A/N: I know there's only a tiny group of people in this fandom, but I hope anyone who stumbles upon these like them. Now that I'm on summer break I should be able to write a bit more.
The boy was getting worse.
That's what the doctor kept telling Archibald, as though ignorant to the fact that the Baron had imagined such for the whole duration of Lilias's pregnancy. He knew the child would be as cursed as him: a poor, sickly, cripple, whom no one would want to see, to be friends with, to love.
A part of him wanted the child to die – to be put out of his misery. But another part, the part he still held his wife in, reminded him that Lilias would never forgive him; she'd be heartbroken to know he held such little regard for a part of her he still had: the living proof of their love.
"I told you, Neville," he exclaimed at the news, "that he'd be a sickly thing. I knew it even before she– before he was born."
His brother picked up on the implication of Archibald's statement; he sighed in defeat, letting his brow raise in an expression of incredulity.
"I tried to save her, you know that. I did what I could – I saved the boy. That child would have probably been small even if he'd gone full-term, Archie. You're lucky he's made it this far. I've. tried. Everything."
"She was my wife!" Archibald's voice was starting to raise in frustration; he rose from his chair, "and now she's gone, and I'm stuck with that thing to remind me! Goddammit, Neville, you loved her too; you should have tried harder."
Though hurt by the elder's words, the doctor took a moment to breathe; Archibald had never been so short-tempered as he was in the last few weeks: in their youth, the younger brother was used to Archibald retreating in any kind of crisis.
"A coward shouldn't be in charge of an estate of such reputation as Misselthwaite," Neville would remark to his friends, bitter that himself, the able-bodied, sociable, attractive brother wouldn't be the one to inherit their father's title.
Perhaps a bit of residual bitterness still remained in the doctor's subconscious; he'd found comfort in truly believing that he'd done everything he could to save Lilias, but had he done the same for Colin? Afterall, without his brother having an heir, he'd be next to inherit after Archibald, and the good Lord knows their mother's death was what drove the former Lord Craven to an early grave just a few years ago.
As a doctor, he didn't with his patient to die; nor, as a man, did he wish harm upon his nephew – but the secret hope still nestled itself inside the doctor's mind.
Through all this inner-turmoil, Neville stood motionless, earning Archibald the chance to sooth his seething heart.
"Why her instead of him," he murmured in a daze, lowering himself back into his chair.
Placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, "that's better now, Archie, isn't it?" Neville remarked, standing beside his brother.
"Try channeling these feelings into actual activities – when was the last time you went outside?"
Still in his dreamlike state, Archibald replied, not since the accident… nature reminded him too much of Lilias.
The other sighed, long and heavy; he should have figured as much.
He rang the servants' bell, which Mr. Pitcher promptly responded to.
"Go down to the stables and tell them to prepare our horses. Archie and I are going out for a ride."
The two brothers would spend hours riding out on the moors in childhood, racing around to see who could get their horse to gallop the quickest. (It was always Neville's horse, Mephistopheles, but then he'd be too tired to continue so, while his horse rested, Archie would advance on his steady mare, Demeter.)
While Neville reminisced on these memories, Archibald's turned to the fateful day two and a half years ago when he went riding down to the valley near the river, and met the woman he now cursed for ever loving him.
How vividly he remembered stumbling upon that young woman with hair spun of gold, and an inviting smile, so unlike the ones the women of high society would force themselves to bear in greeting "that miserable cripple."
Lilias was never like those women anyway. But she would never smile at him like that again; no, she was one with the earth now.
Unknowingly, perhaps being accustomed to the route, Demeter had led Archibald to the river just by the little cottage Lilias was living in when they met. The garden which had grown with their love flourished into a wilderness – just as Lilias would have liked – just like that of the garden Archibald now avoided even thinking about now.
He left Demeter to drink – she was old and faithful and not easily spooked, so Archibald didn't have to worry bout her wandering off – and walked over to the gate he had so hesitantly stood at the first time he met those hazel eyes which bore into his heart, and haunted his dreams.
He picked a rose off one of the nearby bushes to test its willingness to be set free; it provided just enough resistance to entice the lost, lonely man to pick at another, and another, and another, until a bare patch was visible from the gate where Neville now stood.
He carefully approached his brother (who had collapsed in a pathetic heap in front of the bush, amid the fallen fuchsia heads of Lilias's precious blossoms.
"My dear little ones," he heard the widower recall, "that's what she'd say to the blossoms. I can still hear her murmuring to them; she believed that conversing with plants was just as necessary to helping them grow as rich earth or water or sunlight."
He continued murmuring this initial phrase to each rose that had fallen victim to his wrath. He picked up each individual blossom to examine it, to apologize to it; if they were the slightest bit imperfect, he threw them across the grass – Lilias loved all her flowers, imperfections included, but Archibald knew she only deserved perfection in return for how much love she gave them.
The same way she deserved more than a hunchback, a recluse, as the object of her affection; she'd say she loved him just like her blossoms: imperfections included. But that was getting harder and harder to believe, and the image of her beautiful face started to blur in his memory.
"It's pitiful, Neville," somewhere between a bark and a sob," disgraceful honestly, that such impurities would dare show themselves in her garden," Archibald commanded, reaching to test more roses at the lower end of the same bush as previous.
"You're behaving like a child," the doctor wanted to scold, but he didn't have the heart; wasn't it qa week or two ago that he felt the same frustration?
Neville just expressed it differently, privately.
"How could something she gave life to be so unfortunate, so vile." Archibald continued muttering grievances like these at the foliage, but his brother knew he wasn't talking about flowers anymore.
He helped the elder stand, hoping removing him from a site that held such strong ties to Lilias may be healthier for Archibald.
"The boy is a fighter," he tried to reassure, "I know thing are not looking well, but I'm trying – and so is he; he needs his father though, Archie. He needs to know you support him, even if he won't remember."
Calling Demeter to his side, "he needs his mother."
"He needs both, Archie – you need to be both for him." The brothers trotted in the direction of Misselthwaite, leaving the valley behind them.
"Find the part of you that held Lily close and use it to love your son, her son."
"I can't," Archibald snapped, "that part is hers. He doesn't deserve it; he's the reason that she was taken from me – he took her from me!"
And with the click of his tongue and a ick of his boot, Archibald sped away from Neville. His brother held his own horse steady at the excitement – this wasn't a childhood race.
Perhaps a bit of space between the two brothers would be good, Neville pondered, free to grieve in their own ways.
He just needed to trust his older brother not to do anything Lilias wouldn't want him giving into...