Near Midnight, August 21st, 1891 — The Crouch Home, Swallowbury

Pregnancy had its way of proving time and time again just how ill suited Melody was for its conditions. Between the relentless illenss that still plagued her — albeit to a lesser degree than the first weeks of her pregnancy — the vivid nightmares, and typical end stage pregnancy exhaustion, Melody was mentally and physically done with this stage of her life. Boy or girl, she and Reuben would be only child parents, which was fitting given the state of their relationship.

Things weren't necessarily bad between them — at least she didn't think so — so much as they were indifferent. Neither of them had dedicated significant effort into building a bridge over their differences, and at this point Melody didn't believe any such effort would be made. That was fine, she supposed, more fine than she would've thought it to be this time last year. Quiet indifference with their affection being guided towards their child, she could live with that.

Well, Melody could live with that provided she lived after the birth.

Lucy hadn't lived, Melody had witnessed that firsthand. Lucy had some sort of premature delivery and it was a miracle her son survived at all. Unlike her cousin, Melody didn't have the same caliber of support. She didn't have a team of healers who could be summoned with ease, she didn't have a devoted husband who would move heaven and Earth to see her through, Melody didn't even have a family that would miss her. In fact, Melody was convinced Reuben would be relieved if she were to die. Then, he would be free to remarry whomever he wished whenever he would want to. Reuben would be free, which was his only wish.

It was with these thoughts in mind that Melody climbed out of bed and moved downstairs to make herself some tea. Sleep wouldn't come, not with her thoughts racing like this. She was midway through the kitchen door when her eyes locked with those of her husband's. "Sorry," Melody began immediately, "I didn't know you were up." More like she was hoping to have missed him with some event or another.

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Ben had fallen into a habit this season of trying to spend as much time as he could out of the house, so as not to unnecessarily test the uneasy peace that he and Melody had achieved. He was aware that this was the opposite of what most men with heavily pregnant wives might be doing, and he felt guilty about it, but not enough to stop. At least there was no need to keep up the illusion that they were madly in love. They'd made it through the first year of their marriage without anyone speculating that anything untoward had happened at the beginning of it, and now no one was likely to cast aspersions on something that was so far in the past. After the Witch Weekly article earlier that year, it was unlikely that anyone still really thought they were in love, anyway. Might as well let the charade slip a bit if it kept things smoothed over at home.

As such, he'd been out that evening. With his job being what it was, it was easy to find excuses: parties, festivals, events. Networking and making connections was part of his job, so he could reasonably claim that he had to go even when Melody wasn't feeling up for things. He'd only returned about an hour ago. He'd changed into his night clothes, but the party he'd been at tonight had run out of food midway through (a terrible faux pas that Witch Weekly would likely have been writing up the next day if their writers weren't currently on strike) and he was hungry. Their cook was long since gone for the day, but Ben had spent years as a cursebreaker cooking his own meals over rudimentary camp fires; he was more than capable of fixing something up. Just when he'd gotten the fire on the stove lit, Melody appeared in the doorway.

"Oh," he said, surprised to see her and taking a moment to figure out what else to say. "It's — fine. It's not that late, really."

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An immediate sense of awkwardness washed over Melody. Turning face and heading back upstairs would only add to the long list of reasons as to why they were ill suited for one another. He was a Gryffindor, brave and willing to confront anyone over trivial matters (the duel sprang instantly to mind) whereas she only sought whatever measure of tense peace they could find. To stay meant conversing with him when her thoughts were muddled and stressed. To leave meant further hatred.

Melody remained in the doorway.

"I was coming down to make some tea," she explained weakly. "I can come back..."

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Merlin, something as innocuous as tea and she wasn't sure whether she ought to stay or go. Ben knew how rocky their relationship was, of course, but moments like this really cemented it for him. Melody wasn't sure if she wanted to stay in the same room as him long enough to make a cup of tea. What was she afraid of? He wasn't going to bite her. They'd had their fights, of course, but not for months. He'd been trying to stay civil and calm whenever he was around her so as not to add any extra stress. They'd had their fair share that spring, and he knew she was struggling enough with the pregnancy as it was.

(Of course, it was easy when they talked to each other so little — there was nothing to fight about. Maybe she was worried if she stayed and talked, they'd find something. Maybe she was right.)

"You can stay," he said with a shrug. "I can make you some tea. I was already going to cook something." A thought occurred to him and he winced. "Oh — sorry, would the smell bother you? If you want to go back upstairs I could bring you tea in a few minutes. It's no trouble."

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For a split second, Melody wondered if he was being sarcastic. She often had the thought that he believed her illness to be overexaggerated (it wasn't) or used as an avoidance crutch (only on very rare occasions), so for him to be so mindful of it was mildly alarming. Then, as quickly as it came it passed. Whether or not he meant it as a snide remark or as a kindness mattered not, all Melody had to do was answer the question.

