Walsh Family Universe V2

Shannon stood in the doorway of Noam's room, laundry basket balanced on her hip, and surveyed the controlled chaos.

Baseball trophies lined the bookshelf—five of them now, ranging from participation awards to the All-Star championship from last year. Swim medals hung from a corkboard above his desk, ribbons in blue and red and bronze. His closet door was plastered with team photos—boys in matching uniforms, arms slung around each other's shoulders, grass-stained and grinning.

A poster of some baseball player she didn't recognize hung over his bed. Cleats sat by the door, caked in dried mud. The room smelled like boy—that distinctive mix of sweat and grass and the cheap body spray ten-year-olds thought made them smell good.

This was not the room of the child she'd raised the first time.

Shannon set the basket down and started picking up dirty clothes from the floor. A practice jersey, stiff with dried sweat. Swim trunks still damp from yesterday's practice, smelling strongly of chlorine. Baseball pants with grass stains on the knees that would take extra scrubbing.

She held up the jersey, looking at the name on the back. WALSH. Number 12.

Her son. Her athlete son. Her child who spent every afternoon at practice and every weekend at games, who came home exhausted and happy, whose body was lean with muscle from constant activity.

So different from before.

Shannon carried the laundry downstairs, started sorting it into piles. Whites, colors, the heavily soiled sports clothes that needed pre-treatment.

Patrick was in his office, door half-open, on a phone call with a client. Through the doorway she could see him at his desk, papers spread around him, that focused expression he got when working.

Ten years. They'd been doing this for ten years now. Well, eight years since the regression itself, but the journey had started before that.

Shannon measured detergent, started the wash cycle, her hands moving automatically through the familiar motions. But her mind was elsewhere. Back to the beginning. Back to when everything changed.

The overdose. Finding him blue-lipped and barely breathing on Jordan's couch. The ambulance ride. The hospital. Again. How many times had it been? Four? Five?

This is the last time, she'd thought, watching the monitors, listening to machines breathe for him. I can't do this again. I can't bury my child.

The pattern before that. The stealing. The lies. The disappearances. The police calls. Each rehab stay that ended the same way—clean for a week, maybe two, then right back to using.

The mandatory sentencing threshold. Patrick's desperate legal maneuvering. The house arrest that Ash had violated. The judge's patience finally wearing thin.

Twenty years in prison. That's what the prosecutor had pushed for. Twenty years.

Her baby. Her artistic, sensitive, complicated child. Twenty years in a cage.

He won't survive it, Patrick had said quietly, after meeting with the lawyers. Even if he physically survives, he won't come out whole.

And then the program. The Fresh Start Initiative. A lawyer from the state laying out the option in Patrick's office.

Complete physical regression to age two. Male body, per the applicant's stated gender identity. Full memory retention but starting childhood over under parental supervision. Sixteen years until legal majority.

Shannon had thought it was insane. Cruel. Playing god with their child's life in the worst possible way.

But what was the alternative?

The washing machine hummed. Shannon moved to the kitchen, started preparing dinner. Chicken breasts, vegetables, rice. Noam would be home from practice in an hour, hungry and tired.

She remembered the courtroom. The judge asking Ash directly: Do you consent to this program?

And Ash's response: I was trying to stay clean. I was at that house sleeping. Jordan shot me up while I was unconscious. I didn't choose this. Please don't do this to me. Please.

The desperation in his voice. The fear. The fury.

And Patrick, speaking for them: We choose the regression program, Your Honor. We believe it's our son's best chance at life.

Shannon had nodded her agreement, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.

I can't bury my child, she'd said when the judge asked if she agreed. I can't. This way he lives.

Ash had looked at her with such betrayal. Such absolute hatred.

That look had haunted her for years.

The first months had been hell.

Two-year-old Noam, screaming that his name was Ash. Refusing to cooperate with anything. Fighting diaper changes, mealtimes, bedtimes. The rage. The grief. The constant surveillance required.

Shannon had quit her job to stay home with him. Had transformed herself from the mother of five mostly-grown children back into the mother of a toddler. Except this toddler had an adult consciousness and loathed her.

