October 1st, 1893 — Melody's Cottage, [place holder for town]
Reuben Crouch

It had taken Melody the better part of an hour to stomach reading the note. At first, she rationalized her delay in opening it to having to get Nora's morning routine going. However, as the hour continued on and Nora sat in her chair happily eating breakfast, Melody realized how weak of an excuse it had been. Nora was content to sit with her food and milk without much interruption needed from her mother, and, while Melody was hardly the sort to have them sit in silence, there was plenty of time to open the note.

Still, she didn't touch it.

Ben's leaving after an emotional moment was so in character for him that Melody felt as though she ought to have expected to wake alone. Any time they'd argued or came to some kind of truce it was always broken by some other obligation taking precedence over her. Aldous needed him, he had to go duel over his sister's honor, Arthur had required his attention. The list was endless. That Ben left again shouldn't have upset her as it did, she shouldn't have been afraid to read the words this was a mistake or whatever other excuse Ben penned.

And perhaps his leaving wouldn't have bothered her so much if it meant that he hadn't also left Nora. It was only a few weeks ago that he was heartbroken over all the lost time they might've had. It was only a few weeks ago that they came within inches of losing their daughter permanently, and he had somehow decided to leave again. Perhaps if he had left without having kissed her, perhaps if she hadn't fallen asleep with the word stay echoing endlessly in her head, she wouldn't have been so infuriated by his leaving. After all, she was the understanding wife now; she could rationalize and understand why Ben couldn't share a space with her after her horrible mistake last winter.

But, he had asked her to pose the question. He had forced the vulnerability of being rejected to the surface and had heard her request, had promised her I'm here. And yet, Melody had woken up alone, his side of the bed already stone cold.

She was seated in the garden behind the house with Nora distracted by the late summer blooms when she finally worked up the courage to open the note. Three lines, that was all last night had bought her, about him needing space and to clear his head. Melody wandlessly incinerated the paper, watching numbly as it turned to ash in the wind. Ask me to stay. What a ridiculous lie.

She busied herself with her daughter after that, taking the girl into her arms as they explored the garden. This new home was meant to be one of peace and healing, a separation from the devastation their relationship so often brought. Somehow, in the aftermath of September she'd forgotten that, but today brought in a new month and she wouldn't forget again.

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Ben heard Melody say something to Nora on the garden as he approached the edge of the property's low wall, and his face fell. He hadn't meant to be gone that long, when he'd left the house to go for a walk that morning. He didn't actually know how long he had been gone, because his pocket watch had fallen out of his clothing in his haste to undress the night before and he hadn't noticed its absence when he'd been gingerly collecting his things and tiptoeing out of the room while trying to avoid waking Melody. He hadn't known at that point that he was going to leave; he'd just known that he had a lot to think about, and he couldn't do it with Melody lying naked on the bed next to him. He had retreated to the kitchen first, then to the parlor, then finally out of the house entirely.

Not that leaving the house was much of an escape. Melody had told him they'd walked this neighborhood often in the summer, so now everything he saw here made him wonder at the memories he'd missed out on. Memories his daughter might never be able to share with him now, since she still wasn't speaking.

Ben didn't know if he regretted the events of last night, but he'd been through enough with Melody to know that he should. He knew if he told anyone about this, they'd call him an idiot. Still, he hadn't expected to be gone so long. He'd hoped he'd make it back before Melody even read the note he'd left, but it seemed he'd missed that mark by a wide margin.

He meandered to the outer edge of the garden wall near where he'd heard Nora and Melody, looking sheepish, and tentatively cleared his throat.

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Distantly, in a small chasm buried far beneath her anger and hurt, Melody knew Ben would return. If not for her sake, then for their daughter's. His employment was unsteady, Aldous' campaign soon ending - Ben had nowhere else he was morally obligated to be. He had no other priorities to place above them for the moment.