"I should be alright," she replied but still made no move to sit. "I had one of my potions earlier with dinner, it seemed to help." The potions were supplied by a healer, of course, and were thoroughly regulated after her experience this spring. Never again would Melody accept a potion from anywhere but a hospital.

Still feeling awkward, she took a small step into the kitchen. Her dressing gown wasn't large enough to wrap snugly around her anymore, causing her well rounded stomach to be obnoxiously visible. "I'll have some of the chamomile, if it isn't a bother. It's the only thing helping me sleep lately."

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Ben felt a little awkward at the mention of the potion. Enough time had passed that he probably should have been over it, but they hadn't ever really talked about what had happened with that whole ordeal. He still wondered how much Melody knew about what had happened after she'd gone to sleep, or in the days of her immediate recovery. He figured she probably resented him for it, though she'd never said as much. So any time she mentioned a potion, even in as innocent a context as this, he couldn't help but wonder if what she really meant to say was remember that time you almost killed me?

He turned back to the stove. "No bother," he confirmed, lighting another burner and fetching the kettle down from the shelf.

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Unsure of whether she ought to sit or continue standing, Melody remained uncomfortably half within the doorway and half near the counter for a singular miserable minute longer. She despised this — despised him, some nights, as the constant doubt only added to her stress. With her thoughts of death and sickness so prevalent in her mind, the added addition of managing her husband's quiet resentment was almost too much to bear.

Reuben would be relieved, if not happy, if she were to die and she honestly wouldn't blame him. She certainly would breathe out the tension if the situation were reversed. It begged the question of how he would handle raising their child though. His disdain for her was obvious, but surely he would stomach it enough to share whatever few happy memories they had with the babe? Surely, their child wouldn't be raised with an ingrained hatred of their dead mother?

Melody moved from the doorway to the table with suddenly weak knees. The child that she was devoted to would hate her as resolutely as their father, and there was nothing she could do about it. Instead, all she could do was sit in silence and wait for her tea as her thoughts spiralled once more into paranoia.

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   Reuben Crouch

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Ben felt something shift in the air between them, but he didn't know what it was. Nothing he wanted to dig in and try to uncover, he was sure. This was how they survived, since their last explosive fight in the spring. They kept the peace at all costs. Heavy, loaded silence was better than another argument. Sitting under the weight of resentment was bearable if it kept their household together. It was only a few minutes, anyway. Long enough for the water to boil and for him to pour a cup of tea. Ben had no illusions whatsoever that Melody would want to stick around in the kitchen after it was poured.

Something felt different about this moment, and it made him uneasy. Still, he focused on less difficult things: he moved the carrots he'd cut earlier into the pot he'd been heating. He put a piece of bread on the plate he planned to use. He filled the tea basket with chamomile tea. He watched the steam start to gather above the tea kettle and waited for it to whistle. Only when he was well and truly out of anything else to do did he glance back at Melody.

"You alright?" he asked. He knew the answer (no), but was expecting that she'd give a superficial response that would ward off any further attempts at conversation. It was what they did these days.

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The correct answer to his question was of course, for he wasn't her confidante and she wasn't his. The right choice was to take her tea and return to bed, leaving him to wave her off as peculiar. Reuben was only here in this house for the baby, a fact Melody was keenly aware of. He could easily take the baby and declare her unfit, or, if he was truly desperate to be rid of her, murder her himself. (She didn't truly believe him to be capable of murder, but before the events of last year Melody never would have thought herself capable of such duplicity. People were often shocking when desperate.)

She should have gone to bed.

Instead, with a tense expression, Melody looked to her husband and shook her head. "I'm terrified," she quietly confessed. "Well and truly terrified of what's to come."

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Oh. Fuck. He hadn't been expecting an honest answer. They didn't have real conversations anymore. They hadn't had a real conversation in months. Why start now? Why midnight on a Saturday, sitting at the kitchen table? Obviously he had to address what she'd just said, because it wasn't the kind of thing you could just shrug off or give a non-answer to. It was hard to decide what to say, though, when he was so out of practice at this, and when he didn't know what she actually meant. What's to come could have meant the rest of her pregnancy and the childbirth. That was the most immediate answer; he couldn't look at her and her swollen stomach at this point without thinking about how near the arrival of the baby was. But what's to come could also have meant whatever happened next. Raising a baby together. Having to move past this place where they'd currently plateaued because it was easier than trying to forge ahead and safer than falling behind. Figuring out what their marriage actually was, moving forward. All of that was terrifying, too, and Ben didn't have any easy answers for any of it.

Actually, he sort of hoped she was talking about childbirth, because that seemed like an easier problem to solve than everything that happened next.

"Because of your cousin?" he asked solemnly. Hopefully she said yes; that was the easier answer. After the unexpected turn the conversation had taken towards honesty, though, he didn't want to assume.

