I'm thinking about a bigger age gap.
Sam's 10 years old and spoilt rotten when her mother discovers she's pregnant. She doesn't realise for the longest time, never really shows much signs until the end, and by the time she does, it's too late. She doesn't know who the father is, it could be her husband, it could be... well, there were others. The baby's small, comes out early, and who's to say when she was conceived. She has her mother's complexion, her dark hair and dark eyes, and Christina gets to keep on lying.
Sam's not sure about the baby at first, everyone made it sound like things would change so much once it got here. But things don't really change at all. Her mother still always has time for her, and she isn't kept awake all night from screaming. Her parents are a little more tense, but it doesn't seem to change anything for Sam at all.
One night, Sam can't sleep. She's awake thinking of all they learned in class. About pregnancies, and babies, and all their needs and how to look after them. She can't stop thinking about it, there's just this voice in the back of her head nagging her, telling her there was something wrong, but she can't quite figure it out. It feels important.
Her feet find her way to the baby's room.
It's cold, the window's open, the room lit up from a nearby streetlamp. The tiny thing is awake with its hand in her mouth, big brown eyes staring up at her. Sam finds she can't look at them for long, it makes something in her chest ache. She doesn't know why.
She reaches out to touch the baby instead, she's icy cold. Sam thinks of what they learned in class, how much babies cry to tell us what they need, how often they need to eat, how they can't regulate their body temperature. She drags her fingers down its chest and thinks of how quiet it always is, how it never cries. How little her parents seem to feed her compared to how much her teacher said they should.
The thing whimpers when she draws her hand away, and in an instant, her hand is back on its chest, fingers spread against the bare skin, the cold suffocating out her warmth. She doesn't know what possesses her to do it, but she picks the baby up, careful to support her head the way they taught her in class. It's so small and light in her arms, she almost feels like a doll.
She watches the way it suckles on its own fingers and wonders when she was last fed. Mother fed her at breakfast, and again at dinner. She wonders if there was anything in between, there's a heaviness in her stomach as her brain goes no. She doesn't know what mother does when she's at school, but something inside of her is certain she knows what the answer isn't.
So Sam carefully creeps down the stairs, baby in her arms, determined to feed it. She's watched her mother make the formula before, curious, she thinks she can manage it. She puts the baby on the armchair, and takes the blanket from the back of the couch to wrap around her, making a nest so the baby can't fall. It whines again when Sam puts her down, but Sam hushes her softly and tells her she'll be right back. The baby can't understand, but it felt right to say.
She makes up a bottle, and checks the temperature, and returns to the armchair. She picks the baby up and settles herself down and tugs the blanket over her lap. The baby drinks the bottle so fast that Sam's worried it might choke, the way she does when she chugs down her own drinks. But the baby finishes the bottle and it feels like there's a balloon in her chest when it yawns and nuzzles against her chest, tiny hand tangling in her t-shirt.
Maybe the baby isn't so bad, she thinks, curling herself into the seat. She doesn't want to take the baby back upstairs to her cold lonely room. No, she can sleep right here in her arms, safe and warm. It feels right. She'll tell her mother in the morning about what they learned in class, remind her the baby needs to be fed more and that she's too cold. Maybe she just doesn't know. She ignores the voice in her head that says she knows.
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Deaged Oz AU - Meeting Atlas Council
"Well, General? You called this emergency meeting of the council, after all. What did you need to tell us? That magic is real? Again? We know. There are records we managed to access after the last time you informed us." The old woman's voice was soft, but vastly disapproving. Ironwood flinched slightly, while behind him Tip couldn't quite suppress an amused snort.
"... well, whoever you are? Step out and let us see you, don't be shy. After all, this meeting seems to be partially about you, after all..." The same woman kept talking, not letting James get a word in. Tip shrugged and stepped out, looking up at the large circular table. He didn't seem the slightest bit nervous or intimidated by any of them, not even the empty chair which Jaques Schnee might have occupied if he had lived. The woman nodded to him, seemingly approving. Nobody had noticed The Long Memory just yet.
"Bad form, that, child." Another member broke in. "Atlas colors are blue and silver, meeting with us should really have been done in our own colors." In fact, the entire council was in blue of one sort or another. As a color block it was impressive. As a statement, however, it bordered on the ridiculous. Vale had never done anything of the sort as long as Tip had known them. But then, ostentatiously overblown statements fitted Atlas rather well.
"I'm far more comfortable in green." He shrugged, looking a little fed up and not at all abashed by being called out. The man rolled his eyes slightly, muttering something derogatory to himself.