A crown of purple asters rested upon the toddlers head as she explored the numerous petals of a chrysanthemum when Melody first heard Ben's approach. Nora noticed only seconds later, her eyes lighting brighter than any star at the sight of her father. Melody knew then that asking him to go, to give her space to process and bury any feelings she had, would be the cruel thing to do. Even if the sight of him now made her feel uncomfortable in the single space that was meant to be safe.

She wanted to scowl, to demand answers or shout, or to offer him anything other than the tight lipped smile she gave. Nora, who loved her father more than any other person and who Melody had sworn to do right by, was awake and already squirming to get down and rush over to him. Melody could hardly spark a fight when those perfect little ears were listening. Instead, all she could do was say, "good morning, did you have a nice walk?"

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Did he have a nice walk? Not particularly, no. Ben felt as though he were stuck in an impossible situation, a spot where every possible decision was the wrong one, and everything he'd encountered on the walk through the quiet country neighborhood seemed perfectly crafted to remind him of it. As one prime example: a place where one beam of a two-rail fence had fallen down and laid in the grass a few feet off the path, with a little worn trail of dirt running from the main path to it. It was obviously a spot where children had gone off the path to sit down; it would have been an uncomfortably short squat for an adult, but it was a perfect makeshift bench for someone Nora's size. Maybe she had sat there before, side by side with her friend, while Melody and Diana waited on the path and exchanged stories. Seeing something like that and picturing his daughter in this place made his absence from the scene feel so stark. He wanted to be in his daughter's life, and the aftermath of the dragon attack had made it obvious that this wasn't the sort of thing to wait and let develop over time. He wanted to be in Nora's life now, to the greatest extent he could.

But last night hadn't been about Nora. Last night had been about desperation and need; last night had been Ben trying to cling to one incredibly far-flung hope that someday everything could be alright again. Nothing had ever been alright between the two of them, but from time to time they'd both been desperate enough to pretend that it was, or that it could be.

Unfortunately, the a close relationship with Nora and some sort of relationship with Melody were inextricably linked; he couldn't have one without the other. He and Melody had been cordial coparents despite not being together, but he suspected that last night had ruined any chance of going back to that. Her expression as she set Nora down said as much; she was only offering him a smile for the sake of pretense, not because she felt like smiling at him at all.

Fuck. Things had already been ruined, and now somehow he'd gone and ruined them more.

"Uhm. It's a — nice area," he said with a helpless sort of shrug, rather than saying anything about what he'd been doing while he'd been gone or what he'd been thinking. He reached to pick Nora up as she approached the wall and returned Melody's tight smile.

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MJ made this <3

"It is, yeah." Melody agreed with a slight shrug as if to say what of it? She would have told him of this area in depth had she ever had the opportunity - perhaps she might've even tried to convince him to move into the cottage together if she had found it sooner. Irvingly had never felt like anything beyond a hiding place or stopping point - the house always felt cold and lonely. Perhaps in some other time they found this area together, perhaps he might've stayed in that universe.

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Ben watched his wife with a frown. She was angry with him, obviously. She had good reason to be, though he wasn't sure in this case if she was angry at him for what had happened last night, or for having left this morning before they'd had a chance to talk about it. He knew she'd wanted him last night — they had both been aggressively into it from the moment she returned his first kiss — but that didn't mean she hadn't thought better of it since. And he had been the one who had initiated it, kissing her out of nowhere, so if she regretted what had happened it was perfectly reasonable for her to think of it as all his fault.

He shifted Nora towards his hip to hold her more comfortably, and she reached one hand up to tug a piece of his hair. "Ow," he said — less from real hurt and more because someone had told him once that this was the sort of thing you were supposed to do with toddler to help them learn about personal space. "How, uhm — how long have you both been up?"

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MJ made this <3

It was impossible to know the specifics of how long they'd been up without looking for a clock and any generalized response she could think of was nothing kind. If they had any hope of returning to the tentative peace they'd established in the months since he left, she couldn't be unkind. Somehow, she had to maintain civility, even if all she wished to do now was scream.

