"I don't want you to be the guy who lives in his stories. Life only moves forward."
ooo
When Ted first sits his kids down to tell them the story of how he met their mother, the sun is high in the sky. Light is flooding the room through one of the windows he built himself, pouring its warm embrace on their jaw lines, on their smooth cheeks, on their soft hair. They're glowing, the two of them, Penny and her pink top, Luke and his green tee shirt and grey sweater, and Ted is reminded once more how much they look like her. He remembers it all, every single moment, every single thing, how the sunshine would always sparkle like diamonds in her hair, how her eyes would light up when flooded with the beauty of a sunrise.
It is time Penny and Luke get to know her as well as he did.
ooo
Ted doesn't have to wonder a long time about when to start his story. Truth be told, he's always thought, in that little show-boaty way of his, that his story and how it lead him to met their mother is kind of the best coming-of-age love story of his generation.
Picture it – him, thirsty for love and eternally pining over his best friend's fiancée, and her, thinking she would never love again after the death of her first, long time boyfriend, finding solace in each other. Truth be told, their love story is the greatest of all, and to be appreciated, his children need to know why it was so important for them to meet each other.
ooo
"Dad," Penny interrupts, and Ted looks up, startled.
"Yes, darling?"
"You didn't meet Mom until 2013. Do you really need to start the story eight years earlier?"
Ted doesn't answer and just goes on.
ooo
He's three years into the telling of his story when Penny yawns and Luke says "It's getting late, Dad."
Ted looks at them – really looks at them – for the first time since they sat down that morning. Their faces are hidden, their eyes are dark, shadows are dancing on their jaws, their cheeks, their hair. The sun went out hours ago.
He sends them to bed, and stays here for a little while, his hand tightly gripping a picture taken on his wedding day.
ooo
"Dad, don't get it wrong, but yesterday, we missed both lunch and dinner because of your story."
Ted loves both Luke and Penny, he really does, but their mother is dead and he's finding it a bit ungrateful, the way they don't seem to care.
They probably see the look in his eyes, though, because they sit back down, on the couch, and he resumes his story.
ooo
When Ted looks up from telling the story of the first description he ever heard of their mother, Penny and Luke are gone.
He keeps telling the story anyway.
ooo
There's someone touching his shoulder, but Ted doesn't react at first, because this is it, finally, the moment when he looks at the girl with the yellow umbrella and says "Hello, I'm Ted Mosby" and she takes his hand, shaking it with a smile. It takes one, two, three more touches of his shoulder before he finally looks up into the smiling eyes of Nurse Ellen.
"Penny and Luke are here, Ted," she says and he nods, absent-mindedly.
"Hello Dad," Penny says, a sad smile on her face when she sits next to him on his bed and wraps her arm around his shoulders. She hesitates a moment and adds "The baby's getting stronger. Do you want to touch my belly?"
But Ted isn't listening to what Penny says, nor is he hearing Nurse Ellen telling Luke that "He's gotten worse, he keeps telling the story of how he met your mother as if you were here with him, back at home", because when he closes his eyes, she's here with him, not dead, buried in the cold hard ground.
a/n: thanks for reading. please do leave a review with your thoughts on this, good or bad. :)