Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT ONE - PART ONE

Hello and welcome, this is going to be a wild ride right from the beginning and way to the end and I really hope you enjoy it. I worked a very long time on this project so far, which means scheduled updates, I promise. I don't want to say too much but also not too little, so if there are any questions, you know where to find me. Now without further delay, here we go. 

Welcome to Our Bruised Bodies

Cheers!

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Her father had a clear perception of what a father should look like. Righteous and fair, protective. A figure standing in the rain like a lighthouse shining bright and honourable, even in the darkest of nights for his family to feel safe even in the worst of all storms. And he did live up to his own perception.

While he was an exceptional father, he was never a really good daddy, but Grace never had the heart to fault him for it. As a naval officer, he was no stranger to duty and honour. But it was his perception he saw as the challenge he had to rise up to take, not his daughter's actual needs. He got it wrong, a bit at least.

But he had taken her in when he could have just forgotten about her too. Made his motherless child a part of his life. She was his responsible after all and Tom Kazansky never run away from those.

He had her back, stood up for her and spoiled her like he believed a father should spoil his only daughter, with everything but his presence.

His views traditional, while their family had nothing traditional about them. They were patchwork at best, all the puzzle pieces that didn't seem to fit anywhere else at a time where tradition and the common American family was still reigning over every other possible different arrangement, but it was one of these other possible arrangements which described her family.

Sometimes she felt as if the gods had rolled the dice when deciding who would be a member of her family. Picking Bradley, who was the only one left from his own family and pairing him with his godfather Maverick. While they handed her, newly born and swaddled in a pink blanket to her father, who starred at her with his big blue eyes, while his own big blue eyes starred back. Only to then decide that neither man was up for the challenge, so they got thrown in together. Leaving them, two separated family, made one. More often than not, it felt like it.

Her family was small and damaged. No mother left to raise either child. Her father, the Admiral traveling around the world and leaving here with Maverick and Bradley, while she waited patiently for him to come back.

Her father was never a warm person. Not one to kiss his daughter's cheek or forehead or even hug either of the children. That was always Maverick's job. Maverick, who had to play substitute for her father and the mother she never met, but also for Bradley's late parents. He was just one man but had to be four adults in one person for the children. It had been unfair right from the start.

Pete Mitchell was the one to sooth them with affection and devotion, while her father watched from where he leaned against the doorway as his crying children got soothed. It's not that he was a bad father, he was Grace's entire world. It was the lack of a mother, that would balance out his high expectations and strict rules on how Bradley and Gracie both had to behave and ultimately become when they would finally reach adulthood. Maverick did all he could, but in the end, he was a man too, a man raised and formed by the Navy.

Grace missed her father so dearly every time he left, she idolised him. Determined to become just like him. A little Admiral in the making. Raised by the very best. While Ice didn't quite know what to do with a daughter, when all his adult life, he had been surrounded by men.