Ann/Cliff – Delta theme set

-------------------------------------------------------------

#01 – Air

"She just kept talking and talking; I don't think she stopped for breath the whole way home," Cliff confides to Carter, who hides a smile and keeps to himself his observation that the scruffy young man sounds more awed than annoyed.

#02 – Apples

"I guess it's not bad, but they're never as good with canned fruit," she laughs, bright red as Cliff's eyes light up at the first whiff of warm pastry and cinnamon; "Stick around until autumn, and you'll see what a real apple pie tastes like."

#03 – Beginning

He doesn't talk a lot, but he listens, and watches, so he knows when it's time to step in and give Ann a hand with some of the customers, because she always gets the beginnings of a cold when she's too run-down.

#04 – Bugs

Ann's always thought, away at the back of her mind where she's not too busy with more important things, that it's kind of unfair, the way bugs get hit with swatters and newspapers just for taking a wrong turn, so when Cliff picked up a glass and a piece of cardboard instead and carried the wasp back outside, she gave him an extra-big piece of cake just because.

#05 – Coffee

It's kind of funny that they both love the taste of strong black coffee, but neither of them can drink it much, because the caffiene puts Ann right to sleep and gives Cliff the same feeling of one too many beers.

#06 – Dark

He loves listening to her talk, but it wasn't until the evening they passed in the kitchen by the light of a pile of candles while Doug and Duke tried to figure out of the fuse box, that he found himself talking too.

#07 – Despair

"Stubborn doofus," she half-muttered, half-sighed, giving up in despair the fifth time the money Dad sent her to sneak into Cliff's dwindling savings ended up on her dresser the next morning.

#08 – Doors

He only holds doors for her because Mom always taught him to be polite to girls, and she only lets him do it because Dad always taught her to be polite to gentlemen, but Doug thinks with a grin that they sure are smiling a lot over an obligation.

#09 – Drink

It was the first time she's ever been that drunk, so she doesn't know what she said to make him so distant around her; it was the first time in years he's been that drunk, so he's kind of afraid to talk to her right now, because he has no idea what he did to make her so tense around him.

#10 – Duty

Something about Ann and how she can go from laughing to pouting to ranting and back again within ten minutes makes him feel like he's found his little sister again, and even though he wants to laugh when he's with her, the memory of coming home to find Saidah gone, and how badly he failed to look after her, makes him feel sick sometimes.

#11 – Earth

He's so cute when he's lost in thought, that furrow of concentration in his brow, that she almost regrets sneaking up behind him and booming in his ear, "EARTH TO CLIFF; THIS IS PLANET EARTH, PAGING CLIFF."

#12 – End

With the end of Summer comes the end of some other things: the end of his finances, and when he thinks about leaving Mineral Town and maybe never coming back and never getting to try that apple pie Ann promised him in Spring, it feels like the end of the world.

#13 – Fall

But Fall brings something else; not right away, but by the third week, he's working full-time at Aja Winery, and Ann is marveling at the change in him and walking around with a perma-grin to see him so happy.

#14 – Fire

Get a grip, man, he chides himself, shoving Ann's sunbeam smile and sparkling eyes from his mind; Duke's gonna fire you if you don't get it in gear!

#15 – Flexible

Maybe he's getting a little ahead of himself, but Doug thinks it's a good thing that Cliff is so adaptable, because Ann makes a point to make it well known that she doesn't do compromise.

#16 – Flying

She could have killed Elli for it at the time, hanging that mistletoe above Cliff's cot just before she showed up at the Clinic to visit, but whenever she thinks about the feeling of his hands at her cheeks and his breath mingling softly with hers, she gets the weirdest feeling that she's flying.

#17 – Food

So when she came back again the next day with the bag of treats she'd promised him, only to discover that the mistletoe was still there, she decided to spare Elli's life and even gave her some of the cookies.

#18 – Foot

"Well, that was dumb," she huffed when she found out that Cliff broke his foot dropping one of the wine barrels on it after he just got well enough to go back to work, but she still spends the season waiting tirelessly on him while he's laid up.

