A/N: Thank you so much to all the reviewers and favouriters (not a word?) of the first chapter - you are the reason this chapter is posted. This is very long, very introspective and very angst-ridden. Be warned - again! I wanted to do justice to the magnitude of their emotions here - after all, Ross didn't just forget to pick up milk on his way home, did he?! My writing style is sometimes...different, and I think it's a bit like marmite...you either like it or hate it! I can't write any other way - sorry! At least I hope some of you will enjoy it!

My Demelza is a 'mash-up of tv show and book. In a bid to make the show's Demelza a feisty, 21st century heroine, I think the writer focussed a little too much on her anger and bitterness and not enough on her utter devastation and loss, as the book did. She is strong, yes, but strength does not preclude fear and despair, or make them less valid or more shameful human emotions...Book lovers may also notice some dialogue from the Graham books. And on that note, I own nothing...

Chapter 2 - The Claiming

He waited.

Ross sensed he had made a connection with his wife at last, but that it was sapling tender, and for once, for once, in his desperation, his panic, he was mindful not to wither it with his frost. His heart swelled within him, taking in the confusion of emotions that played out across Demelza's face as she struggled with the conflict inside her. But, despite his small breakthrough, this was far from over and he knew it. The air of the parlour seemed to gather around them like a held breath and they both stood there, rooted.

Demelza's eyes, as clear and as tempestuous as the ocean, were luminous in her turmoil; her face cast into relief, the sharpness of cheekbones and generousness of lips, exaggerated. She was unpolished and wild and fierce. And she had been his...she had been his. His gaze, nocturnal-black, became unusually unguarded and it shone with the open wanting in them.

But Demelza could not see it; he was all silhouette to her, and staring into the darkness of his face she sought for the confirmation, the truth, of his words. She felt the sting of tears and she swallowed hard in an attempt to fight back the swell in her throat. Except for Julia, Demelza rarely gave in to tears. Tears, her father had often told her when she was young, were weakness, andd she had quickly learnt to stifle her crying rather than suffer the extra beating it won her. There had been no room for softness and sentiment in her young life, and that Demelza gave it so freely in adulthood was no small wonder.

But she was suddenly weary, tired. So very tired of the fight; with her husband, with George and Elizabeth. With herself. She had no strength left to stop the well that gathered in her throat, and if the dam burst, the storm outside would not be the only thing to shake Nampara. Desperate not to succumb, she pulled in a breath, but the air...the air, it seemed to her oppressive and warm despite the open door and the rain outside. It was like a presence between them - and then not as Ross stepped closer, his features catching the glow of a candle at last as he moved.

It was in his eyes, glittering dark, and in his waiting – he was waiting, she knew – that Demelza saw her husband again, finally: the man she had married with all his strength and grace and loneliness and longing.

And hope.

Hesitation.

They both felt the pull gather between them and around them. Still, Demelza did not move. In the dim light Ross' eyes dilated to utter blackness and were wide as he watched her, as if he wanted to take more of her into himself, like light through a window. He wanted to drown himself in her and forget himself, his idiocy, there. She was his peace and gentleness; she was love and the possibility of a future – precarious but possible.

The radiance of her eyes kindled something in him that made him acutely and suddenly aware that he had passed all his life before in a haze of half-living, half-feeling. For years he had thought, deep down he had thought, that, no matter how deeply he loved his wife, there was something in Elizabeth that he needed and that Demelza lacked. The ninth of May had shown him how wrong he was, the confirmation of a long cherished feeling had simply...not been there. In the shock of it, the turmoil, Ross had walked for months in a daze of confusion, as if unable to admit the ten years of emotional energy wasted on his folly, and the pain that the act of such revelation had brought to the one who truly held his heart. His whole heart.

Knowing this as he did now, the impossibility of good-bye overwhelmed Ross and, helpless, fearful, faltering, he tried to forge the words, to explain.

"I want you to know that Elizabeth means nothing to me, nothing. I realise that now..." he began.

"Don't say such things, Ross," Demelza interjected with a sharp shake of her head and an anguished whisper. Again a look of confusion creased her brow and she pursed her lips to stop them trembling, her head dropping abruptly so that she stared desolately at his boots. "I want to believe you..." her voice was soft, childlike now; a curling whisper that was barely audible. "I...I think that I do want that now. But when you say such things about your feeling for... for her, I cannot believe 'tis true."

