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Where will you fall?

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Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
What she got was the opposite of what she wanted, also known as the subtitle to her marriage.
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#1
March 26th, 1891 — Crouch Home, Swallowbury

Ben had survived his duel that morning, and he'd won. He could still remember the way Macmillan had looked, collapsed on the hillside with magical arrows sticking out in all directions. It hadn't been pretty, and it wasn't something Ben was eager to repeat, but it was over now. It felt a little surreal, as he went home and sat down to write out letters. One for Aldous, one for Dionisia, just to let them know it was over and he was alive. The letters were brief — Macmillan hadn't gotten his dominant arm, but his left still didn't feel right and it was uncomfortable to try and poise the quill the right way when his left hand, which he usually used to hold the parchment in place, didn't seem like it was working that well yet.

He'd gotten out with just conjured bandages and a recommendation for a healing potion to follow it up with, since Macnair had his attention pretty steadily devoted to Macmillan's far more extensive injuries. He hadn't gotten his hands on a potion yet (he probably could have asked Art, but he'd already asked so much of Art this week that it felt strange to add another request, even a minor one), but now that it was over he didn't feel hurried. He could just sit in this for a moment. Alone in his room, just him and the knowledge that this was over.

After a while, he decided to take the bandages off to inspect the damage. He'd just told Dionisia and Aldous that he was going to be fine, but his left hand was still numb and the fingers weren't responding as well as they should have. He didn't really know what it looked like, because he'd been a little dazed in the moments immediately following the duel, but now he wanted to see it. He stripped his coat and shirt off (a fresh pair; he'd changed as soon as he got home and discarded his torn and bloody outfit), then gingerly started to unwrap the bandage on his shoulder. He had only just started, however, when he glanced into the mirror nearby and saw Melody's silhouette in the doorway.

He froze, looking immediately guilty. "You're up," he said after a moment. He hadn't expected her to be, but he should have thought to shut the door regardless. Stupid.



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#2
Melody had never been prone to night terrors before the potion. An occasional one when she was under duress, perhaps, but never a frequent enough occurrence to make her fearful of sleep. Some of her reluctance to rest stemmed from the thought of never waking again, she knew. The potion was sold with the promise of a gentle night and instead Melody woke confused and disoriented nearly three days later in the hospital. Her irrational fear was justified this time, she was certain of it.

However, it wasn't only the thought of never waking again that kept her tossing and turning in her sweat soaked sheets, but the dreams she suffered through as well. The child she — they lost haunted her with cries she could never soothe. Then, she would turn only to face Ben's fury over their marriage once more. The days of unconsciousness provided a steady stream of memories and fears playing on an endless loop.

It was lucky she slept at all.

The only positive to come from the entire ordeal was that the healers were somewhat able to manage her illness. A collection of potions and she was still vomiting at least once a day, but she was able to manage the nausea usually for the rest of the day. Certain smells and tastes still triggered her illness, and she certainly couldn't stomach the thought of most meats, but it was better. Progress, at least.

She was making her way back into her bedroom from the powder room when the sight of Ben's open door caught her attention. Their relationship was strained as ever, any closeness achieved in light of her ordeal gone when he ignored her birthday and, largely, her for the last few days. She wouldn't have greeted him either if not for the blood soaked bandages he was removing.

Not waiting for permission to cross into his room, Melody closed most of the distance between them to have a better look at his injuries. "Merlin, Ben. What happened?"

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#3
Ben tensed when she started across the room towards him. If she noticed the expression on his face, though, she didn't seem to be reacting to it, so he did his best to look less guilty. The mirror being so close at hand gave him a tool to use in schooling his expression: move the frown to a straight, tight line instead; easing the way his brow had wrinkled; blinking that look out of his eyes. He swallowed. There was no way not to tell her, at this point, but at least he could keep himself from looking guilty about it. Confessing to a duel was probably less damning than confessing to a duel he'd intentionally hid from her, when even Art had told him he needed to tell her.

