[UNEDITED
A/N: Written for AnaitisM. You should check out her work on instagram on her account, Anaheeds . Art [without the spaces]. It is so awesome. In this story she wanted, and I quote, "Well actually it's kinda against Lemington but I wanted a fanfic of an OC (which is me) by the name of Anaitis Montgomery who used to be engaged to Jacques and he died and she kinda falls in love with Lemony but he doesn't know it and stuff."
I hope that you all like it.
A/N 2.0- 'Marah' is an unusual word for 'bitterness' and 'Malmsey' is a type of sweet perfumed wine.
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Marah And Malmsey
"Jacques," I had said as we had sat together, trying to pack up his suitcase for his journey to the Village of Fowl Devotees or plain, old V.F.D. for short, "please promise me that you will return safe and sound."
"I will, my Anaitis. Of course I will. We have a marriage to attend, don't we?" he had replied and then winked and my heart had melted. I had loved this man with all I had.
And due to that small, small detail, I, the ever believing fool I was, had believed him and let him go. Countless times he had told me that he would return to me after investigating the Baudelaire case. I had been so foolish, so naïve. I had allowed him to go and now he was not coming back. Ever.
He didn't come back. He left me in my own chaos. I was devastated. Still am.
I grieved. The world was black and my soul was blacker. The world is quite here, they said. Of course it was. My only cousin, Monty was dead and so was my fiance. How could the world not be quiet? I wanted to scream this out from the rooftops. I was murderous with rage. I wanted to kill that bastard— Olaf. After all, he was the one who had taken them from me.
I was shaken and fragile and pathetically moody when I met Lemony Snicket.
Lemony Snicket was the most unusual man I had ever met. I had heard a lot about him from Jacques, Kit and Monty but never actually met him. He was a lot like Dewey from the Denouement Trio; I had only heard of him, never seen.
I first saw him at Jacques' funeral. Dressed in all black and a hat which hid his face, I thoroughly got the impression that he was a gentleman. We didn't talk much, which was strange considering that his brother, who happened to be my fiance, had died.
Sometimes silence speaks volumes, I guess.
Kit consoled me, but it wasn't enough. How could she ever know what I was going through? She had Dewey and even a little baby on the way. How could she ever know what was it like to lose the only person you loved to death? Little did I know that she would come to know that soon too, but that is an other story.
I had been sitting in city's grand library when I had first talked to him.
"I am sorry." he had said so quietly that I might have not even noticed it.
I had not replied. Instead of that, I had just nodded solemnly and gone back to glaring at the book open in front of me, my eyes simultaneously seeing and unseeing the pages and the mahogany wood beneath it. I had prayed that he would go away and mind his own business but instead of doing that, he had done exactly the opposite.
"You remind me a lot about of her." he had stated out of nowhere.
"Who?" I had asked, genuinely interested.
"Oh, you wouldn't know her. She lived in a town far away from here. She was very mysterious, that one. You resemble her a lot."
And that is how our friendship began. It grew into a great bond.
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I was never able to let go of Jacques. His beautiful, dark eyes danced in my mind and his wonderful smile still allured me. And I still wanted to kill Olaf. I didn't know why, but somehow I ended up telling all this to Lemony.
His reaction was the most unusual. Well, he was an unusual man, what else could I have expected?
Instead of telling me to give the grief 'some time', some useless advice on 'letting go' or forgiving Olaf for his mindless sins, he told me about a rather unique philosophy of his mother's. I still remember the night when this had happened. It went something like this:
I had been sitting on the vast sands of Briny Beach, gazing at the pale, full moon, remembering the night Jacques had proposed to me, right on the spot where I had been sitting. He had been quite romantic about it. I had just been on the verge of crying when a hand had tapped on my left shoulder. I turned around a little, just enough to see a silhouette of a man with a hat. Lemony Snicket.
"Can I join you?" he asked.
Of course he could, who was I to say no? I nodded silently. He sat beside me.
"I can see the remains of a great grief swirling and sparkling in your eyes."
I scoffed. "Why can't you simply say that there are tears in my eyes?"
"It doesn't sound charming that way." In the faint moonlight I could see his smile. It was a beautiful smile. It was a smile that resembled Jacques's, but was quite different at the edges. It was a smile that might have meant anything and I found my barriers breaking down.
"You can tell me, you know. I won't speak a word until you end it." he spoke after a while.
I looked at him with uncertain eyes but my mouth opened on its own accord and spoke and spoke and spoke, not growing tired at all. The words poured forth straight from my heart and some time later I found myself crying in his arms. True to his words, he didn't try to tell me anything in between. When I was finished, he gently wiped away my tears. I swear that I had seen his eyes shining, perhaps due to tears but my own eyes were hazing after crying so much and it was dark too; I couldn't be sure.
"My mother always used to say that one should always let out everything making one's heart suffer, unless it's a villainous secret." he spoke just after I had finished telling him my tales of woe. "My mother was quite a remarkable lady." he continued. "She even had a fancy word for the bitterness you are currently experiencing."
"She did?"
"Yeah"
"What was it?"
"Marah"
"Marah? What kind of word is that? I have never heard of it. Not even in the vocabulary class when I was thirteen. And you know as well as me that the chaperones never leave any word there."
"Believe me, it is a word. Before the schism it was on the list but for some reason, it got removed. Anyway, leaving aside its mysterious origins, I intended to tell you a certain thing that my mother had told me a long time ago."
I gave him a look, prompting him to continue.
"It was a warm, moonlit night, not quite unlike this one. My grandfather had just passed away. He was quite young to die— just fifty two. My mother was very remorseful, but she was very brave and courageous too. She didn't shed a tear in front of me. Instead of crying and making her children cry too, she told us to sleep and wake up early next morning. I was an insomniac and hence I was sleepless. To make me sleep she told me about how how she was dealing with her grief, in hopes that the 'boring' subject would make me asleep. What she didn't know that I was higly intrigued. She told me about Marah which meant that she was bitter at her loss and told me not to mind if I saw her crying randomly in a corner of the house. And then she—" He stopped abruptly.
"Then she?" I asked and nudged him.
"Well, that's the part I don't like to talk about much. It's the vice of the world . She told me about Malmsey, a word which here means something that makes the sadness go away."
"Isn't Malmsey a sweet perfumed wine?"
"That's what it is. Marah and Malmsey, they go hand in hand. One is the cause of sorrows, the other, a temporary stopper of them."
"Yes" I sighed.
"Every grief has two stages: the denial and the need to make the sadness go away. You're still in the Marah phase." he whispered.
"You speak from experience, I guess."
"Yes"
We spent the rest of the night by the shore, the sea lapping up at our feet. We spent the rest of the night sharing our sorrows and perhaps, not feeling left out in this wide world of fragmentary plots and mysteries.
In that moment, we were the Malmsey to each other's Marahs.
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I didn't see Lemony Snicket for a long time after that pleasant encounter on Briny Beach. He was busy roaming around the world, investigating the Baudelaire Case.
For all the time he had been missing from my life, I had been growing more and more connected with him. Truth be told, I was a hopeless case. I was falling in love with the man and he didn't even have an inkling about it.
I missed his smile. It was an unusual smile that might have meant anything. It was a smile that I liked. I wondered who he had seen smiling like that for the first time? Or was it his own invention?
Anyway, I was missing Lemony Snicket. But that wasn't the only trouble brewing in my disastrous life. The Last Safe Place had burnt down to ashes. Dewey was dead. A very pregnant Kit was missing and Frank was so sad that on most days he just lied limply on his bed in the my small apartment, asking for nothing.
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The next time I saw him, he looked a little older and somewhat wiser. It was probably an effect of all the adventures he had done. He had come to visit me with four children— the Baudelaire children and their adopted niece, Beatrice Baudelaire-Denouement, who was actually his own niece.
"Meet my daughter, Violet and her siblings, Klaus and Sunny." he had said cheerily.
I had frozen and Frank had noticed the unease in my expression. Daughter? How had I had never come to know about this?
"Hello, dearies." I had said politely to all of them. Internally, my heart was breaking. Frank had been more than excited to see his niece. It seemed that the children knew him well too. So while he talked to them, I rounded Lemony in the kitchen. We needed to have a talk.
"Daughter? Really?"
"Umm, yes."
"Why am I knowing about this now?"
"Anaitis, I myself hadn't known how to deal with it, even after all these sixteen years. How could I have told you if I couldn't even convince myself of it?"
"Did you— did you love her?"
"I still do. I can't forget her. She is unforgettable." he spoke with a small smile. Suddenly the smile didn't feel pleasant to me anymore.
"But I, I—"
"Mr. Snicket!" came Violet's voice from the parlour, "Beatrice is hungry. We need to go!" She still had trouble calling him 'father'.
The words died on my lips. I was never able to utter them. Till this date I wonder if my life would have been different if I had said them.
Frank and I bade them a quick goodbye. After they had descended down the stairs, I just stood listlessly in the doorway, trying to comprehend what had just had happened. Frank came behind me and just held me as I cried. Maybe it was time to find a new Malmsey to my Marahs.
As I write this account of mine, I don't regret to tell you all that an year after this, I married Frank Denouement. I grew to love him. He is an excellent companion to spend a rainy afternoon with, if you are wondering. We have a lovely girl named Ivalyn. She has grown into a fine young woman. I have still kept in touch with Lemony Snicket and I have still have not told him what I had wanted to tell him all those years ago.
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