02/10/21

If I could, I would send you all comfort food and care packages for making you cry in the last two chapters. I hope a one day early upload will work instead :) hugs!


everything is grey

After spending the entire weekend reading Ana's journals, Christian was now sitting in Flynn's office. The past two days had gone by in a blur of irritability, the termination of four employees, a screaming match with Ros and a mid afternoon round with Claude Bastille that only landed him on his ass from start to finish. Who pissed in your Cheerios, Grey? Claude laughed in an attempt to rile his client up. However, the desired effect did nothing to help Christian focus and get a one up on his opponent. His mind and emotions were scattered and no amount of antagonization would snap him out of the fury of the storm brewing inside of him.

This week was about wrapping things up at GEH, getting the important meetings off the books and starting to lighten the load of his schedule so he could begin to handle things remotely. The brunt of face to face interaction would fall on Ros and the various department heads with Christian only coming in if possible for the unavoidable for the foreseeable future. Once Ana and Belle were back from LA, he hoped to dive in head first and be present full time in their lives. Yet another thing I need to discuss with her.


Their goodbyes had been bittersweet. Christian met them at the tarmac at Teterboro. Belle's excitement had been off the charts from the moment she was let out of the car, running straight to Chris with flailing arms and squeals. He picked her up with much fanfare before blowing raspberries into her neck.

"Chwis up! Chwis, pwane! Wook." She pointed excitedly towards the aircraft.

Christian took particular interest in strapping Ana into her seat, making secret jokes and stealing kisses that made her giggle like a schoolgirl. Belle's excitement was at a solid 15 on a scale of 10. She wanted to walk around, touch everything and talk to everyone all at the same time but graciously allowed Chris to help her sit in her seat.

"I'll see you soon, Belle." Chris smiled, crouching down in front of her seat, next to Ana. He stroked her cheek before kissing it.

"Shee shoon." Belle grinned and waved her hand animatedly. "Byeee"

"Mr. Grey, it appears you just got kicked off of your own jet by a little bear." Ana quipped with a cheeky smile.

He smirked, shaking his head. "Thank you, for stating the obvious Miss Steele."

"Just making sure you understand the status quo. There's a new sheriff in town." She shrugged sheepishly. They both laughed, prompting Belle to snicker as well as if she too were in on the joke.

After one last round of goodbye kisses, Chris reluctantly walked off the jet and stayed on the tarmac, waiting by the SUV till they took off.

He'd begun to have an irrational fear of goodbyes now. One simple word and gesture that carried so much weight. The idea of spending a whole week without them seemed to dampen his mood.

Ana's journals awaited him and for the three nights that would follow, he would find out just how important that word would mean to Ana and by extension, Belle and Spencer.


"Christian, it's been a little over five minutes since you've been here and all you've done is stare a hole into the table." Thank God, he doesn't have the power of telekinesis, Rhiann would kill me if something happened to it.

Usually when sessions like this it meant something huge had happened or about to happen. Dr. Flynn took a deep breath and waited again for a response.

Christian nodded, as if to silently ask for a few more minutes while he scrambled to settle his thoughts and string together a coherent sentence. It was clear as day that the man hadn't slept. A stranger passing by would presume that the man casually sitting in a $6,000 suit was merely distracted but the distance in his eyes, the dullness in his skin and the flatness in his voice would tell another story.

"The nightmares are back." He began and cleared his throat a few seconds later to speak again. "They're mostly of Ana and the girls." If it wasn't a nightmare then it was waking up in a panic, gasping for air. Either way, sleep eluded him and if one were to think about it; for someone who had problems sleeping all these years, the effects of insomnia and night terrors had only started to take an exceptionally brutal toll on him since he met Ana two and half years ago.

Sure, he had found some coping mechanisms that would help occasionally but now, just a few nights of sharing a bed with Ana and Belle had been the most restful sleep he had experienced and it wasn't nearly enough. That kind of peace could not be fabricated, everything else would pale in comparison.

