“Gabrielle Gardener!” Gabi’s mother’s voice rang out, all the way from the other side of the house. Gabi bit her lip but didn’t move from her spot, sitting primly at her desk, writing a letter to a friend from Hogwarts. Hearing from her friends was the only way she got through summer break at home. “Come down here this instant!” she yelled again, once she was certain Gabi wasn’t moving to come see why she was so furious. Gabi carefully put her quill down, capped her ink, and tucked the letter away from prying eyes. Her parents liked to snoop, to figure out who her friends were and if they were ‘good’ enough for Gabi to associate with. Gabi walked silently to the staircase that would lead her down to the living room, where she was sure her mother was waiting with her younger brother.
“I swear, that girl is going to be the ruin of us,” her mother said quietly, but not softly enough Gabi couldn’t hear the words. She felt the words deep in her chest. Even when she disappointed them, which was the only way she could get their attention, they never cared about her. It was always about them. Gabi made her way down the stairs and stood in the doorway to the living room, leaning against the wall casually, even as she set her shoulders and prepared for the scolding. Her mother took a moment to notice her, but when her brother turned his gaze on Gabi, she turned as well.
“Gabrielle, what on earth were you thinking?” she asked dangerously.
“About what?” she asked, widening her eyes innocently.
“Your brother’s hair, Gabrielle,” she retorted tightly, gesturing to Garrett. Gabi turned her eyes to on her brother and choked back a laugh. She hadn’t gotten a good glance earlier, as he had fled as soon as it had happened. His normally dark brown hair was multi colored, a vivid representation of the rainbow. She had been meaning to do it to her own hair, but Garrett had been taunting her. When he moved into her bedroom to point out something on her head, she had just been about to cast the spell to change her own hair when his head suddenly appeared next to hers. Her hand jerked up and the spell shot onto Garrett’s head instead of her own.
“It was an accident,” she defended herself half-heartedly. They wouldn’t believe her, no matter what the truth was.
“An accident?” she repeated in disbelief.
“Yep.”
Her mother shut her eyes briefly, to emphasize how frustrated she was.
“Garrett, was it an ‘accident’?” she asked her son. He shrugged but her mother didn’t push him for more of an answer, even if she never would have let Gabi answer her with a shrug.
“I don’t possibly see how this could have been an accident. But, regardless of how it happened, I need you to reverse it. Garrett and I are going to visit some very important friends and this cannot push those plans back,” her mother said and Gabi noticed how nicely her mother was dressed.
“I can’t reverse it,” Gabi said simply.
“What do you mean? It’s a spell, just undo it,” her mother said, starting to sound a little frazzled.
“I found a new spell after you reversed my last one. This one wears out by itself after a few weeks,” Gabi said, which was completely true. After her mother had changed her last hair color back from purple, Gabi had hunted down any and every spell to do with hair coloring until she found one without any discernible way to undo it. Gabi’s mother bit down on her lip, hard, before storming out of the living room.
“I’ll just go by myself then and tell them Garrett is sick!” she cried as she walked away. Gabi just waited for a moment, to make sure she was really going away, when Garrett caught her eye and smirked.
“Thanks for getting me out of that,” he said before walking away.
Gabi’s mouth dropped open. Maybe she had underestimated her little brother’s cunning.
Aidan was woken by the sound of something in the living room. He frowned, getting up slowly and walking so that he could go figure out what was causing it. It only took a few steps out of his door before he heard the sound of her voice, and he couldn’t help but smile as he turned the corner to see her.
“What are you doing, Ains?”
The little girl turned, looking up at him sheepishly, with her cheeks turning red at the thought of being caught. “Putting on my boots,” she said, holding the one she didn’t have on up to him. “I wanna go outside.”
Smiling, Aidan walked over, hoisting her up onto the sofa and then pulling off the shoe that she had on. “First of all… this is the wrong foot,” he stated, holding it up for her to see. “The curve goes on the inside, where the curve of your foot is.” Aidan ran his fingers over the inside of her foot as he tickled her, making her giggle, but at least understand.
“Oh, okay,” she said, pushing him away and still laughing.
“And secondly,” Aidan began, putting her other shoe on and then reaching out to touch her nose. “You’re not allowed to go out without permission.”
“I know,” she said immediately. “I was gonna wait for you.”
“Oh, really?” Aidan asked, smirking.
“Yep,” Ainslie answered. She grinned, holding her arms out for him. “Can we go see the dragons?” she asked him, and the way that she smiled up at him when she asked melted his heart completely.
