Simone and Damsel both smiled a bit and did the little thing where she pushed her hair behind her ears. At least that much hadn’t changed about her.

Damsel looked at Snow and thought about it, “You… filled the room with lilacs. From wall to wall with vases of lilacs. I was sad and you panicked. When I came back from the library you had filled my room with lilacs. Snowball was quite pleased with himself too.” She blushed a bit, “I thought I misplaced a book and I had to go talk with the librarian about it because… I was scared they would keep me out of the library after that… Lewis ended up finding it in his bed. I had been reading it there while waiting for him to come home.”

“Mine… The date on the terrace is up there but mine is… a bit different,” She thought about it and smirked. “I wasn’t feeling well and you wouldn’t let me out of bed. Instead, you went downstairs and tried cooking breakfast and brought it up on a bed tray. You even got a little vase with a flower… Everett and Alshaya were carrying it. They couldn’t have been older than a year and a half… Fiori had the cup of juice. “You turned it into a huge date but the kids somehow got involved.” She laughed as she thought about the kids when they were younger. “You pouted for a bit but not very long once Fiori climbed into your lap. She ended up eating the bread you worked so hard on. But… if it can’t have the kids…”

She thought about it, “Every morning.”

“That’s cheating,” Mia laughed.

“No, every morning… We end up outside on the bench Lewis built… Though we did end up having to buy an actual well built bench after the weather ruined it finally… We share a blanket and have a cup of tea and a cup of coffee while staring out at our island. It’s quiet… It’s before the kids are up. We don’t talk often just snuggle and watch the sky together. When we do talk normally it’s you breaking the ice with some sort of joke.” Her smile was warm. “Our life is so relaxing now just like all of our mornings.”

“What do you do when it rains?” Mia was curious.

“We curl up by the fireplace in our room or take a nice hot bath together. When it rains it makes us sad but we still find ways to be together.”

Then Simone’s eyes got wide and she chuckled, “There is another one though… When I was seven months pregnant… I was in bed as Lewis often made me do. He had his head on my belly listening to them and feeling them. Lewis’s favorite thing is to try and figure out what type of people our kids will be. Remy and Damond are our little blessings. We got to experience pregnancy for the first and last time and Lewis was soaking up everything he could. He must have read dozens of books, went out of his way to talk to Angela about what he should be doing, he was so attentive. He would fill the room with flowers that I like… and he always made sure he wasn’t that far away if I needed him.”

“Actually I don’t remember Lewis ever leaving your side,” Mia made a face.

“You’re right… He didn’t often. He was afraid of missing something. After all, we made the decision for him to retire so we could be a family all the time. Lewis’s favorite thing at first was just waking up in the morning with me. He would watch me for an hour or so before I woke up. It took me a while to get him to admit that’s what he was doing,” Simone chuckled towards Lewis. “We’re soulmates after all… We possess the rare red heartstring. I trust him completely.”

Mia tilted her head and giggled, “Lewis, when did you first realize you liked Simone?” She looked between Snow and Lewis for an answer.

Lewis scoffed, “Asking the easy questions.” His answer was dripping with sarcasm. Of course, only a few of the Simones could tell. Ironically, none of the other Lewis’ could tell. “Snow can go first.”

Snow glanced away, turning bright red. “During the dream dive. There was…I don’t know…just a connection. I don’t remember when I became acutely aware of it, but…”

Lewis nodded, “It’s impossible to tell when it started. The reality is that it may have even been before that when we realized. After all, what sane person jumps into the dreams of another…hell, what sane person jumps out of a window and calls a Goddess into another God’s realm…” He smirked. “

Snow blushed, “Yeah, that might have been the breaking point for Lord Raith.”

“It was worth it in the end,” Lewis replied. “We wouldn’t have come this far had we stayed underneath him.”

“He did a lot to help,” Snow replied. “I owe him a lot.”

“You owe him nothing,” Lewis replied. “He was using you. Which is fine, because in the end, we were using him. It was mutually beneficial until it wasn’t. And we’re better off without.” The ex-assassin seemed pretty adamant about that. After all, if it hadn’t been for Lord Raith kicking him and Simone out, they would have never found the island, nor all of their beloved children.

“Blessings in disguise,” Lewis replied with a smile. “In the end, I promise it was all for the best.”

