Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: So sorry it's been such a long time between updates. I always struggle with endings of stories, so when life kind of came up and interrupted my attempts with this chapter, I let it. I'm sorry about that. ...A lot of stuff has come up lately. Anyway, I'll try to be better about updates. I want to thank everyone for the support and the reviews-they mean so much to me and really are the reason I've kept up with this, trying to finish/fix this chapter, even when other things were going on. Thank you, thank you, thank you. :)

Enjoy!

Chapter One Hundred:

"…Are you happy, Sara?" He asked me softly.

I frowned. It wasn't that I wasn't happy… it was just that… this wasn't what I'd expected for our wedding night. "Yes." I said, because anything else just wouldn't be nice. It wasn't his fault that we were lost. Well, I mean, not really.

"This isn't… how I imagined our wedding night."

"I know that." I said, trying hard to be civil.

He sighed softly and turned to me. "It's just… you're not really talking."

"Ayla's finally asleep." I told him, but we both knew I was making excuses. The little booger could sleep through just about anything. He nodded, looking out the driver's side window, and I sighed too. "I'm grumpy, Gil. I'm not talking because I don't want to fight on our wedding night, but this just… it wasn't the way I wanted tonight to go. I'm sure you could say the same thing, right?"

He sighed. "…Right. Of course. I didn't… this wasn't… what I'd planned."

He looked so upset. I reached my hand over, squeezing his gently. "I know that, Gil. I'm not angry… just frustrated. I love you."

He turned his gaze on me. "I love you too."

The drive back to Paris had started out okay… Ayla was a bit tired but I sang some songs with her, read some books, and she seemed content to play at least for a little while. But when I turned back to the road in front of me, the first thing I thought was that… this road didn't look familiar. Apparently Gil had the same thoughts, because within minutes he'd turned around. Three separate times, we returned to the tiny town with the beautiful tree, and attempted to leave again, following signs that were clearly marked 'Paris.' The third time, he finally broke down and went to ask for directions.

Now, it's in my nature to be a little bit… headstrong. I'm like to do things my way. If we'd been in the States, I would have gone and asked for directions myself, since the man was clearly not so good with them. But we didn't know where Camille or her husband lived, the priest was not still at the chapel and he didn't answer his door when we knocked… and so we were left asking someone who spoke less English than I spoke French for directions. Fortunately, 'Paris' is a word people understand in all languages. And, despite Gil's mediocre grasp on the French language, mine was infinitely worse, so I let him handle it.

We were certain we had it right this time. We realized where we'd been making our mistake, and we headed off, with me still trying to entertain Ayla, to keep her awake, in an attempt to salvage our wedding night, despite the fact that it would now be quite late by the time we returned to The City of Lights. If I could keep her up late enough to eat dinner, then chances were she'd stay asleep through being transported from car to hotel room. The problem was that we got lost again, this time much too far from Allouville-Bellefosse to attempt to turn around and once again ask for help. We were pretty confident where we'd made the mistake, however, so when we saw a place that looked big and touristy enough to speak English, we stopped.

We had supper, though it was much later than Ayla was used to eating, and got directions from there. Everything was back on track again… except that Ayla was now so overtired that she was screaming, and yet wouldn't fall asleep strapped down in her chair, despite the best efforts of half an hour. Finally, Gil pulled off into another little town so I could take her from her car seat, rock her for another forty five minutes, and finally get her to sleep. I held her close for several minutes longer, to make sure she was deeply asleep. I didn't want to spend another hour and a half trying to get her back to sleep simply because I'd been hasty. Not to mention, the still and the quiet was a relief after a day or driving in circles and the noise level of the last hour and a half. My ears were ringing, and it was nice to just breathe and relax and distress for a minute.

When I finally buckled her back into her car seat, tucked her blankie close around her, and scrambled—still in my wedding dress, thank you very much—out of the back seat and into the passenger seat, I had more or less given up thoughts of a romantic wedding night. I was disappointed, but still… assuming we didn't get lost again, we'd be back to Paris in time to order some room service—desert, or champagne maybe—and take a relaxing bath together in the hotel suite. I was certain to pass out right after it, but it would be a nice, intimate way to unwind. We made it maybe ten miles before a low thump-thump-thumping and the car dragging to one side told us that we needed to change the tire.

I had wanted to cry at that point. We were just extremely lucky that Gil happened to remember seeing a flashlight in the trunk. He retrieved it and we moved outside, on the side of a tiny little highway outside the small town in which we'd eaten supper, in our formal wear, while I held the flashlight and he looked at the tire. It hadn't blown—our best guess was that it had had a slow leak for some time that went undetected, and we were merely unlucky enough to get stuck with it. …I wanted to snap out, to this obvious assessment of his, that if we hadn't gotten lost, we would have returned the car before it happened.

But I didn't.

The trunk of the car told us that we had a spare but no jack. We piled back into the vehicle, and after some searching, found the phone number of the rental agency. Once Gil managed to convey to them what he wanted—the man working the desk after hours knew very little English, and so several times they would stop conversing to decipher a word between them. Gil would try it in French, or synonyms in English, and they would spend several minutes trying to meet in the middle and find a way to communicate. Once he understood our plight, of course, he was very apologetic… He said he'd send someone out with a new car, just to tell him where we were.

