missingthekeep | Christmas Eve [for Meredith]

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Christmas Eve [for Meredith]

Sean's so nervous, he thinks he might pass out. He was expecting to be nervous, of course, he was anxious as sin the last time he tried something as insane as this with the last woman to cross his path, but this... this really goes above and beyond. Fortunately, in the years since his last proposal of marriage, he's gotten a hell of a lot better at hiding how nervous he is, so the only outward show of it he allows is some fidgeting with the ring in his jacket pocket. It doesn't help much.

It's a good ring, he thinks. Fancy and pretty without overdoing it. He'll want something a little more personal than what he could scrounge from the Pond woman's stash for the final things, but as an engagement ring, it does nicely. Would that he were so confident about the rest of this, especially when he has every reason to be. This isn't about how lousy everything else in his life is right now, this is about him and Meredith, nothing else. And they're good. They're better than good, occasional hiccups aside. He wants this, she wants this, and they're great, they're solid. How could this possibly be the wrong thing to do, the wrong time to do it?

It isn't, he tells himself for the thirtieth time. Besides, it's already been weeks since she told him she was ready, that she was finally and fully ready to marry him. How much longer does he really have?

Right.

Right.

"Nice night, innit?" he asks with a smile, trying to keep up the charade that he dragged her out to the snow-covered beach for nothing more than a walk on Christmas Eve as long as he's able.

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"It's nae that simple, Meredith!" Sean shoots back, and while he doesn't mean to, he draws back slightly as he does. "I've tried, ye know I have, I don't know what ta do. An' there is nothin' that's good about it."

Meredith pulls away, hands in her lap and shoulders hunched as she refuses to look away. "I don't know that, actually," she says, doing her best to keep her voice even. No good will come of yelling at him, but it's so tempting sometimes. "You get from day to day and I know sometimes that's hard enough, but you have options, if you weren't too stubborn to use them."

Sean tenses, his hands curling into fists as he slumps down, sulking and staunchly refusing to recognize it as such. "Yeah, well, tonight it feels like more than jus' hard enae," he says in lieu of actually addressing her point.

"So tonight you just get through it," Meredith says, "the best you can. And tomorrow you try." Worn out, she draws her knees up against her and leans against them, watching him like she might still figure out something else to make this right.

"We'll see," Sean replies dully, staring straight ahead into the fire for what feels like an age before cracks and reaches for her again. "Lord, I cannae be pissed off at ye f'r no good reason right now."

"You could be," Meredith says, flippant because she doesn't know what else to do, but she finds she's relieved to let him pull her close again. Tipping her head up, she kisses his cheek, rests her head against his. "You shouldn't be, though, no. I told you I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying to help."

"Ye are helpin'," Sean says on an exhale, brow creasing as he shuts his eyes tight. "Some days it feels like ye're the only thing left standin' 'tween me an' the man I used ta be. An' as much as I hate bein' this way right now... that was so much worse."

Meredith closes her eyes, too, slipping her arms over his shoulders, the ache in her chest flaring up again in some mix of empathy and guilt. He keeps proving all her doubts wrong; she doesn't know why she keeps having them. "You aren't going back to that," she murmurs. "I won't let you, alright? We'll get through this together."

"Together," Sean echoes, wishing it were just that easy. But tonight is apparently a night for getting things off his chest, and something's weighing on it heavily all of a sudden. "I jus' cannae help but think 'bout it. If ye could've seen the last thing I saw 'fore I came here... the look on her face... ye'd ne'er want ta speak t'me again."

"Maybe so," Meredith says. The memory of what he told her is still chilling, she can't pretend otherwise. Leaning her head against his shoulder, she reaches for his hand. "But I still would. I couldn't just give you up. Would you do the same thing now?"

"I know ye would. An' I, I don't know," Sean replies as he threads his fingers through hers, even if that second part isn't quite the truth. "I jus'... had so much hate in me, so much hurt, an' it needed someplace to go. She jus'... couldnae understand it. I think that was the worst part."