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Truthfully, Melody was shocked to know he remembered Lucy's death. As far as she was aware, the pair had never met, nor had he ever expressed an interest in her family or friends. It was such an intense experience, though, and one Melody had sought out his comfort after. Perhaps it wasn't such a surprising thing for him to remember after all.

"Yes...but, it isn't so much what happened to her that I fear but what happened to her son. He was so small...so impossibly small, and to never know how loved he was by her..." Melody shook her head. Asking what he would do in such a scenario was too personal, too involved a question. Their marriage was in such a state of disrepair that she feared to have already said too much. "It's a frightening thought." She then quietly added looking away from him.

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Ben wasn't entirely following her train of thought, but he'd latched on to the description of impossibly small.

"You're worried about the baby?" he asked, with a pang of guilt. The healers didn't think there was anything to be concerned about after the potion incident, since Melody had woken up quickly afterwards and seemed to have recovered just fine, but if there was something wrong with the baby it would have been his fault. At the very least, they'd never know for sure that it wasn't his fault. Which would be the end of them, for sure — there was already too much baggage between the two of them, and he knew what little was left of their relationship couldn't survive another heavy dose of resentment.

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"Of course I fear for the baby," Melody answered as if that should have been a foregone conclusion. "I've not managed proper nutrition in months, plain broth has been its main source of food to grow. Between the weight I've lost, the regular use of properly made potions and the events of March...of course I'm afraid." The potions she took now were all properly regulated, but they weren't without their risks. Few could say with certainty that the consistent use of the different herbs wouldn't have a negative longterm effect on her baby.

She shook her head then. "It's more than that, though. It's a fear of laboring and a fear of leaving them alone. I...I don't know. I can't explain it."

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Properly made potions and the events of March. She might as well have just come right out and said if anything happens, I'll blame you. Even if that hadn't been her intention behind the words, that was what Ben was hearing. His throat tightened. He didn't know what to say. Under other circumstances he would have trying to comfort her with vague, empty platitudes. Sometimes that was just what people needed to hear, even if they knew they were empty. Sometimes that was the only thing to say, when there was nothing left to do about their worries except wait them out. And he could have said you're going to be fine, the baby is going to be fine. I'll take care of you, except she wouldn't have believed it, coming from him. The last time he'd said he'd take care of something and she shouldn't worry, he'd bought a potion that had nearly killed her and the baby, and she clearly still resented him for it. As she should, Ben figured. There was no way to tell until the baby was born what the impact of that one stupid mistake had been.

And if he said don't worry, it's going to be fine, I promise and then it wasn't, then she'd have one more thing to resent him for. She would have had legitimate concerns, and he would have pushed them away, dismissed them, and by then it would be too late to do anything about it. She'd never forgive him.

Not that it mattered what he said right now, really. If something happened to the baby, she was never going to forgive him, anyway.

He was somewhat surprised to find that he wanted her to.

"Tea," he muttered, putting the cup down on the table in front of her, then glancing at her face for the first time in more than a minute.

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Melody realized her mistake only after he remained silenced by her statement. The potion that had landed her in the hospital was sought out by him. However, if Reuben was remorseful over it it wasn't a sentiment he'd shared with her. She had woke up in the hospital with him preoccupied by his upcoming duel. She had come home to spend her birthday in a nauseous haze with only brief check ins, if that, from him. Truthfully, Melody sometimes wondered if the whole incident was doctored to rid her of the pregnancy.

She remained quiet even as he met her gaze for the first time that evening. There was much she should say, she should find some way to absolve him of whatever guilt he carried from the ordeal. Forgiveness, though, wasn't a concept either of them had learned in their marriage. There were too many mistakes, too much grief and misery for either of them to ever truly move forward unburdened.

She dropped her eyes from him to her tea, choosing to remain silent as she added her drop of honey.

  

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She takes honey in her tea. Ben made a mental note. He didn't know why. It probably wouldn't come up often, if ever; in social settings it was typically the hostess, or at least a woman, who made the tea for everyone, so he wouldn't have many occasions to fix it for her. It just seemed like the sort of thing he ought to know. Little details he could hang on to in the future for some kind of proof that he'd loved her once. He wasn't sure who he would be proving it to, or in what context. Maybe just proving it to himself, once whatever happened next was over and the dust had settled.

There was nothing to do with the food for the moment, since he was just waiting for vegetables to boil. Hesitantly, he took the seat across the table from her. The chair was uncomfortable — the table in the kitchen wasn't really designed for them to eat at, but rather for servants, if their household ever grew to the point where they needed more than just an occasionally maid and a cook. The nurse, soon enough. If they made it that far.

Ben found a little knick in the tabletop and ran his fingernail along the edge of it. He chewed his lower lip. He didn't know what to say.

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