A single spotlight illuminates where she stands, the world black and endless beyond the reaches of the light. She's standing on a stage, but can only see to the edge where it then dips and dives into a never ending pit.
"Again Miss Webber."
Jaclyn snaps to attention, seeing her old ballet director Ms. Lewis off to the side. Her expression is shrewd and cast in lingering shadows. Her lips don't move from her sneer as the music starts. The tempo is languid with hanging phrases, and a daunting undertone, and Jaclyn knows immediately what it is.
The Dying Swan variation.
Her legs take over before her mind can comprehend what she's doing. Not only is she walking, but dancing, and the movement completes her soul. Her arms become wings extending from her back, thrumming with a life of their own, and her feet flutter across the stage in pointe shoes she hasn't looked at in eight years.
She falls over and recovers, moving to the elongated string chorus while the piano sings consistently short notes in the background. She runs legs extending with the breath of freedom, and her back leg comes up to kick her head in a dramatic attitude. Jaclyn holds the pose perfectly atop her toes, but falters as her back fractures with an obnoxious crack. She feels everything in her fissure, ripping in two halves, but her body keeps going.
She keeps dancing.
A flower of blood unfurls across her stomach, seeping it's greedy grasp into the white satin costume. She floats into another arabesque, gritting her teeth through the pain of her stomach being splayed in half. She does it again and again curious about the feeling erupting through her.
She bourrées backwards, her feet tapping furiously at the floor, and oh how she's missed this sound, but when she looks down blood trickles down her tights in thin rivers, and collect at her shoes. The stage itself is smeared with her blood, and suddenly dancing is harder. Breathing is harder.
What were false fluttering wings seconds ago, now tremble and quake as her feet become erratic. She's heaving, fighting to escape her own lungs. The augmented liquid is everywhere. Ripe in her nose. Slick between her legs. A varnish across the floor.
"What are you doing?"
Jaclyn falters, but her feet won't let her come down from pointe, as she looks up desperately into Ms. Lewis's eyes.
"I'm tired-"
"You're weak."
Ms. Lewis steps closer and Jaclyn is trembling now, her arms moving of their own desperate accord like they can pull her from this. "What kind of swan are you, Jackie?"
"What?" She gasps, falling into a deep lunge with her hands braced on the floor. Now her untouched skin gathers her blood like a rite of passage. "What- What do you mean?"
But Ms. Lewis only repeats her question.
Gaze locked on the stains surrounding her, she fights with her foggy head. Swan... Swan... Who has performed dying swan? Anna Pavlova. Maya Plisetskaya. Uliana Lopatinka. Svetlana Zakharova. What do they all have in common?
Her heads spinning, sitting in her own damnation, and it hits her. She's supposed to be in the hospital. Her last memory is William's panicked face, his necessary words, and then the world is black.
Dying swans all just fade. They beautifully die putting a nice little period at the end of their story. It feels conclusive for her, even in their coat of arms she is the swan to William's lion. For years she's been called fragile and meek and demure, but she can feel something stirring under her skin.
The strength that comes when your life is built on ashes.
On stutterimg legs she stands and she keeps bourréing. She bourrées like her life depends on it with her arms arcing through the air. She is a swan that fights to fly away, broken wings and all. She sees the light that comes with death and she rages. She fights and fights until her vision blurs and the world spins.
When she opens her eyes the stage is gone. Her white costume has been changed for normal clothes and the blood has disappeared. The world is bright and golden compared to the dark room of the theatre. She walks down the tile path, and it's then that she realizes she's walked this trail before.
Westminster Abbey is silent and still even with the city of London on its doorsteps. Jaclyn takes a deep breath, noting the returning strength in her lungs.
The Abbey is exactly as it should be, but the artificially bright glow to the walls has her creeping around. Nothing is out of place, after so many events in Westminster she knows where each thing should be.
So when she turns and comes face to face with an unexpected coffin she jumps a foot in the air and scrambles back. A marble effigy of woman lies across the tomb, her hair spills over the edge in soft waves giving the solid stone a look of liquid, and across her face a pleasent grins sits. She's beautiful with delicate marble flowers around her.
