You Better Mend Your Ways PV AngelFyre McCubbin Finished

The Great Escape @Simon Kincaid

New Year's Day, 2024

It all began to go so much easier when Simon engaged and started to help her, and she was not talking about his added strength with the wheelchair. He did not speak a word in response to her tearful confession, but he did not really have to. His eyes said everything and she heard every unspoken word clearly. She sniffled a little and quickly reached up and squeezed his hand three times before moving behind the chair. Quickly dabbing her cheeks dry with the heels of her hands, and then wiping them off on her jeans, Simon already had her chuckling as she got into place and grabbed the push bar on the back of his seat. "I make no promises. I hope you purchased the add-on travel insurance along with your tour ticket. The steering wheel back here is not... uhhhmm... ideal."

And that was an understatement.

AngelFyre was used to muggle world wheelchairs. When pushing someone, the "handles" were thicker at the top of the seat and had rubber grips to secure a non-slip surface. They were also about shoulder length apart which made the physics of controlling someone while pushing them into a turn so much easier, while requiring less energy to do so. What she had to deal with here was a very slender, metal dowel that was rather uncomfortable by comparison. Her fingers easily wrapped all the way around it and her fingernails would have dug into her palms if she had not released her grip a bit. It traversed the back of his chair from one side to the other, but it did so about nine inches from the top, so her grip was lower, forcing her arms to straighten more. That meant more effort necessary to maneuver. Torque output low, turning harder. It would be fine. It would. But there was no denying there were just some things about the muggle world that had it over the magical one in spades. Wheelchairs was one of those things, apparently.

Simon was just starting to push and she positioned them to head out of the room. As they wheeled by a chair on their way out, AngelFyre noticed Simon's enchanted satchel and grabbed it, putting her head through the strap and then slipping one arm through so it would secure itself diagonally in front of her without her having to hold onto it. "Cannot have you separated from your satchel, now can we?" and she leaned down to kiss the top of his head, reveling in his scent as she did so.

As they passed by the nurse's station and smiled at Simon's nurse, AngelFyre was a little nervous. What if there was some weird prohibition preventing patients from being freely wheeled around the hospital by their visitors? She could not think why there would be, but hey, life-long muggle born winging it in her first magical hospital. How was she to really know one way or the other? The nurse's smile relieved her of all her fears.

Laughing again as she heard him teasing her about providing her an alibi, she for some silly reason envisioned being his gangster moll, busting him out of there before the coppers showed up in their paddywagon and carted him off to the big house. Assuming a wide-eyed, surprised look for the nurse, AngelFyre grinned and started making obnoxious smacking sounds as if chewing gum and whispered, but not too quietly, "No worries, Bugsy. Yer Trixie's gotch yer back. An' Auntie Mags is outside an' waitin' behind deh wheel of deh getaway car. We're golden, Hunny!" and she giggled in the high-pitched, annoying fashion she had heard the actresses do in the mobster movies from the 1930s and 1940s. "I got yer escape all figgered out," and she tapped her index finger to her forehead, but since she was behind him, he missed that lovely little theatrical touch altogether. "To get down an' outta here, we first gotta go up! Ya know, to throw dem dirty coppers off yer trail. Genius, am I right?!" and she thwacked the back of his shoulder with the back of her hand... gently... and turned to wink at the nurse before continuing on their way, laughing in her much less annoying, AngelFyre fashion.

"Okay, love-o'-my-life, we are looking for the lift. I am hoping it is ahead of us and not behind us." The thing that AngelFyre could not help but notice was the vibrant, lime green gowns and masks that the Healers all seemed to wear. She loved green... well, dark green specifically... but immediately tried to picture Simon wearing this color all day long. His clan tartan was a shockingly vibrant shade of green too, though maybe not this vibrant. She did not say anything but wondered if he would take notice at all of the gowns. If he could put up with wearing those day to day, she felt certain her big ask of him one day in the future to wear his clan tartan at their wedding would maybe not be a bridge too far for her very English lad.

