January 2nd, 1894 - Dory's House

Win had let Christmas settle even though Dory didn't celebrate and she wasn't exactly in the mood, but nothing she had left at Dory's was incredibly necessary to her day-to-day life. Except her good hairbrush. She'd gotten a cheap new one to hold her over and as a backup for her bag, but she missed her good one. It was stupid, of all things, but she knew she was going to have to go back and pick up the few things that remained. She was just a little terrified of running into him at this point.

It felt wrong just stopping by without letting him know, so she had sent an owl ahead, but she had purposefully picked a time when she hoped he'd be at work. The heartache was a dull, persistent feeling in her chest, but she still thought she'd done the right thing. She had known things would end this way eventually; it was better to cut ties early before they had gotten in any deeper.

Taking the floo, Winnie stepped out into the sitting room, holding her breath. She sighed quietly when she didn't hear anyone immediately and quietly moved to the kitchen first. She had a small basket to toss everything in; her good rocks glasses, a loaf pan for making bread. She had made a list of the things she should get out of his way, but naturally, in her anxiety of coming, had forgotten it, so now she just had to go room by room to see if there was anything left. She had a couple of things in the room that had been hers; a dress or two in the closet, her brush and some other things like her perfume in the vanity. There was a thing or two in the washroom, and a couple of books in the sitting room, all exactly where she'd left them so far as she could tell.

She'd paused halfway between the kitchen and sitting room, trying to picture her list. Which was of course, when she heard the key in the door, unlocking it. Winnie froze as it opened, breath caught in her throat, eyes wide. "I'm sorry, I was just trying to get everything..."

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Dorian Fisk

  

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Life without Winnie had become endlessly dull. He'd grown accustomed to their routines, to seeing her at whatever odd parts of his day. To have her suddenly disappear felt as though a piece of himself was missing. And, try as he might, he couldn't patch the hole she left.

He hadn't celebrated the holidays beyond what was required by his family. There was no menorah lit in his home, nor had he cleared out the corner as he intended to for Winnie to have a Christmas tree. Instead, Dory had spent whatever days surrounding the holidays that he wasn't working mindlessly drunk. (Perhaps Nemo had the right plan in that regard.)

He was stone cold sober as he stepped through the front door. He was on call this week- perhaps a pitying move by Hatchitt - and so was working odd hours. Not that he minded too much, for anything was better than being home alone. Still, the odd hours helped with running the few errands he had to do. He carried a basket of groceries and various other things he'd picked up throughout his walk through town. New quills, some chocolate, another adventure novel he'd been eyeing for some time. All little, inconsequential things that he hoped might fill the void she'd left behind.

Dory froze midway between discarding the basket and hanging his cloak up on the hook. Winnie was here. Winnie was here acting like a thief in the night as she presumably gathered her belongings. He stared at her, his surprise obvious in his expression, before finally unfreezing and finishing his actions. "I uh - I wasn't expecting you." He confessed after a moment. "Do you need any help?"

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Ah, fuck. It was one thing that he caught her, it was another that he'd been unaware. "I sent an owl, a couple days ago?" She had, though had still hoped he would be at work and they could avoid all of this nonsense. Winnie was already wondering if she should back out and come back another time when he wasn't actually here. It seemed silly though, to feel like this in a place she had once considered home, so she figured she may as well get it over with.

"No, no. I just have a few things to grab." Merlin, now the list she had meant to bring was far from her head. "But I can come back another time?" Winnie had never really been much of a people-pleaser, but she also really didn't want to cause any more drama and could go without just about everything she'd left. Except her brush. She really did want that. This was already a mess. She just wanted to get in and get out and be done with this. She could start moving on once she was no longer connected to this place.

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"My schedule's been a mess this week. I must have missed it." Dory confessed. It stung somewhere deep within him that she had hoped to return not as a friend giving a last goodbye but as a thief in the night. Perhaps if they hadn't been friends for so long first Dory might've tolerated the sneaking better, but they were friends first. And as friends he had hoped for at least a final conversation beyond the mess that was their ending.

And, while he was getting exactly that at present, his thoughts couldn't quite catch up to the present. He could leave still, he supposed. It wouldn't take long to grab his cloak and head back out the door, but to what end? Was he to wander the neighborhood aimlessly rather than watch the love of his life walk out? Dory frowned and leaned heavily against the closed door, eyeing the box in her hands with nothing but disappointment and sadness. She was leaving, and he could do nothing to stop her.

"You're here, you might as well pick up what you need." Dory shrugged. Had she gone through his room yet? The thought of her in his room alone after this past month left him feeling uncomfortable, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

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Nodding in reply to both the information about his schedule and the permission to get her things, Winnie resumed gathering her possessions. A collection of a couple of books went into her basket and she looked around the room thinking that was in for in there. Merlin she wished she had the list she'd written. Maybe it would have been better if she came back another time so she didn't forget anything she'd written down.