It was difficult, sometimes, how much she seemed to love them. It reminded him of himself, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. He loved that she had passion for something, but he hated the idea of something ever happening to her like what had happened to him.
Aidan didn’t think that he could live if she got hurt, and he found himself apologizing a few times to his parents and his siblings. Sometimes it took a wake up call like having a child to show a person just how much they didn’t know before. Aidan definitely didn’t believe that what they had to to protect him had been for his own good, but now he was having to fight his own instincts to hold her close and never let her even remotely near anything that could harm her.
Unfortunately, life didn’t work that way. He was reminded every day that she was growing up, and soon it wouldn’t be in his control to protect her the way that he wanted to. So he made sure that every day that he did have with her was put to the best use.
“Yeah,” Aidan said, reaching out to pick her up. “Let’s go look at the dragons.”
As they headed outside, after Aidan had wrapped her up in her jacket, she went on and on about dragon eggs and how she looked at all the pictures in the dragon book she had gotten for Christmas that she loved. It was almost already worn out, and she looked across at him and made him promise that he would give her another one for her birthday soon.
“I will,” Aidan chuckled. He turned her so that she was riding piggy-back on him, freeing up his hands a little so that he could keep his wand ready in case he needed to do something to protect her.
He never took them close enough not to have time to react, but he was still overly cautious. This was his daughter, and he wasn’t going to take any risks that he couldn’t be overly prepared for.
She started to squeal a little when she saw the dragon in the distance. It was just a small one, a baby that had hatched out a few weeks ago, but Aidan thought that she would really like that. Aidan sat her down, then sat down beside her, so that they could both watch and see the dragon as it fumbled around and played.
“Daddy?” Ainslie asked, looking up at him.
“Yes, Ains?” Aidan replied, turning to her so that she had as much of his attention as he could take off of the dangerous beast across from them.
“One day, I want to be a keeper,” she said, grinning at the thought as she turned away to see the dragon again.
It was times like these when Aidan was reminded of how difficult parenthood could be. These were the times when he wanted to push her to do something less dangerous, even if he himself had never been able to fathom something else. He had to remind himself what it felt like to be denied something that you loved, and how that hurt someone even more than physical pain could.
“Yeah,” he finally answered, unable to take his eyes off of her. “I bet you’ll be a good one.”
He’d told his parents not to meet him at King’s Cross Station, because there was something that he needed to do, and he knew that he needed to do it alone.
Luka kissed his girlfriend goodbye, said a few farewells to some friends (along with promises to keep in touch), and then quickly headed out of the train station so that he could get this off of his chest. It was something he had been planning for awhile, but he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t needed to. This was for his own benefit, and anyone else being involved just seemed unnecessary.
He slipped down the street, walking towards the spot. He would apparate if he could have, but Luka had never been there before. It wasn’t something that he wanted to remember, so he had ignored it for far too many years. Now was the time when he was going to stop that.
After a mile or so, he hailed a cab, figuring that his walking was over. Given the name, the cab driver took off, and Luka pulled out his card so that he could pay the man on the little screen that was hanging on the back of the chair in front of him.
It only took about twenty minutes to get there. More traffic would have made it a longer trip, and even though Luka was aware just how much he needed this, he also almost wished that there had been a little more time for him to get up the nerve to actually do it.
Somehow, it seemed so much scarier when he was near to it. When the idea had been more abstract, more out there, Luka hadn’t been worried. But as he pulled up in front of the place and got out of the cab, he could feel his gut clenching tightly, as if it could hold him in place and keep him from moving.
Slowly, though, he did. He walked through the gate, then found himself looking down rows and rows, wondering where he needed to go. His eyes darted left and right, looking for at least something familiar, but it took awhile before he got there.
The space he found was closer to the open land, a lot more space so that things could expand as needed. He should have known. It hadn’t been that long ago, and there were plenty of other places that people could choose besides this one.
Luka closed the distance, then wondered how awkward it was to stand there and stare. Finally, he decided to sit, because it just felt a lot more natural. Grass had taken over, so he sat just slightly to the side, not wanting to be disrespectful.
“I miss you,” he whispered, but unfortunately tombstones can’t talk back.
“It’s been over four years,” Luka went on, realizing that as soon as he spoke, he couldn’t stop. “It still hurts, and I don’t know if it’s supposed to. I still think about you every day, and I wish that something could have changed. What would my life be like if you were still here?” the boy asked the open air.