#19 – Grave

Ann, who spent the morning trying not to give into the lump in her throat when Dad started off to Goddess Peak with that lonely, longing look in his eyes to honour Mom's memory, burst promptly into tears when Cliff showed up at noon and announced that he'd taken the rest of the day off just in case she didn't want to be alone.

#20 – Green

He kind of likes Mineral Town best in the Winter, still and peaceful and blanketed in white, but he knows that Ann can't wait for Spring, so he can't feel too sorry to see the show melt and the grass and trees turn vibrantly green again.

#21 – Head

"Of course I'm not going to change my mind," she retorts when he asks, one more time, just to make really really sure they're going to the Goddess Festival together; "I never change my mind; Dad says my skull is about two inches thicker than most people's."

#22 – Hollow

At first, he thought of getting a hollowed out cake and hiding a necklace or a bracelet or some earrings inside, but Karen tipped him off that Ann would probably rather just have the whole cake.

#23 – Honour

When it occurs to her that she never did make him an apple pie last Fall with fresh apples, she heads straight over to Zack's to get some shipped in, because she's as stubborn about keeping her promises as everything else.

#24 – Hope

It's a lot easier to be optimistic about the future, now that he's pretty sure he's going to be spending it in Mineral Town; and even though Ann isn't the only reason he's in love with life right now, she's the most important one.

#25 – Light

She thought it was adorable, when she found out that he slept with his light on until he was fourteen, so he doesn't bother mentioning that it was because he forgot to turn it off.

#26 – Lost

It was just good timing that they went hiking and came back famished the same day that Doug was feeling grumpy and unappreciated over losing the Cooking Festival to Lillia yesterday, but he's smiling so broadly to see his daughter and Cliff enjoying his cooking with such gusto, that they decide not to mention the hike.

#27 – Metal

"You should try to be more careful," he chides gently, his customary timidity unimportant beside the matter of her wellbeing, as he helps her salve and bandage the wicked burn she got by reaching across the stove and bumping against the smoking hot handle of a metal pot.

#28 – New

He doesn't mind lending an ear sometimes when she's mad about something; like today, when Doug threw out her favourite old cotton ribbon, soft and comfy and almost taking the shade of her hair after years of wearing it every day, and gave her a new one, all pink silk and lace, and she spent almost an hour on about how it smelled funny and itched her neck.

#29 – Old

The battle between father and daughter raged long into the night, whether or not Ann would get a new dress for Starry Night this year; but when she comes skipping down the stairs in her own comfy old overalls and Cliff's eyes light up, she's glad she stuck to her guns and nixed the froofery.

#30 – Peace

He spent most of the evening at the Church because he likes being alone with his thoughts sometimes, but when he slips back into the Inn to find Ann ranting loudly about something, he reflects with a grin that peace and quiet is overrated, anyway.

#31 – Poison

When she finds him at the Cooking Festival, choking and sputtering and grimacing around a mouthful of a dish that isn't hers or Dad's, she blushes in spite of herself and tells him to quit sucking up; then, as she notices the telltale signs of a Karen Special, she runs for Elli instead, hoping that the doctor has got around to showing his nurse the right way to pump a guy's stomach.

#32 – Pretty

After a few drinks too many tonight, she threw her arms affectionately around him and thanked him beamingly for being her boyfriend instead of going after one of the pretty girls, like Popuri or Karen; this leaves him totally bewildered, because from where he's standing, she's got them both beat by a mile.

#33 – Rain

When they returned from a long walk in the rain, Elli and Karen and her, it was to the half-stern, half-frantic lectures of a doctor and a chicken-farmer; she expected a part-time winery worker to join in the scolding, but ended up blushing furiously instead when his eyes landed, and stayed, on the way her clothes clung wetly to her skin.

#34 – Regret

Every night this that he's gone to spend some time with Ann, Kai has called teasingly after him, "Don't do something you'll regret in the morning", and tonight Cliff finally takes the guy's advice, and gives her the feather he's been hiding under his bed for two seasons now, so he won't have to bemoan his own cowardice tomorrow.

