I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 235

Daisy didn’t want to admit how hard a time she was having to her husband. He had been through so much worse due to their separation that she felt like she didn’t have the right to complain.

She had come back to her terrible life and didn’t even remember the way things had been before they all fell apart in that world too. She had to deal with all the pain and difficulty of recovering from her accident alone because stupid, nosy, selfish Juliet not only got her killed but threw Rukelion off course so he didn’t find her sooner.

Would she have let him take care of her then? Probably. She had been pretty desperate.

She was angry at the stupid, interfering author but she was also heartbroken about losing the baby despite not wanting to bring it into the world under such uncertain circumstances and about Ira having to watch her die. She desperately hoped he wasn’t blaming himself but was worried he would anyway.

Ira. She was never going to see him again. The little boy who had been so eager to learn and help others had grown up while she couldn’t even remember him.

Had he become a doctor? Did he allow himself to rely on his friends after losing her or had he shut himself away like he had after losing his parents? She wanted to believe he didn’t spend his life alone but what if he had?

Daisy would never know and she hated the uncertainty. Her sweet, awkward boy who had barely started to learn how to interact with others better had to be left on his own so soon. And she never got to meet her other child at all. They died before they could be born.

She never knew whether she had a daughter or a son. What they would look like. The kind of person they would grow up to be.

This wasn’t a miscarriage. This was straight up murder. She had been murdered and her baby had paid the price with her because it hadn’t been born yet. The thought filled her with both rage and anguish.

She was beginning to understand why Rukelion’s whole life had been characterized by revenge. He had let the hatred and helplessness take over after losing everyone and everything he ever cared about. It was tempting for her to do the same but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

What could she do, anyway? Juliet was off living her life. There was nothing Daisy could do to her. She wasn’t a killer and she wasn’t about to let her husband become one again.

Unfortunately, all she could do was accept this horrible turn of events and move on. Part of her regretted getting her memories back at all but when she saw how relieved Rukelion was she couldn’t regret it completely.

Daisy had gotten back her time with him. The full depth of her love for him. Eight years’ worth of life lessons. Happiness and heartache. Joy and pain. The good always came with the bad but the same was true in reverse. No, she couldn’t regret it completely.

He seemed to be doing much better in the months following the truth coming out and her getting her memories back. He still had bad days but the fanfiction writing had been surprisingly cathartic for him.

She was grateful for that. If he felt like his past was being honored properly, he could focus on the future. Like she needed to do.

What happened, happened. She couldn’t undo everything that brought her here. All she could do was pick herself up like always and keep carrying on. Her biggest regret was that she didn’t have so much as a picture of Ira to remember him by. She was worried that someday she would forget exactly what his smile looked like.

Rukelion had to deal with that all the time. He never had any pictures of his family. He understood what she was feeling right now better than anyone. If he could deal with it so could she.

Still, Daisy wondered if it was possible to have a sketch artist recreate their lost loved ones from memory. It would probably cost a lot but wouldn’t it be worth it to have tangible proof of their families? Ira had been her family every bit as much as Rukelion was.

That might bring them both a measure of peace. She should really look into that.

So she did. She hired someone online who had previously done work for various police precincts in the past after explaining that she and her husband had lost all pictures of deceased family members and wanted to be able to remember them. Since the pay was hourly and they had to change things a lot this was going to cost a pretty penny but she didn’t care about that.

She wanted realistic portraits of all of them. She would deal with the cost. They planned to have a single one of Ira that would fit in a standard 11×14 picture frame but get a family portrait done of the Blazes in the same size.

Daisy and the artist struggled to recreate what Ira looked like when he was wearing his happiest smile. Normally, his smiles were small to the point of nearly being nonexistent but that wasn’t how she wanted to remember him. After that the artist asked specific questions about skin tone, eye color, and hair color since they were doing full color portraits rather than sketches.

That took a while too but eventually they figured it out for her to recreate later. Doing the same thing for Rukelion’s family was much harder.

For one, it had been longer since he had seen their faces. It wasn’t as fresh in his memory but he was still certain that things were wrong every time the artist tried something different. It took ages before he was satisfied.

At least the color choices were easier since they all had roughly the same coloring as him aside from his mother. His father and sister had the exact same eyes so he didn’t have to worry about picking the wrong shade there the way he did with the rest of them.

When the artist came back a couple of weeks later with the finished products they both burst into tears. It had been worth every penny.

“This is them,” Rukelion said tremulously. “My family. I never thought I’d see them again.”

Daisy had obviously seen the rough sketch but it looked so much different now that it was colored in. The artist was very talented. All of their lost family members looked like real people in a picture rather than drawings. Whoever said drawing realistically was unnecessary in today’s world was dead wrong.

She wrapped her arms around her husband’s back and rested her head on his shoulder. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly.

He broke down completely then and turned around to bury his face in her neck. She knew how he felt. She had been tempted to do the same thing after seeing Ira’s picture and she had been without him for much less time.

The portrait depicted King Baratheon standing strong and proud with a kind look in his eyes. Queen Rakella was beautiful and regal but still smiling warmly at her children. Georgios had a protective hand on Kessia’s shoulder as she grinned with missing teeth. Llyris looked almost like he was laughing.

Seeing his family look alive and happy the way he remembered them before seeing their broken bodies must be horribly bittersweet. Now Daisy was crying for him as well as herself.

It took them both a while to compose themselves enough to hang up the pictures on the wall. They had bought frames to match the one their wedding photo was in and placed them both on either side. Ira’s portrait was closer to Daisy’s half of the photo and the Blazes’ was closer to Rukelion’s.

Someday these wouldn’t be the only family photos they had. They would have more of their future children. The walls wouldn’t be quite so lonely then and neither would they. There was no replacing what they had lost but the nice thing about love was that it could be infinitely replicated. Just because you loved someone new it didn’t mean you loved the people you had before any less.

Daisy looked forward to that though she was still afraid she wouldn’t be enough. She had time to get over that. Her husband was working on improving himself and she could do the same.

She was going to have a family. A real one that lasted forever this time. Her one wish was that Ira would have been able to be a part of it but he had likely lived out his whole life without her. He would never get to be the big brother he was supposed to be.

She glanced at his portrait and prayed that he had been happy. That her favorite smile of his hadn’t died when she had.. That he continued learning, laughing, and loving even though she was gone.