Author's Note: I'm sorry, have some Childhood friend! Reader x Atticus Finch Angst HCs.
Atticus and You, a very unlikely pair. He'd known you all his life, loved you every moment of it too. While he never spoke those heartfelt words, he made sure you knew it without crossing any lines.
His fondest memory is when he was still in Law school. You were both under a magnolia tree in front of your childhood home. He had a cup of peach tea and a book, you leaned against his side and reading over his shoulder quietly.
He knew you wanted to go to college like him, but Atticus knew that wasn't exactly in the cards for you due to your family forbidding you from going. So he was more than happy to read with you like this, just a moment for you two alone in the sweltering summer heat.
"You know... I like these moments..." You whispered, your gloved thumb reaching up to turn the page for him while he sipped his tea. "The quiet, just you and I... They're comforting, truly." Atticus raised a brow and smiled as he put his tea down.
"Really? Couldn't have asked..." He hummed, watching as you reached over and snagging his glass of tea, sipping the cold liquid. "I just can't explain it, Atticus. All this, the quiet and the two of us, it's just so nice.. I don't have to worry about the world for a little while, and I don't have to think about much..." Atticus nodded as he resumed reading, unaware that this moment carried an unexplainable weight, like the world itself was changing.
Atticus started courting you when you were 18 and he was 19, smiling softly in the moonlight of Autumn, 1900. He had snuck to your window with a book full of pressed Magnolias, one for every summer he spent with you after he realized his feelings, 14 dried and pressed flowers in total. On the page with the most recent flower, pressed only a few months ago, was a letter asking for you to be his.
He hung onto your window, his glasses slightly askew from when he was climbing up. A smile crossed his lips as he looked at you in your night clothes, all scattered and bathed in moon light.
"Take this, take it and talk to me in the morning..." Atticus remembered whispering to you, smiling softly as he put the book into your palm and dropped off your windowsill into the brambles below, he'd regret it in the morning but never in the moment.
Those months of courting you were the best of his life, second only to the moments later in his long life. Promised to marry you under that magnolia tree, how beautiful you'd look in white with him under the magnolia in the summer.
It didn't last long, the little things never do.
That winter, you got really sick. Sweat fell from your temples mid winter, a flush always on your cheeks. Weight fell from your frame like cloth falling off a table, you didn't look good...
It took you fainting and coughing up a storm to get you to agree to a doctor's visit...
"It's Consumption... It's not going to get any better..." The doctor spoke, standing over you as your hands shook from the coughs that wracked your sickly frame. Atticus remembered peaking over your mother's shoulders as you were falling apart in your own bed, sicker than a dog.
He remembered watching you, just staring as he tried to reconcile the image of you, full of life, with the one he was seeing now. Pale, sickly, unable to go a full conversation without coughing. It was disheartening, but he still stood by, hoping it got better.
Atticus sat in your room some days, always washing his hands as he came and gone. Sometimes, when you couldn't stand straight and only had the energy to lay in bed, he'd sit there and read from his books on law. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that soon, you wouldn't be here for him.
He was still Atticus though, still sitting by your bed and making you smile despite everything. He stayed there, right there for you through it all. No matter how much he wanted to run so he didn't have to see you like this, he stayed.
As the months stretched on, you refused to let go of your fight. When Alexandra belittled him for staying with you, risking his life just to see a sick person die, he felt like there was nothing more to do.
During this time, it was hard for him to watch. You stared out the window some days, watching the day pass from winter to spring. Sometimes, he'd see tears collecting on your tear line, refusing to fall.
"Atticus..." You whispered, looking away from the window, face gaunt and a painful smile on your face. "Help me get up... I want to go sit under the Magnolia tree..." Atticus raised a brow but nodded as he got up, getting someone to help you get dressed.
He smiled for the first time in days as you gently took his hand, he thought you were getting better. Guiding you downstairs, he chuckled as he helped you into the yard. His brain knew he was wrong, knew that he was lying to himself and that it'd hurt worse when he was done pretending, but he didn't listen.
"Here... Settle down now..." Atticus murmured, sitting down next to you under the magnolia, gently picking up a fallen flower and handing it to you, just as he used to do when you were younger. "Here, just like old times." He smiled, watching as you held the flower in your palm, the silk hiding the boney features of your hand.
"Atticus...?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you read to me? I want to listen to you talk, I love hearing you talk..." Your voice was strained, a choked sound that just broke his heart.
"Of course sweet pea..." Atticus cracked the book open, flipping to the pages and starting to read, not noticing as your breath against his neck slowed to a stop. It took him a moment to look over and see that your chest had stopped moving and the magnolia had fallen from your hands for the truth to really set in for him.
You were buried under that magnolia. Memories of what used to be laughter and joy were just met with silence now, the blossoms stopped falling the year you died. They never smelt or looked the same afterwards.
His eyes stared at your grave, the small script making his eyes burn with tears that he could never truly shed again. He was 27 now, it'd been 7 years since that afternoon under the magnolias and they still hadn't been the same since then.
Your name, written in careful lettering with "Taken far too soon, gone but not forgotten". He should've gone first. He knows he should've, but he didn't. He's still here years later, just waiting to go back to you under that magnolia tree just 5 minutes away from Finch's Landing.
Years later, he's 52. Widowed, a single father of 2, and a struggling Lawyer trying to get an innocent man free. On his desk, there's his motivations laid out clearly: A photo of him and Jean from 1929 (shortly before her death), a photo of him and his kids (Jem and Scout) from 1931, a letter from Tom Robinson. Beside that all? A leather bound book filled with pressed magnolias, the memories still fresher than the flowers themselves.
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