Mia nodded and was fascinated having never actually asked this question before. “Simone?”

Simone put her finger on her chin, “It’s going to be different for three of me.” She looked at the Guide and Damsel. “Because up until the very end I was segmented… It meant I had to fall in love with Lewis three times. Lewis worked really hard to make it happen though I don’t know if he realized that.”

The Guide blushed a bit, “…Lewis was rough around the edges and rough with me…”

“Literally, against a rocky cliff,” Simone said dryly. “He is still impulsive. Continue.”

“But I think it was when Lewis killed the first sin to save us. He was serious about it!” The Guide gave a smile and a little dance.

Damsel looked worried for a moment, “When I realized he wasn’t really a bad person just a bit misguided. Even though… He was a bit of a jerk he relented quite often to my demands. He made me comfortable in the tower even though he didn’t have to. Despite how much he complained about doing so he never hesitated. He did try to cut my finger off though!”

Simone was still thinking, “I hated Lewis. He was a means to an end. Lewis at some point realized how much I disliked him even though Damsel was in love with him. I was very, very stubborn about it. He would coax me out and try to ask me questions or do things for me. He was very, very persistent. I didn’t actually realize I loved him so deeply until we laid dying at the fey lord’s feet moments before he set me free. Then I made him marry me.” She shrugged at Lewis. “You had to take responsibility.”

“You were pretty good at getting me to take responsibility,” Lewis said with a sigh. “You’re always good at making me do a lot of things. You’ve always inspired me to be better, and for that…” He smiled. “I love you.”

There was a fake gagging noise from the side of the room with Edge, but everyone else did their best to ignore it. The truth of the matter was that everyone except Edge was invested in the stories being told. Even Assassin seemed to be intrigued by all of the memories being tossed around. There was a part of him that wanted to be included, but these were supposed to be happy memories being tossed around.

He cleared his throat, and everyone looked at him with curious eyes.

“It’s not a memory of…Simone or anything like that,” he said as he looked around. “But I remember that the happiest I had ever felt was coming home to the tavern halls to hear the sounds of my fellow guildmates laughing. It wasn’t something that I had ever remembered hearing while growing up on the streets. It was…different. I don’t know if that’s what happiness is, but they were happy…and that made me feel secure.”

Lewis smirked. “I remember that. I’ll let you decide for yourself if that was happiness, though…” Of course, the true Lewis already knew the answer to that question. “The Guild was amazing. Xeik was amazing. We were just kids, but we seemed to somehow survive and thrive.”

Simone rubbed her nose against his and smiled at him, “I love you too.”

Mia spoke up, “My happiest moment was when Xeik realized I was trying to get him to date me!”

Simone started to burst out laughing, “We won five hundred silver on the fact that Xeik has NO idea what the hell Mia was trying to tell him. We worked so hard to make it as straight forward as possible and Xeik STILL didn’t get it.”

Thinking though she looked at Assassin and smirked, “Every day, at around three… Our house fills with laughter. Sometimes it is screaming from Everett and Alshaya fighting but most of the time it’s laughter. Lewis and I venture down and greet all the kids. They hug us and tell us all about their day at school. We weren’t going to sent them to the school. I was going to home school them but… We decided we needed to trust people a little bit plus our kids are absolute nightmares sometimes.”

She was in the thought tank again and she smirked, “One day you were sleeping on the couch… You never used to sleep before we started sleeping in the same bed back in the tower but you were never REALLY asleep until the castle. But you were asleep on the couch with Everett on your chest. He was only a few months old. He was being cranky and you tried everything to calm him down and that’s what did it. He ended up rolling and falling off but you woke up in a startle grabbing him. I’ve never seen you panic like that.”

Then there was a look on her face and she started to laugh hysterically, “The day Alshaya said she was going to marry Xeik for the first time. I thought Lewis was going to lose his shit. He had Xeik pinned to the wall and Xeik was trying to explain he did nothing wrong. That’s when we found out how much of a drama queen our Alshaya was. Every time she said she had a boyfriend Lewis would go stalk the poor kid. He would just say he knew how boys thought and he knows what he did. Even with Alshaya being a teenager now… Lewis is worse. He thought he would get over it but he can’t let his daughters go. Well… Fiori can take care of herself. Mira too… The rest of them he watches like a hawk.”