“I probably wouldn’t leave. If you were here, I can imagine that we’d move in together. You’d get a job because you would hate the idea of going to school, and I would be doing something completely different than what I want to do now. Maybe I’d be a teacher, or something. Language teacher. Maybe I’d try to fix situations for kids that weren’t fixed for us. I’d try to make things better for them. I bet you would think it was impossible, but maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you would have found your happiness. Maybe something better was waiting for you, and you just couldn’t wait for it back.”
Luka felt his throat getting tight, burning. His eyes had that heaviness that they got when they were filled with too much emotion. “I want to believe I’ll find you again someday. Maybe not you exactly, but someone like you. I would do better. I promise. I won’t let the same thing happen again. I would notice more. I would care. I wouldn’t blow it off and pretend that it was your fault when you were asking for help and no one was giving it to you.”
How stupid was he, sitting out there and talking to a name on a stone? It was nothing left of his friend except a George Thompson engraved right above some dates and a nice statement about how he was a loving son and wonderful friend.
Luka didn’t care. It felt right. It felt needed. And maybe it would help find them both some peace, if George was still out there somewhere that he needed it.
“I’m sorry,” Luka finally said, the words that he had needed to say to him for a very long time. “I’m so sorry.”
It might have been far too late, but at least it was still a goodbye.
Aidan was singing at the top of his lungs, only five years old and completely enthralled by the season. Christmas was the most beautiful, because it was white and snowing, and everything was cool, and his mum made her hot chocolate that he couldn’t get enough of. It was always his favorite time of year until he started school, and then he liked summer only because he got to be home more.
“And hippopotamuses like me too!” he screamed, putting another ornament on the tree. “Play it again, Dad!” he said, smiling over at his father who was manning the controls.
Brochan couldn’t help but laugh, and even though the rest of his kids complained, he pressed the repeat button so that Aidan could sing along to the hippopotamus song again.
After just a few more rounds of the song, the Christmas tree was decorated, and they all stepped back to look at how gorgeous it was. The MacFusty tree was nothing elaborate - definitely not something that you would see in the department stores or anything. Instead, it was a conglomerate of all of the things that the kids had made throughout the years, and some special ornaments that they got every Christmas to help celebrate the year that had passed. Murtagh obviously had the most ornaments, but Aidan was assured that he would only get them until he was eighteen, so the younger boy could definitely catch up.
Once the tree was deemed successful, it was time for the cocoa. Aidan was most excited about this part, and he didn’t even notice that his older brother had snuck over to turn the music off. There were only so many times that a person could listen to that hippopotamus song without going insane.
“Alright, Aidan,” Sorcha said, setting all of the things out for their cocoa. “What do you want in yours?”
He stood up as tall as he could, peering over the counter with his nose resting on it because the boy couldn’t get any taller than that even on his tiptoes. “Can I have… marshmallows?”
“Yes,” she said, dumping a few marshmallows into his cup.
“And sprinkles?”
Sorcha smiled. “What color?”
“Red. And green,” he said, grinning widely as his mother put them into his cup. “And whipped cream,” he said.
“So much sugar?” his father teased, but Aidan smiled and looked back at his mum.
“And a cherry.”
She laughed, but plopped a cherry right on top and started to scoot it over. She was stopped, though, by the sound of his voice calling out again.
“And chocolate chips.”
Sorcha shook her head. She sprinkled just a couple of chocolate chips on top, and Aidan climbed up into the stool so that he could sit at the bar and drink it. He would have sworn on all of his Christmas presents (which weren’t a lot in number, but meant a lot to him) that he had never tasted hot cocoa that was any better than that.
Gordie went next, and then Stefan, and then Murtagh. After that, Brochan got his own mug, and Sorcha was just about to fill hers when Aidan asked for more.
“He’s going to be bouncing off the walls,” the newly teenaged Murtagh said, but his mother didn’t seem to care because pretty soon they were all heading to go sit outside with full cups in each of their mugs.
Aidan sat on the steps, his feet dancing with excitement as he watched the snow fall. “Does it always snow everywhere for Christmas?” he asked, thinking that everyone deserved to see how beautiful it was.
“No, not always,” Sorcha asked softly. “Not everywhere. Some places never get snow.”
That made the boy frown. He sipped at his cocoa and then made a declaration that his parents would hold over his head for the rest of his life, finding it far too adorable to miss.
“I don’t want a hippopotamus anymore,” he said. “I just want everyone to have snow.”
