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Chapter Text

The wind was cold again her skin as she stared out to the ocean. It had started as a glorious summer. So she had thought. 

The more she looked back, the more mundane and simple her life was. Especially when she seemed to compare it to her friends who seemed to outgrow their small community of Blair Water. While they still had their moments of togetherness. A sense of old belonging, friendships that stood the test of time. There was always something that kept her holding back when it came to them. 

It was all too vivid, Teddy finding her alone in the grass and grasping at her hand. She didn’t understand what had possessed that moment to shake him off. To wound him so? When previously she had been in his mother's small house, crying over the ship that sank that he never got on. Didn't she break an engagement, with someone who would have given her a life of contentment and little financial worry?

Still, she couldn't quite connect as they used to. Her mind went to that night long ago in the church when he saved her from the mad man. When she was mentally begging for him to kiss her. 

Did she even belong in Blair Water these days? Did she ruin all the chances of love that she would come across? Falling in and out of what she thought love was too easily?  Suitors came and went like seasons or turning of the tides.

Were her chances with Teddy completely over? She looks toward the ocean as the cool breeze swept off the ocean before her. She pulled her wraps around her tightly.

Aunt Elizabeth would call her silly for sitting here as such, but she could not help it. Aunt Laura might give her a sympathetic look, seeing beyond what Emily herself would say out loud. 

She scooped up the red sand, freezing to the touch, even through her gloves. Tiny shells, falling through her fingers is it flowed from her palm.

Cool, cold, almost frozen to touch now. Slipping away like fragments of time disappearing from your grasp. 

Perhaps it was her fault? She was the one who had brushed him off.

Did he still think of her? Did he wonder what happened between them as she did? She might never know now. She stood up abruptly looking towards the setting sun. Her skirts swishing around her.

Didn’t they say to never let the sunset on your day's problems?

Chapter Text

Did she think of him? He sometimes wonders as he settles back into Montreal life. He wracked his mind for any sign of indifference he didn’t spot over the years. It was always given and take. Give him that sign, the look that mystified and scrambled his mind as he tried to find the words. The Church, that night out by the Blair Water, the scholarship letter, how he wanted to kiss her, declare himself. Yet one look in her eyes, lost in a moment, trying to gain the courage. Was he good enough for a Murray? 

When he came back the next summer, he put it off to growing up. That made the distance between them was from their separation. She stayed behind at New Moon and he went off to college and then Europe, back to Montreal. Did she feel inadequate next to them? 

She had been engaged to Dean Priest, they wrote about it and it had shattered his heart. 

Doesn’t she know that everything he worked for was for her? The college, the career to save money. What is an achievement if you have no one to share it with? Did his goals, his need to prove himself was all for her? To prove to the Murray’s he could take care of her?

He would try again, she was still there, unattached and still beautiful as ever. She took he breathe away, watching her run to him, and then suddenly she stopped. She never answered his call. Maybe she hadn’t been home, but as he walked the edge of the new moon farm, he saw the light from her window. 

She had ignored him.

Was it all in vain? Would she ever forgive him, how he became engaged to her best friend? Would she forgive him for not being there when her accident laid her up all winter? Allowing her time to bond with Dean Priest? 

He should have bought The Disappointed House for them. He heard the Priest bought it for her, all the days they spent there as children were long gone now. 

It haunts him still, everything that could have been should have been. Nights were long as he paints her from memories. How he saw her in his dreams, how he imagined to her to look at their next meeting. 

Rhinestones in her hair, silvery lace over pale blue, it was ingrained into his memories. Though the white crepe was burned into it with no relief. He wanted to say he loved her that day under the Vega of Lyre that night before they were interrupted. 

He longs for home, for the Island. His mother was with him now, after the disastrous day, jilted, left at the altar alone. The painful weeks, months that accompanied the event. How every painting was grey and dreary, how every scene was a thunderstorm. 

He wondered how she felt, how she watched managed to watch her two friends plan a wedding, pretend to be happy for them. Is all the while slowly dying inside? 

He remembered the cold night that Ilse had returned his ring. If he went back, could they? Could he finally tell her how he felt? Could he right his wrongs?

Chapter Text

She regrets things, she regrets leaving him there. Too proud to run to him, too stubborn to care about hurting his feelings. She cries into his shoulder one night in the parlour of New Moon, sitting on his lap. Aunt Elizabeth would be appalled if she saw them. 

He shows her the painting that changed the tide, how somehow it gave him hope. Throughout all the grey, shades of lavender, mauve, purple smoke came through. He didn’t know why he did it but it was the first time he stepped back and stared in awe. He knew that colour like that back of his hand.

The birthday card was sitting on the table. She always sent one but this one was different. This one made him packed away his paints, he was twenty-five how much longer could he wait. Between the accidents, close calls and brushes of death. 

The train had been late, delayed but it didn’t matter. She didn’t know he was coming, no one knew that he was coming 

He called to her, hoping, praying he would hear her footsteps. Her rapid intake as she caught her breath from the corset that she wore underneath her clothing. 