His ow broke through the rage some and Melody found herself drifting closer to help prevent any further hair tugging. (How he still had any after the amount of tugging she had done was a mystery that would never be solved.) "Oh - uhm. I don't know, an hour or so maybe? Nora had breakfast and then we've been out here."

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Ben pursed his lips for a second. They must have gotten up not long after he'd left the note... that, or he'd really lost track of time while he was out. If that was really the case, he could very well imagine why she would have been annoyed with him for having left. He had really intended return before Nora woke up — he'd even hoped to be back before Melody woke up, though he'd known that was a slim possibility, which was why he'd written the note in the first place. They ought to talk about last night, him and Melody, and now Nora was awake and they'd have several hours before the next window of time when they could have a frank adult conversation. If their positions had been reversed he would have been annoyed, too — he'd robbed her of the chance to actually process what had happened, as a pair.

"I didn't realize I'd been gone that long," he admitted. He shifted Nora in his arms. "Sorry."

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MJ made this <3

The anger that had propelled her all morning was slowly diminishing. The hurt continued, of course, but that hurt was bound to exist between them until the day their bodies were interred until the ground. Such was their issue and struggle - every moment was laced with hurt to some degree. They hadn't had a solely loving moment in years.

She sighed then. When would the hurt stop? When would they be healed from the past and all its mistakes. Melody only wished to stop both her own pain and the ones she caused him. "I thought you would be there when I woke up." There was so much more she had to say, so many answers his leaving demanded, and yet little else could be said with Nora held in his arms.

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Ben sighed. "Yeah," he said, with another frown. He didn't know what else to say. He could apologize again, but it wouldn't improve anything, and he'd already said it. And the thing was that although he could understand her perspective on the matter perfectly, he also couldn't exactly wish that he had stayed. He'd left for a reason, because he wasn't sure that he was capable of having the conversation he needed to have with Melody until he'd had some time to think it all through. He still didn't know if he was ready to have the conversation, to be honest, but he was considerably closer than he had been this morning.

So where did that leave them? With a conversation that needed to happen and a toddler to entertain until her afternoon nap. Ben sighed again. "Yeah."

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MJ made this <3

Melody's gaze dropped from him then, the expression on his face both too familiar and telling for her to look for a second longer. The walk had been so long because he was readying himself for the fight to come, not because he had any desire to stay. Last night was a fluke fueled by overwhelming emotions, and so nothing about it could be genuine. If she had thought herself the fool last night when she expected his departure, then now she might as well have gone to be a jester for the queen.

"I'll give you some time with her then, if you'd like." She had to step away and collect herself, otherwise the conversation they needed to have would happen now and it simply couldn't. "You can use whatever you need in the house - there's a basket of her toys in the parlor and her pram is in the closet by the front door if you'd rather go for a walk. I can make myself scarce."

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Ben tensed, then felt Nora react to his shift in posture and hastily rolled his shoulder back, as though he could trick the toddler into forgetting anything had happened. He moved to set her down back on the inside edge of the low garden wall and glanced around to try and remember which way the gate was. "I'm not — trying to chase you out of your house," Ben said hastily, though he wasn't sure whether the offer had been made for his benefit or hers. Maybe Melody wanted to go for a two hour walk to clear her head, too. He'd had the luxury, why shouldn't she?

"I'm not — I mean, about last night, I'm not —" he blurted, but didn't know how to finish. There were plenty of things he could have said (angry came to mind — he wasn't angry), but all of them felt... presumptuous, as though he had any right to feel angry or upset or anything in the first place, when he'd been the one who started it.

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MJ made this <3

When Melody first extended the offer for him to stay, she had had to suppress her desire to continue spending time as an united family. It was in all of their best interests for him to stay, not because of any hope of a reunion between them but because it provided the best support system possible for Nora. Melody had already slept through her daughter's crying this morning - having the additional support to ensure Nora was never left alone was a comforting idea.

