"Yeah, maybe not," Ben said hotly; it was just an argumentative thing to say, and one he would probably regret later, but in the moment it didn't seem inappropriate at all. "I mean, I'm basically risking my whole life over here — the last time you decided to tell your whole family how angry you were at me, I spent months in the fucking tundra. And nothing happened to you."

  

---

MJ made this <3

Ellory had thought that they'd left Canada behind them. Him bringing it up scratched on old wounds. There was a blow of guilt and anger, something akin to what she'd felt during her argument with Art Pettigrew at the cemetery following Ben's exile.

"Would you have liked for something to happen to me?" Ellory asked. "Would you have liked Canada more if I had been disowned, or Crucio'd?"

  

---

SET BY MJ

Obviously Ben didn't want anything terrible to happen to Ellory, but he didn't really think that she was seriously proposing that anything might have. The only experiences he had had with her family that indicated their level of insanity had been when her mother had claimed to have kicked a chaperone out of the country following the Mexico ordeal, and her sister's hissy fit that had ended with him in Canada. Both of those were on a much different level than having someone disowned, or using illegal magic on them, so he was sure Ellory was just being hyperbolic and melodramatic. Besides, he wasn't even sure how drastic the two measures he'd seen her family take really were. Olivia Pendergast might have been exaggerating what had happened to the chaperone in order to scare him, feasibly — she did think, after all, that he was in the business of deflowering young women — and Ellory's sister hadn't actually suggested exile to Canada. Aldous had come up with the method on that one; Ben was pretty sure the Pendergast side of the equation had just said handle it.

"Well, I was pretty pissed at you when I first got over there," he said with an aggressive sort of shrug.

  

---

MJ made this <3

"Well, why did you write me if I made you so angry?" Ellory asked, placing her hands on her hips.

  

---

SET BY MJ

"Because I thought you were different!" Ben burst before he could think better of it. "I thought you were someone who might get it. That we could have some fun and spend time together without ending up arguing about whether I want to get married or not." Although earlier in the conversation he would have freely admitted that he was in the wrong when he'd brought up the idea and then subsequently botched the handling of it entirely, he was now feeling as though he had been trapped into this conversation and was being attacked. Anger had a way of changing one's perspective on things, and at the moment Ben felt as though it was utterly unreasonable for Ellory to expect him to have any sort of rational or thought out opinions on their more long-term future, particularly given that she should have known better. Hadn't he been clear from the get-go that he didn't think all of this long-term business was for him?

  

---

MJ made this <3

Ellory also had different expectations out of their relationship. She thought that she could be the 'one' that Ben would love enough to want to marry. To be the one he'd love enough to take seriously. She was wrong. He probably wouldn't even write her now that they'd kissed, even if they hadn't had their fight.

"I can't afford to be who you want me to be! I can't just let you have me without having the security that you won't leave me in the dirt when you get bored of me! I'm not like you, I can't just have fun like you! I would be ruined and then I'd be left to starve in the streets, or married off to some senile old man who'd be a pervert enough not to mind getting a used girl! You may think it was hard on you to be exiled to Canada, but there was no one truly keeping you there. You're a man, you could have gone to the colonies and made your life whereas I would be a fallen whore wherever I went!"

The following 1 user Likes Ellory Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Ellory Lestrange's post
   Reuben Crouch

---

SET BY MJ

Ben might not have really understood all of the pressures facing wealthy pureblooded girls, but Ellory's outburst did at least have the effect of making him feel suitably chastised. He wasn't going to apologize, or anything, but he did feel like he should stop yelling at her. That left the question of what he was going to do next, to which he had no very clear answer. He shoved his hands in his pockets a little awkwardly and ended up mumbling, "Fine. That's — I mean, I guess I should have known better."

The thing was, he had known better. He'd known himself well enough to know that he could go seriously playing around with the hearts of wealthy society girls for at least a decade, and he'd known from the get-go that fooling around with Ellory had been a bad idea. What was it about the two of them that saw them reuniting time and time again, after everyone's—his, her family's, his family's, and to some extent even his friends'—efforts to clip this particular owl's wings before it left the ground? He knew that Ellory would want more than he was willing to give her, and that was why he'd tried to ditch her —what, maybe half a dozen times throughout the previous summer. He'd been blatantly honest with her, and then he'd been more than honest with her, and he'd gone so far that he'd gotten himself shipped to Canada, and yet somehow they had still ended up here, making poor life choices and having rather predictable arguments behind some tent stalls at a street fair.

"Listen, why don't you go find your aunt?" he asked sullenly. "This isn't really a place for a lady."

  

---

MJ made this <3

She'd hoped that her words would have an effect on him. That he would realize the error in what he asked of her, that it would dawn on him that it was her that he loved and that he'd kiss her and it'd be alright again. Instead, she was being sent back to her aunt, like that child that he suddenly perceived her to be.

"Yes, I should better do that," Ellory replied solemnly. She paused for a bit, half-hoping that he'd do something to stop her but then realized how foolish that was and turned around and walked away.

  

---

SET BY MJ

Even though it had been his idea that she leave (and none too soon, given that they'd been lurking back here behind the tents for at least ten minutes and any chaperone in her right mind would have been going crazy out in the fair by now), Ben couldn't help but be a little disappointed when she actually turned to go. Was that it? A year of flirting and dramatic romantic gestures and emotional turmoil, and it was ending like this? He regretted having kissed her. He regretted bringing up sex. He regretted even more his ill-conceived joke about marriage. Basically, he regretted everything that had just happened — but it wasn't as though he could undo any of it. Even if he could, would it end any differently? They wanted dramatically different things, and no amount of talking and flirting and smiling could make those two poles any closer. There wasn't a compromise that existed in this situation; she was going to be respectable and court somebody and marry them and have nice, respectable pureblooded children, and that person wasn't going to be him. The longer he spent toying around with her, the more he was endangering that future she was heading towards — or if not jeopardizing it exactly, then certainly unfairly postponing it.

So maybe this was it.

He wondered if he ought to say goodbye, but by the time he'd found the words she was already gone.

  

---

MJ made this <3