"It is true!" And his fearfulness came out over harsh. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes tight shut, his jaw clenching convulsively as he struggled to bank down the despair that threatened to engulf him. "It is true," he repeated softly, emphatically, raising his eyes once more to meet hers and she regarded him intently as he continued:

"The pain you think you see in me at her marriage to George? It is not pain at a wound to my own heart, but rather pain at the wound, the betrayal, to my family. You know, dear God, you know Demelza, of my loathing for George, but do you forget Francis' hatred for everything Warleggan before he died? That...man now lives in our ancestral home; he is bringing up Francis' son. Does that not give you pain?" He demanded, knowing her keen sense of fairness and justice.

"Of course it do," she answered, her eyebrows raised suddenly. "But surely 'tis more 'n that for you. Elizabeth..."

"Arghh! Elizabeth!" And Ross almost growled her name with simmering frustration, and Demelza watched the rhythmic jump of his jugular at his throat. Once more, mindful of the peril, he took a deep breath to steady himself before he tried again.

"D'you know, Demelza," he said quietly, "how it is when a person has wanted something always and never had it? Its true value is unknown, has never been evaluated– it may be everything or nothing." Ross drew in another long, ragged breath, his adrenalin-fuelled heart beating wildly, still. "What I...did, in May, it taught me that Elizabeth does mean nothing to me. For that reason only - if it could have only happened in a vacuum, without hurt to anyone- I should not have regretted it, for it means that I can live my life, that I can love, without this...this..." and his black eyes roved, struggling for the words, " ...this insidious thing, this beast, casting its shadow over me; over us."

Again he was filled with the sight of her as she stood, uncertain, and he felt new life course suddenly through him, mocking him, it seemed, at the very moment his future with Demelza hung in the balance. Tendrils of sensation and emotion that he had not known with such intensity before; roots branching past every trapdoor and through any number of his dark levels, and he was changed by it – made fuller, brighter; the shadow of Elizabeth, gone. Outshone.

He took a step towards her, closing the space between them – negative, pointless, space.

"Your heart has always seen the truth in me, Demelza. Can it not see it now? Demelza..." His voice was no longer fearful, but low and ardent and defeated, and it caressed her name. Ross reached out very slowly, and with one long finger light against her cheek, he hooked a loose wisp of her unruly hair and pushed it behind her ear. The tiny touch sparked and blazed, but it was nothing to the fuller fire when he brought the whole of his palm against her cheek, and he knew that she felt it too.

Demelza bit down on her lip, uncertainty swamping her. The feel of his palm on her hot cheek ... she felt the embers she thought had died, but there was something else also. Images, unbidden, unwanted, flew into her mind: the same cool hand caressing so tenderly, but another face, another woman. And oh, oh, it ached. She clutched at her stomach as if she could feel it there like a physical blow . How cruel was her treacherous, disobedient mind. Now, now that she so wanted ...she so wanted...But it was there, she was there, still.

Elizabeth.

Elizabeth. Elizabeth's life had been an abstraction to Demelza, given over as it was to position and duty and material considerations. She hadn't been able to conceptualize its reality until she saw her with George tonight, when she had gone to Trenwith to warn them. Demelza had seen the victory in Elizabeth's face when George had informed Ross's wife that he had left for France. It had struck her then: Elizabeth was a truly selfish creature, her actions driven by her own needs, and, at times, those of her son.

Even those early kindnesses that the mistress of Trenwith bestowed on her, Demelza now suspected to be attempts to ingratiate herself with Ross; ensuring that in his new-found happiness with his wife, he did not forget his first love in all her perfection. Her unspoilt, untried, perfection; unsullied as it was by living a life together with all its toils and hardships; with all its mundane drudgery of tramping through the muck of the farm and fields; with its petty rows and rifts; its calloused hands and aching feet; with its unspeakable grief and losses.

How would Elizabeth have coped with sharing Ross' life with him? How far would she have fallen? How far had she fallen in showing her true self in May? Is that what Ross meant? Yet if Elizabeth had been shown to be spitefully manipulative, then Ross had been shown to be a fool, and just as selfish. But Demelza was not so selfish, could never be so; it was against her nature, as it also was to hate with any longevity or depth of passion. Against her nature to let bitterness and hurt curdle and fester, souring the sweetness of love and life beyond redemption. It had been so with the loss of Julia, and it was so now.

