I want to say thank you for all the reviews on the last chapter. You are all very kind!


Ken could feel the small presence before he opened his practically lifeless eyes.

He wished he could picture her, see her face more clearly,

"Papa," Her voice was a high squeak.

"Aurelia," he says turning to the voice.

She was the one he connected to most. Those early days when he went home, even though home was a place he didn't know. She would curl up to him, sucking her thumb content to just let him be. They were both strangers to each other, she had no preconceived notions about him really, no memories to frown at. They were learning about each other in the most innocent of ways. A child to a father, a father to a child and it made the transition ever so much more bearable at times.

He could always hear her before he saw the flash of white, and colourful blanket she dragged around.

It made him angry about how useless he was at times, he couldn't dress her or tie ribbons in her hair. He could barely dress himself, let alone walk some days. Still, he found himself stumbling through the darkroom, across the hallway, feeling around in the dark. Somehow he managed to pick her up and seat himself in the rocking chair.

Something in him click with her, and it made him feel normal. He only hoped he could be the father to her that she needed.

He could feel her crawl up the bed, he lifted a handed and she wiggly until he could caress the side of her small face. Her head was covered in little knobs. Rilla must have done them up curlers. Yes, he was told she had dark auburn hair and bright green eyes, that turned a stormy grey when she had a tantrum. That she looked much like her mother, but had his nose and ears, at two and a half she spoke in her own language that somehow they managed to understand.

He didn't know what he looked like, let alone what his wife looked like really. Vague memories, flashes and glimpses of a child who was his wife, though she was older now. He could pick out his wife in a room by her hair alone, and often the colour of her gown. She often wore bright colours so he could always find her in a room if company was over, or the way time he went out somewhere.

"Aura, let papa wake up," he hears his wife's voice. She usually sleeps in this room, in case he needs something. Though sometimes she sleeps in the room across the hall with their daughter. It used to be his younger sister's room, except she had married shortly after the war. This was his childhood room.

Today though she's wearing what appears to be bright teal."

"Mama pretty," Aura says in aww before scampering off the bed, allowing him to slowly rise and feel for his robe. Shapes and bright colours are all he can see, enough to walk around fairly unaided if he knew the place he was in.

"Thank you Aura," he hears his wife say and kiss their child. It doesn't seem fair that the image he wants to see is blurred blocks of colours.

"Papa button up?" Aurelia announcing herself as he was pulling on his suspenders.

"Aura," he can hear his wife warn their daughter.

"It's all right," he says flexing his fingers, they feel normal today. She standing on her mother's vanity chair, the lamplight aiding his dull sight. One button, two, three, buttons, he felt them, then the other side, counting down the stitched buttonholes down the back of her little dress. Starting from the top he felt around until he felt it slide through, then he went down another, and then another.

"All done?" He says look for the red hair of his wife.

"All Done," she confirmed. "Come Aura, we don't wish to be late for church.

"Papa no shoes," She points out.

"Papa will put on his shoes, why don't you go find Grandmama and Grandpa?" She says, and in a moment he hears giggle and little feet out of the room.

Rilla oddly understanding his hesitance for Aurelia to see his struggles or even his parents. She helps him tie his laces, and button-up his waistcoat before helping his jacket.

She hands him his cane, the one carries in public, mostly so people don't crowd him. There is always slightly more room when he uses it.

He hears the whispers and takes notice of just how straight his wife sits next to him. Aurelia on her lap, swinging her legs, her little white stocking catching his sight here and there.

The rumours aren't pleasant, they are worse when there is alcohol involved. The few parties he has been to, the tones and snide remarks about their marriage swirled around them. Did someone dare to whisper about her integrity, the paternity of their child? Why her parents never visited, clearly she had been disowned.

Rilla seemed to pay no heed to it all, grasping his arm and gayly laughing as she reminded him of happy times and memories. They can always make more, is what she would tell him, still it was always in the back of his mind, what if the rumours were true?

Still, he spent most of his time at home, unsure of what to do with his life. They couldn't live with his parents forever, but what was there for him to do? How could he provide for his family? Surely there had to be something he could do? Sure he could live off investments, pension and inheritance, but it seemed illogical. Maybe he should take up that offer that cottage up in the Muskoka's? Buy some animals, horses or dogs for breeding? Maybe if he got good enough at braille, he could persuade his father to mass-produce a magazine in braille for the blind?

"Papa?" He hears as he sits in the sunroom, the warm summer morning, He barely turns his head before she is climbing into his lap, "I, book," She announces to him.

"Papa can't read," Ken tries to tell her. She doesn't know any different and trying to explain to a small child about blindness and war wasn't always easy.

