Darcy shrugged and wrinkled her nose again, looking over at the twins as they played. "They look like him. Their father; not my husband," she sighed, clearing her throat and arching her eyebrows as if to shake it off. "He left me when I was still pregnant with them the first time. Before I came here the first time. And yeah, I had the joy of giving birth to them twice," she said with an airy huff and a playful roll of her eyes. "Once here with freakin' Superman and the Tenth Doctor cheering me on and once back home with Ethan. I had to change their names...Ethan didn't like them," she said. It was only partially a lie.
"The first time was completely surreal. A fictional alien superhero, a fictional alien time traveler holding my hands and a fictional doctor from the same TV show my husband watches back home delivering them on Halloween while the rest of Lawrence was going apeshit turning into personifications of their costumes...it was interesting. By the time I had them at home, it was sort of routine by comparison," she laughed. "It's a story, at least, right?"
Helena went on to say that she felt like her maternal instincts were rusty and Darcy shook her head. "It's like riding a bike. You don't forget," she replied. "I know, because I went from being a mom to not-yet-being a mom and back to being a mom," she said with a ghost of a smile. She realized that talking about her kids with someone who'd come over to forget that she'd lost her own was probably less than tactful, then, and Darcy changed tack, welcoming the change of subject that Helena offered by bringing up the animal thing.
"Oh, God, yeah...yeah we did. We were tigers...that was interesting. The apartment was in shambles when it was over, between the two of them rough-housing and the messes we all made when Dick and Bart were over for steaks...ugh, just thinking about it," Darcy said, making a face and shuddering. "A lynx, though, huh? Were you at least smart enough to leave the complex? I was afraid of taking the boys out because they were so small and we were white; we'd have stood out before we could find a place to hide out. In retrospect, I wish I'd tried," she added with a smirk and a laugh.