"Ilios" Came the whisper from the doorway. "Eli! Wake up, it's come, at long last, it's come!"

Ilios sat up in the dark of the cold room and moaned.

After ignoring the rustling from her brother's bed and the two small children in the doorway she was on the two strong hands gripped the blankets and pulled them to his chest. 

"Ilios!"

She opened her eyes ever so slightly, blinking into the candlelight.  Wade's eyes shone like stars, life emanating from every glance, every beaming smile. 

"What is it? What do you want?"

She glanced from window to bed, then back to the drowsy sibling she loved so dearly. 

"Come on! Please?"

This was met with various excuses none of which satisfied to cancel the enthusiasm of the beaming dreamer. 

"Come on Ilios," Eli smiled softly.

She gave a groan as he looked at her in a way she could never face with strength. 

 She was dragged from warmth, barefoot and barely awake. Perhaps that is the best way. The best way to live: half dreaming. Dreams go as we want them to, lives can become nightmares much too easily. 

But Eli already knew that. 

The room Eli lived in was racked with years of abuse, he was always laughing about it though, that old room was like his only friend besides Ilios. 

And sometimes the Ilios wondered if Eli loved the old Shed more.

They had been through a lot, both of them, that room and Finn, but in some respects, Eli had been through worse. 

When the room caught fire, it couldn't feel it. Neither could it feel when the howling winds knocked it off its feet. When it got knocked down somebody else built it back up.

Eli rebuilt himself. 

"You're crazy." Winnie marveled as Wade thrust open the wooden door. It creaked and slammed. Ilios winced horribly at the noise. 

"Just breathe it in." Winnie laughed gleefully closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. "That's what pure air smells like Wade. Real fresh air."

The small white flurries covered her lashes and wistful hair. Her grin framed by the luminescence of the moon and the stars above. 

The two elder siblings came out with dazed glances around the changed world before them. 

Winnie slipped her hand into Elis, Wade into Ilios. 

There they stood, blinking as their eyes adjusted, hand in hand. 

There is a moment we all have, a moment that comes no matter age or time or life. Even the most lost of wanders finally realize one day, they have discovered home. 

"I hate the cold." Ilios said slowly, turning abruptly to face Eli, "But I don't mind the snow. Especially when I have someone to share it with."

He muttered a refusal but was overtaken by surprise.

 Ilios let a tear cascade from her frostbitten cheek and land on his collar as she leaned to him in content bliss. 

Grief? Happiness? 

Tears of years of fighting against something that was too strongly ingrained to ever be overtaken?

He didn't need to know. 

Families don't need to hear to listen. 

Hand and hand, barefoot, pajamas, white clouds of fluffy snow, burying any resentment, any worry or strife. 

Not a soul awake for miles, not another mind to share the moment between them. 

And from his heart, as his eyes closed and his breathing slowed, Wade smiled.

 For the last time, and the first time, a true, blissfully content, smile. 

"I wish things could stay like this forever."

None said it, but all four thought it. Or rather, what their hearts had meant to think was that they wished they could stay like this. 

The four of them, optimistic, young, eager to live. 

"You won't leave me ever will you?" Winnie laughed with insecurity to her siblings. 

Eli looked at her strangely, "No. Why?"

No answer came. many a winters night would pass again, and Eli would stand there in the dark, his eyes raised upwards, wondering why that question had passed her mind. 

I wonder if he knew she had known even then, if she had sensed it. 

If some part of him had lied.

But it doesn't matter. Sometimes a lie becomes the truth if we wish it hard enough. Sometimes reality overtakes us and a lie is just a lie. Plain and simple. 

Ilios leaned over and whispered to her brother. 

"I know you saw her in the box office today."

He nodded.

"What did she say?"

"She only confirmed something already knew." He said softly glancing to Winnie. 

"What?" Ilios asked curiously. 

His eyes met hers, "That for us," he gestured between the two of them,  "For our family to have friends, it's dangerous."

"it's wonderful," Wade said with delight gazing out at the other shore as the snow fel through the open windows and danced with the dust and sand. 

Together they stand, together they stare. 

Winnie's eyes fixed on the water, Wades on the sky. 

Ilios on her brother, Eli on the tide.

"It's getting late." One commented.

The other drew closer, a smile hinting, as she plainly stated, "Yes. Yes, it is isn't it?"

At some hour I suppose long after the first, one parted to the warm fire, took a book from the shelf and began to read long into the early hours of the morning. Another entered by sneaking in through her window, careful not to awaken the sleeping beasts in the room next door.  

The other back to the old room, full of holes and snow dripping ceilings. 

The last, the smallest, the most broken boy sat in the frigid temperatures, watching as the ice kitted itself like lace across the surface of the lake.

He smiled to himself at how quiet how peaceful it was. 

He had little idea of the horrors about to befall him.

But for now, each one sat awake thinking, thinking the other has it better. 

Both knowing they all deserved more, but content with each other and less. 

------

"Erik," Christine whispered in the dark. 

"Yes?"

She smiled to herself. It felt like a dream sometimes, too impossibly wonderfully to be true. To be married, to be alive, it was a blessing she couldn't quite wrap her head around. 

"Are you worried about Gustave again?" Erik said with concern. Reading her thoughts he pulled her closer, petting her brown hair gently, "We couldn't shield him from everything Christine. Least of all Death." 

"I know," Christine sighed. "I just wish thing could stay as they were. We were happy Erik."

"We still are," He said earnestly. 

She turned her teary eyes up to him and he dried her cheeks with a small chuckle.

 "I've only seen one other person stare at me as you do. A child, a visitor to the opera many years ago." 

Christine frowned, "You never told me about that before." 

"It's of no importance," Erik assured her. 

He glanced out the window and smiled seeing his children together. he wouldn't rat them out to their Mother. He had no need for sleep either. 

Winnie looked so at home with them so at peace. 

He wished it could stay this way. 

He wished she would never learn the truth. 

Yet, all truths come out. 

All children grow up. 

Even when it hurts, it's only growing pains.