Meredith barely gets it herself, still doesn't quite have all the pieces, can't conceive of actually wanting to kill someone. She doesn't want to understand, but she tries anyway. "It wouldn't make it better," she says. "Going through with it. Everything still would've been the same. And she wouldn't have just... understood at the last second. It wouldn't have made anything better. Would it?"

"No," Sean agrees, bowing his head, and as obvious an answer as it is, some part of him still rebels against it. Rationally, he knows he was wrong, but there's nothing rational about hatred. "An' there, there would've been no comin' back from that. F'r me as much as f'r her."

"But it didn't happen," Meredith says. "And maybe that's only because you turned up here or maybe you would have picked it, but either way, it didn't happen. You're here and you didn't do it." He came here and found her instead. That has to mean something, count for something. "You can come back, you did. You will. You shouldn't punish yourself for something you didn't do."

"I would've done it," Sean says, his cheeks burning with something like shame, if shame didn't make it all sound so bloody trivial. He's far enough removed from the event now to be able to say it with certainty, though. "I would've regretted it, but I would've done it. That's nae bad enae?"

"It is," Meredith says, quiet but unwilling to lie. Pretending isn't going to help, although the effort of being both calm and honest makes it easier to ignore the way his actually saying it makes her feel like the floor's dropped out from under her. "It's awful, it's... I don't know what to say it is, I don't know a word for it. But what can you do about it now?"

"Regret it anyway?" Sean asks, darkly wry even though there's nothing funny about it.

"Other than that," Meredith says, brow raising a little, and then she sighs. "Because if you really wanna do better, if you really wanna move forward... I mean, you don't have to let go of everything, I don't think that's even possible, but you can't let it all hold you down forever."

"I know," Sean sighs, biting his lip. "I know, I'm jus'... in a mood." The problem with her viewpoint lies in the way that the chains around him just keep binding themselves tighter whenever he does try to move forward, but that's not anything he can share with her right now, not after tonight.

"Could ye still love me? If I'd gone through with it?"

Meredith considers that, glancing down at the floor, shaking her head slowly. She's hardly sure what she'll do a day from now, let alone what she might have done two years ago. "I don't know," she says, looking up, still struggling to reason it out even as she speaks. "The man you were when you got here, the one who would have done it, who almost did? I really liked him, too. I think it would have been harder. If you'd done it, if I'd always known... I would have had a lot of trouble with that. But you're you. And I can't imagine not loving you."

Whether it's true or not doesn't really matter. What matters is how it sounds to Sean's ears and that he knows she believes it entirely. In that respect, it counts for a lot, it's the world. Since there's no possible reply good enough for something like that, he just kisses her, a small, shaky, but wholly felt smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. "He really liked ye a lot, as well, f'r whate'er it's worth."

"It's worth a lot," Meredith says, smiling a little just because he is. Even if she'd known, even if she had loved him anyway, she knows it would have been different. It's all hypotheticals, though, no more worth thinking about than the things he told her not to think of. Hand at his neck, she kisses him again. "But you aren't going to be him again. And this man here's the one I love."

Sean's still too overwhelmed for proper words, choosing instead to smile again as he pulls her closer, almost onto his lap, and tucks his head in on her shoulder. If he can't properly convey how much that means to him, he'll have to take it on faith that she already knows. "Well, he's pretty fond o' ye, too."

"He'd better be," Meredith says, slipping her hand into his hair and just holding on, though that smile comes a little easier now. The hurt from earlier might not be forgotten, but it's fading and she's remembering why she bears it when these things happen. She's quiet a moment before she adds, "You can keep it here. If you want."

Apparently, they've gone back to the things which shouldn't hurt to hear, but do anyway, though Sean's really just touched by that as well. "Ye, ye dinnae have ta do that," he says, drawing back again to look at her.

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