Jaclyn steps closer inspecting the shape of the woman's face and the way her arms delicatly lay, but the closer she gets the more apparent something becomes. This woman laid to rest in stone is her.
"Odd isn't it."
She jumps again this time coming face to face with a woman. A woman she knows from pictures and stories with a voice that's weaved it's way through her life.
"Shit," Jaclyn blurts, "Am I dead?"
Diana laughs coming closer until her hand is resting atop the marble effigy. "You're not dead, but it is up to you." Diana holds her hands up, one gesturing towards the coffin while the other shoots across the chapel.
There in the pews are her children.
They're older, Amelia with her Spencer height and Jaclyn's face. Her hair free falling in thick golden waves that highlight her brightest smile. Philip is much shorter than his sister, but he's grown to be dashingly handsome with distinct Mountbatten features and pale blue eyes. She knows them, and yet, she doesn't. They look at her and her heart aches.
Beside them are two others. A blonde boy with a height close to Amelia's and a build that resembles the Spencer's. His face is William's, Diana's, his nose and eyes and long face, but there are refined blonde curls framing his face that come from neither of them.
The girl is similar yet different. She is shorter, similar to Jaclyn's own height, and her refined curly hair is darker. Her features are rounder, reminiscent of timeless beauty, and Jaclyn smiles realizing she resembles The Windsor side of the family.
She doesn't need to say anything. She'll choose them every time, every chance. "It won't be easy," Diana says as if reading her mind.
"Nothing ever is. Doesn't mean it's not worth it."
Diana comes closer, her head tilted so her big eyes flutter under her long lashes. With a sharp inhale Jaclyn steels herself knowing that's the look her daughter gives her, but Diana wraps her up in long slender arms and her hard exterior melts away. The glow emitting from the woman is blinding, but Jaclyn ignores it and buries herself further into her arms. This is what she's needed.
"You're a phoenix, Jaclyn Webber, and don't let anyone tell you differently."
And what are you? She wants to ask, but something sad flitts through Diana's eyes. Like she wanted to be a phoenix dancing with fire, burning to rise over and over, but humans can't swallow flames and breathe them out in the next breath.
"Everything is going to be okay now," Diana whispers her expression etherall. She spins them to face the kids who aren't really kids, and her (imagined?) Mother in law squeezes her shoulders. "Oh, how I love them dearly. Take care of them for me, please."
Jaclyn doesn't glance back at the coffin and it's luminous marble effigy. She holds Diana and prays.
-----
June 23, 2018
By the time Harry and her pull up to the hospital the announcement still hasn't been made, and the crowd lining the opposite side of the street is ravenous. She's never seen so many people packed into one area, especially not for the birth of two babies, but it makes her smile. Jaclyn is so adored, the world cannot move until she is okay.
"Remember Meg." Harry pulls her arm to a halt just as she turns to exit the car. "Don't say anything to them. They can't know about Jac's condition or that the twins are already born."
Earlier when she asked why not she was ignored, so now she nods and gets out. The shouting and shutters hit her like a force, and it's not the bright sun that has her squinting. Flash after flash floods her vision, and as Harry leads her up to the front steps she turns to wave. Poor people should at least get something waiting.
"How is the Duchess of Cambridge?"
"It's been twelve hours!"
"Is it true she's lost a baby?"
The questions cause her to pause, a bad idea when Harry keeps moving, and for a split second she gapes at them before she's yanked into the hospital. The noise silences instantly, but Meghan swears there's a tremor in the walls as Harry silently leads her down the hall.
Are they always so intrusive, so brazen with their displays? It unsettles her.
"Why can't the announcement just be made," she tries again softly, looping her arm through Harry's elbow. He's been tense all morning ever since the news was broken to them.
He refuses to look down at her, his pace picking up briskly. "The palace don't want to taint the birth announcement. They'll hold off as long as they can in hopes that Jac will wake up."
"She will."
Harry only shows the slightest of grins.
