May 7th, 1891 - Ottery St. Catchpole

If it had been a bad idea to leave the party, then it was a worse idea to leave Hogsmeade — but they had left the realm of good decisions at the moment Alfred suggested they leave, or perhaps at the moment that she agreed. Now there was too much momentum, because they'd already made the bad decision, so all of these subsequent steps just felt like follow-ups along the same path.

Or maybe she was just teetering on that weird line between being tipsy and being a little drunk, and trying to justify this whole night to herself.

She wasn't sure what the hours were at the floo point in Ottery, but they got lucky — it was still open and Zelda was trying not to think about being maybe spotted by people who worked there, or about the risk of people hearing them say an Ottery address at the other end of the floo in Hogsmeade. She was trying not to think about it, and it was too late now, because they had already left the party and they were already here, and Ottery had been too far from High Street for her to apparate them sober, never mind in this exact moment.

Once they were on the cobblestone path outside the floo point, Zelda wound her arm through Alfred's. Ottery already felt quieter than Hogsmeade had. She had a few extended family members in the area still, but no one who knew her even a little bit well, and there wasn't the overwhelming sound of a party all around them — just the noise of a pub up the street, and the foxes in the woods, the lake at night.

"This is better," she said, more out of optimism than because she already felt it was better.

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J. Alfred Darrow Reuben Crouch

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred only barely remembered how to get to Ottery, since he'd only been once and it had been over a month ago, but luckily Zelda hadn't had so much to drink yet that she was incapable of guiding them. In fairness, if Alfred actually thought she was drunk they wouldn't have been here in the first place, because it would have felt like he was taking advantage of her lack of good judgement to even offer to go somewhere else with her. And obviously they both knew it was a bad idea. Once they were through and alone in the street, however — alone in a more tangible way than they had been alone on the street in Hogsmeade, because Hogsmeade always felt a little crowded even when you couldn't see anyone else — it was difficult to regret it.

"Yeah," he agreed, pulling her arm close to him so that his side was brushing up against hers as they walked. He didn't really know where they were going, but assumed she did. At the moment he was quite happy to be led — he didn't have anywhere he wanted to be, particularly, just a growing list of places he knew he didn't want to be.

They walked in relative quiet for a moment. There was something lighter in the air here, but it felt like it only affected the surface of him. Beneath all of that, he was still weighed down, and thought she probably was, too. In theory this would be the ideal time and place to air whatever grievances were left to talk about between them, to fix whatever was wrong, except Alfred didn't even know what was wrong. He didn't think talking about the same thing they'd talked about last time would help, but he was finding it hard to fully invest in anything else. So where were they supposed to start, if they did want to fix things?

"We're going to be alright," he said after a long moment. "Right?"

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

That was the reason they were here instead of at the ball, other than a sudden recklessness — here they could get away with holding arms or brushing against each other and Zelda wasn't worried that they would be spotted by a hundred people who would freak out about it. And then he asked her that question, which was — probably the most important question he could ask, with this weirdness still hanging around them.

Zelda wanted to just be married already, or even engaged — there was insecurity in the arrangement they had now, insecurity that had been helpfully pointed out by multiple of her siblings. And even if she left this night out of it she knew she was ruined, multiple times over — and this was what she could not explain to her siblings, except Ari, who already knew. She was ruined. She had been privately ruined for a while, but ten months of courtship wouldn't be overlooked by anyone, either.

If it wasn't Alfred she would end up just like Xena, marrying one of her father's friends at thirty and thinking about what could have been. Or maybe she would never marry at all; she would stay at home  and watch all her siblings grow up and move on. She was doing that already. The difference was that she would never be able to do the same.

So of course it wasn't even half a beat before she replied with a soft smile: "Yeah, we're going to be alright." She was not entirely sure she believed it, although the skepticism didn't make it into her tone. But she needed to believe it, because if they weren't — if this was just going to be the way things felt, forever — then she was fucked.

