Absolutely short one-shot. Nagging at me forever. Haha. Well, I hope you enjoy it! Mrs. Lovette drabble.
She knows.
Late at night, when Toby is asleep, when Mr. T is asleep, she knows in her heart. She will lie in her bed, eyes open wide to the darkness, and she will suddenly know. And her heart will shatter into a thousand tiny pieces, because even as she knows she doesn't want to believe it.
He calls her his love and his pet sometimes. During the day, when the light is there to blind her to the truth, she believes him with her whole heart. When the clouds move across the sky, when the sun peaks out, she can believe that she is just as good as Lucy in his eyes. She can believe he loves her as he loved Lucy. She can believe he will never hurt her.
Toby believes it, too. The boy is incredibly smart, even though no one else can see it. She knows he is. He says the things she needs to hear, points out things she desperately wants someone else to notice. She loves the boy for these small kindnesses. He doesn't even seem to know how smart he is to say these things, to notice that he points out things that mean nothing.
Ah, she knows.
His skin is warm. She likes it, how it feels to touch something warm after fifteen years all alone. She likes to accidentally brush her arm against his as they pass on the stairs. She likes to gently rub his shoulders, whipser soothing little comforts into his bitter ears. She likes to bring him up the small pies, the little glasses of gin and ale. She likes to meet his eyes, to stare into them and pretend his eyes say the same thing hers do.
Hers sing of love and beauty and hope and-
Loneliness. Shattered dreams and hearts.
She doesn't like to think of such things. She stays busy these days, and cannot brood as she used to. Oh, she has always scorned such brooding. For years (fifteen years to be exact, fifteen horrible years without him, fifteen damned years), she pined for him. She thought of him constantly, worried for him, prayed every night to a God she has never believed in for his safety, supplied for his damned Lucy and their damned Johanna, neglected her damned Albert, never once allowed a soul to have his room upstairs (just in case, she always told herself), and now he is home. It is strange, she thinks, that she pined for him more than Lucy ever did.
Lucy had Johanna.
But Lucy took a poison, didn't she? Didn't die, but wanted to? Was willing to let her poor husband come home to no one, because that stupidly beautiful woman would know of the judge's plan for darling Johanna? That is why she lies. She doesn't want him to know that his darling Lucy, his damned Lucy, was so very selfish. She wants him to picture her heartbroken for love of him, poisoning herself, trusting that Johanna would be safe. His heart cannot break again, not by her words.
He would be devastated, she knows, if he were to find out the truth. That she was alive, but never could be the woman he loved. That she lived but did nothing to safe her damned daughter.
No, no, she will protect him from such ugliness. Even if he lies to her, even if his eyes do not speak of love as hers do, even if her heart breaks anew every night. She will protect him. After all, she loves him. And love is protection from the world's evils, protection from the lies that horrible Lucy would have told him. Her own lies are sweet non-truths, that's all. Sweet little whispes to protect him from pain. But there are so many of them. So many little non-truths, so many little secrets kept close to her heart. Plenty of people wanted that room upstairs, plenty of people didn't care that it was haunted (as she told them, desperate to have a reason to keep the lovely room to her lonely self). Lucy is alive, insane, ruined, but alive. She never could have sold his razors, those last reminders of him.
He will never, never, never learn of her lies.
It is that late hour when she should be sleeping for a long day tomorrow. She will be exhausted and Toby will worry (but not Mr. T, maybe Benjamin Barker, but that man is gone and she is so very sad). But she cannot sleep. She can only think.
He doesn't love her.
He never loved her.
He never will love her.
She knows, as always. She knows, knows, knows! She knows her love is to be unrequited. She knows that every night until she is dead her heart will break and every morning until she is dead she will pretend it is fine so that it can break again in the coming night.
She will always love him, has always loved him. She wants to kiss his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips. She wants to run her hands through that unruly hair and feel his scalp warm beneath her fingertips. She wants him to take her in his arms and promise to keep her safe (because she is afraid, so afraid, of a thousand things- if he were to find out the truth, his rages would kill her, if the judge were to find them out, what might happen, if darling Toby were to leave, oh where would she be, what will happen when the beadle catches on, a thousand ideas). She wants him to call her his pet, his love, his dove, his lamb, his many pet names. But she wants him to mean it.
She knows this will never happen.
She knows he will never feel that way and it is selfish of her to wish for such things.
But she hopes, in the daylight.
She blinks blindly in the dark, unseeing, lost in her lonely mind. A warm tear makes its way down her once beautiful face, and she will pretend in the morning that it never fell. As her cochineal smears off her lips into the pillow (so very good for muffling sobs), she knows already that it will be pristine and perfect before another soul sees her. She will continue to put up the lie, to show the facade, and no one will be the smarter. She will never allow another to see her heartbreak. She will never show it.
Never, never show that she knows.
But she does.
She knows and it kills her.