A tall, well-dressed man approached the deceivingly-pleasant looking cottage, which had been built so seamlessly into a dip in the moor that it looked as though it had grown right out of the ground, belonging to the earth as much as a tree or a river, and appearing to have been there even longer than the latter. The man, his dark face obscured by a wide-framed hat, looked up, taking in Thrushcross Grange. He was suddenly consumed by memories; one memory of more consequence than the others. A yellow-haired girl, laughing, running much too fast in her dress for an agreeable young lady. Her eyes glowing mischievously, and her skirts flying up around her strong, surprisingly un-girlish legs. Always faster than he, looking back at him and teasing him with a lift of her light, thick eyebrows. And then, the fear he heard in her anxious, rapid breathing as they ran from the dogs.
The terror, the unshakeable anguish when he saw the dog's mouth closed relentlessly around her stocking covered ankle. Somehow then, in his young heart, he knew that day would be a fateful one. Six weeks Heathcliff lived without his Cathy, and the longer he went on without her, the harder it became to remember whatever he had done with himself without her, if he'd ever done anything. If he had, it's wasn't anything significant. It wasn't anything worth remembering – in fact, now, all these years later, he still had trouble doing just that.
He remembered leaving, though. A paroxysm of anger roared in his chest; he felt pain and longing wrench through his heart and his lungs as though someone had slashed a fire poker through him. She had said it would degrade her to marry him. Degrade her, she'd said! As though not walking on her ankle for a fortnight or two meant that friendship with your childhood friend was no longer appropriate. But he already could tell something had changed, from the moment she stepped into Wuthering Heights with that foolish Linton on her arms. Something had broken inside of her - at least, something had been shut away, smothered, and replaced with all of the qualities Cathy was once proud to not have.
Everything he had ever feared, everything that Hindley had tortured him with, had come true, and he'd known it as soon as he saw her flushed pink cheeks and her soft white hands, which looked as though they had not seen sunlight – or play – for years. Hindley, with all his faults, with all his bitterness, had foreseen something Heathcliff chose to ignore – that no great love could overcome everything that separated them, even if it was between two such souls as Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.
And yet, here he was, determined, subconsciously at least, to prove Hindley wrong. He walked briskly now toward the house that held the only woman, the only thing in his life that had ever mattered, just a little bit out of his reach. The tall man stood up a little bit straighter, adjusted his hat so that his dark, sun tanned face was more visible, and his eyes locked on the front door. Heathcliff, of course, did not know just how out of reach his Cathy was… he did not know, nor would he have ever considered that his life would have been much emptier of sorrow if he just turned back the way he had traveled. For both Heathcliff and Cathy were flawed, and selfish, and they both would rather fight for a brief, agonizing existence together than resign to two long, unimpaired lives apart. And so Heathcliff raised his fist to knock on the door.