Love, she suddenly realised in a moment of clarity, her love for Ross, was inescapable. It was simple, yet total, like hunger. To try to never love him was like never eating again whilst still foolishly expecting to live. She did not want to drift through the rest of her life in a kind of half-existence, observing events as if behind glass – present but not fully taking part because she was not wholly there; because a part of her was missing.

At that moment, Ross's hand fell from her face, leaving coldness in its wake. Again Demelza thought of those fingers touching another's flesh, and she was almost overcome, but she pushed the image aside with a new, emerging, very different resolve to the one she had started the evening with.

Yes, her mind would always remember, and her gut too, but her heart in that moment could deny its true self no longer. Yes, her heart knew the truth in him, and her heart was never wrong, and it was filled only with his expectant face – his hair, black and wild, the convulsive clench of his unshaven jaw, the guttering light playing across his angular features and the fullness of his mouth. Judas, he was beautiful, she thought. And she also thought, oh. Oh.

"Demelza," Ross murmured again, breaking her thoughts. Oblivious to this new turmoil within her, he watched her carefully. Their marriage had been fractured, the break too painful to prod and poke with any directness these past months; lord knows, he had tried nonetheless and his attempts had been woeful. Woeful.

Even if he had been less clumsy, more articulate, it would have made little difference until now. There had been no flexibility; the gulf of hurt too fresh and wide to bend and knit back together. But now... ? Things would be different, they would bear the scars, but surely, surely, they could mend. Surely he had said enough...

Surely. Yet there was one more thing.

His mouth went suddenly dry and he swallowed as he broached a subject he had tried not to dwell on overmuch, and even now he couldn't come to it directly.

"I also want you to know how deeply sorry I am that I have been the cause of any pain to you. You were – are- so undeserving of any harm. And... and...after you told me about ..." - now for it - "McNeil, my own feeling, my jealousy, it gave me a greater understanding of how you must have felt...all these months. I want you to know that. If you had gone off with McNeil, I should have had only myself to blame."

If Ross's eyes had darkened at his mention of the soldier's name, then Demelza's face went bone-white. Her memories of that night of the Bodrugan ball were like knives, and it pained her to have them unwittingly turned against her. She took a faltering step backwards and shivered involuntarily at how narrow was her escape, and how deep was her naivety, how shameful her intent.

"You're cold," Ross stated, not knowing the barb of self-loathing he had struck. "At least let us agree to shut the door on this miserable night," he persisted. She had dropped her gaze and he inclined his head in an effort to read her face." Demelza...?"

"I 'm not sure...I want to... to..." but Demelza trailed off weakly. Her head span. Words wouldn't seem to settle into sense as her mind made one last desperate pitch for logic against her heart.

"Come, Demelza, should we not talk properly first, if...if you are to leave me?" His voice was more gentle than she could have believed possible, and she raised her gaze sharply to meet his again and she percieved, despite his words, that Ross' eyes shone with a hopeful, piercing scrutiny, almost unbearable to hold. But she met his gaze unwaveringly, and there was no more hate in the blue-greenness of it – uncertainty still, but no hate. Seeing it, and taking it as a sign, Ross turned abruptly and strode to the door, shutting it quietly, the sound of the lashing rain becoming muted.

He returned to where she stood and saw with jolt of shock that silent tears slid down her face. Her lip quivered in the effort of control, but the stream of salty wetness gathered and pooled under her chin. She made no sound, her features still impossibly composed, but that only made her lostness seem worse to him.

Ross's features shifted from wide-eyed shock to a sadness that threatened to overwhelm him with its force. Her loveliness, he thought, amid her sorrow would pierce his heart. He wanted to tell her it would be alright, but that was not a promise that was his to make anymore – that remit rested with her alone now. She stared blinking at Ross and his stomach clenched and he instinctively reached out to her. But that too was a privilege he had lost, and her arm shot out reflexively to rebuff him, her body still trying to do what her heart no longer could – deny the embrace, deny him.

"Don't," she whispered sharply. "You don't get to do that. " Her voice faltered on the last word, giving way to more stinging tears, and his face looked heartsick and stricken.

The collision of their arms had caught at Demelza's bandaged wrist and she sucked in a breath of pain, cradling it with her other arm, as a sharp throb began to pulse.

"You don't get...to ...to.." she stammered. "Oh!" Spinning suddenly and turning from him, she stepped towards the window and stared with sightless eyes at the rain marring the windowpane.

