It was like a coma she couldn't wake up from, this dream world that she lived in that contained her wildest fantasies, the things she wished for but she knew she wouldn't have. They were all there. Saint, Rory.. and Zacch. Sitting there on the couch, which was familiar, where did she recognize it from? Her chin tilted as she studied the fabric, as if the three of them were statues and they didn't move. Living, breathing.. smiling statues that looked to her as if she posed them.

She walked closer, Daelia did, and she smoothed her fingers over the fabric of the couch, the arm of it compressing as her touch moved along each slow contemporary curve. It had a tan hue with the tiniest little green flowers, sea-foam.. dotted about the background and faded perfectly. Holding it up were worn, brown wooden legs that didn't seem worried whatsoever to be holding up seventy-five percent of her immediate family in it's warm, controlled grasp. This couch, it was so familiar and she stood there in awe of the memory that didn't seem to make itself known just yet.

And there they were, perfect. Safe as houses. Saint with his firm, jutting chin that seemed chiseled from the marble within his Grecian ancestors temples. Bolt upright, his shoulders spread backwards as if he had the confidence of his Father, yet the subdued shrug of his Mother. Gently resting upon Saint's knee was the tiniest Morane, Aurora. Rory, as they called her, which was a feisty nickname for such a docile and sweet young girl. She had her Mother's smile yet the mirth that her Father contained and it was interesting, for Daelia hadn't seen it before. When she thought Caleb was the Father of the beautiful little brown-haired girl.. she sought out facial features that would seem more like the man's and when she couldn't find any, she just enabled her own excuses. Quietly assuming, as she would, that obviously her genes willed out over Caleb's. However, neither one of them sat as strong as oak upon that couch as Zacchary Morane did. Every single tattoo that painted his flesh was like another fleck of paint on the Sistine Chapel and she loved it, admired it, stared at it in blind faith as if the Gods painted the images themselves. The life was there in his eyes, and she longed to be touching his flesh, feeling it alive and lit afire by the beat in his heart. He didn't have a grin, no. He didn't even have a smile so much as a spread thin look on his mouth that lied to everyone who stared at it. No, the true happiness? The way you could really tell that Morane was pleased to be at home with his Family? That was all in his eyes. Aching to get out and tugging every last sinew of his crow's feet against the flesh of his forty-something facade. Daelia knew, how could she not? The scars that stretched out over the canvas of Zacch's body were hidden purposefully with a thin dress shirt and a pair of freshly pressed slacks and he'd never admit it, but it felt good to be in them again.

Daelia lost her place, mentally, at least. Standing there with the sharp edges of the analog camera that clicked under her thumb to process to the next frame. Leaning down with the tripod magically holding the lens in direct line to the group of them on the couch, her breath caught in her throat as she looked through the view-finder. So perfect. Two years ago, only Saint and herself would sit on that couch. There was no Rory then and there was no Zacch. Seventeen years ago, there was a pregnant Dollinger and a rather haughty and misguided Morane who had all the arrogance and none of the self-preservation he needed.

As she gently pressed down on the worn black button of the old camera, she stretched her spine out to step around it and bring herself down on the other side of Saint, slithering her arm perfectly about the backs of her two favorite men. Both seemed to almost immediately relax as she did so and without even realizing how simple it was, she adjusted their mohawks with her nails and gave one last look at her family as they sat there quietly. Morane spoke out of the corner of his mouth, "Dollinger, when will the camera take the picture?".

"We've been done for about ten minutes now, I just liked us sitting here.", she said quietly as she just closed her eyes and kept the mental image in her head to perfectly remember it. This was going to have to replace the memories that her brain ruined. She'd send a picture of them to Caleb and in that, she'd make sure the letter was enclosed that apologized for all she'd put him through. That thanked him for the fresh hell that he must've dealt with in pretending to be her fiance, for her. She'd apologize to her psychiatrist for insisting she didn't need those anti-psychotics and she'd donate money to his new research facility outside of Hathian.

She remembered now, where she saw the couch and it was that of her Mother's, the one that sat in her Father's office that she'd begged him to get rid of for it was so old. So old and so unfashionable and yet he remembered proposing to Katherine upon it and being the staunch romantic, refused to get rid of it. So, for years and years. The seating arrangement for everlasting love.. and now Daelia's imagination sat all of them upon it.

Sure, there were things like old couches and cameras and the futures of her children now that she had her fiance back. And now? Daelia would then spend the next week relearning what it was like to have everything she could ever ask for.