December 18th, 1894 — Emrys' drawing room, Bristol

Angel did her best to keep her breathing even as she sat across from her husband, the vial on the side table next to her weighing heavy in her mind. He was going to hate this; the thought brought a bit of schadenfreude to her current predicament. She'd had months to consider her next play, her attempt to save her marriage when her husband decided he couldn't be bothered. She'd written him two weeks ago with simple, direct instructions: Be available the whole evening, make my room ready, please limit the number of additional staff in the house. Each was essential to her having the courage she needed tonight.

With a heavy swallow of the sherry he'd provided her, Angel turned her eyes to her husband, still not able to hide the hurt at just how handsome he was. "Thank you for making yourself available tonight. I apologize; I should have considered this course a year ago."

---

It was inexcusable to have put the conversation off as long as he had, and this was his just reward for his indolence: Angelica writing weeks in advance and requesting him to clear his schedule, as though she were a business rival expecting to be rebuffed by a harried secretary rather than his wife. He'd given himself a few days after the initial argument to collect himself, and then he'd delayed so that he didn't have to bring it up just before another event they were meant to attempt together. Then he'd started thinking about what she'd said during their fight: you're going to push me off and hope I drop this. He wasn't trying to play into her expectations, but he also hadn't worked out how to start. There were fundamental things that she misunderstood, and if she continued to misunderstand it would prevent them from ever rebuilding trust, but he didn't know how to talk about them. So he had let the time stretch until it had stretched too far, and it no longer felt like he reasonably could bring it up when she hadn't. And she hadn't. No further discussion of wanting to experiment with lifestyle parties. No further questions about the man she presumed he was in love with. He wasn't sure if her silence was intended to be an olive branch extended to him or if she thought it a punishment; he knew her too well to presume it came without some kind of ulterior motive.

He sat tense in his chair. Halfway across the room her posture was the same, as if poised to dodge a jinx at any moment. He sighed. He'd only just handed her a glass, only been seated a few seconds, and already he was tired of this exchange. "Angelica," he started. "Perhaps tonight we could pretend to be lovers instead of strangers."

---

"I'd like to stop pretending." She was proud at the strength to her voice, somehow devoid of the bitterness she felt at his words. She'd been desperate to make this man act like a husband and lover for more than a year now. Every attempt she made to bridge the gap, to try and learn his needs ended with her farther away from him than before. For someone that hated conflict, he was very good at provoking it. She wouldn't take the bait right now, wouldn't give him the satisfaction of her annoyance. Ironically, it was one of the first times in their marriage that "annoyed" wasn't a primary emotion. At the moment, she was terrified. What she was prepared to do for this man was infuriating and insulting, but it had been years of insult to her pride. She wouldn't tolerate it any longer, not now that she'd figured out a path forward. Granted, if he found a way to botch this, Angel had no idea how she would respond. Best not to think about the inevitable fuckery that was Emrys Selwyn.

"I will cut to the chase and spare us both this," she gestured to the space between them, the tension, the awkwardness. Anything to end this, she would do it. "When I speak, I don't know if you choose to question my motives or if it's in your nature not to trust me. Regardless, I have a solution. Tonight, I will answer you as honestly as I can and there will be no doubt to my motives." She risked a glance at the vial beside her, panic building as she commited to her plan. "Tonight, I will be vulnerable. Before I continue, I need to know that you will honor my request and stay with me. I ask for your protection tonight. Can you do that?"

---

Well, this wasn't ominous at all. He had been almost gratified by her response at first, given that she had acknowledged the tension in the room rather than tried to sidestep it, but it became evident immediately that she had a set of plans for the evening and that he was unlikely to like them. Not that she wanted his opinion. She had a solution to what she had decided the problem was. Why bother with any sort of honest conversation or exploration when she had already chosen her course of action?

She was staging a scene. Conducting a performance. She had written and directed and would star in the production; his role was secondary, and she was feeding him his line. I ask for your protection. Can you do that? She was waiting for his answer only as a pretense; she knew how this scene ended already because she'd scripted the whole evening... based on what she had decided was the matter with him.