John nodded, signalling his patient to continue. Over the course of the first hour of the session, the entirety of Flynn's office had been paced; pictures, books and other small decorative baubles were fidgeted with. At one point he paused and a faint smile crept on his lips in memory of Ana's three rules and Belle repeating them in all seriousness; no cwying, no wunning, no toshing.

It began with relaying the information in Ana's journals followed by the nightmares he had every single night over the weekend. The imagery was almost too painful to detail. His own birthmother, the pimp, the smell of cigarettes, burning skin, beatings and then watching Ana die, laying on the ground cold and lifeless with two little girls in her arms. Another was of Ana crying and clutching on to her babies, begging them to wake up. The residual feelings of hunger, fear and darkness all present and inescapable in the safety of sleep.

Since Friday night Taylor had been on edge as well, especially after the first nightmare… both Taylor and Gail kept watch and wondered amongst themselves just what had triggered the onslaught of his nightly terrors all over again. They hadn't completely subsided but the frequency and intensity had lessened significantly and ever since Ana and Belle were now in his lives, they were almost non-existent. So, what was ailing the boss now?

Next on his list of confessions was the raw and ugly truth of what Alice had accused him of. The frosted glass shattered and his subconscious was standing naked in the spotlight. No escaping now, Grey.

"And why do you agree with her assessment?" Flynn needed Christian to verbalize his every thought in addition to simply relaying information to him.

It was imperative that every piece of information be stripped down to its bare parts and understood before putting it all back together. It was something that was akin to climbing Everest when it came to this particular patient, given his penchant to resist emotional development and introspection. The simple fix of calling himself unworthy and unlovable was easier. Keeping everyone, including himself at arms length meant no one got hurt… because Christian Grey doing emotional gruntwork? Fuck that noise.

And now, all that resistance had brought him to a crossroads; with baggage that was so heavy, his body felt like lead and moving even an inch forward, an impossible feat.

Christian sat back down on the couch and blew out a long breath only to look upward and roll his neck. Just spit it out and get it over with.

"It makes sense. I lied to everyone. Kept the information compartmentalized from Taylor. Even with you, which you've already figured out. With Kate, I simply told her this woman helped me and talked to me and I missed that feeling of normalcy, same with Mom and Dad. I just couldn't bear to tell anyone how far I had gone with her. You were the only one who even knew what she looked like, I just… if I kept it hidden then the reality of what really happened wouldn't look ugly. The truth about me has always been so ugly. Where I came from, what happened with Elena, what I did in the lifestyle and then with Ana… I couldn't bear to have that be a reality. Not with her." His voice cracked slightly. "What I did, I can't… she deserved better." He rubbed his forehead and exhaled sharply before his body slumped further against the couch.

"I see." He nodded slowly. "Our subconscious protects us in the best way it sees fit. Your reluctance to look into her given how everything else in your personal life was crumbling around you, your choices make sense." Christian shook his head more in disappointment of himself. It still doesn't make it right.

"The guilt of taking too long to reach out, coupled with the news of her death was the last straw on the camel's back for you. Had you looked into her and she did end up being underage then yes, given your baseline for self-loathing, it could have been devastating." Flynn watched Christian struggle, his hands and fingers wrestling with each other.

The inner turmoil was seeping out of him through his voice, his body language and most of the tense expression of his face. He's going to need crowns if he keeps grinding his teeth like that.

Christian closed his eyes for a brief moment after a stretch of silence. "I even lied to Ana. I've been lying to her."

"What have you been lying about?"

"Well this, obviously." He gestured, alluding to the current topic at hand. "Whenever she brought it up, I told her it was grief that kept me from looking further but…" He clenched his teeth in anger. "And, fuck.. I don't know how to say this… it's a feeling and realization. So many of them..." He mumbled, unable to properly communicate this inarticulate truth that had been nagging at him first gently and now aggressively throughout the later part of the weekend– with Alice' outburst and Kate's advice of making an effort to look inward to find those self-truths he'd been avoiding under the glare of self-loathing.

I cannot be saved, if my birth mother, my own flesh and blood didn't deem me worthy then why even try?