Seeing William so unkept is new for her. Clothes wrinkled and hair standing up, she'd bet it wasn't her brother in law at all if it wasn't for the way he tentatively held Jaclyn's hand between his own. If she squints she can see the red lines left by tears in his eyes.
Meghan traces her gaze up Jaclyn's arm, following the IVs and breathing tubes weaving around her. More startling then seeing William is seeing Jaclyn. She's always been fair, but her complexion is translucent with a blue a tint to her lips and under eyes. Always so lively, and now she is still.
It causes her to pause again as she tries to imagine a way for Jaclyn to pull through. But she remembers her over the last few weeks, exhausted and bone tired. She looks at her now and the fragility of her arms and hollowness to her cheeks. If it weren't for the heart monitor beeping Meghan would bet she was already dead.
"Will," Harry starts and his brother's head snaps up. "If there's anything we can do..." Harry trails off getting lost in the scene before him, and Meghan can't blame him. She shrinks back from it all, Jaclyn's lifeless body a petrifying image that will come back to her night after night. If this is pregnancy and labor then she doesn't want it, doesn't understand why and how Jaclyn could continue to put herself through it knowing this could be the outcome.
"Jaclyn's parents went to get the kids." His voice is grave and deadbeat through all his words, and not once does he look to them. "Buckingham is going to have to break the news soon before someone leaks the truth. Help me keep them distracted."
It's not long until the kids arrive after that, but while Harry and William wait next to Jaclyn's bed she has to sit in the opposite corner.
Daddy!"
From where she's sitting she watches as PJ bursts into the room, and immediately throws himself around William's legs. In the same breath William gulps down what looks to be a sob, and relaxes.
While he is all smiles and clingy desperate hands, Amelia slips into the room like a ghost.
She takes small shaky steps towards the bed where Jaclyn is lying down, and Meghan immediately stands as if to go over to her. She knows Mia isn't her biggest fan, but it's terrifying for her to look down at Jaclyn in this condition. Imagining it through her daughter's eyes is torturous.
Mia's lip wobbles, and she turns sharply around the room surveying them all. Harry and her. Her grandparents and uncle who slipped in as well. Her father. She stops on him with fat tears now stuck in her eyes.
"Mummy's resting, it was a long couple hours with your new siblings." Not even the idea of a new brother and sister brings light back to Mia's face. She just turns between her two parents, hovering in the middle before running over and burying her eyes and tears into his side.
The rest of them awkwardly linger as the three of them huddle on the tile floor. Despite his own feelings, William manages to comfort both kids, wrapping them up until they're safe from everything around them.
She turns to Harry observing his own gripping sorrow, and wonders if he'll be similar with their own children. Perhaps, that would make it worth it. Watching William whisper incoherent things to her niece and nephew is enough to choke her up. Imagine if it was her own husband and kids.
"How about we go meet your siblings?" Harry suggests with a bright smile she knows is forced.
"Oh!" She pipes up making her way over. "We haven't met them either-"
"Wait!" PJ exclaims, kicking until he's freed from William's arms. He toddles over to the hospital bed reaching with desperate arms to get up. "I have to give mummy a kiss. She gives me kisses when I don't feel good."
Meghan sighs wistfully, melting as William lifts PJ up to kiss Jaclyn's head. Deep down, under her consuming fear she's starting to understand why Jaclyn has put herself here.
-----
Jaclyn Webber, The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to twins, a baby boy and girl. The unnamed son and daughter fifth in sixth in line to the throne. The babies were born early this morning around 1 am, and they are doing great, but will remain in the NICU for the foreseeable future, according to a spokesperson from Kensington Palace.
The twins, are the first royal twins since King James II's twin sons born in 1430. The children of Prince William and Webber were delivered through cesarean section, each weighing 4 lbs.
While the babies were born strong and healthy the Duchess took a turn for the worst, and suffered a postpartum hemorrhage losing approximately two litres of blood while under general anesthesia. She has not woken up yet, but sources confirm she is stable and recovering.
