Feels like we're on the edge right now
I wish that I could say I'm proud
I'm sorry that I let you down
Let you down
All these voices in my head get loud
I wish that I could shut them out
I'm sorry that I let you down
L-l-let you down

Middle of the night, March 23rd, 1890 — The Crouch Flat, Paris
Reuben Crouch

Two days.

Two days since the disastrous fight with Ben. Two days since she came home less than twenty minutes after leaving (with the contents of her stomach hurled into a bush near their building) to his note. Two days since she had last touched the vial which started this insanity. Two days since she last saw her husband.

Except, was he even her husband anymore? Was that what 'it's your baby' meant? Melody knew her careless actions had hurt — no devastated him. He was right — she should have talked to him as soon as she realized there was a problem. She should have trusted him to be rational about the issue and not become immediately attached to the pregnancy (his harsh 'of course I don't want a baby' came rushing back). Melody ought to have done virtually anything other than what she had and that was the problem, wasn't it? She wasn't thinking like a wife. She was thinking like the same selfish bitch she had always been.

And now, she would never get the chance to make this right with Ben.

After having spent a month sleeping besides him and a week curled up against him, suddenly sleeping alone was an abrupt change. The bed was too spacious, the side he occupied too cold. During the few hours she did sleep (as she was far too anxious that she might miss him quietly returning to collect his belongings) she slept in a small heap on the couch. The throw wasn't quite long enough to cover her entirely, leaving her feet and ankles exposed in an effort to keep her shoulders warm. More than once Melody had considered dragging the blanket from the bed to the small couch, but even that felt like yet another violation in their marriage. An admission to an obvious fault. When Ben came back — no, if he came back — Melody wanted him to know she was willing to do whatever to make this right. Even if it included her own suffering.

If he came back.

She awoke with a start to the sound of rustling near the door. While the area surrounding their lodgings wasn't worst, it certainly wasn't the best. As such, she had taken to sleeping with her wand held tightly in her hand. "Ben?" Melody called hesitantly as she sat up on the couch. If it was an intruder she had just made a potentially fatal mistake by giving away her position, but she wasn't about to send a stunning curse towards someone who could very well have been her husband.

  

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Even as he opened the door and slipped into the dark room, Ben wasn't really sure why he was back. He certainly didn't want to be here. He'd been gone two nights and two days, and during that time he hadn't come up with any actual solutions or strategies for moving forward. None that were viable, anyway. He hadn't been joking when he'd written to Art that he was considering faking his death, because at the moment that had seemed like the best possible scenario for him moving forward. He couldn't divorce her and he couldn't abandon her, not without sacrificing any shred of his reputation and his former life that he (with the help of Aldous and his family) had been able to salvage so far. Melody was connected, at this point, to everything that he had left — if he left her, he left everything.

At this point, however, he didn't know how staying could be an option. During their last fight, he hadn't even felt like she'd heard him. If she didn't understand why he was angry now — honestly, if she hadn't understood that even before he'd tried to articulate it, based on their recent history — where were they supposed to go from here? She wasn't going to get any better, moving forward. This was just how she was; she made decisions in a panic without even thinking about running them by him first. If he stayed, this was just how things were going to be. How could he live like that? Never knowing what his wife might be doing behind his back? Constantly trying to just catch up and mitigate the damage as best as he could after the fact?

She had no respect for him — that was the problem. She'd told him she loved him, the night they'd gotten married, and maybe she did — but the two didn't necessarily go hand in hand, as he'd learned. Melody didn't respect him, and he had no idea how to make her respect him. This relationship was, as far as he was concerned, absolutely doomed.

But he couldn't stay out forever. Even in such a dire situation, he couldn't drink indefinitely — and he desperately needed to change his clothes. He was sober when he walked in, but you'd never know it from the smell of him. He couldn't go back to his clients reeking of cheap (non-Jewell) liquor, and if he didn't go back to work, he was going to run out of money — and he didn't think the bar that had been more or less his constant residence for the past forty-eight-odd hours would be quite as hospitable when he could no longer pay.

He was hoping that she would be asleep when he came in. He wasn't sure he was ready to talk to her. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like he'd have a choice; he'd woken her up with his fumbling in the dark. Shit.

"Lumos," he muttered after a half-second's pause. No use standing around in the dark if she already knew he was here. Wand tip now illuminated, he moved far enough into the room to sit at one of the dining room chairs and looked over at her in the shadows, but said nothing.

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   Melody Crouch

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The taut tension in her shoulders remained even after she realized it was in fact Ben. He hadn't abandoned her in this flat, then. He hadn't disappeared to Timbuktu and left her to pick up the pieces. Which left the unasked question where were you? to fill the air between them like a suffocating fog. Melody pulled the blanket around her shoulders as though the extra layer would provide some sort of protection from what was to come.

He hadn't spoken to her, though, or taken note of the untouched vial on the table. What was she supposed to do here? How did they start a conversation without it devolving into another fight? Melody chewed the inside of her lip, her gaze never moving from his form at the table. Minutes that felt more like hours passed before she finally quietly spoke, "I'm relieved to see you're in one piece."

