaranteed to send Penny into a full-blown meltdown and that thing was storms. Not only were they loud, with unpredictable flashes of lights, but there was also a component of PTSD involved. Her parents had died while driving in a storm.
If Victoria knew it was going to storm, she could prepare Penny with a set of noise-canceling headphones and a cup of hot chocolate. Sometimes, though, the storm got to her first.
Victoria woke up one morning, much too early, to the sound of thunder and screaming.
"Mommy! Mommy, Daddy!" the words broke off into pure, terrified sobbing, but Victoria was already up and running, John close behind her.
Penny was curled up in the corner of her bed, covers clutched desperately in her hands, so small and so, so scared. Her doll, a plastic version of the porcelain ones she always admired at the department store, was laying on the ground, having fallen off at some point during the night.
"Oh, baby girl," John sighed, scooping her into his arms. Victoria swelled at the site and turned to pick up the doll and the headphones that were waiting on the nightstand.
Penny's tiny frame shook violently as she threw her arms over John's shoulders. "Daddy... storm."
"I know, Pen," he hushed, rocking her. "Must have been scary, huh?"
"Yeah..." she whimpered. "Where's Mommy?"
"I'm right here, angel," Victoria cooed, tucking Penny's headphones over her ears and handing her the doll. Penny accepted it, but reached for her and Victoria nearly cried as her little girl sighed, relaxing into her arms.
"Do you want to sleep with me and Mommy until the storm's over?" John asked.
Penny nodded miserably, clutching Victoria's nightgown tight. She fell asleep quickly, tucked safely between her new parents.
From then on, Penny stopped correcting Ricky when he referred to them as "their parents", and the next time Victoria came to pick them up from pre-k, Penny joined Ricky in running up to her, racing to hug her first. No matter who the winner was, Victoria just hugged her children tight and thought she must be the luckiest woman in the world.