Zuzi: Thank you! :) I'm glad you liked The Blue Castle reference; it's also one of my favorite books. I kind of figured at least a few of LMM's books take place in the same universe (although maybe not all of them, because that's way too much drama on one island, haha).

Guest: Ty ty! :) Yes, I think even though Mr. Meredith supposedly got a bit more with it after marrying Rosemary - I think he's still really spacey, and doesn't always know what his kids are up to. :P As for what happens next (sing it with me) you'll see~*~*~!

Tiny Teddy: Oh gosh, thank you :)

Title is from "Never Look Away" by Vienna Teng.


the shape you've grown

Walter finds his mother in the garden again. She's been spending more and more time there, nowadays - distracting herself, perhaps, from all she doesn't wish to think about. He can understand that.

His nose twitches as he approaches, and he tries not to cough. Too many flowers, too many scents - how can mother not smell it? It's overwhelming, like gas creeping over a trench. He takes a shaky breath before coming to sit on the little white bench next to the garden.

"Walter!" Mother says. She seems pleased, smiling at him in her kind, understanding Mother-way. "What brings you out here?"

Walter just shrugs, not sure what to say. I need your help. I don't know what to do, or how I feel. How easily words had come to him, once - but then, has he ever felt something so difficult to describe?

"I just thought I'd come visit with you," he says finally. "I'm sorry I can't help in the garden anymore."

Mother waves him off with a smile. "Oh, don't worry. Susan and Rilla help me, and vegetables are much hardier than flowers - sometimes," she adds, giving a patch of wilting lettuce a dark look. "Even little Jims is helping nowadays - well, I suppose he's not so little anymore. How hard it is, to watch children grow up." She smiles at Walter fondly. "I remember when you were his age."

Walter thinks back - how old is Bruce now? Nine? The Merediths hadn't moved to the Glen yet, when he was nine - his closest friends had been Di and Jem and Charlie Crawford at school, Alice Parker when he went to Lowbridge. He had yet to become infatuated with Faith's golden looks, be replaced by Jerry as Jem's lieutenant - not that Walter begrudges Jerry this. Not anymore, at least.

He had yet to meet Una.

She cares for him, then. Has it always been so? He tries to remember - why hadn't he looked at her more often, before? He can't recall if she's ever spoken more than common, kind words to him. She had written to him at Redmond, this he remembers - her letters hadn't been anything like poetry, but somehow her words had stayed with him.

Why did I kiss her? he wonders, and then nearly laughs - this is not the first time he has asked that question. For he has kissed her before, touched his lips to hers just briefly before stepping on the train to Valcartier. It had been easy to forget, in light of everything that came - after. But sometimes he remembered, lying awake in Belgium or France or wherever they moved, listening to rain splatter against the tarp above his head. He never really found an answer - it was only - it had seemed right, at the time. Just like kissing her back, drawing her closer, had seemed right the other day.

And he had wanted to, certainly - the same odd desire that had swept through him that day by the Methodist graveyard. Only - only he had not realized how badly he had wanted to until she kissed him first. He can still feel it, the ghost of her lips on his, warm and dry, as quick and hesitant as she had been. And he had wanted more, so then - so then.

"Things were easy," he finally says, "when I was Bruce's age." He leans forward - slowly, carefully, his back doesn't even creak - propping his elbows on his knees. "I never realized how easy."

Mother smiles, a bit wistfully, absentmindedly tugging at a flower that Walter can see does not really need to be pulled out. "I suppose we wanted to give you children all that we never had. Especially…" her voice trails off and there is a far-off look in her eyes. Then she shakes her head. "But I suppose for all that - there are still things we couldn't do."

Walter slides off the bench, comes to kneel next to her as best he can, taking shallow breaths to avoid the scent of flowers. "You did well. I told Rilla, before I went, how lucky we were - how well we were loved. A little spoiled, even," he admits.

Mother laughs at that. "I never quite had it in me to be very strict," she says. "Your father always did have to be the disciplinarian, in this house."

How good they are together, Mother and Father - "made and meant for each other," as old Aunt Rachel used to cluck, whenever they visited Avonlea. How do people know? How did Mother and Father know?

"How - " he starts, then stops, staring at his hands, fingers curled in the soil. He has never, he realizes, written a poem about love, exactly - about beauty, yes, about pining and longing- but never quite about that sweet and elusive feeling. Once, there had been Jem to ask, but Walter had never thought to broach the topic with him - milksoppish as he would have felt, talking of such a thing with his brother. In the trenches, talk of women was lewd at times, wistful and longing at others - but sentiment was something best kept to themselves, confined to photographs they looked at when they thought no one saw them and letters written in whatever time they had. Walter knows nothing of love, he realizes.

He knows that Una is his friend, that she is softer and kinder with him than he deserves, that they have become closer in the past months, that she has told him things that she has not told anyone, save perhaps Rosemary, or Shirley (he knows that he has suddenly begun to wonder about her and Shirley, and finds the thought - unpleasant). He knows that he thinks of her more often, thinks of her smile and mouth and eyes as he never has before. He knows that he misses her when she is not around. He knows - he knows - he doesn't know anything.