  

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In one piece. Did she have any reason to think that he wouldn't be? He'd survived over thirty years of life before they'd gotten married, and he was more than capable of handling himself in a foreign city for two days. Maybe she was worried that he'd gone and hanged himself somewhere, or something along those lines, but she wouldn't have had any basis for that sort of thinking. As bad as things were, the thought of actually dying hadn't crossed his mind. He hadn't been the one about to secretly shotgun a potentially dangerous potion.

A potion that she hadn't ended up taking, by the looks of it. As he'd waited for her to say something he'd rested his wand on the table and noticed the vial placed there, still full. It almost looked like it was on display. She'd wanted him to see it, he speculated. She'd put it there in a central place so that if he came back when she was away or asleep he couldn't fail to notice. Did she think that was going to fix things? She probably did. She hadn't been listening during their last fight, and from her perspective this was all still about the existence of the baby. He'd been upset to find her about to drink the magical miscarriage juice — so the way to make up was to not take it. Simple. Logical. Merlin, she didn't understand anything.

How had he gotten here? Some of the specifics may not have been his doing, but he'd still set these things in motion and started down this path. At one point he'd been willing to do a handful of illegal things and risk sneaking up to her bedroom window in the middle of the night to try and make her happy. Why had he thought she was worth all that? How could he have been so mistaken about her?

"Mmm," he mumbled noncommittally. His eyes drifted back to the vial, and for a moment he was silent. He didn't really want to talk about this, or anything, but if he didn't say something, she was going to, he supposed.

"So you're keeping it?" he asked, still not looking at her.

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   Jupiter Smith

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Continuing with the pregnancy was a daunting prospect. Melody had scarcely held down more than bread in the past two days and was more exhausted than she would ever care to admit. Though, whether that was due to the pregnancy or the stress caused by their fight she might never know. The nausea had existed before, but not to this extent. At least before she was able to tolerate more than a bite of bread and a few sips of wine.

The vial hadn't been touched since she first placed it on the table when they fought. Melody wasn't sure if she trusted herself not to take it in Ben's absence, and once they got through this fight they were going to have a rational talk about it. Or so she hoped. The longer they went without addressing it, the greater the chances of it being ineffective. And then they would both have zero choice in the matter.

"I don't want to." She admitted with a heavy sigh. Perhaps that was why she hadn't consulted him in the first place. Perhaps Melody simply didn't want his opinion when her feelings were so resolved on the matter. It was a tragedy, for sure. It was a future she would never know — and she still didn't want it. She wasn't ready to be responsible for someone other than herself. Someone other than Ben.

"I was wrong for not telling you." Another quiet admission. Another spark that would likely lead to a heated argument. "When I'm scared I act, as you well know, and it's a fault I need to work on tremendously. I'm sorry."

  

Ben scoffed at her psuedo-apology. Not only was this, in his mind, the understatement of the century, but he had no faith that she was actually capable of working on it, as she put it. How hard was it to just speak up when it was something she'd known about for days? She said she'd been researching it at the library, and it wasn't as though there was a looming deadline on this decision (or if there was some sort of deadline attached to the potion, she hadn't divulged it). She could have included him in the conversation at any point, if she'd had any inkling to do so, and she clearly hadn't. She didn't want him involved; she just wanted to fix things her way.

"Yeah, alright," he mumbled. He didn't want to argue with her. What was the point, when she wasn't going to change? And besides, he was tired. He'd been tired when he walked in the door, to a certain extent, but now each passing minute just left him feeling more exhausted. Which was what he was in for the rest of his life, he supposed: feeling worn down constantly by even a superficial conversation.

"If you don't want to keep it, don't," he said coolly. Reaching out towards the vial, he pushed it to the edge of the table closest to her, still without looking at her. Then he shifted his weight in his chair so that he was more or less facing the wall and started to take his shoes off.

  

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Melody blinked at him silently. Was this a test or a dare? Or some sort of trick designed to further degenerate their relationship? She ruined everything on her own, she knew it, but telling her to take the potion after disappearing for two fucking days wasn't helpful either. She rubbed her eyes tiredly, sighing heavily as she did. What a mess. What a bloody, disastrous mess.

"What do you want?" She asked steadily without moving. "We've established what I want, but what about you?" They both knew what he wanted above all else, but that wasn't an option anymore. Not without a carefully drawn up plan. Not without her death as a mentioned possibility. Melody wasn't certain of much anymore, but she was resolute in her will to live. Death wasn't an option, and neither was divorce.

  

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Why did it matter what he wanted, particularly when there was no way for him to get it? He wanted things that were impossible. He wanted Melody to be a different person, someone who could treat him like an actual partner in this marriage they'd been forced into. He wanted to go back and undo everything that had lead to this point. That was the only way his vision was working at the moment: in hindsight. He could come up with a million things he wanted to change about the past, and several large and unfeasible changes for the present. For the future, he had no idea. There wasn't a future, as far as he was concerned. He couldn't see anything past the horizon for him except misery.

"I want out," he admitted quietly, still facing the wall instead of her. Saying it out loud didn't help him feel any better; it wasn't taking a weight off his shoulders by confessing it but rather just adding another millstone to his neck, knowing that there was no feasible way to get out at this point.

Ben sighed and moved his fingers up to his shirt buttons and started to undress. "I want to go to bed."

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   Arthur Pettigrew

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