“Congratulations,” the mediwizard said, smiling up at Luka as she handed over his youngest child. The man took him carefully in his arms, having had his fair share of practice from his other three kids. “You’re a father again.”
Luka smiled at the words, knowing they were meant to be funny. Once you were a father, you were always a father, and Luka knew that as much as any other man who had held their child did. He made sure that the boy had his head supported, and then looked over at his wife.
“He’s beautiful,” Luka told her. “Just like all of the others.”
There was something different about this one, though. Luka couldn’t really put a finger on it. Whether it was the color of his eyes, or a little dimple that he had in his chin, something about him reminded Luka of someone he had known before.
While the woman got some sleep, exhausted from the labor, Luka held the baby boy and tried to figure out what exactly it was about him that seemed so familiar. He watched the baby sleep as well, unable to pinpoint it.
It had never felt like this before. All of his other children were like meeting someone new, and Luka liked that. This child was the only one who seemed a little different, like maybe there was something more to him than Luka had been able to notice before.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just an inkling in the back of his mind, or a faint memory that was growing into being something more than that. Regardless, Luka knew that he wouldn’t be able to get it out of his mind until it really took hold and he was able to explain it.
It took him a few hours. He started going through people that he was in contact with a lot, thinking that maybe one of his coworkers or the regulars at the flower shop was the one that was striking his memory. No one fit, though. He thought about his family, and her family, and the kids that his children hung out with the most, thinking that maybe someone had the baby face that Luka was recognizing in his son’s eyes.
Still nothing. He thought about school, both his university years and their years at Hogwarts, but still no one seemed to stick out to him. Maybe he was being foolish. He couldn’t even define the thing that was making him have these thoughts, so maybe it was something dumb. Maybe he just looked like Antonio had as a child, and Luka was thinking back to that.
With that thought in mind, he carefully pulled out his phone, where he knew he could find all of the children’s baby pictures. Luka flipped through them, and when he came to the one that he knew was Antonio, he realized that he didn’t really look anything like him at all. Calla, Rosalia… same thing. They all had a lighter look to them, more like their mother, with happy expressions and features that made their faces seem to light up.
This child was different. Not in a way that Luka disliked, of course. It was more like this boy held something in his face that was beyond a child. Like there was something deeper there, almost like the look someone gets when you know that they’d really experienced life. It was a crazy thought for Luka to have, considering this child had barely lived at all, but it was the only way that he could explain it.
It was the next thought that came to him that answered his question. Luka wondered what kind of child would have such a look on their face, and he knew immediately.
When she woke up, Luka looked over at her, standing to his feet and walking so that he could hand their baby boy over. “I know what we need to name him,” he said, meeting her eyes so that she would no how serious he was.
When she asked what the name was, Luka cleared his throat, and found his voice was clearer than he expected it to be. “Giorgio.”
The letter came, and Rory had no idea what to expect.
She’d applied to the place on a whim, mostly because her husband kept pushing that she do something even though Rory had no clue what her something might be. She found herself even more upset by doing nothing than she knew she would be if she would try and fail. At least there was some kind of happiness in trying, thinking that there might be a possibility that something could change. Rory wasn’t very good at failure, but she did know that she was never going to make it if things kept going like they were.
She knew that she had to do something, so when she found the school that would teach her about one of the only things that Rory really had a passion for--fashion, and creating things--she talked it out extensively with Ethan and realized that this was something she could try.
When the letter came, he was still off at work, but she wanted to open it and didn’t want to do it alone. The young woman walked the short distance from her home to her parents’, where her mother was home from her early day.
After the doorman let her in, Rory walked slowly to her mother’s office, knocking on the door and smiling as the woman greeted her and brought her in. “Hi!” she said, walking over to give her a hug. Rory returned it, and then held the letter up.
“I got it,” she said, knowing that her mother would know what it was. They’d been talking about it pretty nonstop since they found out she was going to apply.
Alaina smiled, clapping her hands. “Alright. Let’s open it, then. That is what you want to do, right?” she asked, thinking that maybe she was jumping the gun.
“Yes,” Rory said, smiling at her. She was nervous, but she knew that if her mother was excited then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. And she would have some support if it was a negative answer that she didn’t like.
Taking a deep breath as her mother situated herself, Rory ripped open the paper and looked down at it. It took her a moment to be able to read it, because of the small print that didn’t work well with her dyslexia. All the time, Alaina was completely quiet, not pressing it. She would wait until Rory told her something.
After a few minutes, she did. “I… was accepted,” Rory said, looking down at the letter. Her eyes squinted, like maybe she didn’t really read it right.
Her mother, on the other hand, was already celebrating. She let out a happy noise, reaching over to hug her daughter again. Rory handed the letter off to her. “It says that I was accepted, right?” she asked, hoping that her mother could tell her for sure. It didn’t seem real that this was something that was actually happening for her.
Alaina took the letter, reading over it quickly, nodding her head and smiling a huge smile that took up half of her face. “Yes. It says that you were accepted. You’ll start school in the fall,” she said. The woman looked at her daughter and beamed. “Congratulations, chicken.”
Rory was in shock. Never before had she ever had faith in herself, especially not with things like this. She had fully expected it to be a no, and then she would have to find something else to try for that wasn’t so out there and big.
But looking back at her mother, she knew that this really had happened.That look on the woman’s face wasn’t one of disappointment, but one of pride. Rory loved the way that felt. She loved feeling like she had truly earned it, and it wasn’t just given because she was their daughter and they loved her. This was real. She had done something, and she had succeeded, and Alaina was proud of her for it.
“Go home. Wait for your husband. Your father and I will take you both out to dinner to celebrate when they’re home. This is great, Rory,” she said, hugging her one more time. “I’m so proud of you. I can’t wait to be able to wear something that you’ve made.”
This time, Rory really hugged her back. She nodded, and as she walked back to her house, she had the stupidest grin on her face.
“We’re leaving!” Stefan was yelling, running through the house as though it was his specific mission to make sure that not a single person stayed away past the rise of the sun.
Aidan rolled over in his bed, lifting the blanket up over him so that he could drown out the sounds of his screaming brother. Stefan was the most excited about leaving, and Aidan was the least. He didn’t understand why they needed to take a vacation when the reserve was the best place to be.
Finally, someone else got tired of it, too. “Eh! Shut it, Stefan,” Gordie yelled, and Aidan couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at her tone of voice and the sound that followed, which he assumed was Stefan being hit with something that Gordie had thrown.
The reprieve was short, however. Not ten minutes later, his mother was walking into his room and sitting on the bed. The little bit of his hair that was still visible beneath the blanket became the immediate target of her soothing fingers, and Aidan couldn’t even lie to himself and pretend he didn’t like his hair being played with. It was one of the best things in the world.
“Your brother might be annoying, but he is right,” Sorcha said quietly. “We have to leave in an hour, so it’s time to get up and make sure everything is packed. Dad it downstairs making some breakfast.”
“Why do we have to go?” Aidan asked, pushing the blanket down so that he could turn on his back and look up at his mum. “Why? I don’t want to. Maybe I can stay here... Uncle Corey would keep me,” the boy said, grinning widely at the thought.
Sorcha, however, shot it down very quickly. “Not today, love. We’re going on a family vacation and we’re going to spend some time together.”
“But we always do that,” Aidan argued. He stopped when she gave him a look.
“Get dressed, and come on down,” she told him, kissing his forehead before she left him alone in his room, the door shut behind her.
Aidan did as he was told, heading down to the table and realizing that he wasn’t the last one up. Stefan was bouncing with excitement, and Gordie was quietly going about her day, but Murtagh was nowhere to be seen.
Brochan hollered up for his eldest son again, and in a few minutes he was trudging down the stairs. His hair was a mess, and he was still in his pajamas, looking like he’d crawled out of bed after only getting an hour or two of sleep in five days.
“You look shitty,” Stefan said, which earned him a slap to the back of the head, but made the whole crew of kids minus Murtagh start laughing.
After breakfast, they packed everything up into the car, piling into it themselves. Aidan, the smallest, found himself tucked into the front seat between his mum and his dad.
They drove for about an hour before Aidan piped up again. “Why are we doing this, again?” he asked, and the kids in the backseat were all quiet except for the percussion sounds Stefan was making with his mouth.
“Because we need to spend some time together as a family,” his mother explained again.
“I know, but... why did we have to leave to do that?” he pressed.
Brochan sighed. “Because we never leave, and sometimes you need to know that there’s a whole world out there for you. We need to make sure that all of you know there’s more outside of the reserve.”
At first, Aidan didn’t get it. He didn’t ask anymore questions, but he mulled over what his father said because it didn’t make any sense.
Later in life, he’d come back to those words of advice a lot. There was a world outside of the reserve, but it wasn’t a world that Aidan thought he wanted to be part of. He had to decide, though, if it was one that he needed to explore just so he knew for a fact.
He’d been with a couple of girls, before his accident. They were minor things, mostly friendships that turned into a little more but didn’t go beyond that. But after his injury, everything changed.
He didn’t want anyone to see him anymore. He couldn’t hardly stand to take his shirt off in front of anyone because he was afraid that they were going to be turned away by his scar. Aidan knew how ugly it was, and if he thought that about himself, he had no doubts that other people would think it as well.
So he kept his distance. He flirted around a little bit as he started really healing, once the worst of it was over and he could try to think about other things, but as soon as it started going in that direction he shut it down.
As it turns out, there is no greater heartache than the kind that you can give yourself.
Maybe that’s how it always is. Maybe it’s not really the other person that hurt you, but you who hurt yourself. Aidan contemplated that a little, but he didn’t want to think about it too much. If your own feelings were what caused you to get hurt, then it would make sense that staying away from the feelings would keep you safe… but Aidan didn’t like that.
That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be close to someone. He wanted to be able to have someone there for him that believed in him, trusted him, stood there by him through it all. All of this shit he had gone through only strengthened that opinion, because he was tired of feeling like he was alone in it all. He had Gertie on his side, sometimes, but that wasn’t what he knew it would feel like to have someone really special there that could be part of his daily life.
The real issue was in the fact that he didn’t think he was good enough. Especially like he was. Aidan felt broken, torn apart, not whole, and nobody deserved to be with someone who was like that. He was scared that other people would come to that same opinion, so he just made sure that no one ever could. It was an attempt to keep his heart from breaking but in the same regard he was only breaking it himself.
It was his mother who opened his eyes to the fact that things could be different. The summer of his sixth year, right before he went in to seventh year, he was out in the garden with her, having been kicked off of the dragon keeping team he’d tried to sneak onto.
“You’re getting older, Aidan,” Sorcha said, looking over at him and smiling. “Turning into a very handsome young man.”
“Mother,” he groaned, shaking his head at her so that she knew not to push it. Unfortunately, she was also a MacFusty, and they were stubborn bastards.
“All I’m saying is that you’re getting older. Gertie’s on her way to being married, and it’s only a matter of time before you are too.”
Aidan stopped weeding, looking at his mother and unsure why she was even bringing this up. “Mum. What’s the point of this conversation?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes meeting his and obviously confused. “Isn’t that something that you’re going to want?” she asked, moving slower in her work as they spoke.
Aidan shrugged, pulling a few more weeds and tossing them into the bucket he had before he sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. It seems like at this point it would be pretty crazy.”
Sorcha really stopped then, abandoning her row and coming over to his. “Why?”
After this, Aidan would hate himself for letting it go. He would hate himself for telling her, for sounding so weak and desperate and for making his mother worry about him even more than she already did. But in the moment her questions hit too close to home and he couldn’t keep it all bottled up. “Because who is going to want me? No one who wants a man. And I can’t imagine that I would be content not being one. I’m a MacFusty. I’m supposed to be strong and tough and take care of all the things that my family might need, but I can’t. So nobody who wants a man like that will want me, and I can’t be with anyone who expects anything less. It’s crazy, and it won’t happen.”
Sorcha didn’t say anything for awhile. She frowned, though, and she started to slowly pull a few more weeds as she thought about what her son needed to hear. “I think that you’re wrong,” she told him, but held up her hand as she knew he was going to argue. “I don’t mean that offensively. And I understand what you’re saying, and I get it. There are certain expectations you have for how it will go, and you don’t want less. I don’t think that’s bad. You shouldn’t settle.”
He furrowed his brows, sitting back on his knees to look at her. “Then why do you think I’m wrong? You just said how much you agree with me.”
“With part of it, yes,” his mother told him. “But the part you’re wrong about is that you can’t be that man. Yes, I know that you’re hurt, and I know that it’s going to take some time to build you back up, and maybe you’re right and you won’t ever be as innately strong as you were before,” she said, which surprised him because it was the first time that they’d actually said it out loud, even though Aidan knew everyone thought that. “But… Merlin, Aidan. After all that you’ve been through, don’t you think that someone might see you as more of a man than anyone else? Because I do.”
Aidan wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d never thought about it in that way at all, but the way that his mother put it made sense. Luckily, she seemed to know that he wasn’t going to have an answer, because she stood back up and walked over to her row, starting to talk to him about his nephews. He welcomed the change of topic, even if the things she said were still playing in the back of his mind.
Maybe he was a man, still. Maybe he could still be one, at least. He just needed to figure out how.
