Author's Note: This started out as a response to bowlerhat_girl's Alphabet Fic request B is for Babies, featuring Emily. Soon, the idea grew - thanks to nannerz2cool - into what you'll see here. This is an AU, not a romance. Emily is a single artist and foster mom. Dave and Carolyn Rossi live down the street, and are trusted friends. In upcoming chapters know that you will be seeing the rest of the team. I write these types of stories because they are what I enjoy reading. If it's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip it. If you do read it, know I strive for realism which means it may not always be happy, and it may feature things you are not comfortable reading. Check the warnings. If you're in for the long-haul, I hope you enjoy it!

Is a mother still a mother without children? Is a child still a child without parents?

This question set Emily searching just before her 30th birthday. Searching for a way to affect the world. A way to be a mother, though she had no children. A way to be more than a locally known artist on a quiet street. Opening her home to foster children seemed to be a way to answer all the unanswerable questions. To fulfill her calling and atone for a past full of mistakes. She came from money, so that wasn't an issue. She was single but stable and had a huge house, imagining the day when she would get married and fill its rooms with kids of her own. That dream hadn't come true. But this one might.

The process itself took months - there were classes to take and safety measures to have in place, and clothing and toys for any age child from newborn to ten years old. The last thing Emily expected was to be approved on Christmas Eve and get her first call the very next day.

"We have twin boys, who just came into care. Newborns. Could you take them?" her caseworker inquired, just as Emily had gotten comfortable in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine to celebrate this new phase in her life.

Babies. What did she really know about babies?

"It would be a short term placement, just until their biological mother is released from the hospital. She had a difficult pregnancy and delivery and…" She kept speaking, but Emily didn't hear the rest.

"I'll take them," she said.

What the hell. If she was at a loss, she could always ask that nice couple, Dave and Carolyn, who live down the street. Emily had known them for years. Dave had served in the military and now worked as a police officer. His wife of over twenty years, Carolyn, was an elementary school teacher, who mostly subbed now. They attended mass at the same Catholic church, and Emily considered them friends. Good friends. They took all the classes, too, and were cleared to take care of the kids who came into Emily's care, if something were to come up for her. They were older, too. They probably knew all about babies.

So, she had dumped the wine down the sink - grateful she hadn't sampled it yet - and went to her garage. She found the two car seats and strapped them in, and then drove to the local hospital, to pick up her first two boys.

Their names were Jack and Henry, they were three days old, and Emily was in for one hell of a ride. Or so she had thought at the time. Her total terror at being solely responsible for two tiny humans gave way to wonder and awe, as she held the two small boys - one in each arm - and stared at them.

Jack, in her left arm, slept peacefully. He was frighteningly small, at five pounds - as though Henry had taken all the space and nutrients and left his brother only what he was too full to consume. Jack had light brown hair, and his eyes still hadn't settled on a color yet. Henry, on the other hand, was a robust eight pounds, and completely bald. He was wide-awake while Jack slept, and stared at Emily, as if he wondered what they might do next.

When Henry started fussing, loud enough to wake Jack and send him into hysterics, Emily panicked. She picked up the phone and dialed Dave and Carolyn Rossi.

"Dave, I've got two. What do I do?" she asked, not caring if she sounded incompetent. Most mothers had nine months to prepare for their babies. She had gotten approximately twenty minutes.

"Two? Two, what?" he asked, confused. Emily could hear a house full of family in the background. She imagined the pungent, warm fragrances of Dave's Italian cooking and was, for a moment, envious. All she'd managed for dinner was…well…nothing. She'd been rushing around trying to put the finishing touches on the house and a gate around the Christmas tree, at the thought that at any moment, she might have little ones running around.

"Babies, Dave! Two babies!" Was it really possible that he had forgotten?

"Are you having second thoughts?" he asked quietly, no judgment in his tone, just a warm, paternal concern that Emily never heard from her own father.

"No, but I never thought I'd get twins my first time!" she said, blinking back tears.

"Carolyn!" she heard Dave call. "Emily's got twins!"

"Tell her to sit tight! We'll be right there!" Carolyn promised.

"No… I didn't mean.." Emily objected weakly, despite the crying that had increased to an earsplitting level. "What about your family?"

"Kiddo, last time I checked, you qualified…"

They hung up, and in minutes, Dave and Carolyn were letting themselves into Emily's house.

Carolyn gave Emily a crash course on making formula while Dave held a baby in each arm, looking as if Christmas had come all over again.

"These boys are gonna be handsome devils someday…" he said. "Emily, you got any cigars?"

"Keep dreaming," Emily laughed, tossing the words over her shoulder. "And they're only staying a few days, so don't get too attached…" she warned.

"We'll just make them a damn good few days, then, won't we boys?" Emily overheard Dave saying to the babies, who were still hungry.

Carolyn sent her a look as she warmed up a second bottle carefully. "Honey, no matter how long you know them, you always get attached.

"How did you get so good at this?" Emily asked.

"A year into our marriage, David and I had a little boy. James. He had a heart condition and only lived a few months…" she confided, sadness in her eyes. Carolyn's hands, though, kept admirably busy, accomplishing the task ahead.

"I'm so sorry," Emily apologized.

But Carolyn just brought the bottles to her husband and Emily watched silently as he handed Jack to Carolyn and kept Henry to feed.

Now, less than a week later, Emily faced saying goodbye to the boys she'd fallen in love with. Jack, and his quiet nature, had a strange habit of sprawling out to sleep. Henry, on the other hand, preferred to be held close and cuddled. In just six days, Emily had mastered simultaneous bottle making, and feeding. She learned to change tiny diapers and bathe impossibly small bodies. She learned that nothing smelled quite as sweet as the mix of Johnson and Johnson's shampoo and baby powder. That nothing was cuter than the sight of these two brothers, somehow sensing each other's presence in the same crib and flailing around until they could touch each other.

When they left on New Year's Day - just as Carolyn promised - it broke her heart, and Emily wasn't sure she could keep doing this. But instead of drowning in the sadness, she went on a mini vacation to clear her head and came back, renewed, and ready for the next children who needed her.

She never imagined that, ten years later, Emily would have watched 50-some kids come and go. That Jack and Henry's mother would persist in sending Emily Christmas cards each year, showing them, a year older each time. Her cupboard doors are covered in Christmas cards, but the one from her first babies is treasured a little more deeply. The ten-year-olds who smile back at her from the picture hardly resemble their baby selves. Jack won the school spelling bee this year, and Henry made the traveling baseball team for the 11 and up age division.

Though she didn't raise these boys, Emily finds, she couldn't be prouder.

Three little girls - sisters - have just left Emily's care and she is on her way to take a weekend for herself. Dave and Carolyn have offered their cabin. So Emily will go, and recharge. She'll paint the faces of thee girls and get ready for the next call.

Her journey into motherhood may have begun a decade earlier, but it is nowhere near over.