In your nature not to trust me, she had said. That felt especially manipulative because now any deviation from her script would only serve as proof of her premise that he didn't trust her.

He could play along and say the thing he knew she wanted to hear. Merlin knew he'd done that often enough already over the course of their marriage. He said a lot of things to avoid arguments, though only half of them worked in the end. But this felt qualitatively different from most of the other times. She'd asked him to reserve the evening and clear the house; she was taking this seriously, whatever her ploy. He was hesitant to agree to it with so little indication of what she was planning (— here, already, her trap at work: why couldn't he just trust her?). "What do you have planned?"

---

"If you don't trust my words, trust my magic." Angelica held his gaze as she spoke, determined to be heard. Whatever happened tonight, she was removing all excuses of inattention. He would listen tonight. "You've seen me duel; you know I won a transfiguration and charms competition," She didn't need to say that she resented his lack of support. Even competing, his influence directed her magic; her displays were for him. "I am even better at potions." Her assessment was an honest one, and she presented them as trophies. Why be humble when she could be honest?

Picking up the vial beside her, Angelica was sure she shivered. Adrenaline was screaming in her veins, the inevitably of her choice making her a bit giddy. It took over a month to bring her idea to fruition, and now she stood on the brink of her choices. 'Choices' was the wrong word; these were Angel's possible futures. She could spend the rest of her life miserable and unloved, as she assumed most wives were, or she could seize fate and make a desperate bid for her husband's love. A rather easy call for Angel.

"This, my dear, is something the Ministry would be most displeased to find in my possession." Granted, that had made brewing it more entertaining. Angelica hadn't forgotten the good times she had early in her first marriage. Being Viktor's assistant potioneer was a badge of honor for her then, her time in Russia giving her access to potions and poisons that would have set her British counterparts to fainting. Angel could brew her own and had done so in the last lunar cycle. "Veritaserum, the most powerful known truth serum. It's said that three drops of this could have the gods spilling secrets. That might be hyperbolic, but it will be more than enough for me." She shrugged, as if the idea of being incapable of deception or verbal self-defense didn't make her want to vomit.

"Once I drink this, I will be incapable of lying to you. Anything you ask, I am compelled to answer. Keep me away from other eyes and ears and please do not leave me alone. Whatever you learn tonight is not for the bloody maids." Her pace accelerated because now that she was here with no reason to delay, she found herself losing nerve. Exhaling, the last breath before the plunge, she looked back into those beautiful eyes that still haunted her at night. "I love you." She pulled the stopper from the vial and drank.

---

No straight answers, obviously. She was back on script, as though she hadn't even heard his question. Trust, trust, trust, why don't you trust me? The woman who had laughed in his face when he'd told her about his sexuality, the woman who had responded to his refusal to marry her with the expectation of a pregnancy that had never materialized, the woman who had backed him into a corner during their last argument and forced him to admit to secrets that weren't even solely his, forced him to put Arthur Pettigrew at risk for her own smug satisfaction — she could not understand why he didn't trust her wholeheartedly. Here he was, cast as the villain in her production: the man who refused to trust her, refused to love her, despite all her monumental efforts to convince him.

He didn't grasp what she was doing until she said Veritaserum. After that, actually, because for one panicked second he thought she intended to use it on him, to force from him all of the things she imagined he was hiding from her. (In fairness there were things he was hiding from her, but since there marriage he suspected Angelica had a far overblown idea of how vast his array of secrets was). But no, she intended to drink it herself. An expression of confusion crossed his face, because he couldn't fathom why. How did this scene she had written end, in her mind? What goal was she driving towards with threatening to do this to herself? For a moment he still considered it a threat, something she was levying as a negotiation tactic and that no sane person would willingly undergo — and then suddenly she drank it.

