I heard him coming down the hallway and into the bedroom before he shook my arm to wake me up. "Mommy! Mommy! Michael has the remote and he won't let me have it! It's my turn to pick cartoons!" Jacob shook my arm again, thinking I was still asleep.

I pulled back the covers and sat up. "Alright, I'll be there in a moment, Jacob." Jacob ran off, a victorious smile on his face, believing his brother was about to get in trouble. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and walked out to the living room, finding Jacob telling Michael I was going to ground him. "What's going on in here?" I asked, upon entering.

"Mom, it's my turn to pick the cartoons. Jacob had it last week!" Michael whined.

"Okay, well let's look at the calendar." I walked to the calendar hanging on the wall by the television. "Let's see, today is the 23rd, so since we have an M on today, Michael, it is your turn to choose the cartoons."

Jacob began to cry. "But he had it last week!"

"No, Jacob, you had it last week!" Michael said. "We watched your bunny show remember?"

Jacob stopped crying for a moment, thinking about the memory. "Oh."

After finally getting the boys to agree on what show to watch, I went to the nursery and found Louisa standing up in her crib, waiting patiently for me to come and get her. I smiled, seeing her blond curls sticking up from her sleep. "Good morning, Louisa! Did those loud boys wake you up?" I asked, taking her out of her crib and giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. She laid her head on my shoulder, rubbing her sleepy face against my shirt. "Come on, let's go see what they're watching, huh?"

It was shortly after getting Michael his hearing aids, Erwin and I found out that I was pregnant again. Michael was five years old when his brother, Jacob Phillip Smith, was born. As parents, we figured with Michael being as easy as he was, it would not be hard to raise another boy. Suffice it to say, we were extremely wrong. Jacob was the exact opposite of Michael. He was loud, headstrong, and rambunctious, unlike Michael who was usually quiet, easy, and generally self-controlled. It made him unique for sure. Jacob had Erwin's blond hair, but it was obvious he looked more like me in the face than him.

When Jacob was around three years old, we found we were pregnant once more. This time it was a girl we named Louisa Morgan Smith. She was very tiny when she was born, much smaller than the boys. She was quiet and as she grew, she began to be quite shy. At just over a year old now, she is very much a cuddler and hardly goes anywhere without her stuffed elephant. Compared to the boys, she looked very much like Erwin with her blond hair and blue eyes (though I was glad she had my nose).

I returned to the living room, sitting on the couch to watch the television with my children. I was unsure of what the name of the program that Michael had chosen was, but it was amusing and colorful, typical of a children's show. "Michael, can you watch your sister for a bit? I'm going to get breakfast started before your father comes home." I set Louisa down on the floor beside Michael and went to the kitchen.

Erwin worked the night shifts as a police officer in town. It was the most stable job he had gotten in a long time. His experience with a military background certainly helped him land the job. He would come home around ten in the morning, eat breakfast, and then go to sleep until around four or five. Our children were used to their father being asleep during the day. Most of the time the boys were at school anyway while Louisa stayed home with me. She was obviously not old enough to go to school yet.

That particular morning, Erwin returned home just as I was setting breakfast on the table and Michael was putting Louisa in her high chair. He greeted the children happily, but the look on his face told me he had been having flashbacks again. I looked at the time, realizing he was home almost an hour early. Quickly, I gave the kids their breakfast and followed Erwin to the bedroom.

"You're home early. Is everything alright?" I asked, shutting the door behind me. "What was it this time?"

He sat down on the bed and propped his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. "Just another day on the job," he told me. "When I have flashbacks, I always wonder why I took this job in the first place."

"You do it because it's what you're good at," I said, sitting beside him. He looked so tired. His face was beginning to wrinkle, especially around his eyes. Our age difference never bothered me, but I had noticed his age had begun to show greatly. I put my arm around him and leaned my head on his shoulder. "You want to protect people."

"Yeah," his voice trailed off quietly. "Wish I… No… It wouldn't have been possible anyway."

"What happened? Tell me."

It took him a moment to reply. "You remember when the cadets' quarters caught on fire?"

I nodded, thinking of the memory from the other world. The flames were so high and hot. That cadet was burned so badly. "I remember they were covered in soot and burns. I helped one of them."

"Well, that's basically what happened last night at this apartment building. This kid's parents barely made it out with their son. He's in the hospital recovering now. He's stable for now."

"Are you planning to go visit him later?"

"Most likely. I'll eat and then I'll go to the hospital to see how he's doing."

