All It Takes

6.

Gracie and Gabby set off to the kitchen to make dinner while John headed to his bathroom for a much needed bath. Despite the suit, he was still slightly cold as the intriguing weather of Cartin had advanced from almost melting their skin off to gradually coating them with frost bite. After a long day, he just wanted to have a warm bath. So he took his time to think.

To think about the location they were still yet to find a way to rid the owner of. All their ideas and suggestions through out the day were too slack or too tight and they didn't need that. They needed perfection, or at least close to it. The situation wasn't all too encouraging but that was not about to derail him. He loved a challenge. This one though was more of a challenge than anything he had ever had to take on. The situation was delicate. He needed to thread with care. One wrong move and the whole thing could topple over or even backfire.

He got out of the bath and headed for the walk-in closet he shared with Gabby. Turning to his side of the closet picked out a grey long sleeved t shirt with maroon pants and threw them on accompanying it with fluffy grey bunny slippers with cute long ears Gabby made him wear. He never admitted it out loud but they had grown on him. They just had to be the softest things.

He remembered how he just randomly met them on his side of the bed one lazy sunny saturday morning. He knew for a fact that she had got them for him as the sheer size would most definitely be way too big for her tiny feet. They looked more his size. He picked them up scrunching his nose as he scrutinized one. It even had some sort of glitter on it. He dropped them and tried to pretend he hadn't even seen them. It wasn't the first time he'd find very random gifts lying around his side of the bed.

He trudged down the hallways leading up to the ever wonderfully smelling kitchen and plopped down on a stool as he watched her perform her magic. She mixed and stirred, blended and chopped, punched and kneaded till you could almost taste the food in the air. Cooking, he had decided after watching her the first few times, had to be a form of art. His Gabby, a master of this art, allowed him to simply watch as she moved about. In silence or while they chatted. It truly depended on how they were feeling in that moment.

She turned around beaming at him and traced his body down to his feet with her eyes. "Where are your new slippers, Darling?" He looked anywhere but her. "Ummmh, new slippers? What new slippers?" She had given him the look that unmistakably said, "Really, John? You're actually going to deny it?"

He groaned and trudged begrudgingly back to the bedroom to put them on only for that day. As he put his right leg into the right foot of the pair, he couldn't believe it. "Did the makers actually make this out of the actual cloud!", he had thought as he hastily put his left foot in the other one. The rabbit ears suddenly became more bearable to look at. The softness and plushness of the pair had him overlooking the other things.

He was smiling at the slippers. He wondered what Gabby or Gracie would think of him if they saw him staring and grining widely at a pair of slippers so he hurriedly went back to the living room.

As usual, the whole placed smelled divine and he heard his stomach grumble. He hadn't had lunch that day and he was famished. The table was already set and Gracie yelled for him to sit down for a few minutes while they brought the remaining dishes.

Sitting down and waiting brought back memories. Memories he tried not to recall. But there was no way to get rid of them when his mind just brought them forward at will. He usually just tried to ignore it till it went away. He knew he needed to come to terms with it but he wasn't sure how to embrace such. How to embrace something that tore him from the inside out. That shattered his well structured life and made him into a shell of a human being. Damn! He was really going down that road again. He tried, as he always did. He really tried but it was getting harder to reign it in.

The grief, the beast the grief created, the pain, the little child that was forced to grow up too early because of the pain, the agony, the destruction the agony caused, the hatred, the people the hatred pushed far away from him. He didn't realize he was wheezing and gasping for air, gripping the table so hard his knuckles felt abused as his whole body shook uncontrollably until the spell was broken by Gabby's constant voice and the pain his brain tired to ignore in an attempt to focus on the memories as they flashed by.

"Oh Honey, another panic attack?" He looked up through hazy eyes, trying to ground himself into reality. He grabbed Gabby and held on to her for dear life. She was the only one. The only one who didn't give up on him. From the very beginning. She is and was his anchor. His better place. He could push those memories away as long as he was aware of her presence. She had made all the difference in his life and he would do anything to protect her and now their baby.

For them, he had to find a way to reign in the grief permanently. Gabby was more than worried. He hadn't had one of those attacks in months. He hadn't really had the time, to delve into such memories. But from what he had experienced in the past, Gabby knew something had triggered him. She just held him as tight as she dared with their child stirring in her belly. She was angry and sad and worried and other related things. She just wanted to take away his pain but they had tried all they could with no permanent solution. She didn't know when she began to cry until she felt the tears roll down her cheeks and drop on her collar bone. She was sitting in his lap sideways. Her both legs at his right side, her arms around his neck as they both cried.

Gabby cried for the man John had become, she cried for the boy he was, she cried for who he could have been if his life had not resembled a terrible punishment for someone's sins, she cried for the John who loved her with reckless abandon; the John that saved her too all those years ago, the broken John, she cried for her husband.

John cried for the memories he is forced to live with, he cried for the moments he wished he didn't have to life such as his, he cried for Gabby who wouldn't leave him for the world, he cried for his baby who he had every intention of showering with love, he cried even more when Gracie's tears dropped on his cheek as she embraced both of them and they cried together. Relieving themselves of a part of the grief.

Gracie cried for her children. She cried for the broken mess their lives were, for the chaos that seemed to have always surrounded them. She cried because she loved them and would do anything for them.

John, after a while, hastily wiped his tears and started to laugh. Gracie was skeptical but she couldn't hold in the laughter just bubbling at the surface of her throat when Gabby burst into fits of laughter. They laughed and laughed till Gracie was seconds away from toppling off the chair she had eventually sat in. John laughed till he was clutching his stomach with his right hand and using his left to hold on to Gabby and Gabby laughter was cracking them up even more. It sounded like she was giggling and crying at the same time.

If anyone had walked in at that moment and watched for a little while, they would have concluded one thing; Insanity. It was the only way someone who didn't know what their family had gone through and survived could explain the display.

They cried and laughed away their sorrow. They cried because they needed to. They needed an escape. They laughed because they knew they were going to be fine. They knew that having each other was worth fighting a little longer and preserving their hope.

Hello Beautiful People!
Yes! An update. Longest chapter yet, too. Let's see if we get another one this week. I hope you have a great week.
I'll start to keep these notes to a minimum, too. Just know that I love you!
Please remember to Vote, Comment and Share!

Love,
Naomi.