Ross/Demelza and K. "On the edge of consciousness" for the mini fic prompt, please!
Oh god I am really really sorry for this, it’s just what happened *hides*
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He’s barely awake at the end, drifting fromdream to dream with moments of lucidity, moments when he opens his eyes andlooks at her, sees her. Mostly laudanum keeps him from awareness, keepshim in a state that isn’t slumber, not true rest, but oblivion. It’s ablessing, really. So says the doctor, a young man who’s earnest and respectfuland tells her the end can’t be long, now.
He doesn’t know Ross, she says, and it isn’tfunny, but she smiles to herself while the others look at her, the doctorpitying and Henry worried and Noelle trying not to cry. She loves hergrandpapa, little Noelle, and he’s doted on her, loved her, cherished her. Ashe’s loved and cherished all their children and grandchildren, but Noelle wasthe first, and she’s special.
She sits by Ross’s bedside for hour afterhour. She sleeps in the bed beside him. They tell her she would rest bettersomewhere else, but no, she says, she’s slept in this bed with him for sixtyyears, she’ll not sleep anywhere else while he draws breath. And on and on, hedraws breath. Shallow, rasping things, but breaths nonetheless. In, out. In,out. Stubborn, she whispers to him, at night when there’s no-one else there,no-one to watch or listen or fuss at her. Stubborn like all the Poldarks.Henry’s no different. Poor Henry, soon to be Sir Henry, a title and inheritancehe’s no wish for. It should have been Jeremy’s. But Jeremy is long gone, foodfor the worms in France, and soon Ross will be food for the worms here, in Cornwall. There’sspace in Sawle churchyard, next to a tiny grave that’s nearly as old as theirmarriage.
I love you, she whispers. I love you,Ross. Don’t leave me now. Don’t go without me.
Sometimes he opens his eyes and looks at her,and sometimes he manages the faintest of smiles, corners of his mouth turnedupwards, the wrinkles and lines of his face rearranging into the familiarexpression. I love you, he says without speaking. Demelza, I love you. Then hiseyes close again, he fades back into the fraudulent slumber, and she listensfor his breathing, the rattle in his chest. In and out, in and out, to makesure it’s not the eternal sleep, not yet. The rattle of old bones, the rattleof fluid in his lungs. She likes to hear it, the sounds of life. The absence ofsound is what she fears.
Sometimes when she sleeps, she dreams himyoung. Vibrant and full of life, fierce and forbidding or bubbling withlaughter. Sometimes when she wakes, she hears nothing but the sound of herblood in her ears, and she panics, reaches out for him, listens hard until shecan hear him breathing again.
Until the morning she doesn’t hear it. Justthe silence of the house in the pre-dawn and a blackbird trilling outside thewindow. No, she says. Not without me, Ross. But it’s too late. He’s gone aheadof her. Perhaps he’s waiting with Jeremy and Julia, waiting for her to jointhem.
It won’t be long, now.
