Chapter 1: Moving Out

Demelza left Nampara in a cold december morning. She would have gone in the middle of the night but Ross insisted she should wait until the sun would rise. Jud helped her with their luggage, and as soon as the rain stopped they were on their way. It looked like the sky was against her, keeping her prisoner in that place that was once her own home and Ross tried, he tried to convince her to stay, said that he loved her, that he was mistaken, that Elizabeth would never come between them again. And she tried to believe him, but at the end it was too late. He didn't say anything she hadn't heard before so she had to go.

The grey light of the new day found Ross no longer trying to make amends with his wife but pleading her not to go to Illugan:

'Please spare me the thought of my son living with your father' -He'd said to her to make her reconsider, but she replied she didn't have another place to go.

'Then stay here'

'Nay Ross, I can't…'

'I'll go if you don't want to live with me anymore, but this is your home…'

'I can't. I'll see you in every room, hear you in every little sound, feel you in… I just can't, I don't want to.'

If Ross have been blind for who knows how many years, now it was Demelza who couldn't see. The hurt in her so deep, numbing all her senses, she only knew her resolution and she would carry on with it. Ross was in despair, all his life turned to ashes. The hope he had yesterday afternoon while returning from Plymouth was another dream, he had lost her, the true love of his life was leaving him.

He needed more time; she couldn't go in the middle of the storm but now the rain had stop and the sun would be out in any moment. He saw her looking out the window behind him and then at the door.

'You can't go to your father.'

'I'll go wherever it pleases me'

He sighed at the stubbornness of his wife, and an idea came to his mind.

'What about Dwight's cottage?'

'What about Dwight's cottage?' -and her replied sound like a mock.

'You could go and stay there for awhile, Dwight cleared his stuff away before he went to war, and is bigger than any other one.'

'What about when he returns?'

'If he returns, I don't think they'll live there, him and Caroline. I don't believe she'd want to live there.'

Good for me but not good enough for a Lady, she thought.

'I don't know Ross, it's too close…'

'Just for now, while we think in something else...'

'But people will talk, if I'll go away you could said that I went to stay with my family for a time, that my father is ill, or you could just say…'

'Say what?! That you left me?'

'Or that I died!'

'Have you lost your mind?!'

Ross put his hands in his head. Anger mixing with despair inside him.

'I meant… that would be easier for you. People will say things if I…'

'I don't care what people say!'

He had to fight to control his temper. He didn't want to make things worse, he had resign it could not be better, but any misstep from him and there would not be anything to stop her from going far away from him. This arrangement give him time, she would still be close and he could think a way to come back to her. The fact that she would still think in what it was best for him meant that at some level she care for him after all, but she had been so angry and so disappointed of him, not that he wasn't disappointed himself, but the thought of leaving her for Elizabeth had never cross his mind, he was upset that she'd even considered that a possibility, broken by the fact she was actually going to do it.

For Demelza it was Ross who had left her. So many times going to Trenwith to be with that other woman, leaving her and her son to fetch for themselves. Or the time when he went to see Mark Daniel in that dangerous crusade even when she insisted him not to go, or that night when he helped with the smuggling risking himself to be caught by the soldiers, or just these days when he actually went to join the militia... This man... Enough, she wouldn't take it no more; she had her son to think about and let Ross deal with the consequences of his actions.

So she left.

She woke up Jeremy from his sleep, dressed him and at the door she told him:

'Say goodbye to papa'

Ross hugged the child and gave him a kiss on his temple but didn't say anything. Demelza didn't say anything else either, there was nothing left. Garrick followed them, and Ross stood there, at the gates of the Nampara household looking at his family run away from him.

Prudie join him, or she had been there the whole time, he couldn't be sure.

'Tedn't right, tedn't fair, tedn't proper'

'Go with them, be sure they have all they need to get settle.'

'Are 'ee n't goin'?'

'You heard her... oh, I'm certain you'd been overhearing everything. She doesn't want me anymore.'

Prudie made a displeased face.

'With all 'ee respect Cap'ain Poldark, 'ee 're th' biggest dolt I ever known. Tis 'er who thinks 'ee don't want 'er no more, with all 'ee done to th' poor gurl'

'But I told her, I don't know what else to say to her'

''Ee were never very good with words mister Ross... maybe 'ee should stop talkin' and do somethin'. I'll go t' see they'll settle.'

Ross came back inside the house, the silence so deafening, he couldn't remember when it have been like this, perhaps in the days following the death of Julia, when Demelza was still ill and the fear of losing her too obscured everything. He sat in the armchair next to the fire; that fire witness so many moments between them, when she was none but a child learning to sew, to read, when they used to talk when they were still master and servant, friends, when he kissed her for the first time out of madness and sorrow... For all the things that he had done thoughtlessly that was the most clever and luckiest one of all. Prudie was right, he was the most obtuse man ever to live and he deserved this, for she was the one who suffered most for his actions.

He saw her kneeling before him after the accident in the mine, he felt her hands in his hands, in his shoulders, he saw her cooking his dinner, singing to him in front of his family and knowns, he remembered her climbing a tree or under the cabinet when it fell upon her when she tried to move it, she still had a scar on her knee from that day. He remembered touching her big belly when she was pregnant with his childs, he would do that while she was sleeping and never knew if she could tell or not… All that was gone. He'd lost the only thing that was ever worth having.

He would not accept it.

Chapter 2: The New Doctor.

AN: Hello everyone, I've been working in this story for a while and finally managed to post it. It should be 8 or 9 chapters long and I hope you enjoy it. For those who don't know, english is not my native language so sorry in advanced for any grammar mistake or lack of vocabulary.

The story is based on the BBC series and books of Poldark, all belonging to WG and the great DH.