She would do anything to fix it, though, anything, and she wasn't accustomed to failure. So they were going to be alright. She leaned closer to Alfred, needing the feeling of their sides brushing together to reaffirm this. They were going to be alright. They had to be.

Zelda gently tugged his arm, steering them towards the little path down to the docks they'd met at right before Xena's wedding. She hoped it wasn't a mistake to show him places they'd already been, but — Ottery was a small town.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred thought he recognized the path they were walking down, and since he'd only been here once before that meant he thought he knew where they were going. He could have been wrong, though; it was dark and this was an unfamiliar town. The dock was a logical place to head towards, on one level. That was what they both wanted, wasn't it? To feel as though they were back on the dock, trading kisses and making plans about their wedding? On the other hand, it was risky, because if it didn't work — if they got there and they both still felt this way — then they wouldn't even have that, anymore. Their last sweet, good memory, when they'd really been themselves, would be tainted by this whole mess too.

"I wish we were on the other side of it," he mumbled. He didn't know how to get there, was the thing, because he didn't know how he'd gotten here in the first place.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

His sentence had her waver on her path, and she came to a stop, turning to snake her other arm around him. She wanted to agree so fervently that it had brought her to a real, physical stop — she just wanted to be on the other side, with enough distance that she could look at this objectively, and pick out all the things she would have done differently. "I want to feel like myself," she said, although she wasn't sure where it had come from. Normally she felt most like herself when she was with him, but tonight it was like she was on a raft trying to get to shore and seeing him had overturned it, and now she was — in Ottery when she should not have been, wanting desperately to fix things when it felt like for the last month she'd just been fucking them up.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred wrapped his arms around her as she moved into him, holding her tight. It was a protective posture, but it wasn't as though there was anything out there in the world that could hurt them right now. Rather, he was holding her so tightly because he had the impression that if he let go she might fall apart, pieces of her scattering on the ground and blowing away in the wind. He wanted her to feel like herself, too, because it was all bound up together — he didn't think he could feel any better if she didn't.

"How did we get here?" he asked softly. Had she gone off the path first and called for him to follow, or was this his fault? Not that it mattered much, but he had the vague sense that maybe if he knew what had happened in the first place he might be able to piece together how to make their way back.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

She tucked her head against his chest. Having Alfred hold her was something, it brought them a little closer to their normal reality, but she didn't think that would be enough to steady them both. She had to think of something. But every time she tried, she got stressed out and — probably not any closer.

"I don't know," Zelda admitted; if she knew, she would have felt better about trying to solve it. "I think I — I think I keep fucking up." She had gotten overconfident and she did not know when to push and when to stop, and now all of it was coming back to drag her down.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred pursed his lips. He didn't know that he agreed with that assessment, but since he didn't know what had happened he wasn't sure he could present an alternative scenario. He would have just been bullshitting to try and make her feel better, and she would have seen straight through that. So he held her a little tighter — if it was possible to hold her any tighter than he already had been — and spent a minute breathing and noticing the scent of her hair and not saying anything.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda spent a minute trying to ground herself in him holding her, and thinking of all the things she could say but did not want to; they were so close together she could feel his breathing and match her own to it. All the things she'd done wrong, lately: everything with Dio, or I've spent my whole life fighting with Xena but now she's married and I can't sleep, or I should have just listened and I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

She wanted to ask what she'd asked on the boat, again: do you regret it?

She ran one hand up and down his back, and pressed her face into his shirt even more than she had been — like maybe if they stood here long enough she would just be absorbed by the fabric and wouldn't have to figure this out at all.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

They weren't moving, but somehow as they stood there just holding each other in the middle of the empty street Alfred felt as though they were sinking. There was no reason he ought to have felt that way. Her hand on his back wasn't indicative of any alarm. Her head was on his shoulder. They could have been holding each other in any other context and it would have looked just like this, but it wouldn't have felt like this.