"No," he breathed, eyes wide. His grasp on his glass loosened and it fell to the floor, with a dull thud and a splash of sherry arcing out to stain the rug. He didn't look down to see whether the glass had chipped, but it was at least intact enough to roll away across the floorboards. His hands were shaking. Why the fuck would she do something like this? What twisted mental gymnastics must she have put herself through to think that he would ever want something like this? She had ostensibly done it for him; she'd said I love you just before she downed it. But what in all the hells had she been thinking?

"It's a bluff," he said, willing it to be true because the idea of staying in a room with her while she was in this condition made him feel physically ill. "It was water." Please, Angelica, say you're lying, he pleaded, because he really couldn't see how they came back from this, if she had been telling the truth.

---

"Yes, Emrys, I typically exploit our trade connections to find rare ingredients for bluffing." The impulse was strong, her lips parting to snap in his direction snidely, but her throat constricted. Tight. She almost choked on the sudden block to her throat, the air seeming not to reach her. The more she tried to speak, the tighter the constriction of her windpipe. For a moment, she panicked, but as soon as her attention moved from a sarcastic response to breathing, her throat released. Quickly reviewing her brewing, Angelica ruled out an error on her part. She had tested her batch in the privacy of her room, her methodology sound. She could, and did, brew from memory. The issue wasn't the potion, she decided. She found her answer as soon as "Obviously, I went with water for the suspense," crushed her windpipe and had her choking. Sarcasm. She couldn't use sarcasm.

Oh, for fuck sake. She did not think this through.

For a moment, she was silent. The unintended consequences appeared quickly now that she'd set her scene. If he looked terrified, she could only imagine what her face looked like to him now. Now, she had no idea who was in control and didn't like that sensation for a second. This was not the plan. Looking up at him, plenty of words suddenly seemed unspoken, the urge to speak almost more frightening than her own damn potion choking her into sincerity. Testing her voice, she was not sure what in Merlin's name she could say that didn't risk asphyxiation. "It wasn't water." She confirmed, her voice sounding too close to panic. "I'm sorry." My God, what had she done?

---

She had said two things, and he didn't see how both of them could be true. If she had really done this she must have done it for a reason; why would she be sorry? She'd realized very quickly that this was ill-planned, maybe. Already having second thoughts after having seen just his initial reaction. What had she been expecting him to do when she did something like this? He couldn't fathom how this might have worked out in her favor.

"Angelica," he sighed. He put his hands to his head, covering his eyes and massaging his temple firmly. He was angry with her. His body practically vibrated with it. He didn't know what to do with it; he wasn't sure he had ever been this angry with anyone before. He wanted to say What the hell were you thinking? but he refused voice it. He wouldn't ask her a question if it might compel her to share something she didn't want to. He respected her autonomy, even if she was apparently willing to surrender it. But really: what the hell had she been thinking?

She'd confused him with her first husband. She'd expected him to gleefully subjugate her, to take advantage of the position that she'd put herself in, and then to shower her in affection afterwards as a sort of tainted reward for what she'd surrendered.

Fuck. He'd loved her once; mostly he still did. She said she loved him, but then she made these choices that implied she didn't even know him. When had her perception of him gone so far off from reality? Was it when he'd made his confession, prior to their wedding, or had it happened even earlier than that?

He parted his hands slightly, resting on the sides of his temples, but found he wasn't ready to look at her yet. He was livid, and nauseous, and wrestling with a seed of despair; he couldn't stomach the pallor in her face on top of everything. He sprang up from his chair and crossed too-quick to the window, leaning his elbow against the frame and his head against his hand while he stared out into the bland darkness of the garden.

---

The force of the potion was unexpected, but his reaction was unbearable. She’d spent months of her life trying to provoke a response from this man. Emrys seemed to deny her his anger out of spite. She’d seen glimpses, managed to make him slip his control once or twice, but this came with an unfortunate side effect: now she felt guilty. He stood there and radiated his displeasure, but quickly chose his favorite form of action, retreat.

Angelica went impressively still, her body feeling betrayed by its owner and unwilling to move. Some part of her that had thought this plan sound to begin with was demanding action. She had made a plan and had committed to action. She executed that plan for a reason. Silence had not been part of the plan.

“I want to tell you the truth, about everything you doubt. I don’t know what to do, because everything I choose, you resist and resent. I don’t know how to mend things you won’t tell me.” She stayed in her chair, very aware that her physical proximity would be rejected. "Emrys, I did this, but please help me make it right. I need you to talk to me."

---

Emrys tensed. She didn't know what to say, it seemed. She had not only arrived at the entirely insane conclusion that it would be a good idea to surprise him with veritaserum, but she had done it without even an inkling of where the conversation might proceed to next. This was so far removed from anything he might have anticipated that it was entirely incredible to him. Did she live in a separate reality to his? She had no interest in trying to earn his faith or trust, and instead was willing to strip away her defenses not just for one particular issue but for any issue he might choose to take advantage of. He supposed she probably wanted him to interpret this as her having unlimited trust in him, but he couldn't swallow that. He couldn't even call it stupidity, because he knew she wasn't stupid. She was just... living in an entirely separate world.

"I can't fathom how that could help," he said to her plea to talk to him. He'd been meaning to talk to her for weeks, of course, but not like this. There was no parity here, no partnership. Nothing that could come of it except eroding the trust between them even further.

---

"At this point, I would settle for you making an attempt." She ground out. How did it still hurt, when he chose the path of least resistance and furthest understanding? Why did she still give him the power to break her heart when he didn't seem capable of the effort? "I have spent more than a year trying to frame myself in ways that are palatable to you, and you act like it's a personal offense. So, please, try. For me, I need you to try."

Face in her hands, she forced herself to breathe. God, she needed her verbal armor back, needed to be able to snap and flame at him, anything to fight how small she felt when he was finished stomping on her efforts. "I need you to be a man, look me in the eye and tell me what is so bloody wrong with everything I do and say. That is the very least you could do for me, Emrys."

---

"You've put us on uneven footing," he snapped. He'd been determined not to speak to her at all until the potion wore off, insofar as it could be avoided, but she'd provoked his ire with the jab to be a man. A man like her first husband? She knew so little about life, for all she devoted herself to intellectualism. It was this thought that made him pause, considering his first instinct. She really had never been in a healthy relationship in her life; he ought to remember that. Theirs was the best she'd had, god help them both. She didn't know what she was doing, so when he told her it was all wrong she perceived it as his cruelty.

He turned to look at her, but stayed where he was at the window. "The problem you're trying to solve is that you don't think I trust you," he started. His words were slow, his shoulders still tense. "This isn't how it happens. You can't force trust. You can't lay down and hope I take it from you. You have to build it, and you can't build something together if one person has their hands tied." Was she following? He hoped so, because if she missed the point he wasn't sure how else to explain it. There was a difference between choosing to share something and being forced to share something — the latter could never result in mutual trust, never.

He stood for a moment looking at her, thinking hard. He had loved her once, and mostly he still did. This was an egregious misstep. How did they salvage it? Could it be done?

"I do take it as a personal offense when you aim to make yourself more palatable," he agreed. A concession so that she would be more inclined to listen to all that had come before, perhaps.
"Because you guess poorly at what I might desire, and I have never wanted you to be anything other than what you are."

---

“Uneven footing? Please, go fuck yourself.” Was, apparently, not allowed by her truth-serum induced brain. What a fucking pity. Angel revised and tried again, “I’ve? I have. I have put us on uneven footing? Really?”

“I thought being a man meant you could change things as you pleased,” nearly asphyxiated her, but she would like to think that her annoyance was implied. She choked, even as she wanted to fight him, her words seemingly limited by the vision of the world around her.

So she listened to him speak, more words in sequence that usual, and tried to imagine. She imagined what it would be like if he listened to her, what it would be like to be heard. That all seemed delightful, and then he spoke.

