17 June, 1892 — Evening

By the time Ben came downstairs for breakfast, any sign of what had happened last night had already been cleaned up. The only clues he had were the hints Melody had dropped in their brief conversation that morning and the few snatches of things he remembered. None of it was particularly useful. He could bring to mind Melody sitting at the dining room table, frustrated but clearly trying to collect herself and consider her words before speaking. Was that about my happiness? His hand shaking as he tried to refill his glass of firewhiskey. Liar. Melody lowering herself into his lap. Her big dark eyes fixed on his. There was no way to connect the dots between memories like that; he wasn't even sure he had them in the right order. He assumed Melody sitting on his lap came last given that they'd ended up in his bedroom, but beyond that...

He stuck to small talk when he saw her. Now that they weren't waking up next to each other, it was hard to bring himself to open up a potentially damaging avenue of conversation. He could wait until after work, he decided — but when he was home from work Nora was up and full of energy, so obviously that wasn't the time. Dinner came and went, and so did Nora's bedtime, and Ben still hadn't found a time to bring it up. He wasn't trying to avoid it, exactly — but he wasn't trying to let the past intrude on his life any more than it already did, every time he looked at Melody.

He just wanted to be happy. He wanted her to be happy. Why couldn't they handle that?

It was nearly time to turn in for the night, and Ben hadn't seen Melody in an hour or more. He didn't know what she was doing, only that she hadn't gone out of her way to find him as he'd played a solitary card game in their parlor. He had nearly resolved to go to bed alone, but on his way up to his bedroom he saw her in the hallway. "Hey."

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

Melody had hoped they would at least discuss last night before he left for work, but when he'd left without another word on the subject she understood that they likely wouldn't be having the conversation ever. She'd glanced a few hopeful looks in his direction as they played with Nora and over dinner. She had even thought to approach him after Nora had gone to bed. Only, he hadn't wanted to discuss it that morning and, historically, he never wanted to discuss anything at all.

And so she'd retreated to her room instead to continue reading about the theories behind becoming an animagus.

After hours of reading and being quite certain Ben would have gone to bed, she headed downstairs for a glass of water. Ben, however, had either stayed up later than usual or she hadn't heard the footsteps she normally did, as he was right there in the hallway near her door. "Hi," Melody returned. "I was just heading down to the kitchen..."

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Ben wasn't sure if she had intended the line about the kitchen as an excuse to make a quick escape or as an invitation for him to join her. He didn't necessarily want to have this conversation in the kitchen, of all places. He hardly ventured into there these days, since most of their meals were prepared by the housekeeper and served in the dining room. It didn't feel like neutral territory. Did they need neutral territory for this conversation? He didn't know.

"Uh, okay." He wished he had some recollection of last night that made sense, so that he could use it as a springboard for this conversation. He remembered a fair bit of his conversation with Dionisia in the Broomsticks, but he was hardly going to start trying to reconcile with his wife by bringing up that he'd been drinking with the mother of his (other) child.

(Maybe he should write Dionisia an apology for last night).

"Uh — about last night." He put his hands in his pockets, unsure what else to say. He was rather hoping she would take the lead.

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

Again, Melody had to firmly remind herself to bury any hope she might have had of their relationship taking a turn for the better. He was bound to be furious when he rediscovered that she had recalled her lost memories and any explanation she might offer as to why she hadn't shared such news would fall upon deaf ears. Drunk Ben hadn't tried to storm away, his anger too present to be ignored. Sober Ben ... well, he might very well leave and only return for Nora's sake.

They'd made it to the kitchen where she retrieved her glass of water before he spoke. "What do you remember of it?" It was the most obvious starting point and a rather ironic one at that, considering how willing she was to provide him with answers and how steadily he avoided them.

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Ben let out a long breath. She had to start there, didn't she? Despite having a career that required him to drink nearly every day of the week, Ben didn't often get so intoxicated he couldn't remember the night before — or at least, he didn't do that anymore, now that he'd left his twenties behind and become a father. He wasn't particularly proud of that behavior, so he didn't want to put it on display too much through his answers, but admitting to the extent of it seemed unavoidable.

He leaned on the counter and tried to consider how to start. "I wasn't working last night. You probably already knew that. I went to the Three Broomsticks because I didn't want to come home," he admitted. "I've been feeling really... trapped. Like it doesn't matter what I do, the outcome is always the same. When I came home I was going to tell you everything. All the things you forgot that I haven't wanted to talk about. I was pretty sure you were going to leave me." Or that she was going to say something that would drive him to leave her, but he left that part out of his verbal explanation. He glanced up at Melody across the kitchen. "I don't remember why you didn't."

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

She leaned against the kitchen counter, her hands anxiously fiddling with her glass. Aside from last night, this was the most vulnerable she'd ever heard him. Or, at least, one of the most vulnerable times, and she now feared that there truly was no way through for them. Eventually, they'd either give up and abandon one another or they'd be perpetually trapped in this cycle forever.

