Disclaimer: I own everybody except Ichabod and his dad, but I'm not sure when Lord Crane will pop up again.
Once Upon A Time
Chapter Ten
Upon catching the first glimpse of a James Hall who had narrowly avoided death, Rose felt a sick prick of hope surge through her body. James was battered and bruised, and still bleeding from a fairly large gash on his left arm. His hands, the hands he had passed on to Ichabod, were blue and black and purple, and even yellow near his right thumb. His lip was swollen and he had had a thin slice of flesh removed from his left cheek, which was still red and probably infected. He was a sorry sight, to be sure, but the hope he gave to Rose was almost enough to allow her to forgive him for the horrible fate he still had a chance to bestow upon her.
"Oh, Mister Hall," Rose's mother gasped. She looked as though she would speak again, but her voice failed her in the next moment.
James opened his eyes, and beneath all the bruises and the blood, he almost looked surprised. "Misses Hughes?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.
"Yes, Mister Hall," said Rose's mother, who seemed to have found her voice again. "And my good friend Misses Staub, and my dear daughter Rose."
"Rose?" He looked from Mrs. Hughes to her daughter, who seemed an angel to him. The only true beauty he had seen since he set out on his terrible voyage; he felt that her presence today was truly a sign from God that he was meant to live. He was meant to live for this beautiful creature who loved him enough to look upon him even when he was hideous and deformed. "Rose," he said again, but there was a warmth in his voice unlike anything his young fiance had ever heard before from him. There even appeared to be a small smile on his swollen lips.
Rose swallowed her nervousness in one big, silent gulp, and pulled a rickety wooden chair up to the bed. She sat down beside him and held his hands, running her slender fingers lightly across the bruises. Although she did not love him, nor could she ever, he did inspire a certain amount of compassion in this weak state of his, and so she did not mind embracing him. She even whispered reassuringly in his ear, "Yes, I am here, my darling."
"Oh, Rose," he said, and weakly stroked her silky midnight hair. "Rose, I thought of you all the while as I drifted out to sea. I knew that I would die an unhappy man if I never saw your face again, even if only once. It was either that or struggle to the shore so that I could have a proper burial, and you a proper place to mourn." He pushed her gently away then, to look her in the eye, and he gave another small smile. "But now you are here, when I had no means of telling you where I was. You have sought me out of your own accord, and you have come to me in my time of need, without any askance on my part. For this, I declare that you are truly an angel."
"That's...very sweet," she said. Although a smile was plastered to her face, inside she screamed. It appeared that Mr. Hall was far more devoted to her than she had originally assumed; it could pose problems in the future.
"So," he said, now speaking more to the entire room instead of only to Rose, "in light of recent events, I propose a change in the wedding date."
He looked as though he was going to say more, but Mrs. Hughes cut in. "I beg pardon, Mister Hall, but if you recall, we had not yet set an exact date. However, we were thinking of having the wedding in early spring, late March or early April."
"Oh, yes," he said after thinking for a moment. "In that case, let us set a date now." Mrs. Hughes only nodded her approval. "Let us be wed on the twenty-eighth of March. I should be restored to full health by then, and I should be turning one year older on that day."
"Oh, is the twenty-eighth of March your birthday?" asked Mrs. Staub.
"Indeed it is," he said, smiling. "Isn't that a splendid day for a wedding, my darling Rose?" he asked, looking to his young bride.
Rose flashed him as bright a smile as she could, and said, with false cheer, "Yes, a wonderful day indeed." But inside she wept.
The following day, when Rose next saw Ichabod, she said nothing at first, merely held his face in her hands for a long moment of silence. Then she pressed her lips against his with a fervor still relatively alien to her nature, and she even slipped her tongue inside his mouth. So when she finally pulled away, Ichabod looked more than a little dazed and confused, but pleasantly so. "Well," he said, after blinking a few times, "that was...unexpected."
"Yes," she said, "just as unexpected as the news I have brought you."
For some reason, Ichabod's ears did not welcome these words. "I don't very much like the sound of that," he remarked.
"Well," she sighed, "you shouldn't." She took his hand and led him to the sofa, setting them both down gently. She began to stroke his hands and sighed again, biding time so that she wouldn't have to speak. But eventually she forced the words from her lips. "It seems, my dear, that Mister James Hall was in a bit of an...accident." He said nothing but raised his eyebrows, indicating that she should go on. "Apparently he was involved in a shipwreck, and he barely survived. But he survived nonetheless, and now we have a definite date set for the wedding."
He was silent for a moment, but then he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and nearly shook her. "But Rose, we still have a chance. Mister Hall will be incapacitated for some time, I'm certain, and they can't except you to spend time with him when he's barely conscious." His hands moved to her face, and he stroked her cheek gently. "We still have time," he said, his voice softer. "We can still make this work."
"But Ichabod," she said, removing his hands, "that's just it; we may have time, but time is all we have. We don't actually have a chance of being together in the end; all we can do is steal kisses and tender touches and time. It all just feels so hopeless."
"But he could die," Ichabod said. "His wounds must be serious, or bad enough that he can hardly breathe. Chances are he won't live to wed you."
"Oh, he won't die," she said, standing up and walking to the window. She stared out of it, despondent, and said, "You should have heard him talking to me, feeding me some nonsense that my presence was a sign from God that he had to live and make me his wife. If he dies, he'll die when we're good and married, and then I'd have to wait years before I could marry you."
He stood and joined her, wrapping one arm around her waist and placing the other on her arm. He kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, "Rose, I know that all odds seem against us, but things will work out. And if they won't do it for themselves, we'll just have to do it for them. I will not lose you to him."
She said nothing for a moment, as he gently rocked her in his arms, and then she spoke in a quiet voice. "He's your father."
"Unfortunately," he sighed. "It shouldn't be this way, that father and son fight for the love of one woman, but no one ever said that life would be simple."
"No," she agreed, "they most certainly didn't. And if they did...then God help them."
Mr. Hall washed up on shore on the twentieth of December, four days before the big Christmas Eve celebration that Rose's family was hosting. The Hughes household had been terribly busy of late, but now that James was not actively courting Rose, the young woman had more time to help out around the house. Mrs. Hughes had grown up in a large family that had had very little money left over at the end of the week to hire servants, so she knew how to do her fair shore of those mundane household tasks.
So as Christmas Eve approached, Rose could most often find her mother in the kitchen with the cook, the former Mrs. O'Brien, whose husband had died when Rose was but three years of age. On the twenty-second, as Rose was passing the kitchen on her way to the front door, her mother called out to her, "Rose, dear, why don't you come in here and help me with the plum pudding."
Rose backtracked a few paces and looked in on her mother, who was busy chopping up some sort of something. Mrs. O'Brien was busy with some boiling water. "I would love to, Mother," she said, "but I was just on my way out."
"Out?" Abigail Hughes repeated, though she didn't look at her daughter. "Where could you be going?"
"Well, Father asked me to gather some mistletoe," Rose lied.
"I thought he was having Tom do that."
"He was," Rose admitted, "but you know what Tom will do if he gets his hands on some mistletoe."
Abigail smiled. "He'd kiss every pretty thing within a five mile radius, I know. Though I can't stay angry with him; he is such a handsome thing." Now Rose smiled. "All right, go on, then. But be home before dark."
The blood is the life, Sikerra.