"Got hit by a spell," he answered tersely, which was true but of course didn't even begin to answer the question. "I'm going to be alright. A healer's already had a look." More like a passing glance, while he was busy trying to keep Macmillan from bleeding out on the hilltop, but — again, not a lie.



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#4
"What do you mean you were hit by a spell? Where? Who did this?" She asked each question in quick succession allowing him little time to answer. Stepping forward again, she shooed his hands from the bandage to remove it herself. "What did the healer say exactly?" More importantly, how could Ben have gone to the hospital without informing her?!


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#5
Ben winced as she touched his bandage, not because she'd physically hurt him but rather because it was far too intimate a gesture for what he knew was about to follow. He couldn't answer any of her questions, not without giving too much away. So there was nothing to say but the truth.

"It was a duel," he admitted, his jaw set tight. "This morning. It's all over now."



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#6
Her blood ran cold.

Instantly, Melody ceased removing his bandage to stare at him incredulously through the mirror. A duel. Ben had partaken in a duel as though he were a teenage boy with no sense of responsibility. Nothing could have been offensive enough for him to rightfully risk prison or death, not when they had a baby coming at the end of the year.

The longer she stared, the more sick she felt. He very nearly left her a widow. Willingly, too. Melody's jaw opened and shut with countless responses that she couldn't quite vocalize. She nearly lost him and he hadn't thought to warn her of any such happenings. He would have allowed her to find a note or have a devastating conversation with his brother.

She took three steps backward until her backside touched the edge of the bed, as her knees were wobbly and weak. "What could be more important than your children that you would risk everything?" Melody eventually managed to ask in a stunned but cool tone. They hadn't spoken of his son since January, but judging by the letters Ben had to have some kind of involvement.

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#7
Ben inhaled sharply at Melody's response. Children, she said, and his mind didn't go to Elliott at all, but rather to her pregnancy and — since she'd said children and not child — the potential for future pregnancies.

That's not fair, he thought bitterly and fiercely. She can't do that. Melody couldn't pretend he'd knowingly risked something that she'd never offered. With the way things were between them since January, Ben wasn't even confident they were going to make it through to the birth of this child, much less be in a stable enough position in their relationship to consider having more. They'd never explicitly talked about it, but he knew Melody didn't want that. They hadn't even planned this baby, and while she wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize the pregnancy, he wasn't really convinced she wanted this, either. He did, though. Since getting to know Elliott he wanted a family in a way that ached in the deepest parts of him, and he thought Melody knew that. She was leveraging that to get a reaction from him, to get him to feel guilty about this duel, and it wasn't fair. Because however he reacted now, she wasn't going to follow through on this idea she was teasing him with. It wasn't something she wanted for their future; it was a tactic, and a cruel one.

"I wasn't risking anything," he snapped, defensive and hostile now. "I had it under control. I won. I was always going to win."



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#8
"Oh, were you now?" She demanded, her cool tone gone in the wake of his defensiveness. "You and he worked that out, then? He accepted a challenge and was somehow agreeable to losing before it even began?" Melody didn't know much about the inner workings of duels to know what either man's thought process would have been, but she knew of the fundamentals through some books she'd come across.

She wanted to storm out of the room and slam her door behind her, but knew that should she move from leaning on the bed her knees wouldn't support her. "And if you were wrong? If you had lost? What then?" Melody never would have stopped him from leaving when it was just her — she couldn't have considering the circumstances of their marriage — to leave their child, though, was another issue entirely. Aldous, while friendly enough, would have been reluctant to take her in. "How could you have willingly risked leaving us?"


[Image: dqAG6wz.png]
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#9
Ben's response was something that had been bubbling in the back of his mind for a long time, since before they'd even married, but without the vitriol he felt from the last sixty seconds he never would have said it out loud. Between her mention of children and this question of leaving us, though, Ben felt suddenly caged. She was trapping him, guilting him, and this wasn't fair because she didn't mean it. She didn't want this.