"I'm not leaving," he said suddenly. There was no reason he should have had to say this in the first place, because it wasn't something he'd ever even allowed to become a fully fleshed-out thought, much less told her about — but she had to know, didn't she? She had to feel it, that it had been lurking at the edge of his mind. He didn't know where it had come from or why it had lingered there, just as he didn't know where this sudden announcement had come from, but as the words left his mouth he was convinced of their truth. Maybe they were sinking, maybe he couldn't do anything about it, but if that was the case he was going down with this ship.

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   Zelda Darrow

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Her breath caught in her throat before she could exhale it; Zelda moved her head, but just enough so that she could see his face, not enough to really pull back. "You're not leaving," she echoed, a little dumbly. But some of the nervousness left her all the same — she had not been consciously thinking that he would, but she'd known it was an option. Last Spring, she'd asked him to stay. He hadn't written her from the Santa Antonina. Things were weird between them. It stood to reason that if things went wrong enough, Alfred could just leave — he had a boat and the skills to sail it, so he could leave.

But he'd just said that he wouldn't. Zelda's mouth curved into a smile, a small surprised one, because he wasn't leaving.

"I'll do anything," she said, "For us."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

She repeated the phrase and Alfred's heart skipped a beat. For a half-second he wondered if this was news to her, and if they were going to have to stop and talk about that now — not that he would have had anything to say, because he didn't know where it had come from or why he was thinking about it or why he was suddenly convinced he wouldn't. But then she smiled, and his whole body felt a little lighter — it was like a candle had flickered at the end of a long tunnel, and it wasn't much, but it was light when he had been muddling through in the dark for so long already.

I'll do anything for us. Hearing that unleashed a torrent within him, like a dam breaking, and suddenly he knew how they'd gotten here and why he'd been feeling this way. It wasn't the sort of thing she would have had to say out loud two months ago, because he'd already known that she was willing to go through whatever it took for the two of them, and that he would never dream of asking her for anything more than what her family had already subjected them to. Her commitment to this relationship had seemed boundless because it was sufficient, and he'd never given it another thought. But something had shifted during their last fight, when she didn't really understand why he didn't want her to go underway with the Voyager and she didn't understand why he didn't want to talk about it and she didn't understand why he couldn't just give her a straightforward answer or apologize for sending her back home on the docks at the Thames that morning. His whole world revolved around her, whenever she was near enough for him to be aware of her, and she didn't seem to get it. And that had led to doubt creeping in, and the things Jo had said during their fights had drifted back to mind like debris from a wreck riding the high tide. Maybe he was giving up on too much of himself, and maybe Zelda wouldn't have done the same. Maybe he was making all the sacrifices and she couldn't even be bothered to minorly inconvenience her family — maybe despite what they'd said at Christmas she wouldn't ever entertain the idea of moving forward if they didn't have her father's blessing, and maybe Alfred would never earn it. Maybe he'd stop sailing and get a house in the Sanditon and rearrange his whole life for her, and in the end he wouldn't be any better off than he was now, seeing her here and there at parties.

So when she said I'll do anything for us it was a flood of relief; he only realized what had been broken with them before because this sentiment, offered so earnestly and sincerely, patched the hole perfectly.

"Let's get married," he said with urgency, pulling back enough that he could look into her eyes. "Tonight. We don't even have to tell anyone."

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   Zelda Darrow

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda could have had a hundred guesses and she still wouldn't have seen what he said next coming. Maybe that was ridiculous of her — after all, Alfred had proposed they elope before.

He'd proposed to her before, and she'd said no or brushed it off every time.

Ari and Dio were married and they didn't even love each other. They'd married swiftly, for a baby, but they didn't love each other and they had never consummated their marriage, and they were still married. Zelda and Alfred had consummated their courtship — erm, significantly before it was a courtship, but also that time in the garden — and she loved him and she wanted to be done, she wanted some more security, even if she believed him when he said he wan't going to leave.

It could be a secret.

If it was a secret — they would have the security she wanted and they didn't have to tell anyone yet, and then if Brannon said no — if Brannon still said no — then they would already be married and no one could do anything to stop it then. It would be too late to annul it — (although Zelda wasn't really sure how these things worked.) She could go to sleep tonight and be married. The consequences for fleeing the rainbow party could come and she would still be married.

