Hello! It is Wednesday and I am back with a new chapter. It's the early hours of the morning here in the UK but I have read this and edited it ready for the Doc Manager and, just like last week, it technically is Wednesday now so I might as well press upload. This one was the first Christmas story written this year and the first one uploaded too. It wasn't the first idea though. I really had fun tackling this one. It focuses on something a bit different and a different dynamic. Here we have Gary and his grandmother, Greta (Samuel Oak's ex wife) close to Christmas and things aren't the greatest for them. They are dealing with a beureavement. But there is always time to focus on more than just that. So this story tackles that. I hope you enjoy :)

Ages:

Gary: 8

Greta: 55

Disclaimer: I own the story and the OC mentioned!

This is one of those tales which I didn't learn for quite a long time. Not because it was kept a secret, like the unknown pages in between a journal where it was only traced upon during the quietest hours of night. You see, sometimes tales come at unexpected times. And then you think to yourself, ah, of course. Certain stories can show you a glimmer of who people really are. This is one of them.

Greta's nose twitched in her sleep and then suddenly she was awake. It's funny how sometimes you are tugged away from dreamland in the most peaceful of ways, naturally roused away from your dreams. Sometimes it was the opposite, however. And on that particular night right on the cusp of Christmas Eve, a woman was yanked away from wherever she was before.

She had an immediate knot in her brow as she encouraged herself to part from the mattress, hand lingering for a few moments longer as if she still wasn't quite ready to leave behind the freedom of slumber. Letting out gentle mumbles, Greta encouraged herself to come properly to and focus on what exactly had woken up.

No, the scents that were filling her nostrils more and more now that she really was back in reality were not remnants from a lost dream. She was really smelling something quite subtle yet undeniable all the same. And that had woken her up.

Her mumbles to herself promptly becoming a sigh as her eyebrows drew together in unison furthermore, the bed was left alone and a soft pink dressing gown was wrapped around a spritely body.

If there was anyone who would be the cause of that particular smell during that time of the night then it had to be just one particular person.

Greta muttered his name as she was already along the landing of the great research lab, her tones still laced with that sigh that had not fully escaped during the moments before. Making her way downstairs, she hugged her dressing gown tighter around her bosom; as if she needed that soft and fluffy pink protection in order to be a tad sterner.

However, she was not giving her expression and a natural part of her countenance enough credit. Now that she had made the journey from the spare study of the building and her hand was about to clutch onto the knob of the door leading to the kitchen, her nostrils did not only smell that scent all the more powerfully but she heard sounds too.

Piercing blue orbs narrowed against the dark of the night and appeared to lead the way. What a little rascal, she thought to herself. But who was that rascal? She would soon go on to speak aloud one particular name all over again, that time matching the strength of the scent of flour she was inhaling.

No more was her hand merely brushing the knob of the oak door. Her wrist flicked, twisting it open. With a light yet firm foot, she kicked the door out of her way. The causation of all the activity in the middle of the night immediately looked up.

"Gary…" Greta spoke to her grandson, surprising herself by how her tone came out with the same quality as her fluffy pink fortress straight away. She reminded herself she needed to take a leaf out of her foot's book instead. "What on earth-"

As her tone altered to far more authoritative, Gary's eyes appeared to fix on her more, even though they had looked up while in the middle of rolling dough between his two youthful hands. But then, the more that his grandmother lingered in the doorway and her fixating blue orbs against the low lit kitchen lights cut into him, he decided to look away.

Then, the flick of his wrist could not have been a more different action than Greta had portrayed when she opened the door.

"Shouldn't someone of your age be in bed at this hour?" Gary asked her directly, perhaps it being for the best that he looked away because his eyes would have certainly been able to cut deeper than any weapon.

Upon hearing this, Greta's cheeks flushed warmer than the oven that was pre-heating in the corner of the room at the sheer cheek of her grandson's manner. But she managed to hold her own, arms sturdily wrapped around the plush of her robes.

She retorted.

"I could ask you the same thing!" Came her reply, her arms finally flowing freely away from her body and in slippers that were a perfect match for her robes, she padded further into the room and closer to where her grandson was rolling dough in the middle of the night. "What on earth do you think you are doing?"

Greta was able to fully concoct her sentence that she had been meaning to put forth moments before. Although, it goes without saying that it seemed to be perfectly clear what Gary was doing.

The eight year old boy was knuckle deep in dough. There was a bag of flour to his right. There was sugar to his left. The oven was pre-heating in the corner of the room, its humming sounds being the only noise during silences between the two people. There were cookie cutters. It was Christmas time.

Yes, it was fairly obvious what he was doing.

Gary spoke of exactly this as he blew out such a torrent of air from his lips that he was somehow able to move the rigid and spiky locks that hung in front of his young face. Still knuckle deep in the dough as if he wanted to pick a fight with it rather than to nurture it towards its final creation, he looked back over at Greta, his own reply coming curtly.

"Making an ice sculpture." His words were laced with sarcasm. His expression did not even need to move to match his tone for his impertinence to come across. All of a sudden, he was speaking other things, seemingly going against his prior answer. "You can't have Christmas without cookies." A pause. He finally drew his hands out from the mound of dough. "You never asked me if I wanted to make them with you this year."

Dismay at how he was continually speaking to her caused Greta to respond in the way that she did. And as she did so, she did not lead by the best example.

"I most certainly did!" she insisted, drawing ever closer to her grandson and so her arm leaned against the kitchen counter top, the sleeve of her dressing gown becoming snowy. "I asked you and you didn't bother to respond." Piercing blue eyes became narrowed. "Too busy pressing away on those bloody console buttons."

Greta lured her grandson's gaze back to hers all over again and they couldn't help but stare all while not giving much away at all.

She had never been the type to hold her tongue around him, not even when he was far younger than he was standing in the kitchen and certainly not on that night either. He would learn those sort of words eventually, wouldn't he? So he might as well have heard them from her. That was what Greta believed anyway.

Gary gave no indication whether his grandmother's words were correct or not. Whether he had actually not responded to her. That he had ignored her, far too enamoured by a new game which had been released on his handheld console.

A flick of the head that time instead of a flick of the wrist, the auburn haired young boy began separating the mound of dough into smaller domes, evidently preparing to move onto the next step of his cookie making.

He was fully looking away from Greta then, as if her presence was the greatest distraction and her being there would cause the sugar in his cookies to grow as pungent as salt.

"It's late." He began, and Greta's eyes immediately grew rounder, speaking exactly what she was thinking without having to say anything at all. She drew back away from learning against the counter too. "You go back to bed. I need to concentrate on what I'm doing." Before he could stop himself, final words came, his throat silently feeling as though he had swallowed a mouthful of flower. "Leave me be."

The thing that Greta hated more than anything in the world was people telling her what to do. That was why she had left Gary's grandfather, after all. One of her biggest peeves was men who thought that they knew better and could order women around as if they were nothing.

She would be damned if her grandson ever showed a glimpse of that.

"Don't you dare, young man!" Greta responded, her voice rising in pitch and making it a possibility that others in the house would wake to far more than the smell of baking. It was uncertain what part of Gary's words she was reprimanding him for. "You are to stop all this immediately and go up to bed. There is a time and a place for everything but it certainly isn't here and it certainly isn't now!"

These words slipped away from her before she could stop them. Like a ski that was set loose soaring down a snow covered hill, she could not stop her words from getting away from her. Although she did not feel a palm drawing towards her mouth, she felt eyelashes being brought closer together.

When Gary feebly looked over at her all over again, she knew exactly what she was thinking. And it was somehow worse that he didn't address it verbally at all.

Greta's skin began to experience that uncomfortable sensation of pricking with heat while having a cold blade running across it, pricking and slicing. She swallowed a mouthful of non-existent flour.

She had spent far too much time back in that Pokémon Laboratory, even if it was for the sake of her grandchildren. Being cooped up in that spare study room night after night was staring to get to her. She was starting to sound like Samuel, the very man whom she did have respect for in her own way, but wanted to be the furthest person from him as possible.

Silently and to herself, she grunted. Although thankfully, she did not need to speak again because it was Gary's turn. Yet, at first it wasn't quite so reassuring. She wondered what on earth he would come out with next from the moment that his lips started to part.

"Just let me do this…" he muttered, inwardly grimacing at the way his tone sounded like he didn't have the energy left to argue. He would always muster it up somehow. Gary ripped apart dough like he wanted to do that to other things. "Go back to sleep."

Greta winced, the eyelashes of her right eye drawing together before managing to separate all over again and somehow without watering. She would be damned if she left that household in the New Year without her grandson learning not to order people about so much.

Standing erector and like she was when she was on the outside of the large and oak door of the kitchen, Greta's head was held high and her arms were not wrapping around herself even if they would have liked to, out of defiance or otherwise.

She knew directly was the best manner in which to converse with her grandson. But in truth, she saved this quality about herself for everybody.

"I couldn't very well get back to sleep thinking you are burning this kitchen alive, thank you very much." Greta insisted, a bobbing of her head speaking just as much as her throat was able to do. A hand reached out to the counter that time rather than a whole leaning arm. "I will help you. And then we shall both get to sleep."

I can effortlessly guess while recounting this story that Gary's grandmother expected to have the last word there and then. But this is a story between both her and her grandson whom we are reminiscing on, aren't we? She should have guessed that in a room with them both, both of them were going to be fighting to have the last word.

Neither one of them were going to go down without a fight. Even in the middle of the night and with a more hushed quality taking over their tones, they wanted the ball to remain in their own court.

"I don't need your help." Gary insisted, his tone of voice quieter, it is true, but still with a quality about it like a stubborn flame refusing to go out. Narrowed eyes looking down at the domes of the dough rather than his grandmother, he added. "I don't need you telling me what to do."

Though his tone did not inflect one bit, the meaning behind his words were clear and they cut far deeper than any cookie cutter could do while bedding down into dough. His eyelashes flickered and, just like his grandmother, his eyes were able to refrain from watering.

Maybe it was the heat of the kitchen. Or maybe it was the desire not to feel. But still, words had been unable to be held back. And Greta of course heard them. She knew exactly what Gary meant. She was the complete opposite of a fool.

She told him when to get up. She told him when to go to bed. She told him when he should go out for some fresh air. And when he should knock for the company of Ash. Greta told him when which plants needed watering. And she told him when his grandfather needed his help.

Seemingly to Gary, Greta always told him what to do. And he needed a break.

"Well maybe you can tell me what to do." Greta surprised her grandson by suddenly suggesting, her voice still level and curt but with a subtle hint about it that made it clear that she was serious. She added to prove exactly this. "Whatever it takes for all of this nonsense to hurry up so we can both head to sleep."

Gary exhaled an exhale that would have blown out the log fire in the corner of the kitchen if it had been lit. But alas, even that didn't have the energy to ignite. So he just sighed a sigh for Greta to hear and for the balls of dough to feel a breeze washing over them.

Apart from that noise, grandson did not speak to grandmother. He did not disagree with her all over again. Nor did he insist that she really needed to leave him alone. Instead, Gary cracked on with doing what he needed to do. And more importantly, trying not to think about the things he naturally found creeping into his mind.

Greta letting him tell her what to do? Ha, that was rich. She always bossed him around. She always told him what to do. Do this. Do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. Like she was some sort of…

Gary's brow knotted together and if he had been making festive pretzels rather than cookies then he would have most certainly given them a run for their money. He didn't dare think about the word that threatened to force its way into his mind.

No, Greta could never replace anybody. And for the first time on that night, he actually thought about doing what his grandmother had told him and he considered quitting what he was doing until the morning and heading up to bed. And not because he valued what she said. He didn't. It was just that the idea of bed sounded quite good.

The idea of not missing his parents for a few hours was bliss. But of course, he always dreamed about them, didn't he?

Not that he knew it, but Greta and he were quite alike in that area too.

"You're going to want to flour your board far more than you have done, Gary." Greta ripped her grandson away from any of the thoughts that he was having, causing his eyes to practically omit the same wind of his breath over the dough with the speed in which his pupils locked onto the silhouette of his grandmother. "Otherwise they'll stick."

His lip curled as Greta insisted. While it wasn't easy to fight the thoughts that longed to enter his mind and along with the memories too, he had enjoyed the silence from speaking all the same. Greta always spoke, it seemed. To him. To herself. To anyone that was listening really.

It was like she was weak, Gary thought. Like she couldn't be alone with her thoughts for once second.

His lip inadvertently curled furthermore. And though he dropped down one small ball of dough that he was rolling between two hands down towards the chopping board with a bang, he did then reach for the back of flour which contradicted his choice of words.

"I thought you were meant to be letting me tell you what to do?" he questioned, managing to look dead at his grandmother as his hand delved into the bag of flour and then a balled and tightly clenched fist shook flour all over the chopping board, covering it like a winter's first snow.

Greta watched every gesture of his with an invisible fish hook in her eyebrow but for once, and contrary to Gary's opinions of her, didn't say anything to address his hostility both in word and gesticulation.

She could not stop her own bluntness from shining through, like their candidness together was an extra lamp that lit the kitchen up during that dark night.

"Well you weren't doing a very good job of it were you?" she retorted, her voice rising in pitch as it often did when she was going to head to head with anyone, including her grandson. Arms wrapped around her body for the first time in a little while, and not to keep warm. "You couldn't have been more silent if you tried."

It was lucky that even Greta had the sense not to compare his silence to the one particular thing. But even though she didn't actually say the words or think them, a shiver ran along the spine of Gary, as if something was walking over his own grave.

In an attempt to pull himself together and recover, Gary's lips puckered outwards very far before drawing closely together. And while his tone was a bit – to use a word in which he would have described it as – pathetic – words from him managed to come all the same.

Gary quipped to his grandmother once more, his voice being the one on that occasion to feel a sigh eclipsing everything that he felt it necessary to say.

"Because I never agreed to any of this." He began. If Greta had not seen her grandson gesture with a flour covered hand down towards the dough balls of his that were pretty equal size in spite of all the distractions, she would have thought that he was referring to other things. "Fine." He corrected as if certain things really had slipped from him. "Help me cut these into shapes, will you?"

And taking a leaf out of his grandmother's book though of course, it was already a part of him then, before she could agree or she could reject him, Gary slid with his hand exactly half of the balls of dough onto another board and handed them over to Greta.

For a split second, piercing blue eyes stared. But then, she wordlessly complied, knowing exactly what her grandson needed of her and took hold of the wooden board as well as some of the cookie cutters in various shapes.

However, before she set to doing what was asked of her straight away, she naturally reached for the flour to sprinkle some more on her own board and she also set to squishing out some of the balls of dough and reshaping them into even rounder, more perfect appearances.

The prior invisible fish hook in the brow of Greta was contagious as Gary stared from hovering over his own board and balls of soon to be cookie, cookie cutters in his own hands. He was ignored. And so, he was forced to watch his grandmother's skilful and natural hands smoothing out dough, rounding it and preparing it to be cut into a festive shape.

As he had begun to watch what she was doing – or watch as she was redoing what he had done – he felt a fire rising in his stomach that had the potential to be more powerful than the kitchen oven. But as time went on and he instead focused on observing what was truly being done, that heat inside him mellowed out and even went on to spread out throughout various parts of him, warming him through.

Sometimes he felt as helpless and small as the dough that was being rolled between the two small, ring decorated and sun mark kissed hands of Greta. Ever since his parents had passed, he was constantly being tugged in more than one direction. Everyone felt as though they could not only comfort him, but mould him too, that was how it felt to him.

He was a product of his own grief. But he was also a product of how people felt he should be acting while grief stricken. Greta. Samuel. Daisy. Delia at times. Never Ash, though. And because of that, he was grateful to at least have one person who treated him the same. It was nice to have someone who treated you as just the same old Gary. Because in truth, there were times he didn't know who he was without his Mom and Dad.

Both grandmother and grandson were soon deep in private thought as they rolled the dough into the shapes that they needed to be and if they glanced over at each other, I know that one of them or both of them would have believed that they couldn't have been thinking of more different.

But as though it often was when people believe that they are alone in their emptiness and their loneliness, on that night, Greta and Gary were both thinking of the same things. They were certainly thinking of the same people. And how on earth they were going to make it to the New Year without the two of them.

Gary and Greta didn't look at each other for quite some time as they were concentrating. However, grandmother was encouraged to look at grandson soon enough when a grunting noise began to escape from his lips.

You see, Gary was embarking on cutting the fifth and final shape of his cookie. But for some reason, it felt like neither the cutter or the dough was complying and he needed to push the cutter through it with all of his strength.

He groaned. Greta looked over. If she had been wearing spectacles, then blue eyes as changeable as ice could have been seen peering over them.

"You're going to hurt yourself if you keep that up." She told him and as if she had really listened after all to the fact that she was meant to be reigning in her telling him what to do, a whole hand didn't reach over her mouth but two fingers did in a subtle manner. Greta would have liked it to be a whole hand when she saw ridges forming in Gary's hand as he pressed, the grooves quickly becoming a hue that was more pained than it was festive. "Be careful, Gary!" she suddenly needed to do more than just tell him what to do. "That's going to really hurt."

And with that, Greta couldn't not warn her grandson and she certainly could not just stand back and watch him wound himself. With a swift motion of the wrist, she grabbed both his hands in hers and yanked them away, quickly inspecting them although it was just the one who had taken the brunt of his actions.

She raised both palms of his close to her eyes as if they were her own night lights and she could see each and every mark on his hand in the dull light of the kitchen, some of them telling tales of his future and others freshly red and raw from pushing far too hard on the cookie cutter.

Either way, Gary tried to wriggle away from her clutch and her concern too, his body not being the only thing to speak of his unease.

"Stop telling me what to do." He was beginning to sound like a broken record. And as he attempted to wriggle away from his grandmother's hold, he didn't just stop there and he also tried to get back to exactly where he had been and resume exactly what he had been doing too.

He was not going to let an uncooked cookie or its cutter get the best of him. He was going to push down on it until he was bled dry for all he cared.

Greta knew exactly this. She might have been at logger heads with her grandson most of the time during those seasons of his life and often seeing things on entirely different pages to him but this was something she did see coming.

While her grip on his wrists tightened, not letting him leave her hold or her sight, her expression contrasted this as her eyes finally threatened to prick with water. Her tone of voice was far softer than it had been all night, almost becoming the plush of her robes.

"You need to let go, Gary." She told him, those direct blue eyes of hers becoming like magnets and latching onto the face of her grandson who was desperate to get away. He really was determined to struggle away from her hold.

And though he didn't outwardly show it, this became more and more the truth when he heard her choice of words and didn't look back at her gaze and he knew that he wasn't a fool. Without trying hard at all, he knew that there was more to her words than she was letting on for any stranger who couldn't have possibly heard seeing as they were the only two in the room.

It was this that made his own eyes long to prick. And it was this that gave him the last bought of strength to pull away for good.

"The only thing I need to go is get finished up here." He stood his ground as steaming and as hot as the walls inside of the oven as he at last managed to pull away, trying to keep a percentage of his attention on gathering up the no longer round cookies onto a baking tray. They were ready to go into that oven that was rendered useless compared to the heat radiating inside of him.

Greta could only watch as he roughly yet silently swallowed and turned his back on her in order to put the cookies into the oven that had been pre-heating for quite some time and to turn the timer on. And for a rare occasion while he was inadvertently or maybe purposefully blocking her out, she felt the notion rushing through her that she had done all that she could have done.

She said everything that she could have possibly said. She hinted all that needed to be hinted. The rest was up to him. He too had done what he needed to do on that night. He needed to bake cookies. Greta didn't know why. But if there was a time when somebody could be given the grace to do something a bit crazy then it was certainly when you were dealing with grief. And it was certainly at Christmas time, too.

It was a shame that those things had to go hand in hand. A loss during the holiday season was a tricky thing to navigate. Certainly for an eight year old boy. And certainly for one who believed that he had had all the answers in the world up until the death of his parents.

Truthfully, he did not feel like he would ever have the right answers ever again. But at least he had cookies. At least that was something.

"Guess I should wash up now." Gary took Greta by surprise by speaking to her when he had stopped crouching in front of the oven and though he didn't turn around properly towards her or look at her either, he must have been talking to her.

It didn't cross her mind that he might have been talking to himself. And for once, it didn't cross her mind that he was trying to be a bit sneaky, behaving like a teenager and under the impression that if he spoke those sort of words and spoke in that sort of tone, she might offer to do the chores for him.

Greta needed a moment to rub her hands together before speaking, as if her palms were soiled from leftover flour residue and she needed to get far cleaner. But words of her own soon came. And as they tumbled out of her, she put her grandson in his place.

"I shall do that." she answered, her tone of voice laced with that of certainty even if she was growing softer in her manner the later the night became. And before Gary could even part his lips out of disagreement, Greta persisted. "You've done more than enough today."

And for once, Gary did not even bother to dissect the meaning of his grandmother's words and ponder whether she meant it in a scathing way or she meant it in the way in which the words had formed inside her own mind before making their way into the either.

With the slightest of motions that was hardly even a nod, his head moved and he decided to just lean up against the kitchen cupboards that were opposite to the oven and feel the heat radiate from there as well as watch as the time made its way down to zero.

When Greta turned back to her grandson after she had ran the warm water through into the washing up bowl in the sink and she caused the kitchen to no longer just smell of baking cookies but of citrus washing up liquid as well, her eyes could not help but dart towards the timer on the oven that he was loitering near.

Dipping one of the flour enveloped wooden boards into the water; she let out the most silent of grunts to herself, her own head making the smallest bobbing motion. She felt that he had turned up the heat far too much and the timer was far too long for just a few simple cookies.

But contrary to how Gary believed that she liked to behave with him, she actually did feel that it was important for him to learn from his own mistakes and on his own time and not be told exactly what to do all of the time.

And so, Greta simply cracked on with doing the washing up while Gary's eyes blurred together and saw double of the same image the more that he waited for the cookies to fully cook and the longer that time passed. As he stared and as he focused, all sorts of thoughts filled his mind yet none in particular at the same time.

He often did not know what to think. And all the more so, he often did not know how to feel. So instead he focused on staring, telling himself that if he looked away then there would be consequences. He did not exactly know what those consequences would be. But he was almost certain that there would be exactly that.

And in between this notion, he focused on the warm cookie sent floating into his nostrils as well as the contrasting crisp of the washing up liquid that Greta was using. Not that he allowed himself to feel it fully, but that was the most peaceful that he had felt in months. Everything was simple then.

He was just a boy who was waiting for his cookies. He was just a boy in the kitchen with his grandmother. There was nothing to worry about then. His grandfather certainly wasn't bedridden upstairs and his older sister definitely wasn't acting out in her own portrayal of grief. Everything was perfect. As it always had been. As it always would be.

Gary would have liked to stay in these thoughts. Gary would have liked to stay in that trance. But it was not realistic, was it? And after all, he had set a timer, hadn't he? So it would eventually go off. And it did, with a ringing sound, bringing him back to the reality which he didn't exactly like but was embracing as bravely as he could all the same.

Greta could not help but look over and watch as her grandson reached for the oven gloves in order to set the cookies free from their heated prison, out of curiosity for whether the outcome she predicted would happen would be the case, as well as a natural protection for the eight year old boy that she still could not shake.

Even though she still had washing up to complete, her yellow gloved hands took a break and lay resting in the warm water as she turned over her shoulder, watching Gary crouch down to the level of the oven after turning it off. He made sure to follow some of his grandmother's guidance from another day and allowed hot air and steam to pass away from his line of vision before he delved his hands into the oven, pulling his creations out.

The auburn haired young boy waited to see perfectly crisp and golden festive shaped cookies staring back at him as he held the tray in oven glove adorned hands. For a split second, he believed that he was seeing the most wonderful creations. But then the truth hit him.

Like he had been slapped in the face, Gary jerked when he saw the true appearance of what he had made. And practically instantly, he turned to look at his grandmother in an accusing way.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" he began by speaking to her although, of course, 'speaking' isn't exactly the manner in which he came across to his grandmother. Starting to feel a burning sensation travelling to his hands even though his oven gloves were staying firm on his hands, his eyebrows had never drawn so closely together. "I bet you knew! And you didn't tell me!"

With a slapping sound and a clanging noise to boot, Gary discarded the tray full of burnt cookies onto the top of the hob and threw the oven gloves to the floor, revealing pink and clammy hands that appeared to glow under the low lights of the kitchen.

Still turning over her shoulder and looking in that way, Greta's eyes clapped together as she listened to her grandson ranting. Then as she rid herself of her own gloves, salmon pink pads of her own fingers being revealed, she turned around to properly face him and couldn't help but be direct with him at first.

"Of course I knew." Greta didn't lie for a single second. Ice blue eyes continually blinking while Gary felt hotter than the baking tray containing the cookies, she added, standing her ground and allowing her stance to be known. "You told me not to tell you what to do."

If I had been there, then I would have let out a sigh that would have been far louder than the groans of the oven! There is a time and a place to teach a child a lesson. I for one believed that there and then wasn't it. And in truth, Greta would have agreed with me.

You see, she wasn't trying to teach any sort of lessons at that point. She was just being the only way that she knew how and with her grandson. Herself.

Hotness spread from Gary, from the tip of his fingers right to the tips of his ears and to every space in between. Something clutched at his throat and he told himself that it was not a sob. No, it couldn't be a sob. He simply wouldn't allow it.

Sensations of rage pricking at the whites of his eyes, he allowed his emotions to come out in different ways rather than crying.

"Why did it have to go wrong?!" he hissed, and almost as soon as this snake-like sound had escaped from his lips, those lips of his were then practically the same hue as the eyes that his grandmother was using to look back at him. His own eyes fell together. Spiky locks felt the tight clamping of a hand. "Why does everything have to go wrong?!"

Silence. Not another single sound.

With his eyes closed and his own hand tightly wrapped around the spikes of his hair no matter how much it hurt his other hand that had not been dug into by the cookie cutter, Gary's shoulders bobbed up and down.

No matter what, he would not allow himself to cry. But that did not mean that he did not allow himself to feel.

Greta caused his eyes to want to peel open all over again when she surprised the whole empty room by speaking promptly and matter-of-factly after her grandson.

"Maybe not so." She disagreed, her calmness cutting the atmosphere like a knife and peeling herself away from the washing up and the sink in order to join the discarded cookies on the top of the stove and give them her full attention. After she had peered plenty, both flushed hands on her hips, she had more answers. "I don't think they've gone as wrong as you think. I think they look a bit like you."

Understandably, these were not the words that Gary was expecting to hear. He took the seconds after this as the moment where he would finally be able to creep his eyes open a little and as he did so, moisture ran along the lower lash line of his lid.

A vehement sniff from him encouraged not only the water to evaporate but for him to find his voice another time even though it hurt from the way in which he had yelled moments before.

"Don't." Was all he said, his word and his tone a warning in spite of how feeble they came across. He couldn't even look at his grandmother, let alone the disastrous cookies that he had concocted.

He could not even blame the middle of the night. In those moments, he felt like everything that he touched was doomed to fail.

With a shake of her head, Greta disagreed to this but of course, she did not know exactly what she was disagreeing with because these thoughts of Gary's had not been shared with her. Truthfully, she had been slowly moving her head from side to side to tell him that she still stood by her words.

A few moments later and after a few more garners at the broken cookies, she found her own voice all over again, not blinking to show just how little she was lying through her teeth.

"I'm serious." She told him in a tone that spoke of nothing but honesty. One more glance. One more gaze. Then her eyes were for Gary only. And her flushed fingers started to depart from by her sides and one of them reached over to her grandson. "Come, child." She encouraged. "I don't believe things have gone as wrong as you think. They do look like you."

Hesitantly, Gary did not know what more he had to lose by joining his grandmother's side and so he stood there. And immediately, he was taken aback by how her hands completely forwent wrapping around the ball of either shoulder to direct him.

Out of nowhere it seemed to him, two warm hands were wrapped around the single hand of his and clasped him, not letting him go and just one finger out of the ten pointing to where the cookies were still lingering on the tray, dark and imperfect and abandoned.

Another thing threatened to catch at his throat but Gary managed to breathe through it. But he still could not resist saying these words:

"How so?" Wonder for half a second got the better of him. But then his eyes narrowed as his head swung towards his disastrous cookies, expecting to see one that had taken the shape of a mismatched face which he could suspect that Greta believed to be the one that looked like him.

But alas, nothing. There was no cookie that was oddly shaped. They were all perfect in that way. And some of them did still have a border of golden brown that was untouched by the burning. But surely, they would have all been bitter to taste and an entire waste of time.

With another swinging motion, Gary's head turned to look at his grandmother, wondering how on earth any of them looked like him. Maybe she was lying, he soon told himself. Maybe she was trying to get him to stare hard to forget about other things. Or maybe it was a game to her. Or worse, she was taking him for a fool.

The hand of his that was delicately yet firmly being clasped by Greta started to grow clammy all over and he was almost overtaken with another urge to rip himself away from her. However, he was not given the chance. He watched long enough to see the way that her eyes thoughtfully scanned each and every cookie, her head tilted on the one particular side.

If her hands had not been so busy holding his single one, her fingers would have most definitely been towards her lips as she pondered to herself.

At long last she finally answered him. Fortunately, it was not too late.

"Do you see how the small ones have the biggest area that is burned right here in the middle while it's a lot smaller and spread out in the ones that are on the larger side…?" she asked Gary and if he had been uncertain of where to look, lightly, one of her hands broke away from his one and her finger touched him on the chin before pointing, continuing too. "The little ones are like you and the burning is your sadness about all kinds of things." That hand stopped pointing and instead managed to brush spiky locks of Gary's. "It's almost taken over all of them. And it's almost taken over all of you. But-"

It was rare for there to be a gentle moment to have an interjection. But there and then, that took place as Gary couldn't help but repeat his grandmother's words, feeling her cooling hand resting on his forehead.

"But…?" he wondered, in the low lit kitchen his eyes starting to grow as wide as the cookies that Greta would go on to refer too. It had been such a long time since he had looked that way and understandably so.

In recent months, he had grown beaten down. It was a Christmas miracle to know that the innocence of his youth could still prevail.

Greta did not allow her hand to falter on the forehead of Gary, that gesture offering her as much comfort as it was beginning to do for him. And she answered her grandson, knowing full well exactly what she was going to say. As ever.

"But…" she copied him like he had copied her. Her grip lightly clenched around his fist but did not suffocate it. "As you get older, you will be like the larger cookies and the burning won't take up so much of you." She paused. Her hand pulsed against his forehead. "The sadness won't take up so much of you… You'll grow all around it."

For a very long time, grandmother and grandson looked directly at each other, united in the moment between them but also the hope that Greta was right. She hardly ever told a lie. The last thing that she liked was to tell a lie. During those seconds, she hoped that what she was saying could not be seen as a falsehood. She too hoped that she was correct more than anything.

At long last, Gary needed some time to look away, pondering to himself and thinking about everything that he had heard. He mulled over the analogies. He glanced over at the cookies. He thought to himself. Then, he looked back over at his grandmother.

He needed more answers. He needed more.

"Is that true…?" he asked, immediately noticing the way that Greta promptly nodded her head, needing it to be true herself. Gary's head twitched just once, almost telling her that she did not need to do that. "Is it like that for you?" he continued be adding, his expression growing puzzled as he considered before he concluded. "Do you not miss them…?"

Greta's hand hadn't been able to reach out to Gary's forehead since he had looked away but now that she heard those words, she needed to reach out to him all over again. And that time, she reached for his hand to clasp it for another time.

That time, she did indeed suffocate it. In the most welcomed way.

"I miss them, Gary…" she informed him, the display of her actions and the simplicity of her words speaking more than if she had elaborated on her sentences even more. She met her grandson's eyes. He couldn't quite meet hers. But it was okay because she squeezed his hand in her hold all the more strongly. "But's it's different for me." She would go on to tell him why. "Nothing hurts quite like your first loss… And I just need to be here. For you. And for everyone."

She didn't exactly want this to be case but Greta's hand felt the need to depart from Gary's there and then. However, it soon sought refuge back under his chin in a similar way to which his forehead had been caressed in the moments before. And Greta watched as her grandson considered everything.

She could almost see his little mind ticking as his eyes flickered and he thought about everything. As his shoulders sank down, she couldn't read some of these thoughts but it was these ones that she probably needed to know the most.

Gary's lower lip softly fell into his mouth like someone sinking against their pillow at the end of the day.

He sometimes forgot that it was her loss too. Because it wasn't either of her children, he forgot that she shared a lot of the pain as well. And truthfully, because she was seemingly so put together and she told everyone what to do, organising life beyond loss, he forgot that there were moments that she would be sad about it too. He forgot that his parents belonged to her almost as much as they belonged to him.

He thought about this for quite some time. And then eventually, he looked back over at the cookie tray to do some thinking. It was then that he stopped pondering and started reacting instead. He could not help but address the thoughts that whirled through his mind as soon as he acknowledged them.

Just like Greta!

"You know…" he started, wriggling his body away from his grandmother in all ways which he could. His hand was no longer held and his chin was no longer cupped. Instead, he joined the cookies by their side instead. "That one kind of looks like a heart."

Greta had to recover from the fact that her grandchild had moved away from her, and she had to tell herself that it was because he needed to do that rather than he wanted to do that, to prove a point. In the middle of lightly breathing to soothe the pinkness of her chest that resided beneath the flush of her robes, she knew that she had to listen. Then, she knew that she had to look.

She was half sceptical about what she was going to see, as if her grandson was telling her things to tear her attention away from the sad things which had happened and to distract her. And she was also convinced that she would see something that would only just slightly resemble a heart but she would have to go along with it for him anyway.

She was stood correct. On both accounts.

"So it does…" Greta breathed out, her hand taking a chance to fully go over her mouth now that it was no longer clasping any part of Gary. This action of hers was entirely instinctive when she saw the shape that might have been burnt in places, but it was still almost a perfect heart shape even if it had meant to be Santa boots shaped.

Gary hid the secret smile that took over his face. He reached out and poked the cookie, looking back at his grandmother. When she didn't tell him off for germs or burning himself or any other reason, he poked some more.

Then, he stopped those antics and looked fully back at her properly, his eyelashes grooving together and appearing more endearing than he ever had done.

"Granny…?" he began, subconsciously copying her prior stance by his own dressing gown sleeved elbow resting against the counter of the kitchen. Before she could respond to him with a word followed by a pet name or his actual name, he added, almost rolling to the tips of his toes. "I know I'm meant to be letting go…" he continued and it was Greta's turn to feel the need to buckle while her grandson stood straighter again. She hadn't realise he had actually caught on after all. "Do you think I could leave the heart cookie on the fireplace for Mom and Dad? Just so they know I still think about them…?"

If the wind had not been knocked out of the lungs of Greta when she realised that her grandson had caught onto the deeper meaning to her simple words earlier on in the story, then it certainly was at everything that he was saying there and then.

This paired with the long eyelashes seeming to shimmy on his face and his eyes giving the biggest, roundest cookies a run for their money had the ability to floor Greta. But fortunately, it had the potential to revive her as well. And it did.

That hand of hers needing to clasp over her slowly beating heart instead of her lips, slowly but surely, she nodded her head before she actually gave Gary a worded answer. But of course, one of those from her came as well.

She watched as he came alive in the dead of the night and with the gentlest hands he could muster, cradled the heart shaped cookie and transferred it to just one of his hands. Then, the spare, cookie crumbed hand of his was accepted by Greta almost as soon as it was reached out to her.

And it was as they entwined fingers all over again and prepared to go to the corner of the room and leave the cookie where it needed to be, she finally found her voice to say the answer that she needed to say.

"That… That sounds like a wonderful idea, Gary." She affirmed to him with her own catch in her throat and her heart continuing to beat deeply in her chest and underneath the hand of hers that was still residing there.

Gary had never needed permission from her anyway, not really. He knew that he was going to do it with or without her. But he was wholeheartedly glad that he had had the chance to do it with her, he had to admit.

There was no other person that he would rather have by his side as he placed the heart shaped cookie on top of the fireplace as he thought about his parents but he thought about the person that had joined him equally as much. She might have nagged him. She might have bossed him around. And she might have always acted as though she was right. But at least she was there.

During the nights leading up to Christmas Eve and the first Christmas without his parents, he had someone. And that is all anyone wants really, isn't it? Someone to offer a hand to hold and a reason to still put one foot in front of the other in the middle of the darkest of times.

Christmas isn't always the most wonderful for everyone. But even in the most lonesome of ones, there are moments to watch out for. After all, you never know who or what is going to be the light at the end of the tunnel. Or the light on top of your Christmas tree. Or the warmth that bakes your Christmas cookie. And gives you a reason to feel all of the peace on earth. On Christmas Day. And every other day for that matter.

The End.

There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) I came up with the character of Greta a good few years ago with the help of my Mum actually. She is very smug that I am finally uploading about her :D I think I wrote her once before but it never got published. I was prepared for this chapter to be challenging seeing as it focused heavily on a new character interacting with her grandson but I am so pleased to say that it was like I had been writing about her forever! She came alive in this. I often say how fond I am of Gary and it was interesting to tackle him so young but also going through things he should never have to go through. I think the title of this story sounds a bit Edward Scissorhands-esque and I really like that. It felt right for Christmas :3 Thanks again for reading and I will be back on Wednesday with another Christmas story so see you then!

Amy signing out :P