She didn't — couldn't — look at him. Not while he spoke, not for a long minute after. Ben made no mention of their argument, just of his feelings and why he hadn't come home. (And, were she not now at least trying to work through this with him, she might've laughed. He felt trapped and inconsequential when he held all the power in their relationship. He held all their memories, all the answers she had searched for, and yet he was trapped. It was ridiculous, really.) "I wouldn't leave you, Ben." Melody replied simply at first, although this time she was wise enough to leave out that there was nowhere she could reasonably go.

"I think ... before we get into this you need to know that I remember now, and have for a few weeks. Things have been so tense and awful between us that I haven't known how to tell you." He was likely going to walk away now, Melody could already see it playing out in her head. This was going to be it for them and whatever futile hope provided last night would immediately be forgotten.

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Ben looked at Melody. He pursed his lips together and tightened his grip on the kitchen counter. This was such unexpected news that he at first thought she was talking about remembering last night, the same as he was. In context, though, there was really only one thing she could have meant, and as he unpacked the confession he realized that it didn't surprise him as much as it should have. She must have told him this last night, and somewhere in the back of his head he remembered the discovery and the feeling it had given rise to. Last night he'd felt angry, betrayed by the dishonesty in keeping something like that from him when he was under the impression she was upset because she didn't remember. Now, it made him feel more depressed than anything.

She had known about their entire past for weeks, and that hadn't been enough to clear the air. She had known about everything they had been through together — the sacrifices made, the struggles to make things work, the way Nora had rescued them both — and she had still interpreted his attempts to repair things as tense and awful. He'd been trying his best, ever since her accident. He'd made the decision not to tell her about the sordid parts of their past because, given the option, he wouldn't have wanted to know. If he could have wiped that slate clean and just been happy with her, he would have. She had thought at the time that he'd been willfully hiding something from her, but after she remembered, how could she fail to recognize that as something he had done for her? And the other things over the past few weeks, the things that she'd rebuffed. His trying to be nice to her, trying to touch her, asking her about how she was feeling — he'd been trying to make her happy. He'd gone to talk to her former fiance in the hopes that maybe playing nice with this bloke he hated would make her happy. He'd been trying, and she said things were tense and awful.

Ben shifted his eyes down to the floor. When he spoke, his voice was shaky and he only uttered one word. "Okay."

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

It was near impossible to gauge what she ought to say next without anything further from him. In a way, she almost missed his drunken frustration for at least then she at least had the benefit of knowing what he was thinking. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner." Melody sincerely said. If she had known this would be the result of her continued silence she might have been more willing to make an attempt at bridging the gap between them.

"I think I was stuck in how lost and alone I felt when I was first injured. The more questions I had the more isolating those feelings became ... I should have tried to talk to you about it sooner." Regardless of how terribly his decisions had effected her, Melody should have realized sooner that she had to put in the effort she wanted in return. Perhaps if she had tried in earnest to explain why she needed to know, maybe then he wouldn't be standing there like a kicked puppy.

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Melody hadn't forgiven him for a decision he'd made, so she'd stopped talking to him despite all his efforts to engage her. That made sense. Not that he empathized with or agreed with her actions, but at least he could connect the dots through them and see how it had happened. One thing he couldn't understand, though: what the hell happened last night? Even if she'd apologized as she admitted it, like she'd just done, Ben couldn't imagine that he'd just forgiven her and immediately moved past it. This had been dominating his home life since February, and it was (at least partially) a lie. And he doubted that she'd been so ready with the apology last night, too. It had the cadence of something offered in appeasement. She was apologizing because she expected him to be angry, not necessarily because she was sorry.

"I don't know why we slept together last night," he said bluntly. "Make that part make sense."

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

"You asked me to stay with you," Melody answered just as bluntly with a small shrug. "Towards the end of the argument you started explaining more of what you were feeling — like how you hate that I wrote to him and that you thought, at least in that moment, that you weren't good enough for me." She placed her glass down on the counter as she spoke and looked up towards him.

"I took the bottle away from you and climbed onto your lap so you'd actually hear me. At the time I had hoped you would remember it in the morning, obviously. But that doesn't matter as much now." Melody was rambling and she knew it, but she also had no way to stop it. "I told you that you were the only man I ever wanted to marry, that you were good enough, and that we just need to work through this."

Pausing finally for a brief second, Melody wondered if he would permit her to be closer. However, judging by how irate he already was she didn't dare try. Instead, she pressed on much softer but no less sincere. "I want you — I've only ever wanted you. We just ... we need to actually talk to one another and not just pretend that everything is fine."

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Ben had no reason to disbelieve her version of events, but he was still having a hard time reconciling what he heard with reality. It was jarring to hear his own insecurities, things he barely admitted to himself, reported back from her mouth. He'd admitted to a lot, apparently, and she had answered his anxieties point for point. When he was drunk and emotional and tired and vulnerable, that had been enough.