I hate you. You destroyed me. You chose this.

Over and over. Until the NCI made him stop, made him comply, made him go through the motions while seething with fury underneath.

Shannon had cried herself to sleep most nights those first few months. Wondering if they'd made the right choice. Wondering if they'd saved him or destroyed him.

Patrick had been the steady one. He's alive, Patrick would say. He's clean. He's safe. Everything else we can work on.

Slowly, painfully slowly, things had improved. The rage quieted to resentment. The active resistance became passive compliance. Miss Jessica helped. The routine helped. Time helped.

And then activities started. Swimming. Baseball. Friends.

Shannon hadn't expected that. Hadn't expected her artistic, alternative child to become an athlete. To genuinely enjoy sports. To build a life around physical activity and competition.

But that's what had happened.

Shannon checked the chicken, lowered the heat. Fifteen more minutes.

She thought about the photo album Claire had made for Noam's birthday. All those pictures tracking his growth. Shannon had copies of all of them, of course, but seeing them laid out that way—two years old to ten years old—had been striking.

The transformation wasn't just physical. It was in his posture, his expression, his energy.

The two-year-old in those early photos looked small and angry and trapped. By three, still angry but starting to adapt. By four, the anger was fading to something more like resignation.

But around five or six, something had shifted. The photos from baseball started showing genuine smiles. The swim meet pictures captured real focus, real pride in achievement. By eight, nine, ten—the child in those pictures looked happy. Not every moment, not without complexity, but genuinely, observably happy.

That was her son. That was Noam.

And yes, she still thought of him as Ash sometimes. Still mourned the twenty-four-year-old who'd been struggling so hard. Still wondered what kind of adult that person might have become if things had been different.

But increasingly, what she saw was Noam. Her ten-year-old son who played sports and hung out with friends and came home sweaty and exhausted and happy.

The male body had changed things in ways she hadn't anticipated. The comfort he had in it. The physical confidence. The way he moved in the world without that constant undertone of wrongness that had marked his entire first childhood.

He was growing into the person he was supposed to be. Just... the long way around.

Patrick emerged from his office as Shannon was setting the table.

"Smells good." He kissed her cheek. "Noam home yet?"

"Should be soon. Practice ends at five-thirty."

They worked together in comfortable silence, Patrick getting drinks, Shannon plating food. Twenty-eight years of marriage had given them an easy rhythm.

"I was thinking," Shannon said as they waited. "About the courtroom. About the choice we made."

Patrick looked at her, his expression careful. They didn't talk about this often. It was still too raw, even eight years later.

"What about it?"

"I was thinking about how angry he was. How he begged us not to do it. How he looked at us like we were monsters." Shannon's voice was quiet. "And I was thinking about him now. About the trophies in his room and the way he talks about baseball and how excited he gets before swim meets."

"And?"

"And I think we made the right choice." The words came out firm, certain. "I know it was awful. I know we took away his autonomy and his adult life and sixteen years of freedom. But Patrick, he's alive. He's thriving. He has friends and activities he loves and a body that finally feels right to him."

Patrick's eyes were suspiciously bright. "I think so too."

"He would have died in prison. Or come out broken beyond repair. At least this way—" Shannon paused as the front door opened.

"I'm home!" Noam's voice called out. "What's for dinner? I'm starving!"

He appeared in the kitchen doorway, still in his practice clothes, face flushed, hair sweaty. He dropped his bag by the door—Shannon would remind him later to take it to his room—and headed straight for the table.

"Chicken! Yes!" He slid into his chair. "Practice was brutal today. Coach had us doing sprint drills for like an hour."

"Go wash your hands," Shannon said automatically.

"Right. Sorry." Noam got up, went to the sink.

Patrick caught Shannon's eye across the table. A shared look that said everything.

This. This child, vibrant and healthy and alive. This was worth it.

"How's the ankle holding up?" Patrick asked as Noam returned to the table.

"Good! Doesn't bother me at all anymore. Coach said my times are actually better than before I got hurt." Noam piled chicken and vegetables on his plate. "There's a big meet in two weeks. Coach thinks I might qualify for regionals in freestyle."