"As if you wouldn't have been happier that way," he spat, wrenching his shoulder forward so that he could start wrapping the bandages back on.

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#10
For a second, Melody was rendered speechless. There were several meanings behind his spat words, none of which Melody thought to be true. She certainly wouldn't have been happier as a widow, nor would she be pleased to see him imprisoned. She didn't want her child to be raised fatherless, nor the complications that accompanied that. Nothing about Ben dying was desirable, and that he thought she dreamt of it was even more disheartening.

"You -" she began and immediately bit her tongue. He thought she wanted him dead, how the bloody hell had they gotten here? For all she knew, it was the other way around! Witch Weekly certainly thought so.

She gripped the bedpost with such tension she thought the wood might give way beneath her fingers. "I've been here, Ben." She told him heatedly. "In my room, sick and pregnant with your child. You visited me twice in nearly two months. If anyone wants out of this relationship it's you. You're the one rekindling old flames. You told Arthur about last year — about the potion and what we did. You say you love me, and then you do that?! And then you ignore me for the better part of a month?! And be barely present after I nearly bloody died?!" She was shouting now, and unbeknownst to her tears were streaming down her cheeks. "You say you love me and then you nearly got yourself killed. No. If anyone wants out it's still you."

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#11
In the silence that followed his statement it occurred to Ben to regret having said it, but he pushed it away in favor of nursing this anger that was burning in his chest. Melody would have been happier without him, and they both knew it. She wasn't even denying it now, which spoke to how obvious it was. And it wasn't a surprise, it wasn't news, because he had always known that being married to him would make her miserable, and he'd always said that, even before they married, but there was a part of him that was still a little hurt that she didn't even try to deny it. He glanced at her in the mirror and thought the expression on her face looked... caught, like she hadn't expected him to say it out loud. Of course he wasn't supposed to say it out loud, because that wasn't in line with the facade they were maintaining, the game of make-believe they were playing even with each other, even with themselves. They were just supposed to keep pretending things were going to get better, he supposed, and keep dumping poison into the space between them until one of them couldn't breath the air any more and suffocated beneath the weight of it.

When she did start talking, her words felt less like dialogue and more like spears she was sharpening and throwing in his direction, like arrow spells meant to crack his shield charm and leave him as bloody as Macmillan had been that morning. I've been here, she said, but she hadn't. Not in the way he'd asked her to be, and not in any way that mattered. Physically she was here, so she got to play that card as they tallied up whose fault this was. Poor, sick Melody was just sitting around at home waiting for him to fix things, and he was off doing other things because he didn't care. That was the narrative she was pushing, but what the hell was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to do, when the few times he had conversations with her she'd given him two-word answers to his questions and then slunk back to her room at the first opportunity to escape his presence? When the two times that he'd specifically come to her room to visit her, she'd clearly just been waiting for him to leave?

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," he said tensely. Maybe that was true, or maybe she was intentionally misrepresenting things because she wanted to twist the narrative to make him feel bad, because winning this argument and being able to play the victim was more important than talking about anything that was wrong with them. He wasn't rekindling old flames, and if she'd been worried about that she could have just fucking asked and he would have told her the truth about his conversations with Bella Scrimgeour and Ellory Pendergast and anyone else that she cared about. He wasn't running around on her, and he wasn't trying to keep secrets, but he didn't think she really cared about that. She just wanted to latch on to something to push this narrative that he was sabotaging them, that he was the only reason their marriage was failing. So if he had a conversation with a girl, that was a point against him. If he smiled at someone else, or laughed with someone, that was a point against him. Merlin forbid he be allowed to be happy, even for just a minute, if that happiness involved anyone in the world besides Melody.