"I know," Aurelia tells him, taking his hand leading him to some sort of feather material. "duckies go quack. Papa quack?"

So he does his best duck impression and she giggles before turning the page of her book. "Moo, moo," she said leading his hand to a smooth almost suede finish that was on the book page.

"Cow," he says. "Cows go moo," he tells me, before mooing, making her giggle once more.

He could hear his mothers laugh and sigh as she passed behind the window. He could tell it was his mother from the sound of her shoes. It was funny how little things he would have never thought about, or cared about make up his daily life.

"Is there a meow?" Ken finds himself asking his daughter. Even after a year, the word feels foreign to him. Daughter?

"Kitty!" She shrieks as she flips to another page, and then another page. He kisses the top of her head. Remembering the first days he had with her, and how much she had grown from a babbling infant to this talkative little thing that sat on his lap. With a million opinions and questions at any given moment.

It was Rilla, who finds them, he could tell by her perfume. "The braille teacher is here," she speaks quietly. "Come along Aura, grandmama has some lunch laid out for you," she tells her daughter.

It takes him a moment to stretch out his limbs and stand up. Rilla taking his arm to help him into the house.

Braille wasn't easy to learn, it was rather frustrating if he was honest. He wasn't even sure what he needed it for? No one else could use it, and if he wanted to write a letter in it, who would be able to read it?

Still, he tried, for whatever reason he did not know. Maybe because it made him feel me useful? Or maybe it was because even Rilla was learning along alongside him.

That the first thing that she wrote to him was,

I love you.

His wife had been barely seventeen when they married, he had been twenty-three. She read their letters out loud trying to help him. They seemed so familiar, that who he was back then at his fingertips, but he could never quite grasp the other person.

So letters, he could hear her blush, sometimes she read them in the quiet of the night to him. Trying to show him how happy they had been before the awful war. How hurt she had been when he had left her, the letter he never received that had been sent back to her.

She told him her dark days, the long hours of labour she went through with their daughter. However, the time her father had looked at the tiny baby was with some haunted look as if he didn't expect the child to live long.

Aurelia did though, which made everyone breathe a sigh of relief with every ounce of weight she gained.

Rilla was curled up against him when he woke up, the room was still dark but his body was alive. Of all the times? Why did she have to wear that perfume the night before, ask him to help her get out of her dress the night before a simple hook was all she needed. Even a half-blind man could manage that right? Instead, her scent sent him down a well of dizzying mental flashes that haunted his dreams.

He tries to roll away, hide his embarrassment. They may be married, they even have a child but he barely remembers them, even after months and months of being with him. A year, and a half, since he had come home. Then a year of hard work and doctor appointments. He didn't need to see the pity, he could hear the pity in their voice whenever he ended up in his wheelchair from stumbling, or not feeling up to walking.

He could feel her wake.

"It's okay," she mumbles. "Pretty sure you once told me It was natural."

Did he say such a thing?

She sounded so young, yet so mature at the same time. He was almost twenty-seven now, they told him, a December birthday. She was twenty-one now, having a birthday that just had passed.

"Let me help you?" God help him as her hand drifted downhill stomach. He panicked and swatted it away.

"Please Ken?" She says in such a way sends his mind into mush.

It's awkward, but it feels real. It's real, as her kisses send his heart skipping a beat.

"I've missed you," She whispers in his ear, her bright white nightgown, glowing in the morning sun as she straddled his waist. Until he managed to lift it overhead, tossing it aside, Her hands caressing the scared plains of his chest and stomach. She flinches when his fingertips trace over what feels like scars to him.

"Stretch marks, from carrying a baby," She whispers. "I most likely don't feel the same to you,"

"You feel beautiful," he says deep in his chest. A flash in his mind, she was right in a way. She did feel different, but she still felt like home to him. "This is why this why we got married."

"Shh, we got married, because we were in love," her bright hair moves to tell him he is wrong. She makes him forget, she makes him lose his mind, a grind of her hips, a nip on his neck. He comes undone all too easily as the bed squeaks beneath them.

Their breathing is quick, their rhythm is far isn't perfect but they make do. His lips found places that made her cry out, he didn't know how or why but in the back of his mind it was like he knew.

"You were so young," he says afterwards, suddenly paranoid of what his parents may think of him. "Why do I feel like I took advantage of you, that I still do?"

"You never-ever have taken advantage of me," she tells him, kissing one of the many scars that he could feel on his chest.

They learn every day about each other these days. There are constant little touches, brushes of hands and for the first time since he woke up, he felt at peace. He didn't need to see her face when his hand grazed her hip, or when they said together and he ran his fingertips down her spine.

