Hello everyone3 Thank you again, dear guest user, who reviews every chapter! This chapter explains some things and I hope I wrote it clear enough to understand. Have fun!

A Hundred Years Of Love

On Christmas Eve, the decoration in the Folly had tripled overnight. With the very extensive breakfast Molly also showed that she was in a very holiday mood. Still, she seemed kind of nervous around me, almost as if she was afraid of me, which was absolutely absurd. Unfortunately, I wasn't in my prehistoric state either, which I think Nightingale noticed, but he didn't ask. Mellenby, on the other hand, was terribly happy.

The mistletoe branch in the atrium had disappeared, although it had apparently turned overnight into a jungle of pine greens, holly trees, Christmas stars and tons of decorative ribbons. Maybe Molly got the impression that I wasn't interested in my boss because I stopped her from tearing David apart yesterday? Truly, I didn't want to think about it, and I also ignored Nightingale's worried side view when he thought I wasn't looking.

Somehow, I had a feeling that Mellenby was gonna talk to him soon, and if he didn't... maybe I'd find the courage to do it? I think both would affect our relationship. Could I play Nightingale's supportive friend if the tide between him and David would ease? I'm already a little jealous, even though there was nothing to justify my feelings. But the worst thing would be to be rejected. I'm sure Nightingale would be very sensitive by doing so. He wouldn't chase me out of the Folly and free me of all my vows or anything like that. But it could destroy everything we've worked so hard for. Would a certainty be worth jeopardizing this wonderful fragile friendship? Throw away that safety comfortable relationship?

No, definitely not. What was I thinking? To ask Nightingale for a date, isn't like asking someone to pass the salt. A no could destroy everything, and even in the unrealistic occasion that he says yes, things could still change between us. We could always fight and split up, and then things would be a lot worse. I should be happy that David showed up here and thwarted everything. I really should.

All in all, everyone spent the day in serenity. The sky was completely white, but although the temperature dropped just below freezing, the snow forecast for London looked rather poor. But that wasn't so bad, the romantic mood was gone for me anyway.

Later Molly forced us to play cards with her, while David, after a very quiet hiss on her part, voluntarily decided to read instead. I have to say, I wasn't really on board, and I lost more often than I wanted, but Thomas and I never stood a chance against Molly anyway.

In the afternoon she served tea and cocoa and biscuits. Everyone seemed to let their guard down a little bit to enjoy the moment. Everybody except for me. Somehow, I couldn't stop thinking about Mellenby. I had done a lot of research in the last few days to find out how David could be alive again. He looked like the man he was 75 years ago when he locked himself in the lab and shot himself, but there was no trace of the latter.

How could it be that he just showed up here? What happened to his body? I'm pretty sure he was buried (and I don't want to think so much about Nightingale probably having to take care of all this as considered it as his duty). So, could Mellenby come from an alternate timeline that he was snatched from just before he could shoot himself, but because of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, he now carried the memory of the version that died in this reality? Actually, we would have to sort of cross-check David's memories with Nightingale's memories to see if there were any inconsistencies. But we had only limited opportunities to do so, and so far, all the memories they talked about seemed to be the same.

So, after dinner, I tried to read into all the parallel universe stuff, which kind of reminded me of my senior year. I found myself yawning in the Tech Cave with a laptop on my lap and realized it was almost midnight. It was time to go to sleep and first make a detour to the kitchen to satisfy the night hunger. It was cold outside, and the spiral staircase had been quite icy since today, so I grabbed hold of the railings as a precaution.

Back in the Folly, I took off my jacket to hang it up properly, because Molly's gonna kill me if I put it anywhere else again. But then I brushed the fabric of Mellenby's coat and smelled something very faint again, like the day I thought I had felt a certain vetigia. I was sure this time. I tried to pull the garment off the hanger, but it got stuck somehow, so I pulled it very energetically once again.

In fact, the big coat landed in my hands, but something small fell out of one of the pockets and landed on the floor. I picked up the piece of paper and read it. I felt sick when the pieces of the puzzle came together.