But Ana fought for the girls. Why couldn't she have been like Ana? He knew the answer to that and it lay in the fact that it was a different time, not much information at all about Ella's past, except that she was a teen mom and the fact that he was letting this particular part of his past run his life. But Ana saved me, she didn't even know me and saved me.

And in return, what did you do?

You saved yourself at the expense of another and eventually your own flesh and blood.

The parallel, while not new to him almost sent him into drunken stupor over the weekend. You're a fucking selfish asshole, Grey.

There had been a lightbulb moment that had been a tiny flicker at first early on but this weekend upon further introspection, the implications of this realization he knew could have disastrous ramifications. He took out his phone to look at a picture for the first time in a long while and it knocked the wind out of him.

"This is a safe space, say it however you want to. The purpose of these sessions is to make sense of these feelings and give you the tools to manage them so you can move forward and improve your life."

Nodding at John's words, Christian roughly rubbed his face and ran his hands through his hair.

"I know that Belle is my daughter, biologically, scientifically but I…" He could feel his voice strain under the weight of the truth of what he was about to share. "When Ana is close by, I can see her as ours but when we're apart, my thoughts are more focused on Ana. Belle is sometimes an afterthought." He hung his head in shame.

"You're having trouble bonding with her?"

"I don't know, I think." He shrugged. "She's done everything to help, she's always including me when it comes to Belle but I feel something inside me that's...I find myself more focused on Ana." My every god damn thought is of wanting to be with her.

"Yes, I have noticed that pattern too." Flynn confirmed, going silent and swiping on his iPad for a bit to pull up notes from a few of their earlier sessions. "According to my previous notes, every one of our discussions about an attempt to build a bridge through Belle towards her mother, you have remained fixated solely on Ana. Being Belle's father is not enough, having Ana is equally, if not more, important to you."

Christian didn't answer but his silence was telling. His eyes shifted around the room as he tried to find the words to verbalize his feelings in response to Flynn's observations.

"Belle is what ties us together and I see that in her. I see her as... Fuck!..." He got up abruptly and began to pace. "She is a part of both of us and visually when she's with Ana or as long as Ana is in close proximity it all makes sense but the thought of her and I alone, just being her father, in the abstract I get it but the reality is…" He went silent and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"You're unable to see her as a separate entity from Ana?" Flynn decided to help him out. It was a matter of time till Christian had gotten to this realization, better sooner than later.

While Flynn was ecstatic at the idea of these new breakthroughs– finally, the man is getting it– there was still a lot of work to be done to help this damaged man repair and recalibrate his way of thinking in order to maximize all that his new life as Belle's father and being Ana's partner could offer him. But only if he sought it.

"I think so." He looked at Flynn in apprehension. The guilt of this confession along with the earlier one were just too much to process and work through at this moment. "I want her world to begin and end with me and Belle is the physical manifestation of that but her world only begins and ends with Belle and I can't compete with that."

"It doesn't have to be a competition. Ana is not a game to won or something to be conquered, she is–"

"I know that, John." Christian interrupted him. "I mean, I need her and she doesn't need me. She did once, she desperately needed me and held out but now…"

"Why do you need her?"

"I can be better with her." Christian said quietly. "Her version of Chris is infinitely better than Christian Grey. Christian Grey left her that morning and waited two weeks to go back and then never looked into her again because he was a coward." Everything is perfect when we're in our bubble.

Flynn eyed his patient curiously. The man who thought himself irredeemable in every way seemed to be looking for a way to do the very opposite. Improvement? Reinvention? Finally! After all these years.

"You want to reinvent yourself for her?"

"I want to be the version of Chris she wrote about in her journals. The man she kept alive in her life despite everything. I need to find a way to become that man. She wrote that she would tell the girls about me and..." He sharply inhaled at the stinging lump that formed in his throat and kept him from going further.

Flynn gave him a minute before speaking again. "What about the months of intensive therapy on your own and with your family? Where's that man, the one working to better himself?"

"Honestly, after a month of that shit I was just saying stuff to coast by and get everyone off of my back. I couldn't tell anyone the real reason for my depression and I just hated being looked at like the broken one."