"Alright. Don't forget to come home and sleep. Michael is counting on you to spend the afternoon with him. He's been talking about it all morning when he wasn't arguing with Jacob."

Erwin nodded, smiling briefly. "I haven't forgotten." We sat in silence, listening to the sounds of our children loudly eating breakfast. We trusted Michael to keep his younger siblings in line when we were out of the room. Eventually, Erwin stood and began to undress out of his uniform.

"Erwin," I said softly as I watched him move across the room to the dresser, "we have to move on from that world. We can't stay there."

He nodded, agreeing. "I know," he said with a heavy sigh, pausing in front of the open drawer. "I know… Leaving is just the half of it." Another long silence passed between us. "It's just… when I'm in the situations that I'm in during work, it's hard to leave those memories and experiences behind. Whether or not they were fabricated in some way, I don't know, but we can't deny that they did happen, Ariadne." He turned to face me. "We can't deny that we experienced the Titan world."

I also nodded in agreement. "I'm not saying we should deny them. I'm saying we should accept it happened and move on." I stood up and moved in front of him. "Right now, Erwin, our family is what's real. Your job is real. Everything we have here would never have existed in that world. One or both of us could have been killed, our children wouldn't exist, our home would be cramped, Erwin, our freedom would not exist. We can live here." I paused and I took his hand in mine. "Erwin, we have to leave that world for good."

"I know that," he said, turning away for a moment. His face suddenly lit up as an idea formed in his mind. "What if we were to write it all down?"
"Write it? Would we publish it?" I liked the idea of writing it down, but I was unsure of why Erwin thought writing our story would be helpful.

He shook his head. "No, we don't have to do that. We could write it like a story," he said, still thinking of the idea. He let go of my hand to put on a shirt. "We could use it to tell our kids why we are the way we are. Why we wake up with nightmares and why we sometimes don't respond to them right away because we're having flashbacks. We could give it to them whenever we feel the time is right."

I considered the idea. "I like it," I told him. "Where on earth would we start though? Should we tell everything? Or do you think we should leave some things out?"

"Well, I mean, we could leave some things out, the little unimportant details. Let's stick with the big events. Like your arrival, for instance."

"But what about yours?"

"It's not nearly as interesting," he argued.

I shrugged. "I suppose, but you could still put it in."

He also shrugged. "True. Let's go eat though. I'm hungry and that bread smelled really good." He gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek and followed me out of the room.

I really did like the idea of writing down mine and Erwin's story. I felt as though once we wrote it down, we could leave that world for good. Writing it would be our final thorough visit through that world. A final goodbye to it.

We worked on the book for nearly two years as we pieced and edited and wrote the story together. We brought the book to a friend of ours who knew how to bind books and asked him to do that, but he should refrain from reading any of the pages. He gave it back to us a week later, bound in beautiful leather, not looking us in the eye, non-verbally telling us he had read our book. Erwin and I hoped he would not say anything. We never heard anything from him for a long time.

I wondered when we would allow our children to read the book. Whether or not we would give it to them when they were adults, or leave it on the bookshelf for them to find and then have them ask about it. We decided to let them find it on their own.

A letter to my children,

Should you choose to read this book, understand you must read it in its entirety or you will lose much of the meaning to what was written.

Please also understand that not everything we experienced is in this book. There are stories we felt were unneeded. There are stories we felt were unimportant. There are stories we wish to keep between the two of us. Please try to understand the horrors we went through.

Do not be angry at the men who started us on the path we went on. Without them, we wouldn't have a story to tell.

This book contains a story so bizarre, so insane, and so sad, yet there is still happiness. Do not be afraid to ask any questions you may have. Your father and I wrote this book so you would know. You would know why we are the way we are. Why we have the horrible nightmares and flashbacks that we do. This book was a way for us to get past all that. We feel as though not telling you would be unfair, but not telling you everything is still unfair in a way.

Do whatever you want with this book when we are gone. It is of no concern to us.

We know it may be hard to grasp at first, but give the story time to sink in. We admire your courage and understanding to read this story. Please do not hold anything against us if you read something you disagree with. It's too late for us to change what happened.

We love you and hope that this story will hold meaning for you as is does for us.

Your parents,

Ariadne and Erwin Smith

And that is where I shall end this story! I don't exactly want to end it, but this is where I think I shall complete Ariadne and Erwin's story. Thank you for everyone who has read and enjoyed this! Without you guys, I probably wouldn't have finished it at all.

If I ever get the motivation, I may write those alternate endings in as a treat.

Again, thank you for all the followers and favorites and reviews! I appreciate everything you guys have done!