The thing about telling Arthur — he hadn't, first of all, though again she had never asked because it fit her narrative better to just assume. But even if he had, how could she hold that against them? When she was pregnant and she hadn't even told him, and she was just gone when he got home? She'd fucking run away with their baby, and he had to learn the news from her mother instead of from her. How could he not have feared the worst? And how could she blame him for wanting to do everything he could to prevent that? And maybe he would have told Art, if he'd had to, because fuck! Ben couldn't do this all alone, and Melody wasn't helping. Art was all he had, sometimes. But of course she begrudged him that, too. He couldn't have a confidante that wasn't her, he couldn't process his emotions with anyone who wasn't her, he couldn't be happy around anyone who wasn't her. His whole existence had to be about her, about catering to her needs and her whims. And this past week, when he'd been barely present as she put it — he'd had some really fucking big shit going on, as evidenced by the fact that he'd just finished a fucking duel, but of course that wouldn't matter to her either. There could be nothing of importance in his life if it didn't revolve around her, no priorities that even approached taking care of her. He could have told her what the duel was about, but she wouldn't have cared. His sister wouldn't have mattered to Melody, because from her perspective no bond he had in his whole fucking life was important compared to the marriage vow he'd taken to her. His entire life up until that moment had ended the night they'd eloped — nevermind that he hadn't wanted to, nevermind that he hadn't chosen that — and she resented him for any connection to his past, for still trying to be himself, for not putting her above everything.

This was her reading his letters all over again. She had taken so much from him already. He'd had to give up so much to try and satisfy her, but she was never satisfied. She was never going to be satisfied, unless she sucked everything else out of him, too. Everything that was left had to go, because there was only room for one of them in this house and it was going to be her.

"What do you want from me?" he spat back, tucking the bandage in on his shoulder a little too rough and wincing at the jolt of pain. "You want me to sit around the house waiting for you to deign to talk to me? Letting you give me these withering looks and cold shoulders and just hoping maybe someday you'll feel up to having a conversation that lasts more than five minutes? I have people in my life who care about me, Melody," he said, turning in the chair so that he could look at her directly instead of in the mirror. "I have people who want me to be happy. I'm not going to burn all my bridges with them so you can get your claws even further into me."

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#12
"I want you to try like you promised you would!" She argued heatedly. Hadn't he asked her not to give up on him? Hadn't he swore he would prove it? Instead, the morning after their fight he'd gone off Merlin knew where and didn't try to speak to her again for weeks. Melody hadn't remained glued to her room because of any bursting desire to avoid him (perhaps that was true on the first day, but she did want to see him put in the effort). Some days she had truly been too sick to move, and others her illness had made her so bone weary she couldn't move.

Then, the realization of what he meant by his last few words sank in, and her face fell entirely. "So that's what I am to you? A stone cold manipulative bitch?" She asked without a second thought. This was their marriage argument all over again, this was her betrayal being raised again like they hadn't had this same fight a half dozen times. Melody would have walked away, would have determined this to be the last straw, if she wasn't so utterly certain that she could not stand. "I'm the horrible monster that keeps you chained and doesn't give a fuck about you."

She was the villain in his story, the monster to be slayed. Bile rose in her throat, this time not because of her pregnancy but because of the emotional distress she was now under. He hated her, despised her even, and he never and would never love her.

Melody was quiet for what felt like minutes as she struggled to wade through her thoughts. Although she once believed they could somehow coparent their child peacefully, she was now utterly certain he wouldn't be able to do so. Not if he harbored such ill thoughts. Not if he trusted her so little. Her arms came to wrap around her stomach. Even now Ben didn't understand her reasoning about the potion last year and he didn't even care to.

"Promise me you're not staying here just to take the baby when it's born." She asked in a shakey voice. "You think I'm so evil and heartless. Tell me you're not planning to take the baby — my baby — and leave me."

