FRABLE | DUPLICITY AU

[sodark]

Both Nate and Francesca have managed to avoid many of the harrowing parts of Duplicity, but it's like running through a minefield and their luck was bound to run out. Nate comforts himself with one thought, that it could be worse. That she could have been spirited away.

Instead, he came back from work to find her sleeping on the couch. Unable to rouse her and ruling out a medical emergency, he ascertains that she's experiencing one of Duplicity's mines. The long sleep residents occasionally fall into-- something they don't talk about enough. He feels ill-prepared for it.

He moves her somewhere more comfortable and he struggles on a daily basis not to sit at her bedside. Like a loyal, old dog. He knows it would upset her terribly if she woke up to find him wasting away, so he does the things he needs to do every day. It allows him to feel no guilt when he spends hours by her side, holding her hand.

It's not like he's ungrateful, either. It could be worse, she could have been sent home-- but he always knew he'd have to come to terms with that. Unlike Duplicity and his world, he can be assured in the fact that she'll be relatively safe. Unless she contracts tuberculosis. Or smallpox. Or Cholera. But she's a privileged woman-- usually the last to experience contagious disease. Usually.

His mind wanders to the other possibilities. Just like he's always known she'd go home one day, he's also always known that when she did she'd be resuming her life, getting married and having more rich, little kids. If she even remembers him, which she probably wouldn't, he can only hope she'd have the sense to keep it all a secret. That kind of talk could get her institutionalised.

These are the thoughts he has while he's holding her hand. He's dozing in a chair beside the bed, a book in his metal hand. His flesh hand is enveloping her hand gently, hoping it helps her feel connected somehow. It certainly connects him to her, because he rouses abruptly when he feels her fingers twitch.

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[selfeffacingly]

Francesca is slow to wake.

She has dread every waking since the moment her world came to an abrupt stop. Waking up every morning, so heavy, like she drank too much the night before.

Even now, she fights it. Not again, not another day. Asleep, she does not have to remember what awaits her. She does not have to exist. To spend every moment with heaviness on her chest, in her limbs. Feels like drowning, like when she first learned to swim and the water got in her lungs and she choked up saltwater.

( Her new baseline, she knows. Facing the next minute, the next hour, the next thing that is a milestone in that she must do it without her John at her side.)

In the seconds that pass, she can barely move. Her head turns to the side, sinking into the pillow, eyes tight. Her body is lead.

She's slow to register the light, casting through the spaces of a curtain. Slower to feel the warmth of a hand squeezing her own.

When she turns to the figure, blinking sleep from her eyes, she expects to find — ]

John?

[ The name parts her lips, voice rusted, so much hope bundled within. Wishful thinking. Even half-asleep, a voice whispers this. She's wrong.

Not John. Her heart sinks. She doesn't know this person — her brows furrow, confusion, some anxiety — but she does know him. She does. Like she knows herself. The honed eyes, the cut of his jaw. ]

Nathan.