Since May, Demelza had only cried once, on her long, shameful walk across the Dark Cliffs back from Werry House. Her pride had not let Ross see her utter misery at his betrayal. She was a miner's daughter, dragged and beaten up to adulthood by an unloving father. Yet she had survived with the purity of her spirit intact, and she could not, would not, stomach Ross – this man who had raised her up to be so much more than what she was born into – look at her with pity. She had shown him her anger, her disappointment. Oh yes, of that there had been no end. But her devastation...?

No.

That pain, that hurt, she had carefully shut in a dark room of her mind, closing the door tight and not daring to open it for fear of what it might unleash.

It occurred to Demelza then, as she watched the rain trace rivulets down her reflection in the glass, that that place in her mind, the dark, was where she'd also kept all her happiness, bundled up and stowed away, like gear she'd never need again, except now she found she might, and she was fumbling around in the blackness to find it; grappling with the despair that was hid there as well as the joy. Hopelessly, she realised that the one could not be freed without the other demanding its due.

Ross's hands trembled and he clasped them and stepped slowly towards his wife, focussing on the fiery curls of her hair as she stood, back to him and silent once more. She had her arms wrapped around herself now, her hands hidden, and her head was tilted and hunched into her shoulder like a wounded bird, and she was...desolation.

An ache swelled in Ross. He wanted to fold her in his arms, but he couldn't, daren't, touch her again, not even in her anguish. And he couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear it.

But then, the tightness coiled in Demelza finally broke, the silent tears replaced by an outpouring of grief as she opened the door to that dark room at last; a sobbing that racked her, seized her, shook her.

Ross had only ever seen his wife this vulnerable once before – when they had lost Julia. And yet this seemed worse to him, worse, for he was the cause of her suffering and he felt his heart twist within him.

She began to shake. Pent emotions - the neglect and betrayal of the last months, the danger and confrontations of this very night at Trenwith - they broke over her like a tidal wave, the tears falling hot and fast and she covered her face awkwardly with her injured hand. The throbbing pain, both that in her wrist and her heart, sent her breathing off kilter and it became rapid and shallow – intermittent as she struggled to pull in air between her gasping sobs.

She staggered backwards, light-headed, the convulsions sending tremors through her slight frame.

And Ross caught her. Of course, of course, he caught her; stopped her falling. Enforced touch. He placed strong, gentle hands on her shoulders and she sank into their support, wanting and needing. She did not recoil, and some distant part of him marvelled at that.

"Demelza..." he murmured softly. "Take a deep breath. Hold it."

She tried to obey, the shivering sending her teeth on edge and causing her stomach to clench, threatening to revolt. As she quietened, Ross prised her wounded arm away from the curve of her waist and he supported her weight, her back to his chest. The bandaged wrist, sticky and dark from fresh blood, lay over his upturned forearm, her elbow resting in the crook of his.

Careful, he unwrapped the bloodied binding with his free hand and she acquiesced to the ministration like a listless child. When he saw the burnt mess of scorched skin and flesh beneath, his indrawn breath was a hiss of fury and his fingers gripped hers that were curled limply in his palm.

"I should have shot him," he choked out from between clenched teeth, appalled. His mouth brushed the top of her head and he closed his eyes, pulling in a shuddering breath to calm himself. Now was not the time for that; that could come later.

"Look at me, Demelza." And his voice was tender command, though he dreaded looking into her face and seeing what he might find there. But Demelza just stood there, leaning into him but shivering still and unmoving, her head hunched in its fixed position and her slender fingers still resting in his.

Ross gently moved his arm away and hers fell lifelessly to her side. Then, he gripped her shoulders again and turned her around. He was so careful with her, like she was made of glass, and she let herself be moved to face him.

He looked down at her and was caught by the sight of her long lashes, dusky and trembling against the blue-tinged flesh around her eyes.

She was so bleak. And so beautiful. And Ross' arms ached for the embrace that he still denied them, waiting for her. Still.

Her face was blotchy and wet and impulsively Ross smoothed her hair from her face, letting it run through his fingers. His thumb lingered lightly on her cheek, caressing. The action hauled him back to that moment of first touch, the day of Jim Carter's trial, when an urgent desire had gripped him. But that was long, long ago. Now, he knew her completely, had shared so much with her. Now he loved her. The love of his life. He had known it when he had almost lost her along with Julia. How could he have forgotten? How could he have been so stupid?

