19 February, 1893 — Night time — Zelfred's House, Sanditon Terrace

The Voyager had arrived in London midmorning, without Jo Smith stashed on a cot in one of the store rooms, which really was for the best. He'd known it was a bad idea when he'd offered, and she must have sensed the same thing in replying; though he might have wished things were recovered enough that they could treat their interactions more casually, they just weren't there yet. Even after his talk with Zelda, they wouldn't be there right away; no matter how his wife took it, Jo was going to worry that Zelda wasn't really alright with things for a while, he suspected. Maybe her concern in that department was warranted; there was only one way to find out. The conversation they were planning to have had loomed large in his mind since they'd first mentioned it in the letters; earmarking this or that to be unpacked later, in person.

But when he'd first come home there had been other things to focus on. Orion was bigger, more animated, with a wider vocal range than the binary crying or not that he'd had when Alfred had left, and all of that was an adjustment. When he'd first come in the door and taken the baby from Zelda she'd had to say you don't have to hold him like that, which had left him feeling out-of-sorts and a little guilty; of course he had known that time would pass while he was away but up until that moment he had not really known how much would change. The house was different, too; things rearranged, reorganized to accommodate the baby's changing needs; the things he'd left behind pushed out of the forefront or put away while her things took prominence in all the rooms. It looked and felt like he didn't really live there anymore, which, of course, he hadn't been. So there was a lot to deal with and a lot to talk about before they could approach the talk.

Seeing the dark circles under Zelda's eyes, Alfred had offered to put Orion down to sleep, but it turned out he didn't remember how — or maybe it had all changed since he'd been gone, or maybe Orion just didn't think him familiar enough to relax and fall asleep in his arms any more. In any case, after trying and failing he'd had to hand the baby back off to Zelda, and he'd idled restlessly around the kitchen while he waited for her to finish. He made tea, just to have something to do so that he didn't feel entirely useless. It had nearly stopped steaming when Zelda reappeared. "Hey," he said hesitantly, wanting to smile at her but not sure whether she would be annoyed at him for not being more helpful in getting their child to sleep. "Did you, ah — should we talk? I made tea," he pointed out. "But if you want to wait until tomorrow morning, that's fine. It's — you know, there's no big rush, I mean."

---

Zelda Darrow Cassius Lestrange

  

---

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

There was something looming in the room with them; the discussion they would have to have at the end of the night. Zelda felt it when she welcomed Alfred home, when she corrected him on holding Orion, when he tried and failed to put Orion to sleep. Zelda spent a few extra minutes in the nursery, tucking loose strands of hair back into her braid. She couldn't stay up there forever, and she knew it. She just wanted a few minutes.

Finally she went back downstairs and found Alfred in the kitchen. Zelda leaned against the counter, slumped with her elbows up on it. "I'll take a tea," she said, "And — well, we might as well talk now, right? It's been long enough."

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

She looked tired and already a little defeated (or was that his anxiety projecting?) but if she wanted to talk, Alfred would forge ahead. She was right; they had waited long enough already to have this conversation. He moved the teacup to the counter she was leaning on and slouched against the nearest wall. He was a little tense, but trying not to look it, and may have been overly casual as a result.

"Sorry," he began. "For not saying all this earlier."

---

  

---

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

Zelda took a sip of the offered teacup. She was leaned on her elbows against the counter, with the cup cradled in her hands. "How long have you wanted to talk about this?" she asked, already aware that she sounded the tiniest bit exasperated.

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred chewed the tip of his tongue. She sounded mildly accusatory, but he supposed he couldn't blame her. He shifted his weight against the wall and glanced up at the ceiling while he did the mental math. "Early summer. June, I think," he answered. "That was when I figured out you already knew about — I don't know her name. Jo's daughter. I ran into her in London, just — by chance, she was at the docks when I was there — and she let it slip. But I wanted to wait until the baby was born," he admitted. "I, uh — it seemed like it would probably be a fight. I didn't want to fight while we were — well, you know."

---

  

---

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

Zelda's forehead furrowed, creating an unhappy little line between her eyebrows. "That's a long time," she said. "And — after Orion?" She knew she was needling on things that could become a fight, but — talking about the timeline seemed easier somehow than talking about the rest of it. Her husband had wanted Jo Smith back in his life for nearly a year. What was Zelda supposed to do with that?

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred did not have a discreet excuse for why he hadn't brought things up after Orion was born, but he had felt at the time that the general state of things was excuse enough. Having a new baby — even with a nurse and even with all of the support from either of their families and the Sanditon staff and everything else — was hard, and he was aware that it was harder on her than it was on him, much of the time.

"After Orion we were — busy," he said with a helpless sort of shrug. "And it's not — it's not like I was thinking about this all the time and choosing not to bring it up. It's just — something that swells up, sometimes."

---

  

---

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

A few weeks ago Zelda had a thought that she didn't want to interrogate Alfred when they talked about this. They could talk, and they could both have their feelings, and that would be fine. But it was different to plan this conversation in her head, and another thing to have actually have it. The cup of tea was so warm it was starting to hurt her hands, and she set it down on the table with a click before speaking again. "When does it swell up?"

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred stared at her for a second, not because it was an unreasonable question but because he had no idea how to answer it. When he interacted with her, certainly, because when he talked to Jo it was always painfully obvious how much distance had grown up between them. But it wasn't just that, because sometimes he'd missed her even before she'd come back to England, and he didn't know how to articulate what drove those moments.

"Do you ever —" he started to ask, and then cut himself off before he could say something that would come out all wrong and get him into trouble. He had been about to say do you ever feel lonely but only for one specific person? and of course the danger was that she would think he was talking about Jo, when that wasn't what he'd been trying to say at all. In his last underway he'd felt acutely lonesome for the lack of her, and every time that struck he felt guilty for having gone away at all, but half of him still felt he needed to go away. It had seemed like the sort of thing that Jo would have understood, and so those were moments where the loss of their friendship had surfaced most, but it had not been driven initially by missing Jo.

But it was evening and he and his wife had both had a long day, and he wasn't sure she would understand — or maybe he didn't trust himself to convey it properly so that she could understand. He had never been eloquent, exactly.

"It's just — when I'm reminded about things we used to talk about, I suppose," he mumbled, when he had given up on trying to come up with anything most earnest to say. "We used to be good friends."

---

  

---

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

Her forehead had finally unknotted. Zelda stared at her husband until he answered, and was uncomfortably aware that she was staring. She was too tired to handle this gracefully. A part of her wished she'd asked Alfred to put the conversation off longer, put it off forever.

"You were closer than good friends," she pointed out, tone a little flatter than usual. Zelda reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Jo and Alfred had talked about everything. Maybe that wasn't what he'd meant, but that was what she could think of — they'd talked about everything, and their conversations were impenetrable to Zelda.

She sighed and tapped a finger against the counter. "She came to visit a year ago, with the baby," Zelda said, "Just to see someone. We had tea and she told me she didn't need any help."

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

Of course they'd been closer than good friends, but that was something he'd determined not to say out loud anymore.

He could have responded flippantly to what Zelda said next, or he could have used the same words but made his tone sound weary: of course she'd say that. Jo wouldn't have wanted help even if she'd needed it, not after things had ended between the pair of them. He could have just acknowledge that and moved on, stopped talking about the past and instead pivoted towards what this conversation was meant to be about, which was what happened moving forward — but something about Zelda's phrasing had stuck out to him.

"Just to see someone," he repeated, raising an eyebrow. There was a very limited list of someones she could have wanted to see, if she'd sought out this house in the Sanditon Terrace during the resort's off season. Would Zelda have told him if Jo had come here looking for him? Would Jo have told him if Zelda had rebuffed her and told her to stay away?

---

  

---

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

Zelda shrugged her shoulders. "She said —" she paused, having to think back to that day last January "— that she just wanted to see someone she knew."

Zelda didn't know if Jo had been looking for her, or looking for Alfred — but it was December, and Jo had to know Alfred may have been underway.

The raise of Alfred's eyebrows felt like a trap.

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

It seemed to Alfred that there was something unspoken there, and a beat passed while he decided whether or not to address it. This was, ostensibly, the time to bring everything to light that they hadn't been talking about for months, but —

He didn't really want to talk about any of this. He just wanted to be through to the other side of it, and he didn't know how to get there.

"Alright," he said eventually, willing it to be.

After a long moment, he spoke again. "I don't think things could ever be like they were before. Between us. Too much has happened."

Was that enough, to reassure Zelda that Alfred and Jo could never get back the friendship they'd had before? Enough to set her mind at ease about the two of them talking again? I'm not in love with her. I wouldn't fall in love with her, he thought, but wouldn't say. That was another thing he didn't want to put into words, in case it wasn't already weighing on Zelda's mind — in case she'd forgotten.

(Of course she had not forgotten).

---

  

---

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

Zelda looked down at her teacup. She tapped the side of the glass with her finger. "You said in your letter that you've been missing her the whole time," she said. She'd read it more than once, when she wanted to make sure she wasn't imagining the hurt in her chest. "So — what's to stop things from being the same, then?"

Things had changed: they were married, they had their own home and life, and Jo had a child. But if Alfred wanted to spend time talking to Jo and drinking with Jo and adventuring with Jo, there was still nothing Zelda could do to stop it.

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred's brow furrowed. From his perspective it seemed that the entire premise of Zelda's discomfort with the situation had been removed, so this question caught him off guard. When Alfred and Jo had been close, Alfred and Zelda had been continually at arm's length, due to the restrictions of the courtship they had more or less forced her father's hand on. He'd always interpreted that at least half of Zelda's frustration with Jo, through all the ups and downs, had actually been misplaced frustration with the situation the two of them were in. Now that all of that had changed, it was hard to give an answer to this question. He understood the concern, but it wasn't really rooted in the way things had been back then. The things that caught in their minds were the circumstances under which everything had been dissolved: The arguments, the blizzard, the misfired stunning spell, the restless admittance of I don't know. Zelda wanted to be reassured that none of that was going to happen again, but in order to do that he would have had to be able to articulate what had gotten them to that mess in the first place.

"What is it you're worried about, exactly?" he asked. He couldn't tell her, with any real conviction, what the future would or wouldn't be like. Moreover, trying to cover as many sins as he could without knowing what she wanted to hear was likely to only get them off track, with him digging himself into holes he'd have to work his way out of later. I couldn't fall in love with her, he thought again, and felt the words on the edge of his tongue, but didn't say.

---

  

---

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

Zelda looked up at her husband, her mouth a flat, exasperated line. "I don't want to feel like the fifth wheel to my own marriage," she said, alluding to the extra wheel on a carriage. It was more than that, but she didn't know how to verbalize it — she was afraid that she would become boring here, left behind with their child and a home on land.

"For Merlin's sake, Alfred, the last time we talked about Jo you said you might love her."

---

  

---

AMAZING set by MJ