Unable to shake the discomfort, feeling like she was intruding and he was watching her, Winnie was trying to be as quick as possible. Just the washroom and the second bedroom to go. The collection of things in her basket were so very random, but proved that she had lived here. These were not things that one often traveled with or used sparingly, they were everyday items that reflected their relationship.

"I ah, just need to get by you," she hesitated, biting her lip, waiting for him to move so she could get to the other rooms she needed to visit quickly.

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Dorian had never felt so wholly uncertain of what to do with his body before. It was awkward, her being here like this. And perhaps he ought to have let her leave and return at a later date, but that just meant another potential encounter at a later day. If he returned home too early or she stopped by too late...no, it was better if she finished now. Even if it hurt like hell watching her pack.

He understood better now than before why she had to leave. The heaviness that had settled upon them in her boarding house years ago had never truly left. Dory wanted a life that she was unwilling to live, and asking her to fit into that box was wrong of him. If he had had a lick of sense he would've ended things then, but he hadn't. And now they were here, awkwardly dancing around one another in the house that was now too big for him.

He leaned heavily against the hallway wall, determined as ever to avoid being in her way. He trusted her enough not to feel as though he had to follow her from room to room. In fact, knowing Winnie she likely wasn't taking half of the things she ought to be. Dory sighed. He would do a second run through later — tomorrow maybe, when he didn't feel so raw and exhausted — and send her whatever was missed.

He thought he was out of the way enough, but moved from the hall towards his bedroom without issue. There, he wordlessly sank down onto his bed and waited for her to continue on.

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Scooting around as quickly as she could, Winnie get the things she could see immediately in the washroom. It wasn't much, not that she could see anyway. It was likely she was missing things, but probably not things she couldn't easily replace or live without.

Her room had the most in it and as she moved from the washroom she was relieved, and a little disappointed, that Dory was nowhere in sight. She squashed the latter emotion; it wasn't practical, they had never been practical. She couldn't live the life he wanted to and that was that. Still, she missed his company sometimes, missed sharing a bed with someone when the nightmares hit

In the second bedroom, she grabbed her brush and perfume, the two things she'd been missing the most. There was a couple dresses in the closet that she folded up and shrank magically to fit better into the basket she'd brought. Moving the rifle through the drawers, she pulled out a couple of her underthings and shoved them haphazardly into the basket as well. Win stood at the end of the bed, idly running her fingers over the soft comforter, looking around for anything else she could have missed. There had to be something else that she should have thought to get, but her mind was blank.

Making her way back out into the hallway, she called, "I think that's it." End of sentence, end of relationship, period.

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Remaining while she did this was the wrong decision, Dory realized as sounds of her rustling throughout the house echoed in his otherwise silent bedroom. There was nothing remaining for them, no friendship, no consideration, nothing, and it killed him that they had somehow got here. He had changed somewhere along the way; his dreams had shifted so drastically that they could no longer align and, as he sat statue still waiting for some signal that she was done, he wished he could have figured out a way to somehow separate their friendship from this disaster. Losing a romantic partner was a harsh enough wound without losing the person he'd always relied upon to be there.

And perhaps that was his fault, too. He'd grown too reliant on the fact that she'd remain. She was his constant, his best friend. If he'd been smart they never would have fallen into bed together at all. He would have recognized the importance of their friendship and have vowed to do any and everything possible not to lose her. But, Dory hadn't. He'd fallen prey to the ease of comfort and in the process destroyed everything he held most dear.

He almost hoped she'd just leave without announcing it. Watching her leave the first time had killed him, how was he meant to watch the second without complaint? There'd been a disbelief in his heart that colored the first time, a ridiculous hope that they'd somehow work things out in the days following. But now — now this was final. This was it. And Dory almost wished he could escape without bearing witness.

He stood unsteadily, grateful for once for the agony his leg caused, and limped his way back to the hall. There was a present for her carelessly thrown onto his dresser — a rare edition of a midwifery book she'd mentioned looking for — that he grabbed on the way. He'd purchased it weeks before she left and would have no purpose for it without her. "I uh- I already had it." The book hung in the air between them, a last parting. "It isn't much, I promise."

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In the time it took Dory to reappear from his bedroom, Win took one last indulgent look around. Just because she knew she was doing the right thing didn't mean it wasn't hard, or miserable. She hated having to do it, but their paths in life were starting to diverge too far and she knew she had to stay her course. That meant shoving Dory back to his too, even if she hated it a little bit. As selfish as a creature as she was, Winnie was not about to do it here.

The selfish part of her had hoped he would just stay hidden and she could leave without any fuss. The last thing she expected was to be handed a little wrapped present. Something he'd purchased before. It made sense, but Winnie struggled briefly, wondering if she should even accept it. It wasn't much, but she knew that was a lie. She didn't have time to agonize over it for too long and decided, hoped, that just accepting it would be easiest.