“Teddy”

“Emily,” they said in unison. Should he just kiss her now?

"Don't tell me you can't love me--you can--you must--why, Emily"--his eyes had met the moonlit brilliance of hers for a moment--"you do."

He felt like he had been dreaming as their hands sought each other. Grasping tightly as he finally pulled her close to him. How long they waited for this moment, a decade at the most as he finally brushed his lips against hers. 

The war threatens them, they don’t know how much time they have with each other. They marry anyway in a small ceremony, a small honeymoon in Montreal. He wanted France, he wanted to bring her to Paris but he decided against it. Teddy makes their old disappointed house something of his own. He ends up painting landscapes on the walls from the paper that Dean had chosen. In the tiny room off their little bedroom, he paints a woodland faerie tale. In hopes for something more for them as their dreams come into reality far quicker than they had planned. 

Of course, Aunt Elizabeth balks at the name Lyra, such a non-sensical name for a child. But she can’t help but fall in love with the child. 

Lyra Juilet Elizabeth, of course, Aunt Elizabeth would fall in love. 

Then Teddy was enlisted, Emily stayed at New Moon. Watching as her daughter grew day by day. Watching her toddle on wee little legs, her dark her and bright royal blue eyes. She sends endless photos to Teddy or Captain Frederick Kent as he was over in Europe. 

Isle visits with Perry the questions came out over tea…

Why didn’t Teddy just get invalided out?
Perry being who he was doing, surely Teddy was special enough to Canada that they wouldn’t have sent him?

Emily would never tell how he agonized over the decision. He was able-bodied, he could help the cause. It would do much better than painting, it haunted him that he wasn't doing his part.

At the end of a cold dark night, Emily gave him permission only telling him to not leave until the babe was born and she was settled at her Aunts. She didn’t like the decision, she didn’t like the thought of him over there. It felt like all they worked through something was still missing when it came to them. Wasn’t his family enough for him? Was Lyra an achievement enough for him, college, France, Principalship, marriage and Fatherhood.

All his achievements that had shaped his life, why was it never enough for him?. 

 She regretted how they had fought one day about it one winter day, her back hurting. The baby was due any day which only meant it was only a matter of weeks. Words were said, pain crossed each other's faces.  The doctor was soon called, on a cold February Evening.

They had one night when he dropped her off at New Moon. Lyra sleeping bundled in her blankets warding off the cool later winter air.

Pregnancy had changed her body, but it had been so many weeks and he was leaving.  So they had one last night, one last goodbye before they watch the train leave the station with Teddy on it

Time passed slowly, or all too quickly depending on who you asked or what you were doing. Lyra grew in the beauty of the spring days to fast for her dear carers to believe. The days were far too slow as they waited.

Of course, it became apparent as Aunt Laura gave Emily worried looks in the morning. Fretting as Emily looked positively green. 

“Dear Aunties, do not worry about me,” Emily would say to them. Dr. Burnley would be the one who would confirm it. How she cried after he left, screaming into her pillow at Teddy who had left her to go fight in a war.

Aunt Elizabeth came up petting her hair and Aunt Laura fretted as she held the baby.

Nothing could be done of course. 

Still, Emily got up and faced the world each day. She watched and felt her children grow as days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into seasons.

She heard the whispers. the baby wouldn't even be a year when this one was born. Shameful of Teddy to do such a thing to his bride. Then again maybe it will a be son, a boy to come home to when everything was said and done.

It was a cold winter day when another photo was sent.

Celeste Aileen Laura born on January 22nd, 1916

He wrote a happy letter back, wishing her a speedy recovery, how he longed to be home, which Emily bitterly laughed at. If he wanted to be home, he would have stayed home. In the meantime, she publishes stories, wrote them in newspapers. Unwilling to touch Teddy’s money more than necessary. 

She made a name for herself, and that name spread across the ocean.

“Emily Byrd Starr, a writer of the times,” One headline said once.

It confused Teddy, Emily wasn’t a Starr anymore, she was Emily Kent. When he asked about it, she brushed it off in her letter. In her mind, she didn’t need his name to elevate her career. 

They didn’t know him when they met him at the train station. Well, she knew him, but his daughters didn’t. It was apparent as they cried for mommy and Auntie Liza and Laura as he tried to hug them for the first time. 

“This is Daddy,” Emily whispered in their ears. Lyra was Three, and Celeste was Two. Both were dressed in pretty white eyelet dresses that had been made for the occasion. Dark hair had been curled and tied back in little bows.

In the end, it wasn’t a reunion that they had dreamed about.

“Emily?” His voice called out as she put the little ones down to the bed as the sun went down. It had been a long confusing day for them.  

“I truly am sorry.” He says when he sees her in the dark archway of the Disappointed House. Why was this house always disappointed? 

Was it cursed?

Emily looks at him with her purple smoke eyes. 

“Will we ever be enough for each other?"

I hope you all enjoyed this.  

There is a direct quote in bold from Emily's Quest. When Teddy comes back at the end when while depressing is my favourite of the Emily books. 

Tina