The Daily Mail
-----
After the announcement is made William is strict about keeping the kids away from the news and papers. Harry and Meghan entertain them for awhile, taking trips to the cafeteria and visiting the twins, but eventually they have to leave.
For awhile Caleb takes his place beside Jaclyn's bed, holding his sisters hand with a tense grip like it'll wake her up. He switches between glaring at her blank face to clenching his eyes closed.
"Can't..." He finally mumbles, throwing the chair back with a painful screech and storming from the room.
Once he's cooled off he settles back down in their private room, with his back turned, to play board games with Amelia and Philip.
Brad waits in the far corner, refusing to take his eyes off his daughter while equally refusing to come near William. He hasn't looked at him since William broke the news of Operation Westminster. He couldn't keep them in the dark anymore especially now that different staff members from KP, Clarence House, and Buckingham were coming in and out speaking in codes.
It was Michelle though who took the news the worst, collapsing to the floor in a heap of hysterical sobs. Now she won't leave the NICU where the twins are. It's safer there. Strangers are less likely to approach her to ask her for something if she's tending to the twins.
It makes for a long first day, and by the time everyone leaves and he's left alone he can't help but collapse into his spot and fall asleep.
-----
June 24, 2018
Jaclyn feels like she's being swallowed by the sun. Her eyes slowly blink and the lights above consume her. Not in a pleasent pearlescent way like her dream. This light is sharp inducing a throbbing headache across her head, and with this awareness slowly every ache comes back to her. She can't move, rigidly lying down and tingling.
You're alive, she tells herself, groaning over the stiff bones that crack as she tries to move. No dead person would be in pain, congrats.
There's a mask over her nose and mouth, and all kinds of wires stuck to her. So many she's scared to move and risk messing something up. The fuzzy world around her clears enough for her to make William out. He's slouched against the wall still in the same clothes from... Well she doesn't really know how many days it's been.
"William," she croaks, but her voice barely breaks the air over the monitor beeping beside her. She stretches her arm out and just barely brushes his hand, but it's enough to make him jump up.
For a solid minute they stare at each other. Her tired hand lingering out into the air while his shocked and disbelieving eyes wait for her to disappear. He probably thinks he's dreaming, but she's had enough dreams for a lifetime to know this is real.
"William," she tries again, and he lurches forward to grasp her hand. He massages her pulse point feverishly, and when he's sure she's real exhausted tears fall from his eyes.
"Bloody hell, Jac," his head drops as he shakes it, "You scared me half to death. I thought..." His words blend with his tears, and he kisses her hand like she'll shatter at any moment. She's never seen him cry like this. Yes, he's teared up with each of their kids, and she's seen him cry from time to time. But this... These are sobs that wretch through your body until your lungs are heaving. These are the sobs of a desperate man.
He sits up suddenly. "I need to get the doctor, or a nurse-"
She latches back onto his hand, feeling sudden strength in her desperation. "Please don't leave me. Not yet, at least."
"How are the twins?" She asks as he settles back down. There will be time for doctors and tests later, but for now she wants a moment of peace.
"They're doing well, fighters like you."
Her chest swells, and she deflates happily with the news. For a moment the world is as it should be. She's alive, her babies are alive, and William is holding her hand like he's never going to let go.
It could be the adrenaline of all the good news, the relief of opening her eyes, but she pulls him down until her arms are looped around his neck. Her nose burrows into the place where his neck and shoulder meet, and he melts into her hair with a sigh.
For the night they don't talk about their past actions, or worry about what tomorrow will mean. Because for now she's alive and that's all that matters.
-----
I hope this was worth the wait! Now that we're passed the pregnancy it's time to focus on healing and trusting. I've written more therapy scenes and I honestly love them because they feel like such rich character studies. I can't wait for you guys to read them.
We also have some more H&M coming up which will be fun. I hope I did Meghan's POV justice in this chapter. It was a last minute decision, so I'm still trying to find her head space, but I'm not completely appalled by the scene lol.
Names will be revealed in the next chapter, I hope everyones happy cause I think I'm going to do something crazy. For plot purposes of course.
Let me know what you think!!!