April 30th 2023

Chapter 120
We Feast On Normalcy

After nearly a week of being back home, Lucas was still finding parallels to their return from the For Starters tour. It felt just a bit like what they might consider to be that return's twin, not an evil one but definitely its… not-nearly-as-nice twin. When they'd returned, him and Maya, after having been away for weeks, traveling the world as she and Ree performed all those shows, it had felt surreal to see their home again, to exist in it again after it had been relegated to the status of memory while they'd been away. Lucas had been living that, those many days in the hospital. He wasn't nearly as far away from home in that time, but seeing as he was unable to leave the place where he was at, it might as well have been.

Returning after the tour, getting back into their rhythm of life was a bit strange at first, but it was thrilling, in no small part due to the fact that their first child, their Marianne, was only a couple of months away from being born. They'd still believed she'd come into their lives in November by then, couldn't have fathomed that she would be their pumpkin, their Hallowannie baby. And with all that to look forward to, there was nothing else for them to look forward to except… all the wonders that the world had to offer.

Now, over nine years later, what he had to face as he went home was… it was… a lot, good things, and bad ones all together, no matter how much he wanted to focus on the good ones as though they were the only ones. He was back with his family, he got to see them in the morning without the use of a computer screen, got to hug them in his arms and feel their energy in his presence. He got to be there when they came home and there were no detours, no visiting hours. There were dinners, and there was homework, family TV time, stories, and bedtimes. There was still school, there was still work, even if none of it was his, but there was also Aubrey, at home with her father from morning to night, and if that wasn't a gift, then what was? They were never on their own, naturally, not when Lucas needed help to tend to his own needs and couldn't count on seeing to a two and a half-year-old girl on his own.

Oh, it was a tough call to figure out which of the two of them was happier about this turn, about getting to spend their days together. Aubrey would wake up in the morning and almost immediately scramble out of bed - Marianne had seen her go - and hurry over to her parents' room, and from there she would remain by her father's side whenever she could, because he was her buddy at home now and they had to stay together. She would know that he was not exactly the way he'd once been, because of what had happened, and she would be so sweet and attentive to him, but there was still plenty to show for the way she really didn't see things as they were. She couldn't see the difficulties he had in his rehabilitation, even as she was one of the great motivators for it.

Were it not for her being there with him all day, Lucas really didn't know how he would have coped. Sure, he still wouldn't have been alone all the time, he would have had people coming along to visit him and keep him company, but it would have been impossible to find an escape from the plain truth of things with them as it was with her. They would have been with him, and they would have wanted to ask how he was doing a lot more than they did now, and he wouldn't have wanted to get into it.

It wasn't terribly bad, not all the time, but there were definitely times where the pain got harder to bear, and the limitations to his mobility... Deep down, he would try and remind himself that this was only a moment in time and that, even if it wasn't, he could be okay. It would be an adjustment period, but he would adapt. He knew all this, and on good days he remembered it well. It was the hard days that caught him off guard and made him feel his heart ramming in his chest like a trapped bird, and all he could do was try and find enough peace in him to keep his smile on for his lucky girl's sake. The thing that would do it was her. It was like she knew, like that part of her that might have retained those early hours after her birth, when she'd been his anchor, was brought out once again. When he'd start feeling that way, all she'd feel like doing would be to sit with him, her little arm around him and his long one around her. His heart would come and rest easier in time.

His days would be a mix of Aubrey time, and Maya checking in, and of course seeing to his care now that he was home and in the next part of his recovery. Those were highs and lows in varying measures. But on either side, before, and especially after, he would take in every ounce of the good that he could get because he'd have all of them... Maya, Marianne, Lucy, Kacey, Remy, Mackenzie, Aubrey, Wyatt, Nellie, Gracie, baby Finn... The boy spent his days with one or the other of his grandparents as their schedules permitted. Lucas wouldn't have minded having him there in the day, too, but it had been felt that it would be easier this way, and Abigail and James did very much want to spend time with their grandson. When they couldn't, Finneas would be seen to by his aunt Eliza, putting him together with his cousin Hannah.