"This isn't how it happens. You can't force trust. You can't lay down and hope I take it from you. You have to build it, and you can't build something together if one person has their hands tied." She felt tears forming, because he’d hit the heart of things, hadn’t he? Trust was one thing; what he had demanded of her was a different matter. “I know you don’t trust me. You go out of your way to not trust me. What is my path then?”

She would have liked it better if he just slapped her, it would be easier to bear. He said pretty things about being herself and honoring who she was, but she had learned. Anything that looked or felt like ‘her,’ he rejected; anything she wanted, he refused. So, who in Merlin’s name was she if her husband wouldn’t hear a damn idea from her?

“I will never know what you desire when you pout, huff, and then leave in a fuss.” She glared, veritserum not helping at all. “I expect you to tell me the truth, so I can stop wondering at what you want. Seems rather simple, don’t you think?” She couldn’t lie, but she could shine a light on his hypocrisy easy enough.

---

Emrys pursed his lips tight. Patience, he reminded himself, though she seemed hell-bent on picking a fight. She couldn't have come in tonight planning to argue with him, given the potion she'd taken. Had she become that angry when he walked away, or was this just what inevitably happened to every conversation they had? Was it too optimistic to think they could converse as opposed to arguing? Well, they couldn't have a conversation now, regardless. Not while she was under the influence. He'd meant what he said about this being a situation from which no trust could possibly arise, with them starting off on such unequal terms. Unless he could find a way to level the playing field? It seemed an impossible task when she might be compelled to admit to anything with as little as a careless word from him, but what could he do?

He could respond to her honestly, or he could elect to say nothing at all. No dodges, no equivocations. He could do that. He didn't know if it would work; it didn't seem like anything would ever be enough for her. But he could try.

He could refrain from asking her anything. No compulsions. What she said would be true, but only what she was freely willing to offer.

Seems rather simple, don't you think?

Sometimes he hated her.

Mostly he loved her.

Emrys gave a heavy sigh. "Sometimes I leave," he began delicately, "because I cannot stand to be with you another moment." He didn't think this sentiment was incongruous with loving her. He could appreciate a fire and still occasionally need to adjust his chair to remove himself from the heat. He didn't blame the fire for burning.

---

"I don't remember the last time you acted like you could stand me." It came out smaller than she liked, more wounded. But was there to say when her husband decided he couldn't stand her presence? How was she meant to make anything better when his way of dealing with the world was fleeing?

"How do you expect me to earn your trust when you run away from me?" She couldn't keep the challenge from her eyes, his bluntly cruel words doing what he intended, wounding her, undercutting her confidence because that was what Emrys liked to do. "You moved me into a different house, Emrys. You have seen me try, and you answer every attempt with a wound. I want more than your bloody disdain; I want you to try here and now. I want you to look at your wife and realize how absolutely vast the canyon is between us when it comes to effort. I will fight for you, I will spend every day of the rest of my life fighting for you. And you have done nothing." The words poured from her, the truth of her pain and effort filling the space between them as she forced herself to remain in her seat, her nails digging imprints into her palms. Angelica didn't understand flight, but Merlin, did she know how to fight.

---

Her tirade he could have borne. Her accusations weren't grounded in reality, but they didn't have to be in order to serve the purpose to provoking him. But this was different than their usual arguments, because she claimed what she'd taken had been veritaserum. If that was true, it meant she actually believed that. That he had never been able to stand her, that he had never tried, that it had been nothing but disdain, and that — that he couldn't bear. He'd held her while she grieved a child who had never existed. He'd tried to meet her for years, but her grief — and the fact that he couldn't share in it — made her inaccessible. And if that — if his years of trying meant nothing, if now she could truthfully say that she thought he'd never loved her — what were they doing here? What could they possibly accomplish? His self-imposed rules to try and put them on more even ground meant nothing. What was she trying to save, if she didn't think he was willing to try?

He turned back towards the window. He was at a loss for words and unable to keep the pervasive hopelessness off his face or out of his posture.

---