Mend

Chapter Two - The Claiming

My Demelza is a 'mash-up of tv show and book. In a bid to make the show's Demelza a feisty, 21st century heroine, I think the writer focussed a little too much on her anger and bitterness and not enough on her utter devastation and loss, as the book did. She is strong, yes, but strength does not preclude fear and despair, or make them less valid or more shameful human emotions...Book lovers may also notice some dialogue from the Graham books. And on that note, I own nothing...

He waited.

Ross sensed he had made a connection with his wife at last, but that it was sapling tender, and for once, for once, in his desperation, his panic, he was mindful not to wither it with his frost. His heart swelled within him, taking in the confusion of emotions that played out across Demelza's face as she struggled with the conflict inside her. But, despite his small breakthrough, this was far from over and he knew it. The air of the parlour seemed to gather around them like a held breath and they both stood there, rooted.

Demelza's eyes, as clear and as tempestuous as the ocean, were luminous in her turmoil; her face cast into relief, the sharpness of cheekbones and generousness of lips, exaggerated. She was unpolished and wild and fierce. And she had been his...she had been his. His gaze, nocturnal-black, became unusually unguarded and it shone with the open wanting in them.

But Demelza could not see it; he was all silhouette to her, and staring into the darkness of his face she sought for the confirmation, the truth, of his words. She felt the sting of tears and she swallowed hard in an attempt to fight back the swell in her throat. Except for Julia, Demelza rarely gave in to tears. Tears, her father had often told her when she was young, were weakness, andd she had quickly learnt to stifle her crying rather than suffer the extra beating it won her. There had been no room for softness and sentiment in her young life, and that Demelza gave it so freely in adulthood was no small wonder.

But she was suddenly weary, tired. So very tired of the fight; with her husband, with George and Elizabeth. With herself. She had no strength left to stop the well that gathered in her throat, and if the dam burst, the storm outside would not be the only thing to shake Nampara. Desperate not to succumb, she pulled in a breath, but the air...the air, it seemed to her oppressive and warm despite the open door and the rain outside. It was like a presence between them - and then not as Ross stepped closer, his features catching the glow of a candle at last as he moved.

It was in his eyes, glittering dark, and in his waiting – he was waiting, she knew – that Demelza saw her husband again, finally: the man she had married with all his strength and grace and loneliness and longing.

And hope.

Hesitation.

They both felt the pull gather between them and around them. Still, Demelza did not move. In the dim light Ross' eyes dilated to utter blackness and were wide as he watched her, as if he wanted to take more of her into himself, like light through a window. He wanted to drown himself in her and forget himself, his idiocy, there. She was his peace and gentleness; she was love and the possibility of a future – precarious but possible.

The radiance of her eyes kindled something in him that made him acutely and suddenly aware that he had passed all his life before in a haze of half-living, half-feeling. For years he had thought, deep down he had thought, that, no matter how deeply he loved his wife, there was something in Elizabeth that he needed and that Demelza lacked. The ninth of May had shown him how wrong he was, the confirmation of a long cherished feeling had simply...not been there. In the shock of it, the turmoil, Ross had walked for months in a daze of confusion, as if unable to admit the ten years of emotional energy wasted on his folly, and the pain that the act of such revelation had brought to the one who truly held his heart. His whole heart.