Evenings were really the best. Everyone would return, and even before the incident it would have meant stories exchanged, tales made that much more thrilling by their storytellers and their respective brands of imagination... and handle on language. But ever since his stay in the hospital and now since his return home, the stories had taken on a whole other life, another meaning, and he looked forward to them each time. They helped to fill his mind, load it with just what he needed to alter the narrative track of his dreams.

He still struggled at times with the intrusion of nightmares, but it had been better, something he credited fully on to having Maya by his side, anchoring him. She'd be right there to remind him of where he was, and it meant the world. His bigger worry had been that, after he came home, he would bring his trauma with him, and it would affect his connection with his wife and daughters. He never wanted to find himself indifferent to their joy, their whole selves, because his thoughts had been invaded by dark clouds. He could have made Maya promise to tell him if he ever got to that point, but he didn't have to bother. If he got there, she definitely would call him on it, and he was so deeply thankful to her for that.

As though he hadn't had enough things on his mind throughout these days of adjusting, he'd found a new one to add to the list he would have rather never encounter, and that was the sensation that he had gone and made himself a burden to his family. They could go and say over and over that his current situation was a temporary one, but just now it simply felt anything but, and it put him into situations where he would have done just about anything not to be seen, not to be perceived in his present predicament. He didn't want to have to be helped to do things, and he would often need to whether he liked it or not. He'd been able to swallow his pride enough not to complain up to now, but he could feel the frustrations rumbling within him, building up and weighing on him.

It had led him to try and push himself more than he probably should have a couple of times, and one of those had been bad enough that he'd almost hurt himself. He'd gotten stuck and been fortunate enough to have the means to call for help, but in the wait for that help to arrive, there had been nothing better for him to do but to contemplate how he'd gotten there. Wyatt had been the one to come and help him, and Lucas was thankful for this as much as for the fact that his brother-in-law had taken in the situation and had the presence of mind to keep the event between the two of them. No one needed to know, though he wouldn't be so caught up in his own head to presume they weren't in some way aware.

They had been counting down the days to December, and now here they were… it was the last day of November, which meant that, in a matter of hours, their house would be visited by the Christmas fairies. The excitement had been boiling over from the moment everyone had gotten up that morning. For the little sisters, Aubrey especially, it was still something they had to be reminded of at first, but as soon as their memories had been jogged, there'd been no going back and they were so, so giddy. On the other side, as their eldest at home and not only aware of The Truth but complicit in its performance, Marianne was as eager to feed into her little sisters' excitement as she was just a bit impatient to get started already. This year, because of what had happened to him, Lucas knew, she was concerned about including her father as much as she wanted to make sure he wouldn't do anything to get himself hurt.

And there in the middle, there were the triplets. They were five now and the question was starting to hover around them, their parents trying to coax out whether or not they might have figured out a few things without actually doing anything to help them piece it together if they were still firmly in the 'I believe' camp. Between the two of them, Maya and Lucas had not so much made wagers as predictions. At this point in time, they were both of a mind that Remy still believed and knew nothing of who actually decorated the house every year. They were also of a mind that Lucy might not know about Santa, because if she had figured it out she would have been so sad that they would have known, but as to the fairies… Oh, she had been looking at them the last couple of days like she was starting to put two and two together, so maybe by the next morning it would all be out in the open for her.

The only one where they were really not of the same mindset was Kacey. This wasn't surprising, not when she had always felt to them like the perfect linking point between the other triplets. Lucas believed that she didn't know about the fairies but she knew about Santa, so it was anyone's guess if she'd figure out about the decorations. Maya, for her part, thought Kacey suspected nothing as of yet, like her twin, but would take very little to tip on the other side, like she was right there on the edge of knowledge.

"That was almost poetic," Lucas informed his wife, and it made her laugh.

"I could make it into a song if you wanted."

"You know, I'd love to hear that."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners