Delight, pain, agony, ecstasy, rapture, woe—what curious things. He made himself promise to never ignore them again.
But there would also be a time when these fears would slowly ease—when the need to constantly lock and hide and protect would soften, and she would no longer startle at the gentle passing of fingertips on her back in the morning, or a playful jostle of her shoulder by a laughing girl. These things she hoped for, and knew would come. These things she held closest to her heart, like the first peak of sun over a mountain that whispered: You can have this. You can keep this. You deserve this.
Soon their arms were wrapped around her, and at that moment Alice knew she had found a home, a permanent one, for the first time in her life. Not just within the brownstone walls of that house, but in the people who resided there. For the first time, Alice was apart of a family.
They were so peculiar, these days. They were so absurdly hopeful that their faces had taken on some of the stupidity of domestic beasts.
That is what Lincoln saw in them, this love in all his friends, who held a close place in his heart, and Oscar, the one dream of his soul. He found it in them, in all of them, with their dirty pasts and their still recovering minds, in their words and in their friendship, and in their souls that spoke to each other in the mist of the clouds or the surging of the trees that knew that, in eternity, they would always find beauty. And that was an incredible world to wake up to.
But now they were done running, lying, hiding, apologising, pretending. They were there because they wanted to be, because they had gotten there from years of fighting alone, and had stayed when they found they didn’t have to anymore.
