Rating: PG 13
Disclaimer: Not mine. The poem used, sonnet VI from "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is also not mine. Funny how life works that way.
Feedback: I’m an insecure and weird person. Please assure me that I’m okay. :)
Distribution: My site (http://redrival.com/ivysplace/index.htm), and anyone who wants it. Please, go ahead, just let me know where it’s going!
Notes: Here is where I get babbly. I haven’t written anything for a good long time—not because I don’t watch the shows, because I do, and I love them more than ever. Honestly, I just haven’t had that writer’s bug inside me. And reading all the wonderful fic that is sent out to these lists, I feel so unsuperior and feeble. :) This SHORT fic I wrote a looong time ago, and I got a great response and it won me some awards, but I’ve never been completely happy with it. I’ve rewritten it, and I hope you enjoy it. You can read the previous version at my site.
And this is for Lizzie-Bethie, even though I didn’t let her beta this first. :)

You get married when you are twenty-three years old to a man whom you have known for two months, because you think you have to. You were young and living in a whirlwind, but whether that whirlwind was fear or giddiness, you’ll never know.

Your life was happy at first, but gradually sad. Eventually, you start to see it. He controls what you wear. He tells you to eat less. He gets angry when you want to go out with your friends. And then when he hits you, he cries the next moment and tells you that he loves you.

You stay with him, because you think you have to.

And then, one night, you simply drive away.

Your old lover’s house is familiar and soothing as you let yourself in, unannounced. He is reading in the living room, the fireplace lit, comfortable and warm and cozy. When he sees you, the too-thin ex-girlfriend, with messy hair and rumpled clothes, his eyebrows raise a little but he cooks you dinner and talks to you, no questions asked.

You spend the night and when your best friend calls you, saying that your husband was looking for you, you do not care. You plan to file for divorce.

Within a month you move into your old—now new—lover's house. He makes room in his closets for your clothes. He gives up bathroom space for all of your makeup.

He is much more light-hearted than he used to be. He jokes. He smiles. He assures you that you are beautiful and loved, and not once does he ask about your ex-husband.

He makes up little pet names for you. He tells you he loves you, every day, ten times a day. He does things for you that he has never done before; like cook you dinner and fill the vases in your room with roses. It is as if he is making up for everything you lost when you were apart.

One time you spend the entire day in bed, and it is then you tell him about what happened in your marriage.

You are lying lazily in your bed, the sheets wrapped around your bodies, the air scented with your lovemaking. When you tremble, and cry, and say that your ex-husband used to hit you, he kisses you so gently, it is like he is afraid you will break. He wishes he could have been there, he tells you.

"I'm sorry," he whispers softly, and holds you.

The day after that, he calls your work and tells them you won't be in. He makes you breakfast in bed. He makes love to you, all day, all night, and he never mentions your husband. You are so grateful for him, your heart aches.

You know that he is the man you can trust forever, so you marry him. The ceremony is at night. Your sister stands as your maid of honour, and a thousand candles are lit around you, stars brought down from the skies. You wear flowers in your hair, and vow "Always," with a smile upon your face.

He fills your life with love that you haven't had together in years. He teaches you how to dance the minuette. Often he'll sneak up on you in the kitchen when you're washing dishes and dance with you, getting you both soapy with dishwater. You go to movies together, and if the film is scary you’ll cling to him. If it’s sad, you’ll cry and he’ll laugh and give you tissues. He takes you to Paris, because he knows you have always wanted to go. He holds your hand as you walk on the Seine, and it is then you know that you have everything you have ever wanted.

When necessity calls and you have to be away from each other, he sends you poetry. Love poetry, some weepy, some on the erotic side, always heartfelt and treasured. It is enough to make up for the absence until you can be together again. Sometimes, when he returns to you after your time apart, he’ll read you the poems he sent you, and the words will touch you all that much more, just hearing his voice and looking in his eyes.

A few years pass.

One day you notice a swell on your breast and ask him to feel it. He laughs, thinking that you want him to cop a feel. When you grow serious, so does he, and he asks you to call your gynecologist.

She sends you to a surgeon, who does a biopsy of your breast. The labs have your results after a week.

After you find out the news, you're calm. He is not. He is angry, he demands, "Why you? Why now?"

You tell him that he's not helping.

He stops, and throws himself into making you well.

He does all the research and knows all the terms. He comes with you to every doctor's appointment. He pays for the plastic surgery to reconstruct your breast. He tells you that he is honoured that you threw up on him when you were sick. He stays as late as he can, every night, during every test and every operation at the hospital.

During your chemo treatments, he buys you cool wigs; the kind of hair you always wanted. When your hair is almost completely gone, and you ask him why he is still with you, he says obviously, as if it’s the reason for his very being, "Sweetheart, I love you."

He stocks your fridge with healthy, beneficial foods and reminds you to do your exercises.

When you talk about dying, he says that you're not going anywhere. He points out that treatment is better than ever. You start radiation after finishing chemo.

But something's wrong, and he still doesn't want to talk about it. Your healthy cells are not killing off the bad ones, like they're supposed to. He argues that you have fought much bigger fights than this before; you tell him that it might not be bigger or nobler, but it requires more energy. You are tired of dying.

On the anniversary of your marriage, you are lying in your bed together, the bed that had seen so much love and gentleness.

You say to him, softly, "I'm going to miss you."

He looks at you tenderly for a moment, and in him you see everything you have shared, years of conversations and tears and the best times of your life flowing between you in a gaze. And you feel no remorse over anything.

"I know, álainn," he says, using the Gaelic word for beautiful. You drift into sleep, and he lies with you, rocking you, his eyes never leaving your face. He holds you steadfast all night, and he would be there until the sunrise, like he always would.

On the dresser lies one of the poems he gave to you, beautiful script on parchment paper, fluttering gently in the breeze that comes with morning.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforth in thy shadow.
Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forebore…
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy hand in mind
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

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