Like we had any idea which town we had just left behind.

Gil did his best to explain, and the man did his best to understand… and said that he was sending someone out… but we weren't exactly hopeful. He'd hung up the phone and we'd sat in silence for several long seconds before he asked that question—Was I happy—as if a series of unfortunate circumstances would make or break how I felt about our life together… or how I remembered our wedding day and night. But in the moment, I was irritated too. It had been a long, stressful day, I'd just finished listening to him spend an hour attempting to communicate in between two languages something that should have taken fifteen minutes to communicate, and that only occurred after I had spent how long trying to calm down my overtired little princess. I was in a bad mood.

But the gaze he turned to me was so… hesitant. Like he thought that he'd ruined everything. It melted away my frustration at being in an uncomfortable gown in a car for hours, and everything else that had a moment before had me gritting my teeth. …Even after marrying him, and the gesture of the dress—which I had thought he would really appreciate—he still seemed insecure. I turned soft eyes on him and put a hand to his cheek, caressing softly.

"Gil, honey, look at me…" I said, because his eyes were flickering from my nose to my hair to my shoulders to my ears, but never my eyes. When they finally met mine, they looked pained, and I leaned over and kissed him impulsively, just trying to banish that look. I hated to see that. When I pulled back, his baby blues were shining, and though they still looked uncertain, it wasn't as bad. "…This is our wedding day, baby, and while I might be irritated at the circumstances… I couldn't be unhappy if I tried. …Today, you've given me everything I've ever wanted. …Twenty years from now, thirty, forty… I'm not going to remember what my headache feels like, or my irritation… but for as long as I live, I will remember how I felt when I saw that tree today… when I saw you, in the chapel… how I felt when I realized how much effort and concern and love you'd put into this day, even the details… the flowers, and Ayla, and… all of this. On my death-bed, my love, I will think of white fringed tulips, and a ceremony in a tree, and how you held Ayla and I, and the look in your eyes when you kissed me and knew I was yours, forever."

He blinked a little too rapidly and then lifted a hand to cover mine on his cheek, leaning in and kissing me again, drawing strength and reassurance and letting love flow freely between us. "I… I never told you how much I liked the dress, Sara." He breathed, right against my lips, pressing his softly to mine again. "I know it was silly to want a white dress… but you look so beautiful in this. It… meant so much, honey."

I brushed my nose against his and our lips pressed gently together again. "I'm sorry I didn't realize, at first, what the dress meant for you. …Gil, I know that… that when Jace was alive, I never got a chance to… choose you over him. The way things happened… But I would have, Gil. From the moment I met you, I knew you were different. …I wouldn't have married him, if I'd known you were there."

I felt a pang of guilt for the man who had died to save our child—who I would have so willingly hurt in order to be with Gil—but it didn't change the truth. Gil pressed his lips to mine, again and again, sweet, shallow kisses, but they communicated so much need and love and devotion. "I just wanted today to be perfect for you, because your first wedding…wasn't. And… everything has all gone to hell…" he murmured softly, his eyes closing at his disappointment.

"No. No, it hasn't. I told you that when I remember this day, even when I remember these trials, it will be with humor… but when I remember the good things… how sweet you were, how loved I felt… how much love I felt for you… I'll remember exactly how I felt."

His next kiss was harder, deeper, and hinted at his growing desperation. "Oh, god, Sara, I just love you so much… I was going to spend all night just… worshipping your body."

I groaned softly. "I know, honey. …I wanted that too. But we did just make love this morning… so it's not like we won't have done it on our wedding day… And with any luck, we'll be found soon, and we can go back to the hotel…" I kissed him again, the love and relief and exhaustion of the day seeping through us and lightening the stress of the moment, until my body felt loose and languid again, and with a flutter of my eyelids I realized that despite my words, I wanted him to touch me…wanted him to make love to me again. I groaned again, this time in frustration, and he chuckled and pulled back.

"What happened to that positive attitude?" He teased me lightly, and I tugged him gently to me, kissing him again.

"I love you so much, Gil. …I must not say it enough, if you thought anything could dampen this day for me. But… no one has ever made me feel like you do. You know that, right? I wanted this dress to tell you that… I wanted to make sure you knew it, but…"

"Hey, hey, hey," he soothed me, rubbing his nose against mine gently. "I know that, Sara, I do. It's just… it took us so long to get here and sometimes I…worry. But here," he took my hand and pressed it to the center of his chest, "in my heart, Sara, I know that. I know how you feel about me. I promise I do."

I kissed him again, heat shivering its way down my spine, and he chuckled and pulled back. "Honey… we have an infant in the back seat."

"I know!" I hissed in frustration, nipping at his bottom lip anyway. He gasped, and I felt the mischievous smirk slide over my lips. "…The shoulder?"

His eyes went wide in the dark of the car. "…Like, the shoulder of the road?"

I grinned. "It's dark, we're in a low traffic area, the car would block us, Ayla would be safe inside the vehicle with the hazards on… and it'll probably be hours before anyone finds us…"

He was tempted, I could tell. He bit his lip uncertainly, glancing between Ayla in the back seat and the dark look I knew was in my eyes… and I decided he would need a little more convincing.