His hand then moved to rest on her back and she blinked up at him, her green eyes wet and wide and seeking. Her breathing had steadied and the shivering came now in sporadic bursts; Ross' presence, his solidity and strength calming Demelza in a way she had never expected it to again.

Another tentative hand at her back and she let herself be drawn to him. Ross's heart beat against her cheek and his arms came around to embrace her and she did not resist. And he held her. He held her. His long fingers moved down the length of her hair, again and again, soothing until he felt the last shudders fade and release their grip, and he murmured over and over, like a mantra he clung to, like he was atoning for all the times he had not told her in the past:

"I am sorry. So, so sorry...So sorry. My dear, my very dear Demelza. My fine, my loyal, my very sweet, my precious Demelza. I am so sorry..."

He drew back then and looked down into her face, his own features clouded with emotion and his black eyes glittering with tears now too. "I love you, Demelza. Demelza..." His voice was low, soft, and he dipped his head to the pale oval of her upturned face and carefully set his lips against her brow, then her wet cheek, then, when she did not tense at the charged intimacy, he breathed her name against the curve of her mouth.

"Demelza...?" His said, the word cracking with a desperate pleading.

When he withdrew, his black eyes searched for hers, looking for the answer his kisses had asked, but she held her face to his chest once more. Demelza's heart finally muscled her wearied mind into submission then, and it was as if a voice within her whispered "Enough of this; stop pretending."

So, with a shudder, she did.

He hooked a finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze, and he thought his heart would break as she looked at him and looked at him, pouring herself out through her extraordinary eyes – for him.

And then, she smiled through her weeping. She smiled. It wasn't the radiant, dimpled-cheeked unfurling - not the sunburst, not yet, that smile for him. This smile was small and sudden, shy and unsure. Dazzling nonetheless, and it more than answered his question, and Ross felt as if the air was pushed from his chest, and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe.

He bent his head once more, half-hesitant still , and he kissed her lips. Smooth as inevitability, his mouth brushed hers; a gliding together. A touch, like a whisper – a gentle, gentle grazing of his full lower lip across both of hers, and Ross tasted her, sweet and warm and trembling, and he was moved by the aching familiarity of her mouth beneath his. Then, his heart slammed into his chest as his wife unmistakeably leaned into his touch, and he caught her suddenly tight against him, a sudden unspooling as all restraints gave way. And that was all it took.

Magnets collide and quickly align.

They were urgent, clumsy, showering kisses. Lips landing where they would – brow, cheek, neck- again and again, no spot neglected . Lashes wet with her tears, and his too; salt-kissed lips to lips. They were overwhelmed with relief. After all that they had been through, relief, and thanks that they had come to this moment.

Breathless, Ross drew back, resting his forehead against Demelza's, the tips of their noses touching, and he took her face in his hands, fingers lightly skimming her jaw and ear, the unreality of touching her after so long an absence filling him with wonder and gratitude. She was as warm as summer, as wild as the sea, and as giving as new-tilled earth.

And she was his.

"I will never hurt you like that again," he whispered hoarsely . Demelza could taste the headiness of liquor on his breath as it sent tendrils of her hair dancing across her cheek, but she did not doubt the fierce conviction or the sobriety of his promise.

"No, you will not," Demelza responded with the same quiet ferocity, and there was no smile now, but she sought his mouth, and she claimed him. And he kissed her, his body responding to the heat of her, the kindling fire, and their lips and breath danced between them with relief once more. And hunger.

He was hers, she knew, and a sigh went through her like a loosening, and Ross felt it as he kissed her neck, burying his head in hair, eyes shut, drinking in the remembered fragrance of it. He tightened his arms around her, cradling her, breathing in her nearness, and she brought her good arm to wrap around his waist and they clung to each other.

They stood like that for a while, content in their togetherness and new understanding and they were quiet. But their blood and nerves and hearts were not; they were violently alive, rushing and dancing and aching and ...burning in the thrill of rediscovery.

It was Demelza who untangled herself at last, roused after who knew how long, by a gust of wind that rattled the windows. She looked up at him, holding his black, burning eyes carefully as she brought her uninjured hand to slide under the fabric at his chest, laying her palm to rest against his heart, and the very touch of her cool fingers seemed to speak to him:

I love you. I want you, I claim you, at the end of all this. Our future, peace. And you...

TBC... Again, if the desire is out there, I will post a final chapter that details the full reconciliation between husband and wife...*winks* (No lemons though!) Please, please review...