Imperfect. Beautiful. The most extraordinary thought of all.

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. 

And once and for all; Lincoln knew to his sorrow, further and further, what it meant to love against reason, against hope, against duty, against moral, against promise, against expectation, against any obstacle that could be.

Their gazes locked, and together they saw the squandered mirages slain beneath their feet, cemeteries of lonesome dreamers who gave up their wings under the name of love, salt-soaked kisses half-forgotten and twice-remembered.

He looked at all the people in that room, their tears and their smiles merging together as one, and at the care they all had for him, as if he was worth something great.

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.

And all through the tireless motions of stripping a boy’s soul to the bone, his mother listened with the tear-filled awe that one inspired after a particularly wonderful symphony. Her eyes held sadness, yes; but they also held realization, and by the end of it, she embraced him with her whole being.

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.

Silences like these were never uncomfortable for them, never an awkward space squabbling for meaningless words to fill it. It was acceptance, of a sort, an understanding. These were the people who had lived long and fitfully enough to discover that they were not alone, that there were people out there who would love and fight with them.