All the reasons she'd said no every other time he asked still existed, obviously. She could lose her family over this. It could bring on a swell of scandal that wouldn't look great, for Ros or for Ross' administration or for any of them, and surely eventually some of her brothers wanted to be married to — and this could be bad for them. Brannon might never forgive them. She didn't know how to exist without her siblings, not really.

But maybe she was losing them already, or at least Dio — and maybe they would be able to forgive her, if they realized how in love she was, and how cornered she'd felt. And it was after Xena's wedding. No one was anywhere especially fragile, surely Miss Evans wouldn't blame Kons for this - and that was only if they got caught. She did not think they would get caught.

It took her a beat to work through it all, but when she decided her expression played out on her face: she broke into a grin, her eyes crinkling up at the corners.

"Yes," Zelda said, "Yes, I'll marry you tonight. And — and we can keep it secret, for now, but we'll be married. Tonight."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred's heart leapt. He'd believed her, when she'd said she would do anything for them, but this was tangible proof of it. There was nothing to say at this point except that he loved her so much it hurt. Even if this changed nothing on the surface of things — even if she went back to her father's house and slept in her empty room tonight and he still had to write her father a pleading letter the next morning and even if no one ever knew — it changed everything, of course. It was everything he'd been looking forward to, for years. He wasn't leaving — he'd determined to stay and muddle through this even if it felt the way it had a moment ago, even if they were sinking, even if it never got better — but now here they were, on the other side of it, and she'd said yes.

"We'll keep it a secret," he agreed. He moved his hands to the sides of her face and leaned in to kiss her, deeply. "I love you," he said, as though it needed saying in a moment like this. He was practically giddy, but he hadn't planned this — for all his talk on so many other occasions of being willing to elope with her on a moment's notice, he was woefully ignorant of the logistics — and he didn't know what to do next. "Do we need a witness, or something?" he asked in a rush, hoping she would have some better idea of where to start than he did.

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   Zelda Darrow

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"I love you too," Zelda exhaled. Something like relief had flooded her body as soon as he kissed her, and she was riding the high of it still. But of course there were the logistics, and Zelda bit her lip as she thought through them — she had very conveniently recently been in a wedding party, but it was not as if she had born witness to much of the actual legalities of it.

"I think eloping is easier in Scotland," Zelda said slowly. That was true, because Xena had griped about the three-weeks-notice requirement in England, which she'd had to follow because they were getting married in Ottery.

Alfred and Zelda didn't have three weeks — just tonight. "And that we need a witness, and — a minister or something, obviously." They could use a muggle Church of Scotland minister, she didn't care about that. But — "I need something glass, for after. Just a — quick Jewish thing."

A thought occurred to her. "Delight would do it," Zelda added. Rowan probably would too, but Delight had at least met Alfred before.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Scotland, but presumably not Hogsmeade, if this was going to be a secret. Irvingly was risky, too, if they could even get the Minister of the little Muggle church to agree to it — marrying after the sun set on a Friday night wasn't really a done thing, so it wasn't as though they could expect someone to just be standing by waiting for them to arrive.

"Montrose," he suggested. It was one of the larger cities he knew of in Scotland without being too large, and it was still mostly Muggle, which meant they could slip in and out without being noticed, probably. He'd gone on holiday there a few times as a child, to visit extended family — he had determined the Montrose Magpies would be his favorite Quidditch team at some point in his childhood because of it. So he knew the city well enough that he could find a chapel, probably, and it was by the sea. That seemed to matter.

Delight Urquart was a good option, since she had proven she could coexist with the two of them alone without being awful about it already. She seemed discreet, anyway, because Alfred thought she probably knew that he and Zelda had slept in the same room the night they'd been there in the blizzard, and she'd never said a word about it afterwards. "That's good," he agreed, with a grin. "I think Evander would, but he'd probably be awful about it the whole time."

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER