thejonderettegirl asked for Warstan - The Timetraveller's Husband
This is for my flash fic fest on tumblr. The prompt was for folks to give me a title and I'd write a fic based on it. This is pretty darn angsty, I hope you all enjoy it.
The waiting was always the hardest part. There was something about that phrase - had he read it somewhere, heard it in a song, maybe? Whatever It didn't matter, because it was the truth. Waiting for Mary to come back from wherever in her personal timeline she'd been unwillinglhy flung was always the hardest part.
The second hardest part was trying to live a normal-ish kind of life, not knowing when his wife might suddenly vanish. It usually happened at night when she was sleeping, but not always. It was the reason she never held Rosie in her arms unless he was right there. She'd never actually vanished while holding their three-month-old daughter, but the fear was real. It took only one dropped platter of roast beef for her to realize just how dangerous it could be.
It was heartbreaking, but it was their reality. Whatever quirk in Mary's biology or neurochemistry caused her to travel in time at random had come upon her after Rosie had been born, else she was adamant that she'd never have risked a pregnancy. She'd gone so far as to have a hysterectomy after her third unplanned trip - two to her own past, one to her future where John's future self had apparently explained things to her. "No more babies, I won't risk it, not knowing if this…affliction…might affect them."
There had been tears in her eyes when she spoke, but her voice had been steady. And John, helpless, terrified, longing to lash out but having no target but whatever cosmic force had inflicted this on them, could do nothing but agree.
Rosie cried every time her mother vanished, until she turned five and could better understand that it wasn't something Mary was doing on purpose. Not that it stopped her crying entirely, but she did it with less and less frequency as she grew older. It could be unnerving when a Mary from the far future appeared - silver haired, wrinkled, but her blue eyes always filled with love - and it was terrifying the few times the Mary that flashed back into existence was injured or ill, but she always came back and they always welcomed her home and filled her in on what she'd missed, at least when it was the 'right' Mary.
They knew she was fated to outlive her husband the first time her silver-haired edition appeared, bursting into uncharacteristic tears at the sight of John helping Rosie with her maths homework. They knew the version that escorted Rosie down the aisle on her wedding day was a Mary who'd just left her three-year-old playing the 'knock down the blocks over and over again' game with her father. And the Mary that was there when Rosie's first daughter was born was the one who'd just experienced her second trip into her future.
Yes, the waiting was the hardest part…but the best part was whenever she came back to him and Rosie, whether it was the Mary that had vanished for a few hours or a few days, or whether it was one of her future selves.
Because no matter how non-linear her life had become, the one thing John could count on utterly was her love for them.