I saw the picture and just knew it. I knew I had it with me when I was about to…go.

I heard David's voice in my ears and remembered that his memory had not overwhelmed him where his suicide took place, but a floor higher. He had chosen his words carefully.

Never showing remorse for not destroying the Black Library. He had told Nightingale at the time that he would hardly bear to approach it, but in conversation with me he had let it shine through that whatever was being kept behind this closed door was his legacy, fruits of his work.

Thomas never saw the opportunity that the results could have brought us. A solution, a price for all the suffering, so that these terrible experiments would not be meaningless.

I was so blind, because of course no one could shoot themselves in the head and turn up unharmed 75 years later. But then what happened to him?

Then, a heavy, sweet smell came up my nose and I finally knew what it was.

I don't know how long I sat there on the cold tile floor of the nearest bathroom, like a teenager who clearly didn't know anyone at the party, staring at the piece of paper. Again and again, I read this one date, March 5, 1945, where Chemnitz was bombed, David didn't visit Nightingale at the hospital, and Hugh Oswald and Molly found the body... found a body. The day Mellenby wanted to take that train ticket to Leicester, without a word, without Thomas, but maybe with some of the results that the Black Library kept until everything went wrong.

Eventually I managed to get up because someone had to show Thomas this ticket. Someone had to end that self-blame he harboured for Mellenby's apparent suicide. Yes, it's cruel to tell him that he'd been living a lie for the past 75 years, that he'd been betrayed, but someone had to stop it. I knew he will hate me or even himself for it, but in time he will finally stop blaming himself and he can get rid of all those feelings he was keeping under wraps for decades.

As I searched for Nightingale, I thought of how many things suddenly made sense. Molly's fear and later her anger. Mellenby's carful use of words…

The old ticket in my hand felt much heavier than paper should have been. As I noticed m shaky and sweaty hands and I was briefly afraid that the ticket would dissolve.

I found them in the library, sitting side by side on the big sofa in front of the crackling fireplace. They didn't notice me, just stared at the fire, hands intertwined, while Nightingale's head rested on his shoulder. I could hear them speak softly. The sound of laughter as muffled as from a pillow.

I didn't have to stay to know where that would lead. I'm not a masochist. I knew what they had when I saw the look on their faces. A hundred years of love. I would never know what it was like, never feel what they had, since me and my parents and my grandparents weren't even born when they met. Because, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't build a time machine to keep Nightingale from being lonely for so long. Because I couldn't stop anything, I couldn't protect anyone, except right now. I could protect him from the truth, as well as everyone else is doing it in this house. I could give them their happy ending.

And that's why I didn't go inside, respected that wall with the force of almost a century and hid the train ticket in the next best book.

While I was doing this, a movement from the corner of my eye distracted me. Molly was standing in the door, staring at me, and I'm pretty sure she's been doing it for a while. I sighed. At least there was one conversation that was held today.

I took my jacket and walked out the service entrance with Molly. She can't or doesn't want to leave the Folly, but moves freely on the grounds, and as we stood there in the yard looking out at the coach house, I wondered if she had ever lost the chance to go, maybe at that time, by doing what she was doing.

There were still a few openings, but I think I know what must have happened to Mellenby back then.

Like he said, he got his gun and the photo because he wanted to have it with him when he goes... like in really going and leaving the Folly and Nightingale. Because things in the Black Library had made him insane, but unlike others, not because he had read them, but because he couldn't read them. He had promised to let it rest out of love for Thomas, but the never-ending questions had devoured him until one day, after a visit to the hospital, he had decided to buy a ticket and leave in the early hours of the morning, along with as many fruits of his labour as he could bear.

Maybe he would have come back. If David would had developed a theory that could save as many lives as were lost at Ettersberg, he might have made it back to London. Back to the Folly where no veteran could take it anymore, because of ghosts and memories and guilt. Where only Nightingale was left because someone had to.

He would have forgiven David if he had come back. He would have, because he'd just be glad, he wasn't alone. And maybe David could have forgiven himself if he had finally led one of his experiments to something other than heartache. It would have excused that day where he just had disappeared without anyone noticing…But someone had.