She was lost in those delicious thoughts when she heard him mention something about the lift being straight ahead. She hurried her pace a bit and got him wheeled in before the doors closed. "Where are you taking me, anyway?" he asked and reached for her hand. She smiled down at him and pressed the 5th floor button. "Fifth floor, eh? The Tea Room. I'm suddenly seeing extra hot lemon drop mint tea in my future," he teased as he closed his eyes and squinted while rubbing his index fingers in tiny circles on his temples.

"Ha! Ha! Very funny," she smirked. "Well, possibly, but later." Just as she finished, the doors opened and she maneuvered him out of the lift. "I want you to meet someone first." As there was only one way to go, that is the way they went. She hoped they did not get to the Tea Room first as she knew that is where Aunt Maggie and Mark were and she was not quite ready to share Simon yet. She could smell the baked goods and the aromatic teas as they continued on their way and was beginning to get nervous when she also began to hear talking. Not too far ahead of them it appeared as if there was a fork in the road and her smile grew wider. A sign post directed that the Tea Room was straight ahead. Nice, but not where they wanted to go. She instead followed the sign post that directed her to the right.

The Nursery.

As they turned and wheeled up to the big glass window, Simon sat up even moreso and leaned forward a bit in his chair. AngelFyre walked around to his side, and was ecstatic to see the wide grin on his face. He reached up again and took her hand, but this time he kissed the back of it. He was now scrambling to get out of the chair, and AngelFyre was not going to try and stop him. As they both stood there, looking like grinning loons, their attention was turned to the five little bundles of love wrapped snugly in pink or blue blankets and wearing teeny tiny little pink or blue caps on their heads. The pink and blue is what caught her attention first and she hurriedly tried looking at the dates of birth on the charts attached to each crib. DOB: 31st December, 2023 Time: 17:53 hrs. read the first one. DOB: 31st December, 2023 Time: 19:26 hrs. read the second one. It was when she got to the third chart that she looked up and noticed this little cherub was wearing a golden yellow cap and had a golden yellow blanket wrapped around him. DOB: 1st January, 2024 Time: 00:03 hrs. She let out a little laugh and pressed her forehead against the glass, waving to him and cooing.

"Simon, I would like you to meet Baby New Year."

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Hopes and Dreams for Hufflepuffs @Simon Kincaid

New Year's Day, 2024

She kept her eyes on Baby New Year and his 'court', as Simon had referred to them, and listened as her very own handsome toastmaster did one of the most Simon-like things possible and bestowed his wishes upon all of them. As her forehead still rested against the glass and her eyes were still glued to the bonny wee bairns¹ on the other side, she listened intently to Simon's words. When he had finished, there was a brief moment of silence as the impact of it was absorbed and AngelFyre simply added, "And may you all love well and be well loved in return."

Turning to him and smiling a smile to match Simon’s blinding one, AngelFyre remarked with a good deal of awe, "Very well done, Mr. Kincaid. Memorizing Fitzgerald is most impressive, not to mention the sentiment itself was lovely," and she moved closer so that she could lean her head on his shoulder as they stood there a while longer, just looking on in silence. Said silence was eventually broken a few moments later when she tossed out into his universe a thought which had rapid-fire-leaped-frogged over one synaptic gap after another in her brain until it was formed into words that left her mouth.

"Just think! If you have your way, you could be standing here, maybe six times in the not so distant future, making such wishes over your very own future Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors and Ravenclaws and... possibly even Slytherins," and she teasingly hip checked him while keeping her head on his shoulder. "Four times would be even better if God takes pity on their mother," and she squeezed his hand three times and sighed theatrically, suppressing a little laugh. He knew full well she was all in on their future plans.

"Time is just weird," she mused. "It goes by so fast, but so slowly as well. You were 12 when I met you, almost 13, and you are now about to be 15. Boggles my mind when I think about it. You are, right this second, actually closer to being 16 than you are to having turned 13," and she shook her head in wonder at that realization.