It didn't feel like enough now. He heard what she was saying and knew what she was trying to do, but it didn't patch over the tightness in his chest.

Maybe she wanted him, but she didn't understand him and she never had. Even having all the context available to her, she couldn't understand that he'd made the choice not to share their past for her. Knowing everything, she'd still been unable to forgive him for it, and it had kept her from having a real conversation with him for weeks. He couldn't look past the hurt attached to that realization. While he'd been pulling his hair out trying to figure out how to get through to her and convince her to be happy with him again, she'd been entirely aware of what he was doing and insensible to it. He didn't know how they moved past that. Not that specifically, but the fundamental misunderstanding of each other's character that it represented. She might as well have come straight out and told him that after everything they'd been through together, she didn't think he was a good person on any level. She'd just said she wanted to be with him, but how could he believe her words when her actions for the past weeks had told a different story?

If he looked a little shell-shocked, it was an accurate depiction of how he felt. What did he even say at this point? How did they start to pick up the pieces from here, even if he'd wanted to?

"Okay," he said, mostly to fill time while he tried to think of what to actually say. His options ranged from making up last night was a mistake to I want to fix it, too, and he hadn't made much progress in narrowing them down. A not-insignificant part of him did want to fix it. This morning he'd been offering her boyish smiles over the edge of the pillow. He wanted to be happy, and if there was any chance he could be happy with Melody, he wanted that. He wanted that for Nora as much as for himself. He just couldn't see a path from here to there.

"What else?" he asked after a moment. "What else should I know about last night?"

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

Being on the opposite side of the argument they'd been having for months now was jarring. For once, she had the opportunity to allow things to just gloss over, to obscure whatever random details she'd rather they both forget, and move on. And, for a minute, Melody once again considered doing just that. She considered lying and saying there was nothing else worth remembering from that conversation.

Except, there was. Like how she admitted to being unsure of what romantic love felt like. Like how she intrepretted his advances after their last argument as seduction as opposed to his intention of trying to be a better husband. Everything said last night was the raw honest truth of what they were both feeling, and to refrain from telling him was just wrong.

And so she retold the night's events starting from the beginning. From the moment he knocked on her door to when they laid down together. Every detail, every piece of damning information came forth like an unstoppable hurricane of destruction. Melody paused only to breathe before continuing, her voice breaking more frequently towards the end.

When she finally finished, she reached for her glass of water and took a quick sip as she waited for his next question.

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Well, what a fucking mess that was.

Ben didn't even know what to say or where to start. If he were able to redo the conversation they'd had last night, there was a lot of that he wouldn't have said. Talking to Melody while he was that drunk had been a mistake. Sharing so many of his insecurities had been a mistake. He couldn't take them back now; they were just out in the open and she knew about all of them. He didn't like how much leverage that gave her for any future conversation. At the moment they were on the same side, more or less, but he wasn't naive enough to think that would always be the case. Melody had hurt him in the past. The stakes were higher now, and after the conversation last night she was better armed. The next time they had a fight, it was going to be explosive.

Poor Nora. She didn't deserve the pair of them for parents.

"Sorry I put you in that position," he said, a little stiff. "I shouldn't have had so much to drink."

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

"It's fine." Melody stated in an attempt to wave the apology off. Last night was the latest in a slew of things they both had to apologize for, his being drunk was nowhere near the top of the list.

She couldn't stop the frown from spreading across her face, though. That he was more concerned with apologizing than he was with actually responding to anything she said was ... disheartening at best. "I meant what I said about working through this. Is that something you want?" Melody then asked bluntly. If he was uninterested in finding happiness together, then that was it. They would have to be civil towards one another for Nora's sake, but she wouldn't fault him for finding love elsewhere. It would hurt, Merlin knew it would hurt, but they both deserved better than they currently had.

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj

Ben sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. He'd been anticipating this question, but also hoping she'd hold off asking. He didn't have a very good answer, and he likely wasn't going to come up with one in the next few seconds. He frowned at the floor for a moment before speaking.

"I need some time. I want things to work," he clarified. "I'm just... not sure I think we can get there." The past few weeks their relationship had been conducted under false premises, as far as he was concerned. He needed time to work through his feelings on that revelation before he committed to anything one way or another. Rushing into emotional decisions had never done them any good before.

---

  

---

MJ made this <3

Well. That was it then, wasn't it?

"Okay." Melody said as she dropped her gaze from him to the glass in her hands. She truly did understand where he was coming from — it'd been all she could think about last night. The hope she'd allowed herself to feel after waking up in his bed was the biggest culprit of disappointment she now felt.

She stood up straight, her attention shifting back to him despite how painful it was at present. "I'll be here when you decide either way. At the very least, I'd like to be your friend. For Nora's sake."

---

  

---

beautiful set by mj