Oh man, I feel like I have a few apologies to make. One: sorry this is up relatively late, I'm visiting family, who live in the timezone three hours behind my normal one, and mine is already pretty far behind the rest of the world - so my "early" is even later than it usually is. Oops! Also, sorry for this chapter - like I said, I rewrote huge parts of this story on a whim, so this isn't as...polished. But I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. ^_^ To the reviews!

Guest: Hey, don't feel bad about reviewing late - I'm happy you're just reading. Seriously, there's no obligation to review, and I'm really glad you do at all. Thank you for your kind comments, as always. :)

For once, I didn't gank the title from something. I'm growing up, u guise!


being brave

"It's too strange," Di says.

It's the day before Di and Nan are scheduled to go back to Kingsport, and they have come up to the manse, with Rilla in tow. It's still strange, Una thinks, to see Rilla sitting amongst them. The younger girl is her friend, of course, but she had never joined in the social doings of her siblings. But then, there's something levelheaded, something capable about Rilla nowadays. Nan and Di still have a habit of calling her "Baby," but sometimes they catch themselves and even look a bit guilty.

"What is?" Una asks, breaking a biscuit in half. She gives part to Nan, who claims to be too full from Susan's lunch to eat a whole one. Una can believe that. For her part, she's too tired - nervous, too - to really eat.

"Everything," Di sighs. "Home - the 'VAD thing' - the war. Even Rilla," she says, nudging Rilla with her foot.

Rilla scowls then smiles to show she's not really upset. "You get used to it," she says.

"I suppose I just expect home to be like a memory. Just like I remember it before - everything."

Una hums sympathetically, but doesn't say anything. She doesn't have much to compare these days to - oh, of course she recalls the idyllic slowness of 'auld lang syne', but the feeling is much the same - the almost dangerous hope, the despair one tries to put to the back of their mind - and the waiting, always the waiting. Una has been waiting her whole life. That has not changed.

"And then there's Walter," Nan says. Di elbows her, but the words are already out. Una hates the way her heart beats a little harder every time his name comes up. He had been so distant, so - un-Walter-like at Ingleside the other day. She hadn't been able to reach him at all, and she will not let her unwanted feelings damage him any further.

Rilla shoots Una a look that the other two don't notice, and she shifts uncomfortably in her chair.

"We used to be so close," Di says, picking at something on her sleeve - Una suspects there's nothing to pick; Di only doesn't want to look at them. "He keeps saying that I can't understand." Rilla nods; the same must have happened to her.

"I don't imagine any of us can," Nan says softly. "Jerry's letters - he tells me things, sometimes, that I think Jem and Shirley want to protect me from. And he's seen - " she sighs. "I can't imagine what it must be like. I've never seen anyone die. The only funeral I've been to is Aunt Marilla's."

"I suppose," Di says. She sighs. "It's never - we've never had something like this between us before. What about when the rest of them come back?"

"Oh, let's not think about that," Nan says. "It's too much. Walter is bad enough - I don't mean it like that," she says to Rilla, who has opened her mouth to defend her favorite brother. "I just - I think of everyone we knew coming back - like that - and it's overwhelming. We can't know what it's like. What could we say?"

Una is not really listening. A sudden tightness has occurred in her chest. And she thinks, perhaps, that she may know what to do.


"I've been thinking," Bruce says.

Una wants to laugh - he looks so serious - but she would never do that to her little brother, so instead she fixes her best concerned expression on her face and kneels down to look him in the eye. "And what were you thinking?"

"Do you suppose," he says, "that knowing you're bad is worse than - any other punishment?"

Una frowns. "You mean that…it's worse to know that you've done wrong, than to be punished?"

"No," Bruce says, widening his eyes at her like his meaning should have been obvious. "I mean that your punishment would be the knowing that you're bad. And you'd have to live with that forever."

Una bites her lip. She thinks of nights in her room, with Faith asleep, lying awake, thinking about all the things she's done wrong - the people she's hated, even for a moment, the little lies she's told. The feeling of guilt coiled in her stomach.

"I think," she says, "that punishment is supposed to make you think about what you've done, so you feel repentant - like you want to apologize," she explains, at Bruce's frown. "So if you already know you've been bad, then yes, that's like being punished."

"But that feeling goes away. Like when Father or Mother punish me, I feel bad, but then later I feel fine. If you were really bad, would you feel bad for your entire life?"

"We-e-e-ell," Una says slowly. "I suppose that's possible."

Bruce's brows are still knit in thought, but he wanders away with his arms swinging. Una watches him for a moment, wondering what on Earth has possessed her brother to ask such questions.

If you were really bad, would you feel bad for your entire life?

What would it mean to be really bad? Una wonders. What would you have to do? Kill someone? The way soldiers do? The way Jerry and Carl and Jem and Walter and Shirley have? Perhaps that's how Walter feels. How her brothers and her friends will feel, when they return.

Una knows the feeling, she thinks. Not that she has ever killed anyone - she has never killed so much as a fly. But she knows guilt, and the certainty that she is not as good as she should be - with her quiet resentments, her little lies, her weaknesses. And there are - other things she knows, too, things she's kept locked away in some part of her heart that always aches a bit, every day.

These thoughts preoccupy her all throughout dinner, worry at her as she cleans the dishes. She escapes to her room and sits on the bed for what seems like hours, half-undressed, with her hair falling out of its braid, thinking, thinking.

She could do this. She failed Rilla, the other day, unable to hold a conversation with Walter. But now - now, perhaps, she could fix it. Help him.

But - I could never tell him, she thinks. They have never been that close. She cannot suddenly open her soul to him, tell him all her secret hurts and harms. What if - what if she ends up burdening him further, weighting him down with her problems, like stones in a stream?

Or maybe it is her fear that is hurting him. She'll never know, will she, unless she tries? Be brave, she thinks. Brave like Jerry and Carl at the front, like Faith in the hospitals. No more hiding. Not from anyone - not from Walter - not from herself.

She looks up at Ingleside, at the lights in the upstairs windows. One of them must be Walter's - she knows it is the one that looks out at Rainbow Valley. Perhaps he is lying in bed, too, thinking of something he cannot tell anyone else, the way she does, sometimes. She shivers.

And decides.