I'm not sure where this came from, but once the thought occurred to me I had to write it.

-ooo-

She places flowers on Janey's grave and then Arthur's – they're side by side, as they were so often in life – Janey, gentle and loving, Arthur, eternally a child. I was their ringleader, their defender, she thinks, and one day I'll take my place beside them. Not now, not anytime soon, but eventually.

She smiles as she reads a line below Arthur's name – The world is full of dreams – it's from his favorite song, the song that, once his mother heard it sung by those who knew him and loved him, allowed her to acknowledge her grief and begin to recover.

Still smiling she reads a line below Janey's name – They sailed away, for a year and a day – it's from the song we sang while we pretended an old bathtub was a sailboat and the yard was the open sea. When her remains were laid to rest here I was finally able to grieve.

She shifts and places the last bunch of flowers on Uncle Edward's grave and steps back and reads the story of her family so far.

Beloved Husband and Father. Beloved Son. Beloved Daughter, Sister, Niece.

She remembers her uncle gazing fondly at his wife, her aunt keeping her child close, her parents struggling to make sense of the incomprehensible.

She remembers Jack's gentle touch moving her forward to the truth and his strong grip holding her back from the abyss.

She waits for the sting of tears to subside as she breathes and blinks and looks around her.

This is a peaceful place, a quiet place, leaves rustling and dancing in the breeze and dappled sunlight. It's an old place too, so many of the stones darkened by weather and dust and moss that they seem to be returning to the earth, rooting themselves in it. In time Janey's and Arthur's stones will join them but now theirs are still bright and fresh, reaching to the sky.

Too many will never be here; their final resting place is far, far from here, in the newly green fields of France and Belgium, their names inscribed on marble stones so raw and brilliantly white that they flashed and gleamed and blinded her when she flew over them and their sheer numbers in ordered rows took her breath away.

It's a miracle we're not there. It's a miracle we made it home. It's a miracle we found each other here.

She reads her family's story again.

Beloved Husband and Father. Beloved Son. Beloved Daughter, Sister, Niece.

There's nothing about a gold mine or riches or society or illness or pain or poverty or murder – there's only love, proclaimed for any and all to see.

I want to be beloved, she thinks, and having allowed herself to think it, she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she already is, and she can't wait to tell him he is too.

-ooo-

A/N: The line below Arthur's name – The world is full of dreams – is from the song 'There's a Long, Long Trail' written by Stoddard King and composed by Zo Elliot and published in 1914.

The line below Janey's name – They sailed away, for a year and a day – is from the poem 'The Owl and the Pussycat' written by Edward Lear and published in 1871.