A/N: Happy Back to the Future Day! Who's in the mood for a treasure hunt? Whoever finds Marty McFly first wins. Of course, being in Australia might put me at a little bit of a disadvantage, but who cares about that? Just remember: pics or it didn't happen.
He loves me.
She plucked the crimson petal from its erstwhile home before releasing it, letting it flutter along on the breeze like a released butterfly before spiralling to the ground. He was charming and handsome and had manners befitting a king, and of course he loved her. Of course he needed –
He loves me not.
Her chest clenched as she tossed aside the next petal, wanting to distance herself from it as quickly as possible. After all they'd been through together, there was no way he could not love her. It was just ludicrous.
He loves me.
A smile spread across her face as joy filled her heart, and she kissed the little red triangle before letting it too blow away. He did; he really did! Her sweet, devoted husband, with his thoughtful ways and pretty words, had truly grown to care about her. It might not have started out that way, but it was now as sure as the eventual re-emergence of the sun after even the longest of nights.
He loves me not.
Of course, that might be a little bit of a stretch. There was no way to accurately determine how much of his feelings were manufactured by the potion she routinely spiked his tea with and how much of it was genuine. It was possible, however loathe she was to even consider it, that it was all fabricated nonsense that would fall away like the discarded petals when exposed to the hand of truth. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and she reached her hand down to lay it against her swollen belly.
He loves me.
Could he love her? Did love potions breed love or just enamoured obsession? She liked to think they shared the kind of real love that people ruminated on in songs and books and poems, and that his sense of duty to their unborn child would compel him to stay long enough to see past the sting of betrayal and realise that, but she could never know for certain. It would always be simultaneously love and not-love, real and fake, freedom and imprisonment, always and forever and even past that, because the only way to ever be absolutely certain would be to…
He loves me –
…to stop administering it to him. That would prove it once and for all, more accurately and definitively than a silly little children's game ever could. If she were to do that, everything would become as clear as glass. And it wasn't even much of a risk, really; no matter what, he would stay and provide for their baby, and she could even experiment with little doses to keep him complacent if she had to.
She jumped to her feet and ran inside their little rickety house. She couldn't do anything until the current dosage ran out – which would be in around two weeks if her calculations were correct – but she could pack away her cauldron and ingredients to mark her decision. It would be better for the baby, anyway, to be away from the fumes of brewing Amortentia.
She would do this, and it would be brilliant. Their life together would be perfect once the potions were removed from the equations and it was just her and him and the baby. It was everything she could ever have dreamed of – freedom and love and true family and him – and she couldn't wait to truly get it.
Her cupped fingers opened as her hands gripped her skirts, hiking them up so they wouldn't trail through the mud.
The last petal fell, forgotten and unnoticed, to the ground.
– not.