#35 – Roses

Popuri wants Ann to carry yellow roses for the wedding, because they'll look the nicest with her hair; Mary and Elli want Ann to carry red roses for the wedding, because they have the right meaning; Ann just wants to pick something already, so they can get back to the important issues – like the wedding supper.

#36 – Secret

He doesn't know why she works so hard to keep Doug's recipes a jealously guarded secret from him; he wouldn't have the first clue what to do with a recipe.

#37 – Snakes

"I'm not afraid of snakes," she huffs, hurrying ahead of him and glaring back at him over her shoulder as he tries to hide a smile; "It just startled me, coming out of nowhere like that!"

#38 – Snow

Popuri and Karen shake their heads when they happen upon Ann and Cliff in the middle of a heated argument (even if Ann seems to be doing most of the arguing) over who would win a snowball fight – and not only because it's summer.

#39 – Solid

"Didn't the doctor tell you to stay off solid foods in the mornings?" he reminds her timidly, shrinking back when a glowering visage raises its head slowly from the waste basket; and even though he knows he should push the issue and insist that she stick to porridge and tea for breakfast from now on, he's too busy reflecting comfortably that she'll be a good mom, because she's already got the Angry Eye down cold.

#40 – Spring

She was really hoping that the little rugrat would come early and be a Spring baby, because all three of them having their birthdays in Summer, a week apart, makes it really hard to justify having more than one party; Cliff starts to ask when she's ever needed justification to throw a party, but thinks better of it when he remembers the clean-up from the last one.

#41 – Stable

Between his occasional moodiness and her frequent bursts of temper, it's hard to say which of them is the stable one, so Doug laughingly takes that role on himself.

#42 – Strange

"This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen," Cliff mutters to his father-in-law and the doctor as the three men watch Ann, in the midst of labour, and Elli, at the end of her rope with the most stunningly and violently uncooperative patient she's ever had, launch into an all-out insult war.

#43 – Summer

"It's too hot for that," she grumbles when he brushes a kiss against the back of her neck, so he grins, calls to a delighted Doug to look after the tiny boy in the cradle, and bodily carries his wife down to the cellar of the Winery.

#44 – Taboo

"I know mothers aren't supposed to seriously consider duct tape a viable substitute for real parenting, but God, how much can one kid cry?" Ann sighs, near tears of her own, as little Wade bursts into glorious noise once more.

#45 – Ugly

"He kinda looks like a little monkey, doesn't he?" Cliff asks one day while they're both leaned over the cradle watching Wade sleep; Ann nods thoughtfully: "I think he gets it from you."

#46 – War

And after that, they discovered the contrary nature of babies, because Wade, who will wake and howl with the slightest sound in the middle of the night, sleeps peacefully away through his parents' pillow-fight ten feet away.

#47 – Water

"Cliff, you're supposed to be watching in case someone comes!" Ann reminds him when she looks up to find his eyes fixed on her and slightly glazed, as she splashes around in the Hot Spa in the mountains.

#48 – Welcome

With a town full of baby-crazy girls less than five minutes away, sometimes it's really tempting to welcome Popuri's and Elli's hopeful offers to look after Wade any time you guys want a quiet evening alone, but they somehow think that they'll regret it when their son is older, so they try not to do it too often.

#49 – Winter

"He likes Winter as much as his mom, huh?" Cliff grins when Ann holds Wade up to the window to see the soft, feathery snowflakes drifting down from the sky, and the tiny infant immediately lets loose a wail.

#50 – Wood

Doug doesn't quite understand why Ann and Cliff are so adamant about building Wade's treehouse themselves instead of just hiring Gotz to do it, but at least they know their own limits, if they're starting when he's one to have it done by the time he's five.

-----------------------------------------------------------

End Notes: Sigh...so, how obvious was it that I still have no grasp on these two:)

Oh, well. At least they have a firm grasp on each other.