We kept quiet for a while, which was on mw because Molly isn't able to talk. It was still cold, but somehow only my breath was blowing clouds. I might have given Molly my jacket if she had given a sign that she was cold, but she stood in her maid uniform so unimpressed on the cold winter night that I didn't.

"So, it was you?", I said, still unsure how to start the conversation. I thought of the missing girls in North Herefordshire and one of them, Nicole, who suddenly had a double. "You staged his suicide?"

She looks very anxious for a very short time before braiding her teeth and clenched her fingers in the fabric of her skirt, as if she had to refrain from pulling my throat out at any moment.

"Molly...", I tried to keep my voice soothing and not to show that it scared me a bit. "Did he try to break into the Black Library?"

She looked away for a moment before turning her head. So, a yes. Then she looked at me bloodthirsty again.

"I don't blame you", I said honestly. "You did it for Nightingale."

I would have done the same, I just said in my mind.

At first glance, a lover who leaves you is a better option than a lover who takes his own life. But David would have been a traitor if he had carried out his plan. Right after the war, Nightingale had a healing wound and so much that he had to rebuild himself. I don't know if he would have survived the hunt for a traitor across the country. And especially not for someone who had betrayed him so personally.

"He asked you to watch the Folly, watch the Black Library, and you did."

Molly hissed quietly and let go of her skirt. They're remained visible wrinkles, which smoothed them with an energetic motion.

"You know I was in...fairyland. I was standing with the Queen in a clearing in the woods and all of a sudden, she grins at me, and we are there. I know you're related to them in some way, Molly…" I stopped briefly and looked at her face. As I was talking of the Queen a shadow of fear crept over her face but now, she didn't make any attempt to tell me anything about her emotions, seemed more patient, as if she wanted to wait until I had spoken. "Did you send him there? But how? And if you could, why didn't you leave?"

She didn't answer but just stared at me for a very long time.

"That means, you can't go? But you could send something there?" I sighed frustrated as I still didn't get any reaction from her. "Listen... Can you try to show me something, so that I can understand you better?"

Something awoke in her face for a moment, then she looked away and I followed her gaze. Molly stared at a spot on the floor for a long time, her face was clearly distracted in pain. I felt bad because I pushed her. I'm sure everything was taken from her when she was dragged to London, far from her home. But then suddenly a speck of colour appeared on the grey stone floor. There was a very small example of the plants that had given David's coat the distinctive smell: foxglove.

I picked it up in amazement and looked at it carefully.

"So, you also can theoretically bring something there?" She shuddered and I quickly added, "I mean, that's what you did to David. It must have hurt a lot. But what happened to him there? Did he just sleep 75 years?"

Molly hesitated for a moment and her smooth brow waved, then she pointed at my wrist.

"Does time pass differently there?", I asked, and she nodded, which was such a human gesture that I'm sure she had taken it from me.

"And how did he get out of it?"

She didn't seem to know the answer and since she started to look quite panic again, I quickly grabbed her (very cold) hand and squished it shortly.

"I won't tell anyone", I said firmly. "I promise."

She stared at me with such a testing look that even Nightingale would become jealous before giving me a very toothy smile.

We stood there for a while, not knowing what to say next (okay, obviously it was just me who didn't know what to say), then I finally squeezed it out: "Did you know back then that they...uh...loved each other?"

Molly only laughed about it hissingly, because of course she knew. She probably knew about everything that ever happened in that house.

"That was a stupid question…", I muttered a bit offended anyway.

She still hissed until she reached out her arm, patted my shoulder in a frighteningly compassionate way, and then walked back in.

I stood there for while looking at the flower. I thought about David and how the memory of wanting to leave Nightingale had given him a panic attack. If that wasn't a sign of remorse, I don't know. He was the best option for Nightingale, tried to make my brain clear to me, but my heart didn't really seem to believe it. Maybe I didn't want to.

Eventually it had started to snow.