"Thank you," she smiled softly, sadly, at him. Winnie tucked it into the basket along with her other belongings. It could be a later problem. "If you, ah, find anything else, I'm sure it's nothing crucial." If she'd missed anything she could live without it; nothing was worse than doing this again. Nothing was worse than standing here dithering about knowing it was time to go, but afraid to do it.

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"Yeah, sure." Dory acknowledged tensely. It was outrageous to him that her life here with him fit within a single box that didn't even appear full. She hadn't packed everything when leaving the first time, had she? The time between her determining to leave and actually doing so hadn't felt terribly long, an hour at most. Where was the rest of her belongings then? Had Winnie ever brought them along to begin with?

He desperately wanted to peek into the box, to see what she deemed important enough to share with him for the meager few months they lived together. He desperately wanted to ask her to stay again, not for a romance or a marriage, but just to share a single drink and allow themselves a more gentle closure. He wanted anything other than the harshness of her disappearing in a puff of green smoke.

Dory remained leaning heavily against the wall behind him. The hallway was too narrow, too small a space to encompass all that was happening. He tried to manage a sad smile at her, it barely lifted his lips.

"You are always enough, Winnie." He promised in a soft voice. If she was to take anything with her, he wanted it to be that knowledge. "For me, for your family, for anyone you find yourself with. You're enough. I'm sorry I didn't show you that better."

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   Bronwyn Moony

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"Please don't," Winnie couldn't do this again. It was all just empty words. Even if Dory believed them, she couldn't. She wasn't meant to be more than what she was and she was alright with that. Win had picked herself up out of the ashes after burning bridges, on more than one occasion, she would be able to do it again, but not if everything kept hitting the bottom again.

Arguing with him wouldn't do any good and she didn't know what to say to the last bit either. She couldn't make him see that it wasn't his fault anymore than he would be able to make her stay. The gap between them was just to wide to bridge this time. They wanted such different things out of life and one of them would wind up miserable trying to make the other one happy. Winnie could live with the heartache now knowing that it would only last for so long. In time things would get better. He would move on to someone who could give him the life that he wanted and she would be perfectly fine carrying on the way she always had. Time would fix it, she had to believe that.

"Don't make it any harder than it already is," it wasn't much more than a whisper, but the pleading was there nevertheless. Leaving the first time had been hard enough, this didn't need to be as bad if they could just acknowledge that it was actually the end.

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"I'm not - " he started instinctively and just as soon stopped. Dory knew she wouldn't stay. Even if he fell to his knees and begged she would still leave, for that was the decision she had made for them both. And, ultimately, he wanted to respect her decisions, he wanted to be supportive and considerate of her. That he hadn't these last few months would haunt him for years to come.

He dropped the pretense of trying to manage a smile and allowed his lips to fall into the frown he'd worn this past month. Dory could no longer meet her gaze head on, instead his eyes lingered somewhere on her cheek. "I know you need to go, I'm not hoping to stop you. I just - I hope you know I'll always be here. We were friends first, that doesn't stop because of this."

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Win squeezed her eyes shut, looking up as if it would prevent the tears from spilling. She hadn't cried all that much over this, drank too much and hid in her room at home sure, but she hadn't given in to the tears that threatened to overflow if she thought about it too much. Fortunately she'd been busy. Emilia had been up her ass lately too, and it was fine. All good distractions.

"Everything stops, we can't pretend otherwise." Merlin it was like ripping off the bandage all over again. They couldn't go back to being friends, couldn't be lovers, couldn't get married. Nothing. None of it was any good. She hated to admit it, because she couldn't remember a time when she and Dory weren't something to one another, but nothing was going to change if they didn't stop all of this nonsense. Winnie had convinced herself that this was the only way to move on. He deserved better, she deserved not to feel trapped and eventually that would be it, just a memory of time well-spent. She didn't want to look back on this and regret it, because she didn't, none of it, but it had to come to an end and clearly she was the only one willing to take the steps necessary.

"It'll be alright, not now, not for a while, but it'll be fine eventually." She assured him, managing to keep the tears at bay for the time being. "I need to go." She sighed and headed toward the fireplace.

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Dory sighed. He hadn't meant that anything would be as it once was, nor did he believe it ever could be. The ground beneath their feet was too unstable for them to even consider anything resembling a friendship at present. He'd only meant that if she found herself in need of support — in need of anything, really — he would endeavor to be there for her.

But, given the expression on her face, Dory knew better than to try and elaborate that point.

He scratched the back of his head as his gaze fell to somewhere between their feet. Watching her go would break him, he was sure of that. "Yeah, sure. Goodbye, Winnie." Dory mumbled.

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