"That first night we drove in to pick you up at the train station in Edinburgh, when you visited me over Spring break in Stenton, I felt like I was dying waiting for your train arrive. Seriously. It was the longest 37 minutes of my life up to that point. No joke," and she felt the heat rise in her cheeks at the mild embarrassment over something so silly... but true. "Daddy has since told me he had never seen me so jittery," and she laughed lightly at the memory, "but he also told me that night something to the effect that no matter how slowly it all seemed to be passing in those moments of waiting for you, when we would be together I would discover it would go by too quickly. He was right." Then she was quiet for a bit as she pondered how to navigate what she next wanted to say to him.

"It is always like that for me when we are apart. And I mean apart apart, as in different time zones. When we are at school, of course I would rather be with you doing all the things we have to do, but I can get through it easily enough because I know I will see you throughout the day, even if it is nothing more than a passing smile or a brief touch of our hands in the Corridors between classes. But this last week, Simon? This last week has plunged me into the pits of Hell."

She then turned to him, her smile having evaporated as she crooked her head in the direction of the wheelchair, indicating she wanted him to sit back down. It was not because she was mothering him or being a helicopter girlfriend when it came to his health. Nope. It was because she wanted to sit on his lap as she continued what she needed to say.

When he comfortably situated himself back in the chair, she gingerly sat down, half afraid the two wheeled antique might collapse beneath their combined weight. She need not have worried. It supported them both, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and continued her thoughts.

"Grandma Ruth's loss has been for me this year what your unsettling aura was for you last year. There has been no rapid recovery for me. I am doing what I should be doing, at least I think I am, but like I told you the night we mailed the paper airplane letter from the rooftop, I am struggling with everything."

And suffering.

But that she would not articulate. She was not trying to guilt trip him; she only wanted him to understand.

“Dealing with her loss over Christmas has not been easy, but dealing with her loss over Christmas without you has been even worse. Add to that the normal level of worry and concern I am always plagued with when you are with Adrian and you may get a little sense of the poisonous brew my thoughts have been marinating in recently.”

Dang it. She just told herself she was not trying to guilt trip him yet it sounded like that is exactly what she was doing. Sigh. This is what comes of choices. He makes the choice to pursue his father. Fine. But there are real world consequences to that choice and she was going through them now, and so was he. Any other time she might have been able to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself, for a while at least. But her emotions were raw and tattered and the searing pain of it all was screaming for attention.

Now.

“I felt like something was not right with you, but because things are not right with me, I could not be sure what I was feeling was real or just a projection of my grief. Learning that you had been hurt and were in the hospital rocked me, but Aunt Maggie was able to talk me off the ledge when she insisted you were going to be fine,” and she grinned at him and tapped her forehead to his, kissing the tip of his nose before pulling back once again.

“But Simon, what you told the nurse back in your room? That is next level stuff… fears and worries on steroids. You know that, right? Love, you were hurt and you were missing… for days. None of us, including Adrian if we can believe him, knew that. That is just unacceptable. That is something I am only now starting to process because it was easier to grab the low hanging fruit of jealousy when you started talking about Clara.” Even saying her name aloud made AngelFyre’s heart drop to her stomach.

“I am aware you are the one who actually went through it, but I have been through something, too. It is not easy being the one who has to sit back and wait and worry and pray and hope for you. And each day I had to felt like 100 years. I know what this whole Adrian thing means to you, but criminy, love, WTHeck? Happy New Year, AngelFyre! Your very heart and soul was missing for a week, was injured, but was, thankfully, tended to by some young healer.” She took a shuddering deep breath. “I feel like I could find a bed in the psych ward here and fit right in.”

There were a few long moments of collapsing silence before she spoke again, looking earnestly into his remarkably beautiful brown eyes. “Who hurt you, Simon?”

And how do I get just five minutes in a room alone with them to ensure it never happens again?

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¹ - bonny wee bairns = beautiful little babies

Making apologies and assurances to @AngelFyre McCubbin