"Well, child? Introduce yourself." The old woman prodded, but her eyes had narrowed slightly, seemingly searching for something in Tip's face. From the way her lips whitened, he had a horrible feeling that she might have found what she was searching for. By her age, she could quite easily have known Winter Schnee, after all, and the gap between ten and almost twelve was far less than that between ten and thirty six.
"My name is Wintertip Pine and I'm the current incarnation of the wizard." His voice was calm and even, Vale accent obvious. There was a shocked silence broken only by James' aggrieved sigh.
"You couldn't have told them a bit more gently?"
"You're the one that wanted me here and it's my secret, not yours." Tip murmured, rebelliously. The other council members seemed to still be in shock though the old woman looked amused again.
"Oh good. The General has needed someone who can stand up to him for awhile now. I'm rather glad that's you, Winter... tip." Tip winced, she definitely knew, then.
"Prove it." A rather thickset man demanded, flatly. "Still not sure I believe in magic, but if you want me to believe that the current wizard is a child, I'll need proof. We all will."
Tip sighed and gestured. A glass on the table lifted as though cradled in a crackling green net. The man who'd tried to tell him off for wearing green instead of blue blinked at it and nodded a brief apology. After all, dressing to match your aura was also a long standing tradition by now.
"All that proves is that you have some form of a Telekinesis semblance." The heavyset man snorted. Tip let the glass rest back on the table, shrugged and called up his shield. That was rather harder to argue against. Either single example could easily have been his Semblance, but both of them?
There was a soft swearing coming from one of the council members now, though. Tip met their incredulous glare and almost flinched himself. He knew that face. Oh no... not now. He had been rather hoping to get through this as merely Wintertip Pine, not the rest of it. After all, the lady may have recognised Winter Schnee but she hadn't overtly pointed it out yet. Bruin would.
"Okay, explain. Why are you a child, and why call yourself Wintertip? Also, the Wizard? Really?" Bruin sounded rather more amused than Tip might have preferred, though the fact that they'd been friends for years didn't really help. He sent a dark look at James, annoyed than neither of them had seen fit to inform him that Bruin was on the Atlas Council. Right, then...
"There was an... incident. When the Fall Maiden attempted to kill me, things backfired rather. I woke up as a child and no, I'm still not entirely sure precisely why. However, I do appear to be growing up again, so it could always have been rather worse. Of course I'm the wizard, who else would have this bad a luck except Qrow?"
Most of the council was staring at the pair now. That Wintertip wasn't actually a child was, well, slightly less shocking than it probably should be. He hadn't acted the slightest bit like an eleven year old, after all. But Bruin was one of their newest members, drafted in when Lark Winchester had pled circumstances and stepped down for awhile. If they truly knew this boy that was seemingly the wizard, though, then maybe they would be too valuable to lose.
"Well, child? I assume there might be slightly more to your identity than you may have admitted to us. Care to share the rest of it?"
Tip sighed again. "Hello, I'm Wintertip Schnee Pine Ozpin. Better?" He sounded very, very fed up now, sending another rather poisonous look to Bruin who looked rather more shocked than amused now. So he hadn't known about the Schnee bit, then...
"What do you mean, Schnee? If you're Winter Schnee, what the hell were you doing in Vale?" This was demanded by an older man seated near the old woman who had first spoken, looking at him incredulously. "We can deal with the fact that you're Ozpin later, but if you're Winter Schnee and you're the wizard... that's an act of war!"
"Not really? They didn't actually kidnap me, apparently. They just snatched me from those that did. That was a good thing, too, since Jaques Schnee paid to have me murdered."
"That doesn't matter, they should have given you back." There were nods of agreement to this, but Tip just shook his head.
"If I had been given back, the likelihood is that he would have just tried again. The more attempts made, the more likely one could succeed. As it was, I at least lived to adulthood in Vale. It might not have been as comfortable as it might have been amongst my own family and those that loved me, but at least I was relatively safe. The only war that matters now is the one against Salem, please don't try to start one with Vale merely because I'm alive?"
The council glanced at each other, seemingly touched [and probably slightly worried] by Tip's gentle pleading.
"We'll see. We will need to let them know at some point that we know what they did, however... at least until the Salem debacle is over with, we won't press anything. But Winter? You're ours, our incarnation of the Wizard, not theirs. They have no claim on you."
Tip bowed his head, waiting to be dismissed. When they gave the nod, he eagerly escaped the stifling room, finding Qrow and Winter waiting for him outside. He nodded to them, looking weary, all the nerves he had not allowed himself to show suddenly evident.
"There won't be a war with Vale. I hope, so that's a good thing at least? Can we get out of here? I hate politics..." The other two shared a speaking glance over the top of Tip's tousled silver hair and followed him down the corridor. If it came to it, they could probably sabotage any interkingdom war effort well enough.
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