Some may call him lucky, not remember what made him like this, though in the middle of the night sounds and sights still haunt his dreams. But it came with a cost, and the cost was family and his ever wandering thought that he stole his wife's childhood, or did the war that it for him?

A few weeks later he can feel his wife fret, it was painfully obvious that she was pacing the room, chewing on her lip as she did.

"What is wrong?" He asks her. He still never knows quite how to approach her at times even after a year. Sometimes the need was so strong to pull her into his arms and just comfort her. Other times it was like he was hesitant about approaching her.

"My parents want us to come to visit," she says quietly.

"All right?" He says, surely he could manage a train these days? Though the last time they had visited he got the feeling they never quite liked the fact of how young their daughter married. Which truthfully he understood in a way? Now that he thought of himself as a father.

"They'll know," she tells him.

"We're husband and wife, missing memories or not, I know I care for you," he says quietly. "Plus you said," he says blushing slightly. Meaning she wasn't pregnant, or she was sure that she wasn't this time unlike before.

"I know," she still frets. "But going there, visiting them, it's my entire family Ken, I mean Jem, Walter, Shirley, the Twins," She says apprehensively. "A lot of them never approved of us," she adds on quietly. Grasping one of his hands squeezing it

"Then that is their problem? Maybe it will be good for me to go back? Maybe I can remember more?" He reminds her.

The trip was long, his mother made them take one of the maids. Rilla couldn't handle him and Aurelia by herself on a train after all. The train was an experience that he remembers vaguely throughout his years, though unlike before the flashing by scenery is just blurs of colour.

He heard the hush of women telling their children not to stare.

"I'm not horribly disfigured am I?" He asks after seeing the red tone of her hair in the sunlight through the window.

"Papa handsome," Aurelia tells him, climbing into his lap. He smiles at her innocence, he can feel the scar running down his cheek when he touches his facing, lines around his eyes from what he had seen that he could never remember. "Papa dashing," she giggles.

The Blythes were waiting for them when he let Rilla quietly lead him onto the platform, gentle touches, taps to direct him. It was like their own secret code between the two of them.

"Mom, Dad," He hears his wife greet her parents, letting go of his hand, to which he could only assume to hug them?

"Kenneth," He hears his father-in-law speak to him. Rather a touch stern or cool?

"Dr. Blythe," He finds him holding out his hand waiting for the older man to give it a firm shake. "Mrs. Blythe," he says shifting his eye to who he believes to be his mother-in-law.

"Say hello to Nana and Grandpa," Rilla says to Aurelia, her voice seemed lower which meant she had lowered herself to encourage Aurelia.

"Hello," He hears his little daughter say shyly, before attaching herself to his leg. He manages to pick her up and settle her in his arms. While some fixed her dress so her drawers wouldn't show.

The island feels familiar, familiar as his wife does these days. It's the cool breeze from the ocean, the sand that ends up in his boots. The smell of the salt in the air, as what she calls their lighthouse is just a shape to him in the distance.

His brother in-laws were cool towards him, though on random occasions something would be said that reminded him of summer's past. No one talked about what they went through, but he could tell that her eldest brother had a slight limp. Walter who narrowly survived was missing an arm, his non-writing arm thankfully, while Shirley managed to come away unscathed.

After a bad day that had kept him on the top floor of Ingleside, Rilla helped him to a place she called rainbow valley. The smell of wet earth, flowers, and the sound of rustling leaves greeted him in a way that calm rushed over him. Was this whole island just enchanted? He asked her to which she laughed at.

Kissing his nose as she settles on his lap, he was beginning to understand his younger self, and how intoxicating this woman of his could be?

"Maybe?" She giggles against his lips. "Maybe we're in some fairy ring?"

"Maybe we are?" He tells her, he truly does swear at this moment he can see her a touch more clearly, that his memory isn't completely fogged over.

She saved the trek to the lighthouse for a good day, Aurelia in tow because she wanted to see where mommy and papa danced for the first time. It was a flash of a memory, of a green dress, pink daisy garlands and yellow flowers in her hair. He can feel the happiness around them here, swirling around like some magical being. For the first time, within all the worries and doubt, he knew. He knew whatever had been said in the whispers of corners of hospitals, churches, concert halls, had been lies.

He panics when loses track of Aurelia, who runs for the ocean, she is too little to be in the ocean alone. Dread creeps into his heart, as he spot her barely, maybe a cabin in the wood would be easier for them?

Still once their mischievous child was caught and sitting upon his shoulders, he sighed.

It had never been a lie,

They had been happy.

They were happy

They will be happy.