"Yes, it became apparent the second you got with Lillian." Flynn remarked, still unimpressed.

"I just needed everyone to move on. Once they saw me moving on, things changed all around, it became easier for everyone."

"While you remained in another version of a vicious cycle?"

"What the hell was I supposed to do? Ana was dead, what reason was there to change?"

"Your birth mother is dead too, yet you still sought to punish her and yourself every chance you got"

Christian's head snapped towards the direction of his therapist, who maintained eye contact not once caving under his patient's arctic glare. Go ahead and punch me but you know I'm right.

Going for a slightly different tactic, he continued. "Why does change have to be at the expense of someone? Why can't you want to better yourself for you?"

"BECAUSE!" He shouted then immediately went quiet. "She saved me and–" His voice cracked a little and he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. "I didn't deserve it okay, I didn't deserve to live happily after what I did."


"Christian, I'm going to ask this question again as I have many times before, what does Ana need from you in her life?"

"She needs me to be a father to Belle, for Belle's sake. Her every motivation is for her sake and I've been selfish far too long. Doesn't parenthood require selflessness? I, fuck, John, I don't know." Both hands flew up to grab his hair as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and he exhaled roughly. "I know how to give things, I can provide things but myself?" Christian shook his head in confusion.

What the fuck can I give beyond things? I'm too fucked up and all of these issues are evidence. Who would want all this baggage around their child?

"We talked about you becoming the person that they both could trust, what about that?"

"Not with these recent revelations, I can't." He countered. "And there's another thing that's been weighing on me. I've tried to push it from my mind and for a while I did, given all this drama in between but I can't ignore it anymore. It's been… eating at me."

Reaching into his pocket, Christian took his phone out and scrolled through to find the desired email before leaning forward to hand it to the man across from him.

Taking the phone from Christian, Flynn's eyes settled on the screen and his brows shot up in surprise and recognition. It was the first time in almost 11 years of treating Christian that he'd seen this picture. In front of him sat the spitting image of the picture and by way of biology or maybe in some way, a cruel joke by Mother Nature; Christian's present and future would stare back at him for the years to come in the form of his past.

"This makes sense." Flynn finally spoke. "She looks exactly like her except for the eye color. The name too, Belle… is somewhat similar." Well if this ain't a clusterfuck of epic proportions."Do you have any negative feelings towards Belle?"

"No, I don't. She's a child, innocent." Christian immediately replied. "I just, I see Ana in her, she acts like her but then there are many times where she looks so much like…." He paused and shook his head. "This isn't her fault. She's my daughter, I shouldn't be… I mean I should be able to love her completely as who she is and not struggle with who she looks like. That shouldn't hinder my ability to bond with her but sometimes I can't shake it."

This was his low-self esteem talking. For a man who exuded confidence, power and was the walking definition of domination to the outside world, he was still at times fueled by the fears of a scared four year old or the confused and out of control fifteen year old who was barely hanging on and trying not to succumb to the rage coursing inside of him. If he didn't like the man who stared back at him in the mirror then having to face a miniature form of himself couldn't be easy either. The awe and wonder of who Belle was as a child being eclipsed by the cold hard evidence of their shared DNA threatened what should be the blossoming of a bond that they both deserved and one that Ana longed for her little girl to have.

Christian knew of Ana's desires to give their little girl everything that the Universe denied her all these years. She wouldn't let anything come in between that, not now, not ever but this was something else entirely. This could mean potentially losing them all over again and he didn't want to be the reason for any more heartbreak.

Closing his eyes for a brief second, Christian swallowed in an attempt to push down the rising bile in his throat and looked back up at Flynn with a weary expression. When he began to speak again, he sounded as broken as he did that day he met Christian at his apartment a few days after learning that Ana had died.

"After all this, how am I supposed to tell the woman I love that our daughter, the little girl she loves more than life itself, is the exact replica of the woman I have hated and sought to punish my entire life?"


A/N: Oof!

No promises for an upload next week but I shall sincerely try.

Colors - Halsey