"Something is on your mind," Mother notes, carefully tugging a large caterpillar off of the lettuce. The caterpillar, much used to living off the fat of Ingleside's land, can barely squirm before it is callously tossed aside, for Mother could never bring herself to squash them.

Walter coughs out a laugh. "Is it that obvious?"

"Mother's intuition," she says with a wink. "Tell me. I'd say come sit on my knee, as well, but I'm afraid you're too old for that."

Walter sighs, not knowing where to begin. "It's just - " It is just that Una is too lovely, too sweet, for what he is now. Walter has never been vain, but even he knows that he was good-looking enough, with grand plans for his future - and now he is scarred and wounded and the thought of anything more than a quiet life makes his hands shake uncontrollably. As much as Una cares - if she still cares - what an ugly shock she would receive, seeing his scars in full, having to touch him, waking next to him in the throes of some nightmare. And how good she is, and how good he is not - will he ever be able to look at his hands and not see blood? What a life he would condemn her to, with him, with his nightmares and his bitterness, the odd angles at which he has healed and the wounds that still gape.

"I don't know," he finally admits. "I'm afraid for once I don't know how I feel."

"Ah," Mother says. She leans back on her heels, pulling off her thick gardening gloves and tucking flyaway red strands behind her ears. "Would I be correct in guessing that this is about Una Meredith?"

Walter blinks. And stares. And blinks again. "My God, how does everyone know?" he finally manages.

"Oh, I didn't," Mother says. "I never even thought of such a thing - it was really Miss Cornelia and Susan - but I did notice you two becoming rather close."

"It's only Una," Walter mumbles at his hands, for it is all he can think of to say - only Una. Una, the only.

Mother only hums a little, pulls some weeds threatening to choke the June lilies. Waiting for him to find the words, he knows.

"It's not like it is in the books, is it," he finally says, a bit foolishly.

"No, not quite," Mother says. She smiles a bit ruefully. "It took me quite a while to figure that out myself - I had such grand ideas! There was romance and poetry, and I think a castle in Europe, too." Her eyes twinkle at that last one. "And you were always so much like me, I'm afraid."

Walter has to smile, too. Perhaps he does not have a castle in mind - though there was a house in Venice - but his whole life, Walter has been waiting - waiting for someone striking and golden, who speaks in poems and songs. Una is none of that, and yet - he can see some kind of future stretched ahead of him, living with memories he cannot lay to rest, but there is sweetness there, too. He sees Una at his side, gentle and kind and so much stronger than he is, in her way - and he wants this future so badly that it frightens him.

He almost laughs. So he does love her - he loves Una - has loved her for some time, now. It's almost a relief - to know that he loves her, that what he feels is certain and true, that he can love, that he has something left and even something new.

"I think I understand, now," he says slowly. "I'm only afraid that - " he looks down at his hands, knowing that further up, under his sleeves, his skin is burned and twisted and stretched over bones that ache. "I'm afraid that I am not quite deserving of - anything."

Mother leans back, turns to face him for the first time since he's sat down. Her fingers brush through his hair, smoothing it back as though he's a child again. "Perhaps that is for her to decide."


It takes him the better part of an hour to compose the note. Poetic words, commonplace words - none of them seem quite right. In the end, he only asks that she speak with him. They can finish this, he thinks, this odd, strange dance they have been doing - since before his return, he realizes, since the beginning of the war, the dance of her hesitant kindnesses, his own obliviousness.

Rilla comes in, mending basket on one arm, Jims in the other.

"What are you writing?" she asks.

"A note," he says. "To Una Meredith."

Whatever reaction he had been expecting, Rilla's is not it: her eyes go wide, and then she smiles, a cat's smile that stretches slow and smug over her face.

"Oh?" she asks. "What for?"

Walter shakes his head. "I believe you know perfectly well, Rilla-my-Rilla."

Rilla presses her lips together, trying to hide her smile, then she shrugs. "Yes, I do."

He pauses, and for a moment the doubts resurface. "What if she doesn't care for me?" Oh, he knows she cares, now - she would not have kissed him otherwise; Una is not like that. But there is so much she does not know, has not seen of him. He would not blame her, if she ran.

Rilla tilts her head at him. "Sometimes I wonder if Ken still cares for me," she says slowly. "If he's forgotten me, 'over there' - if I'm waiting for someone who isn't waiting for me. But I 'keep faith' - I know you don't like that poem much, anymore," she adds when Walter opens his mouth. "But I still think of that line, sometimes. So - you should 'keep faith,' too."

Keep faith. Una has, he knows - loyal and dear as she is. For her brothers and her friends - and for him, he realizes now. Waited for him, believed in him. She had begun everything: sent him the first letter at Redmond, spoke to him first when he returned. Kissed him first.

So now it is his turn.