#13
Ben didn't respond to her first comments not because he had nothing to say, but rather because he knew she would use whatever he said against him. Anything she could use to paint herself as the victim in this. As though he hadn't been trying! As though he was supposed to have known what to do when she locked herself in her bedroom for days on end, and when the only thing she ever bothered to tell him was how miserable she was. What was he supposed to say to that, when it was presumably their baby — a baby Ben desperately wanted, which Melody hadn't planned — that was making her so miserable all day? What was he supposed to have done? There was no right answer here. If he'd pushed in to her room and forced her to make conversation every night, he wouldn't have been respecting her boundaries. Since he hadn't, he'd abandoned her. If he'd been optimistic or aggressively cheerful about how she was feeling, he would have been insensitive and unsympathetic. Since he wasn't, he was apathetic. Nothing he could have said or done over the past two months would have been right.

The rest of this was just her trying to get a rise out of him, Ben thought. She was intentionally twisting what he'd said, using phrases he hadn't, in order to try and guilt him into backtracking, placating, apologizing. But he didn't want to apologize — he should be able to talk to other women. He should be able to confide in his friends. He should be able to step up and be a member of his family. Melody's existence didn't trump any of those things, and she wasn't going to get him to back down and agree to give up on all of that. Not anymore, anyway; he'd given up enough already.

It wasn't until she brought up the baby that he reacted to what she was saying. His throat tightened. It wasn't as though he'd sat down and schemed this out, trying to lure her through a pregnancy under false pretenses so that he could take the baby — but as she said it, he knew that he could, if it came to that. Aldous would find him a lawyer, and they'd win. Art had already suggested it. Ben didn't want that — had never wanted that — but he could. And given the way he was feeling at the moment, how much anger he had built up in his chest, he didn't think he could promise that he wouldn't try.

"It's my baby, too," he said thickly.



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#14
"That isn't a promise." She remained frozen, arms curled around herself as though she might somehow be able to fight him if that was, in fact, his plan. "Tell me you're not going to remove me from our baby's life."

#15
CW: harm/self-harm/miscarriage

I don't owe you any promises, he thought, but he wasn't going to say that. He knew that whatever he said to this was going to be used against him. If he promised not to try and take their child away from her, he would be condemning himself to a whole life of this, where she could do anything she wanted because she knew that he would never leave the baby, and he'd already promised not to take them away. If he ever even contemplated trying to leave, if he ever reached the point where he couldn't take it any more, he would be breaking his promise to her. If he said he was going to try and take the baby, though, then he was the villain right away, a heartless cruel man who was leading her on to deliver his child only to wrench it away at the last minute. And even if he was planning to do that and even if he didn't care what anyone thought of him for admitting it, he couldn't have ever said that. Melody might get desperate, and do something desperate, and put the baby in danger. He didn't trust her to make it through to the birth if she didn't have these promises from him, if she didn't think there was a future and that at least on some level he might love her. So he had to make whatever promises he had to make, except fuck, he couldn't keep living like this.

"I don't want that," he said hotly. "I want this baby to have two parents who care, but — but right now that doesn't seem very fucking likely, does it?"



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#16
"Care about who, Ben?" Melody demanded. How had her being sick for a month lead to his assumption that she didn't care about him or the baby? "You? The baby? Who are we talking about? I thought I made it clear that I care about this baby? I wouldn't be enduring the bloody fucking nausea and vomiting all day long if I didn't care about the baby!" Losing the pregnancy was her foremost fear, just as her fear of losing the baby once she birthed it was beginning to gain traction.

"I don't know how you've come to believe I don't care about you. I've done unforgivable things, I know, and there's much I would change. But, for fuck's sake, I wouldn't change you. I still love you." Even if he didn't love her. Even if she wished she didn't love him. Even if she was confident in her belief they would be happier coexisting than as trying to manage a functioning romantic relationship. Even if promised her fresh starts and to try and always failed to follow through, always had something more pressing that forced her into the back of his mind, she would still love him.

She sighed and rubbed her face tiredly. Loving him was an exhausting state of misery, and, perhaps, they were waging an already lost war. Perhaps they both just needed to accept what they had years ago was lost in the frozen Canadian tundra. "You can't ask me not to give up on you only to turn and give up on me. I am trying, Ben. I'm doing my best, if that I've been sick is too much for you, well. I don't know. I don't know what we're doing."


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