Number 8 ❤️love your work!!
Here is part 2 to this drabble. There may need to eventually be a part 3 … not entirely happy with it, but it’s done
I’ve fleshed out a scene already in existence from JFellz - S2E8 (once again). You’ll recognize the borrowed dialogue.
Oh, and S2 Robert is definitely depressed… we’re all in agreement there, right?
#8 - Things You Said When You Were Crying
O’Brien had changed her nightgown for her. He noticed that now. She was dressed in a looser one, a cream-colored cotton gown, one with crocheted lace around the neck and shoulders, and not stains of sickness and sweat through the silk.
Though that didn’t matter. Her illness was still all too evident in the dark circles at her eyes, the pallor of her cheeks, the oily matting of her curls that stuck to her throat and forehead. An inner voice whispered how beautiful she was, and Robert had to clench his jaw from saying it aloud. Now was not the time.
He watched her from the chair beside her bed. He watched as Cora’s tired eyes met his own, as she peered down at his hands that he held in his lap, and then back up at his face.
He’d told her she was a sight to gladden his heart, and it had been the truth. Well. Mostly the truth. For while his heart leapt up in thanks at her being here, alive, his soul was heavy and he knew that Cora sensed that.
Of course she did. She knew him.
There was a small movement then, a decided one on Cora’s part, when she let her hand fall from the resting place of her middle and to her bed. He moved his eyes from her face and to her hand, her offer softening the moment, and he exhaled.
He slid his palm against her smaller one and grasped her, but the warmth he thought he’d feel at touching her, the warmth he always felt when he held her hand, was overshadowed by her sigh.
No. Not sigh. It was a small shudder of breath, a sound that felt both like relief and yet like pain. It was a sound so heavily laden with emotion that it drew a tight knot inside of his throat. For Cora did not often show her weaknesses.
Oh, just as Cora knew him, he knew his Cora. He knew her perhaps even better than he knew himself.
No -- especially better than he knew himself.
“We're all right, aren't we Robert?”
He forced himself to look up at her, at her frightened words, the brave verbiage no mask for the doubt he heard in her voice and saw in her lovely face. It was the face he had pictured as he bowed his head, praying in his chair in her room; praying as Doctor Clarkson confessed last-ditch efforts to help her.
My God, please, do not take her from me.
“Of course we are,” he heard himself reply, and he wanted to mean it. Yet another desperate prayer.
Cora lifted her chin slightly. He saw as her eyes began to glisten, as she began to blink heavily, and a creeping feeling of alarm burned up his back and chest. She was crying. And he knew why.
Yes, he knew she loved him, but perhaps recently it had only been a fact, not a feeling. And the confirmation that she still felt such love for him — this woman who said she loved him in touches and glances and flirts but who had said the words aloud only a handful of times — it prodded the hollow, aching places inside of him.
Her voice cracked when she spoke, “Only I know I got so caught up in everything, I think I neglected you, and if I did, I'm sorry.”
“Don't apologize to me.” A command, and though quiet, perhaps harsher than he meant. But his heart was bleeding behind his ribs.
He watched her still, as she stared at their hands. And he watched her as she moved her weakened fingertips against his skin. He felt every year of their life in her touch: the way she had looked peering up at him on their wedding night, the overwhelming joy he felt at Mary’s birth, the grief they’d shared at Papa’s death. He didn’t want the memories to end.
He needed her, and he felt humbled that she was just there, caressing his hand.
For the first time in years, he felt it again. It was the feeling he felt when he first realized he loved his wife: Awe. Awe that she wanted him next to her. Awe that he was allowed to touch her, to be with her, to speak to her. Awe that she simply existed. How could this person possibly exist?
But alongside the awe, there was despair, because unlike before, the awe did not bring with it euphoria. And he hated himself for not allowing his love for her — this all-consuming love for her — dissolve any of the sadness he felt. Not sadness at what he’d done. Sadness at something he couldn’t explain. He had no right to this sadness, and it had no right to him. And yet … it remained.
And guilt. But he deserved this guilt.
“I think I’d like to rest.”
He watched her as she spoke, as her voice caught in her throat, as a tear escaped her eye. But she didn’t look up at him. She only held his hand, batting her lashes, trying to stem the tears he wished she didn’t shed. He was not worth her tears.
“Will you stay here? Please.” A hoarser whisper, and her eyes met his. “Just for a little while.”
He felt her use all her strength to squeeze his hand, her thin and rattling chest heaving beneath her gown, her red-rimmed eyes searching his. The blues of them bright, and lovely. Achingly lovely.
He felt the burn in the bridge of his nose, the flare of his nostrils, the unwarranted wobble of his chin. And his shoulders shook with his breath. He nodded and tightened his grasp on her fingers.
She loved him. And he loved her. He loved her. He loved her. “Always.”
