Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 71st cycle. Now cycle 72!

"In Ireland"
Beiste & Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty), Ewan/Sugar
Beiste & Ewan series (FINAL INSTALLMENT)
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

It hadn't so much been planned that they would be in Ireland on the exact day, the one year anniversary of his parents' deaths, but in having to select the dates and making sure that everyone would be able to go, the anniversary had fallen just near the end of their selected dates. It wasn't that he didn't want to commemorate that day in some way, but he'd been thinking that being in his old town to do it would have made it harder. Both his aunt and Sugar, who were the rest of his party, had assured him that, if he wanted to change the dates again, they could do it, but he had told them it wasn't necessary. Maybe it was right that he should be there, closer to them.

The last week or so, he'd had trouble sleeping every night. He would toss and turn for a while, and then he would end up going into the living room, turning on the television, and letting it lull him off to sleep. His aunt or Rich must have caught on to this, because by the third day, when he woke up laid out on the couch, there would be a blanket over him where there hadn't been the night before.

Finally, the day had come, they had said goodbye to Rich and Mitch, and Ewan and his aunt Shannon had gone to pick up Sugar to head to the airport. He didn't know that he retained all that much of their flight. It felt as though one moment he'd been in Lima, and the next they were getting off a plane and he was… He didn't know like he felt suddenly 'at home,' because Lima had become that for him, much more than anywhere else.

But this place had been his home, once upon a time, and as much as he'd believed that would have disappeared by now, for the first time he understood that he hadn't lost it, and it warmed him to know it. After months of working day after day to put together the money to come here, he'd only had to set foot outside the plane to see that it had been worth it.

They rented a car, and they were off. As they went, old familiar sites started to pass, and he didn't miss the chance to point them out to both Sugar and his aunt Shannon. The last time they had been here, both him and his aunt, he had been in no mood at all to show her anything.

"Look at you," Sugar would get a hold of his arm, getting out of the car.

"What?" he asked.

"You look so happy here. I'm glad I get to see it." He smiled, and that got her smiling, too. He was glad she was there to see it; he was glad she was there, period, and the same went for his aunt. Getting to share this with him only made it better.

Before long, he would start running into people he knew, old friends of his, old friends of his parents', too. He had lost count of how many times he'd been pulled into a hug, how many people had burst into tears at the sight of him. It wasn't long that the plan had come together: they would have a gathering, the day of the anniversary, to celebrate the lives of Glenn and Kathleen Healy, on the anniversary of their passing. He'd gotten the idea in realizing how glad he was for Sugar and his aunt being there.

The days had gone by so fast, like with his flight, it felt as though he had turned around on the first day and found himself suddenly waking to three hundred and sixty-five days gone since a car collision had taken his parents from him. This time, he had not taken his travel companions. He left the house where they had been staying, found a place that was open where he could buy flowers, and he walked to the cemetery. He knew where they would be buried, the family plots. How many times had he visited his granddad's grave with his father?

He felt chills, seeing their names in the stone, the dates… Too young, both of them. Beloved father. Beloved mother. The flowers were set, yellow for his father, white for his mother.

"I should talk now, shouldn't I?" his voice quivered as he looked at his feet, kicking at a small rock. "I'm sorry I left so quick, I hope you understand. But I came back, worked like you wouldn't believe, so I'd come back… to you. Maybe I thought you'd be here, alive again like that day didn't happen. It's been a year now, can you tell? Never believed in ghosts, but I might change my mind, so any time you want to stop by, my door's open."

He looked around, a fresh chill running through him, making him believe for a second that his wish had been granted.

"Mom, I'm glad you picked aunt Shannon to look after me. We needed each other after you died, maybe you guessed we would. She's married now. His name is Rich, his son is on the football team. We live together, the four of us. He's a great guy, you would like him," he smiled. "I work at his store, so I got to come here in part because of him."

Sometimes he wondered if they would still have found their way to each other if everything else hadn't happened.

"And I have a girlfriend. Her name is Sugar, she…" he chuckled to himself, picturing her meeting them. That would never have happened, not if… "I wish there had been some way for you to get to know her, I… I fell in love with her."

He told them about Tina, and Mike, he told them about being in Glee Club… He wanted them to know, more than anything, that he was doing alright, that he had spent this last year healing, even though he still missed them and would continue to for all his life.

"I'll come back again, every year if I can, every other year maybe… I'll bring you back more stories from Lima, I promise."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!