Ingemisco tamquam reus

He held the book in his hands and removed the marker almost reverently from where Barbara had put it the night before. As he did every other day, he sat himself down on the armchair, his legs under him, with a blanket thrown over him. This day was different. Barbara wasn't waiting for him to read – or to shut up so she could read to him – but curled on her side and facing away from him. He knew she hadn't expected him to come home. And he almost hadn't. He'd gone through feelings of betrayal and anger and grief in quick succession, had resolved to get drunk or high and jump off the highest building he could find and had done none of it.

Instead, he had decided that he wasn't going to feel all hard done by. And then it had hit him that he had no reason to grieve. He had lost nothing. She was there. She was Barbara, his Barbara, and nothing could change that he loved her more than he'd ever thought he was able.

He licked his lips. 'A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other,' he started reading. He saw her tense out of the corner of his eye, but he wasn't going to look at her. He'd cry if he did. Not because of the news the weird young doctor in Goodneighbor had given them, but because he knew that this was harder for her than for him. Bravely, he continued reading. 'A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!' He did look now and promptly lost every mind he'd had for the book when he saw the tears running down her cheeks.

'Are you out of your mind?' she asked, walking towards him in slow steps. Her eyes were wide, almost frightened and he wanted nothing more than to get that look off her face, to tell her she had nothing to fear and nothing to cry over.

'I've never been saner in my life. I love you.'

'I'm … I'm a … thing!'

This was way more than he was prepared to listen to. He placed the marker in the book again and sat it down before walking over to her to meet her where she'd halted. 'Hold right there. You are not a thing. So you're a synth, assuming that person even knew what she was saying. But more importantly, you're my wife. You're a person. I adore you. I want you. I need you. I don't care what you are except Barbara, the woman I fell in love with for so many reasons I'd need a lifetime to list them.' He was a little surprised himself that he meant every word.

At first he thought she'd protest, dig herself deeper into the abyss of self-hatred he knew so well, but then Barbara stood on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. 'Then go on, love,' she said, her voice catching. 'Read to me as if this didn't make a difference.'

He smiled at her. 'I swear to you that it doesn't and one day you'll believe me. I'm going to show you. But something has to be different today.' He saw the uncertainty, but only for a moment. Then there was that glint in her eyes, that silent joy she reserved for him alone. Dim but there. He took her face into his hands and pressed his lips to hers in a chaste, loving kiss. 'You are not going to have that couch for yourself today.' He sat down and pulled her into his lap with her back against his chest. Then he wrapped the blanket around them both, opened the book on her lap, and continued reading over her shoulder. The world was all right. They were all right. And a shadow in his soul fled for good from her light.

((The book, if it needs saying, is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.))