"That's wonderful, honey," Shannon said.

As they ate, Noam talked about practice, about his teammates, about some drama with Marcus and another boy on the team. Normal kid stuff. Normal family dinner conversation.

Shannon watched him—the animated gestures, the passionate description of a swimming technique, the way he inhaled his food with the appetite of an active ten-year-old.

Her son. Her athlete son. Her child who'd been given a second chance at childhood and was actually living it.

After dinner, Noam helped clear the table—a recent rule, now that he was ten—then disappeared upstairs to shower and start homework.

Shannon and Patrick sat at the table with coffee.

"He's doing so well," Shannon said softly.

"He is." Patrick reached across the table, took her hand. "You've done an amazing job with him. With all of this."

"We both have."

"Do you ever wonder what he would have been like? If things had been different?"

Shannon thought about it. The alternative timeline where Ash got clean on his own, stayed clean, transitioned, lived his life as the adult he was supposed to be.

"I do wonder," she admitted. "But I try not to think about it too much. That's not the path we're on. This is."

From upstairs came the sound of Noam's shower running, then later, music playing softly while he did homework.

Normal sounds. The sounds of a child living in their home. A child who was safe and clean and thriving.

"No regrets?" Patrick asked.

Shannon thought about the question. About the rage and the grief and the violation of that choice they'd made. About the years of struggle and adjustment. About the child who'd begged them not to do it.

And about the ten-year-old upstairs who had a room full of trophies and friends who called constantly and a life full of activities he genuinely loved.

"I regret that it had to come to this," she said finally. "I regret that addiction brought us here. I regret that he got dealt such a hard hand the first time around. But the choice we made in that courtroom? Choosing the program over prison?"

She looked at Patrick, her voice firm.

"No. No regrets. We saved his life. And yes, we took something from him. But we also gave him something. A chance. A real chance. And he's making the most of it."

Patrick squeezed her hand. "I think he'd agree. Eventually. Maybe not now, maybe not for years. But eventually."

"Maybe," Shannon said. "Or maybe he'll always resent us for it. But he'll be alive to resent us. And right now, he's not just alive—he's living. That has to count for something."

Later that night, Shannon went upstairs to say goodnight. Noam was in bed, reading a book about baseball statistics—the kind of thing that would have bored old-Ash to tears but that current-Noam found fascinating.

"Lights out in fifteen minutes," Shannon said from the doorway.

"Okay, Mom."

She almost left. But something made her pause.

"Noam?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm proud of you. The way you've worked so hard at baseball and swimming. The friends you've made. The person you're becoming." Shannon smiled. "I know this isn't what you chose. But you're doing a really good job with it."

Noam looked at her for a long moment. His expression was complicated—not quite grateful, not quite resentful, something in between.

"Thanks," he said finally.

Shannon nodded and closed the door.

Downstairs, she finished cleaning the kitchen, her mind still turning over the day. The laundry with its grass stains and chlorine smell. The trophies and medals filling his room. The animated dinner conversation about sprint drills and qualifying times.

This was her life now. Mother to a ten-year-old athlete who was simultaneously thirty-two years old. Navigating the complexity of having saved and violated him in the same choice.

She'd make the same choice again. That was the truth she carried.

Even knowing everything—the rage, the grief, the violation, the years of struggle—she'd still choose the program over prison.

Because he was alive. Because he was thriving. Because he had a chance at a full life instead of dying slowly in a cell or overdosing in some stranger's apartment.

The cost had been high. Was still high. Would always be high.

But her child was alive.

And tonight, he was upstairs reading about baseball statistics, his body tired from practice, his room full of evidence of a life well-lived.

That had to be worth something.

It had to be worth everything.

Shannon turned off the kitchen lights and headed upstairs, past Noam's door where she could see light still on, hear him turning pages.

Her son. Her complicated, resilient, remarkable son.

Eight years ago, she'd thought they might have destroyed him to save him.

Now she knew they'd saved him to let him rebuild himself.

And he was doing it. Day by day, practice by practice, trophy by trophy.

He was doing it.

They'd made the right choice.

She was sure of it.