Jo sat by the sink where Hannah washed the pots. She aimlessly drew on the countertop with her fingertips as she held back another bout of tears. It felt as though all she could do was cry every minute of every hour.
The kitchen door opened and in crept Laurie, his face a perfect opposite of Jo's. "Where's the little Ma?" he asked Hannah in a loud whisper before he spotted Jo behind the older woman. Dressed in black looking as though someone had just cut her through Laurie's face fell and he froze in the doorway. Hannah dropped her saucepan and Jo pulled herself off the stool dreadfully serious.
"Meg's gone."
Laurie crossed the room in two paces and crushed the girl to him with an expression she would not soon forget. Hannah put a soapy hand on the tall boy's shoulder as Jo broke into painful sobs and he looked about wildly. "Jesus took her when she gave the bah-bees, dear child," she sniffed audibly, moving away to cover her face in the dishcloth.
Still in shock Laurie simply continued to hold Jo tightly as the girl wept. She clawed at his shoulder and he kissed her hair telling her to 'hold on, dear' as he had that awful night where Beth lay with the Fever.
"Grandfather said Meg had called you all down but he didn't say-" Laurie choked when Jo's last tears dried and she sat them down in the garden outside.
"I wanted it to be a surprise," she whispered "-she had twins, a boy and a girl." Jo plucked the long grass between the stones feeling as though everything had fallen apart.
"Twins," Laurie repeated still feeling entirely lost.
Silence settled over the pair and Jo could hear birds singing across the lane in the opposite fields. It felt wrong, it all felt wrong that everyone, everything had gone on as though it was any other day. Laurie was supposed to be greeted with the bundles of joy and her greatest smile but there was only grave quiet in the house behind them.
"I should have wrote you." Jo threw the grass at her feet, pulling her knees to her chest.
"I want – I wish I could have been here." He said, meaning 'there for you' without saying the words.
"I had the paper but-" Jo turned her head away from his, remembering the day she spent motionless locked in the garret while her sisters cried downstairs and her mother and father were out. She felt Laurie's hand on her back and silently took comfort as the sat on the steps and bees busied themselves around Meg's garden.
AN/: Anything you recognise in this is from 'Domestic Experiences' which is lord knows what chapter in Little Women and definitely not mine. Also while I'm at it, would anyone be interested in reading Little Women comics if I made them?