However, when Ben hadn't ever confirmed one way or the other what his intentions were Melody realized the thought of being near her like that was likely the hindrance to the offer. They weren't fixed or healed - they weren't even husband and wife beyond the support he continued to offer. Melody had no right to expect him to play into the family time alongside her. And so, she'd spent the time remaining in the hospital preparing to give them whatever space she could at the cottage if he chose to stay. After all, his returning to London with Nora was simply out of the question for the foreseeable future.

She moved towards the gate, opening it for him as she watched Nora wander towards the flower garden once more."I didn't think you were." She still wasn't ready yet to have this conversation, not when he could barely finish a thought and she was left to wonder what the final word was meant to be. And yet, she continued on with, "I just - I wanted you to know that spending time here didn't mean you had to spend time with me. I know I - this isn't what you wanted, and I want you to have all the time possible with her - I was just trying to make it easier, I guess."

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Ben's expression softened slightly as she replied. He understood where she was coming from, because he'd had very similar thought patterns in the time since they'd parted ways that spring. Trying to do his best to make things easier on Nora, and easier on her — trying to carve out enough space for her to sidestep the pain they were both in every time they were around each other. How often he'd been successful in that endeavor was hard to say. Not often enough. Still, even though he understood, it hurt somewhere deep in his chest to hear it all put into words like that. He didn't like to look reality in the face so baldly, to confront the fact that — at least since January — pleasant memories with his daughter and his wife's company couldn't coexist. He'd spent all morning wandering around the little village and the surrounding countryside and trying to convince himself they could, someday, but sooner or later the voice of reason — which sometimes sounded like Aldous, or sometimes Art, or sometimes Ben himself — pointed out that this had never worked before, and nothing was different this time. He wanted it to work — wanted them to be a cohesive family again (maybe for the first time) — but wanting didn't make it so.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said in a rush — because that was right, that was the part to be sorry for. That was the mistake. The two of them had never been meant to be together, and by now they were broken beyond repair, and it had been a mistake to pretend that they weren't; a mistake to hold her like they loved each other. They didn't love each other — or didn't love each other enough, maybe. They didn't love each other in the sort of way that mattered, when it came right down to it. (And if half of him was hoping, even now, that she would contradict him — that she would say don't be sorry — then so what?)

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MJ made this <3

Melody knew they had to have an in depth conversation about this, knew she couldn't hide from the rising tide of disappointment and hurt in her chest, but she would have done anything in that moment to avoid hearing Ben call last night a mistake. Of course she knew that it was, two people who for whatever reason could never love one another right weren't meant to be intimate like that. She even knew that naming it a mistake was what Ben meant by clearing my head as soon as she'd read the note. But, Melody had asked him to stay, had foolishly thought his question genuine when he likely would have said anything at that moment, and now she was stuck in the consequences.

"Oh." She didn't know what she was meant to say, for the only response he was likely looking for was an agreement. She tried to form it, tried to force out the words yeah, it probably was but they stuck like a ball of lead in her throat. "Oh. I - " she attempted again only to break off completely. He didn't want to hear anything other than an agreement and she couldn't utter one. Not when last night was the safest she'd felt in months, not when his touch had set her afire. Not when she'd meant it when she said stay.

"I don- it - I still think you should stay, if you would like to. For Nora." She eventually managed, her disappointment evident in both her inability to address her thoughts and how she could no longer meet his gaze.

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Ben's heart thumped in his chest. He hadn't been drunk last night (touch-drunk, maybe) so he recalled their post-coital conversation with perfect clarity, and what he heard was I still think you should stay. And yes, she'd tacked on for Nora, but the way she was tripping over her words signaled to him that it wasn't what she'd meant, or at least not the only thing she'd meant.

"I want to," he said, cheeks flushing. He moved to the gate, closing the distance between them in the process. "Stay," he added a beat later, as though it needed clarification. Ben swallowed, then ducked his head slightly as though embarrassed to have admitted it. "But, uh. If we do then, uh. I think we need to take it slow." A beat, then: "Slower than last night."

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