Ch. 4, Part 3: The Blue and the Green

 (Continued from part 2.)

You know how some teens are when they start out at high school? At first, they're all confident, and raring to go and make a name for themselves?

And then there are other teens who are all shy at first, then they get all confident?

I don't think Echo fit either of those. She was...she was her own woman. Shark and I were worried about her, at first. We didn't want any boy in school to tease her for anything.

In fact, Shark promised her that if any guys got fresh with her without her permission, he wasn't afraid to bust some heads for her.

 Echo said that it wasn't a problem. She could handle it. I know she could, but it still didn't mean we worried about our little girl.

As for Amaranth, well, she did her own thing.

We actually had to convince her to leave her doll at home. We assured her, nothing was going to happen to her little Pal. She held onto it like some kind of security blanket.

As for her school performance, well, she kept wanting to see how her big sister was doing, you know, with all the grades in one building and all. They kept sitting together during lunch.

Amaranth even wanted to go into the same after school shop class Echo was enrolled into. When we told her she was too young, though, she settled for scouting.

Both of us were happy for our daughters, starting to grow up on their own, and the time was just going too fast. Before we knew it, we were going to be attending Echo's graduation.

I made sure not to say that in front of Shark, though. The last time I did, he started bawling about how they weren't babies anymore, and he just wanted them to stay small just a little longer.

Well, I couldn't exactly control time. What, did I look like that green-haired chick from Sailor Moon? If I could, I would. But I couldn't, so...

Time just kept going, whether we wanted it to, or not. And time stopped for at least one of our relatives, in a sense.

Shark told me once that, for one reason or another, he felt compelled to visit his grandma Marigold, who apparently moved in with Bill, Julienne, and Wilhelmina.

He said it wasn't anything special, just some casual conversations between the two of them. Still, deep down there was something different about this visit.

He offered to spend the night at their house, but Marigold said it wasn't necessary. She was just happy to see her grandson at least one last time before her time was up.

That was why Shark knew it was different. He knew she was going back to the afterlife, and wanted to say goodbye.

This time, he made sure he did, unlike the last time he lost her. Shark spent as much time as he could with her, until she asked that he should head home.

Both of them knew it was coming, but neither of them were quite ready to say their final farewells.

He told her, though, that no matter what happens, she would always be his grandma, and he was going to miss her dearly.

Then...he left.

By around noontime the next day, she was gone. Wilhelmina found the urn with her ashes on the kitchen counter, which she gave to us for safekeeping.

What were we gonna do with an old lady's ashes? Shark and I decided to get a plot of land in the graveyard, and gave her a proper burial.

He cried, of course, but he had good reason to. He still loved his granny, whether she was a former criminal or not.

Now that she was gone for good, it was almost like a punch to the gut for him. Not only that, but he was worried about how his grandpa was taking it.

Oh, but we didn't have to worry about that old bastard.

Max, too, felt himself about to leave this world. But apparently, he made his mark, definitely after Marigold left.

One night, Shark got off work early, and decided to some see me at the diner. He said he wanted to wait for me to finish my shift, and we could go home together.

Right before he went in, he caught up with his Grandpa. 

Max told him that he was doing all right, given he was a ghost that recently lost his wife. He made nice with Shark, asked how he was doing, the works.

Then he asked him if he could do him a favor. Apparently, Max got a little...well, he got a bit "lonely" in the time Marigold was gone.

So, he found a girl to have a one-night stand with, they found themselves in the back of the movie theater, yadda yadda yadda, the girl got wound up pregnant.

Shark was a little disappointed, at first, thinking his grandpa moved on from his grandma so quickly. What was done was done, though. Shark decided to honor his grandpa's wishes.

But when it came time to take the girl to the hospital...

(Huh. She don't look pregnant, for some reason.)

Well, the first thing Shark said was, "Nice to see you again, Jade!" And, well, I couldn't help but facepalm.

Of all the women Max had to do the nasty with, it was with a woman roughly the same age as his own grandson.

That would make for some awkward family reunions, I was thinking back then. Not to mention that Max was gonna have a hell of a time explaining this to Marigold when he joined her.

After the whole weirdness was out of the way, Shark ended up taking Jade to the hospital. Not every day a man drives his old classmate to a place where she can give birth to his aunt and uncle.

I kind of felt bad for Jade. If she just had one child out of wedlock, she'd probably been fine, these things happen all the time.

With twins, it's a little harder, what with two mouths to feed. But when one twin is born a ghost, and a blue one at that...

Well, whatever good reputation Jade had essentially went down the toilet. Most people in town were aware of Max being a ghost by now.

The fact that Jade's daughter was somehow born a ghost, most people put two and two together, and figured out who the father was.

Personally, I found the whole damn thing mind-boggling. What kind of higher power did you have to piss off to have that happen to you?

Shark loved his aunt and uncle, even if he was a lot older than them.  He still never looked at his grandpa the same way again, after that.

And after Max was gone, Jade was left alone with two kids to raise. Thankfully, Shark asked if she could move next door, or at least nearby. That way, if she needed anything, we weren't too far away.

It certainly wouldn't be hard to remember the kid's name, at least, what with names like Midori and Greenlee. Then again, maybe Jade was just trying to keep the theme going with her family.

That, and I kind of knew she let Shark name one of the kids.

When she did need something, sometimes Shark was busy, so he sent me over instead to watch the kids.

 I didn't mind it too much. I just had to make sure the both of them stayed out of trouble most of the time.

But then, when Midori was able to crawl through walls, it could prove she was a handful. Sometimes I wondered if her brother was jealous of what she could do.

I know I was. 

But other than that, they were just normal kids. Besides one technically being dead, they were just like any other set of fraternal twins.

What I didn't plan on was how Shark felt afterward.

I remember one night I was talking about how Jade's kids behaved earlier that day. Shark, weirdly enough, just nodded and listened.

When I was done talking to him about how Greenlee used my head as target practice with a bowl of cereal, he just looked down at the foot of the bed and smiled.

I was compelled to ask what was on his mind. He told me in this kind of shy voice, "Is it bad that all this talk of kids makes me want another one?"

At first, I didn't know what to say. He still wanted more kids, though with Echo and Amaranth growing up, maybe he wanted another baby to hold and to rely on him.

Then I joked with him about it, saying Social Services might want to keep some daughters for some other couples looking to adopt.

He said that wouldn't be a problem, because this time, he wanted a son.

And a son he got. By the time I got home from work, the Social Services had already dropped him off.

I only wish Shark waited to name him until I got home. Otherwise, maybe he wouldn't have named him after a guy from Mass Effect.

Shark gave me a dirty look and asked me, "What's wrong with naming him Kaidan?"

Nothing was wrong with naming our firstborn son that. I just didn't think he really looked like a "Kaidan".

Then Shark told me I didn't really look like a Sinbad. I told him he didn't really look like a Shark, and it just kept going from there.

Later, Shark told me he named Kaidan that because he felt he'd grow up to be a kind person. Just like his namesake from Mass Effect.

With that in mind, I was hoping he'd grow up that way, as well. I actually wished this of all my kids, but not as early as with Kaidan.

Shark and I made sure not to be those strict, stuffy, intolerant parents towards our kids. Whatever our kids wanted to be when they grew up, we would make sure to support them as much as we could.

We just had one rule: never become criminals. If that rule was broken, we'd stop supporting them, no questions asked. It wasn't that we didn't care. It was just that I didn't want any of my kids to make the same mistakes I did.

Our daughters were growing up, so we didn't need to worry too much about them. Kaidan was still a baby, though. We kept a close eye on him.

But he was a smart baby. From the time he knew how to walk, he roamed around the house like a little adventurer. He also knew what he could or couldn't get into, with a little help from his parents and sisters.

After a while, he learned enough to keep himself out of trouble. We still had to baby-proof the house, and keep him in the same room with one of the other family members, but other than that, he was fine.

Kaidan learned that the "cats" were the furry things sniffing his toes, the strange red things on the coffee table were "flowers", and "Daddy Sinbad" was the guy in the kitchen kicking the dishwasher and screaming that it was 'a malfunctioning piece of shit'.

But besides my filthy mouth, which I did try to tone down around the children, it was all good. It was just this happy little family we had going on there. I almost wished it would've been that way forever.

But everyone knows that's not how it works. Everyone grows up and gets older, whether they want to or not.

It wasn't until Echo was in her last year of high school, that the reality of it all hit me right in the face...

(A/N: Chapter 4, completed.)

(Note: The kids are all aging strangely, because at some point, I actually had aging turned off. It wasn't until around the time Amaranth was a child, that I finally turned it back on.)