A/N: This wasn't requested by anyone... (at least I don't think so?) and I guess this is one hell of a way to come back after a few months away. Apologies for the abrupt tone shift from last chapter to this one.
I can't tell you how long I've tried to write this. I've had this in mind since Roe V Wade was overturned by the SCOTUS. Personally... the ruling devastated me and it completely took away my drive to write for a while. Never before have I felt so sick and disgusted at a ruling like this.
If you're pro-life, that's fine. If you're pro-choice, that's fine. I don't want to hear any arguing about the verdict and whether or not your side is right or the other is wrong. All I want is to get this off of my brain so I can finally have some rest.
Obvious warning for a miscarriage and the depression that follows. Please skip if the topics are triggering for you.
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It had been a week.
He could hear the whispers, see the pitying looks, knew what the people around them thought. Even if he couldn't quite figure out how he felt, everyone else was crystal clear.
She hadn't been the same.
She spent a week locked away in solitude; straining an ear, he could catch the faintest sound of her sorrowful sobbing and every day he felt his heart break more.
What had they done wrong? Had the gods been angry? Was this a punishment?
Hadn't they done everything right?
(y/n) was inconsolable when the doctor broke the news to them - what had started as a panicked house call due to a sudden heavy bleed ended in a night of tragedy, of a broken couple staring each other in the face and trying not to fall apart even more as they tried to pick up the pieces of a life lost.
Her female relatives visited more often now. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen them visit, yet now it seemed every day he was letting one or more into the house, only for them to give him a sympathetic frown before hurrying on to comfort his desolate wife.
He could hear them talking sometimes; hushed tones and his wife's shaky voice that broke so easily, weeping that carried despite his desperate pleas to the gods to make the pain stop.
He dreamt of them more and more. Dreams of a life they would never have, dreams of a life they'd wanted so badly they would have given anything, anything to be able to save it.
They never ate together anymore. The most contact they had was when he would leave a tray of food by her door and hope that she would have enough strength to eat.
The food was hardly ever touched. He tried not to think about how she was unwittingly killing herself in her grief over their loss.
The visit to the tombstone felt so hollow, so empty, that he almost couldn't bear to read the words engraved there. Couldn't stand to read the letters she left in a shaky hand, addressed to a name that never would be, tearstains blotting out the ink.
It had been only a week. Nothing would ever be the same.
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A/N: I know nobody would have asked for this, but I felt like a catharsis tonight.
Please tell me what you thought.