Mend

Chapter 1 Promise and Hope

A/N: So, what do you do when the tv programme has great big holes and leaves you wanting more? Well turn to fanfiction, obviously! Set at the end of episode 10, series 2. How did that conversation go after Demelza decided to stay? This is not in the same style as the books. It is introspective and angsty and, strangely, a tad cheesy - maybe. If that's your thing, then enjoy! If not, avoid!

Chapter 1 – Promise and Hope

"She will never come between us again."

The words hung heavy; the promise they held significant far beyond their collective brevity. A desperate promise, yet given sincerely nonetheless. A promise which must be accepted on faith alone, for Ross Poldark had nothing left to give his wife.

Faith. Yet faith had been broken and had left them empty. A thing that Ross had thrust upon them and had spectacularly failed to mend. And now...? Ross did not know. He only knew that after months he and Demelza had come to it at last- the struggle to comprehend this...thing that was so massive and hideous between them - and it was a strange, cruel kind of relief, edged with panic.

Silence smothered them. Silence. It wasn't really silence. There was the ominous sound of thunder rolling over Nampara, and the rain, incessant and miserable, and the rasp of their own hard breathing. But it felt like silence in the shock and suddenness of the confrontation.

Ross' black eyes blinked slowly and he stared and stared at Demelza, and her eyes glittered fiercely back; the tilt of her head, proud; the line of her mouth, resolute. Now, as on those rare occasions since May when their eyes had met and lingered, a smouldering fire seemed to sear the air between them; a cauldron of black emotions that seethed and boiled, as if his very glance was a flint to the hard steel of hers, paradoxically working together, yet bringing only fiery discord where once it had brought a warming harmony.

She had changed so much in the past months, Ross noticed abruptly. Her lack of appetite making the contours of her face sharper, more beautiful, yet marred by a new bleakness that now seemed part of who she was. Images of her as she had been before flashed through his mind. The softness and mobility of her open features; the rapid flare flushes that spread up from her neck, the flashing vitality of her smile. Ross hated this new hardness, and he hated his part in bringing it about; hated being the instigator of his remarkable young wife's sorrow.

His heart roared in his ears and his stomach was a churning pit of emotions; a physical manifestation of the tumult of the past months. Somewhere in that maelstrom of passion and guilt, of loves and betrayals and jealousies and loss, was hope. Indefatigable hope.

Until that night with Elizabeth, Ross had always assumed that somewhere, in the dark recesses of his mind, was an irrepressible hope of a life with his first love. A thought of a past, long dead, and of an impossible future. It had lurked like a carrion, shadowing his happiness with Demelza; always circling, waiting to pick him off at his most vulnerable. And he had been vulnerable that night. The ninth of May. However reprehensible his actions afterwards, no-one could deny that. Impoverished by failure, grief-stricken by the losses that day at the mine, and that final betrayal that had nudged him into an unstable black, brooding rage.

Oh yes, hope had swooped down on him that night and had swallowed him whole. A black, twisted hope that Elizabeth's letter was meant to provoke him, urge him to action. Hope that his cousin-in-law was finally asking, in the most obtuse of ways, to be rescued from another loveless marriage. Hope that, in lacking the courage to make up her mind, Elizabeth was forcing him to make up his. But the presiding feeling that night as he strode like a storm through Trenwith was hope that he could prevent George Warleggan getting what he wanted.

Hope. A fool's hope.

Be careful what you hope for...

Now, Ross could almost laugh. Almost.

How wrong he had been all these years. It was not hope of Elizabeth, it was hope of an ideal, of perfection, of a dream, and just as transient and unreal. Because of that night, that night, Ross had learnt the difference between loving a shadow and a thought of someone, and the aching fire of loving a person with the full knowledge of their soul. But the cost of that lesson was dearly bought, and just how dearly, Ross was about to find out at last.

He frowned, his dark, drawn brows casting his eyes to utter blackness as he brooded. All this time, all these years, perfection, his perfection, had entered his life in a dog fight and had quietly, unassumingly, ordered his chaotic existence, offering help, companionship, tenderness. Love.

Year after year, hope had warmed his bed, swept his hearth, tended his wounds, borne and cared for his children with no complaint. And hope had a face; hair the shade and unruliness of fire; alabaster perfect skin; a smile like a sunburst; bright, shining eyes the colour of the sea. And hope had a name...

"Demelza..." Ross' resonant voice was a low, scraping whisper. "I promise, she will never...I will never..." His throat closed around the words, his shadowed gaze flickering, dark and unfathomable, to the stacked valise cases beside them, and he was suddenly swamped by fear and a panic he had not known before. "I..."

As he struggled for more words, he and Demelza stood for a long drawn out moment, facing each other, and to any casual observer, nothing had changed from the bitter exchanges of the last weeks and months, but they would not have been more wrong. Everything had changed – the packed bags and cases were testament to that- and yet...

And yet, Demelza's head drooped a little. Her eyes glittered still, but now with unshed tears rather than rage. Inside his chest, Ross' heart swelled and hope flared to life once more – but a hope of something true, something right. Yes, everything had changed and it could never go back, but just how it would go forward depended on Demelza.

He took a step forward, the candles behind him abruptly casting him to shadows, all angles and darkness; her opposite – a slicing shadow to the glow of her face. Another step. Her face; so close. The pale smoothness of her skin, her full lips, softly parted, and her eyes! The luminous sheen of them. Ever since May, her eyes had shrank from him, but now...now, despite herself, they seemed to reach out for him, he was certain, like the creeping rays of the sun beyond cloud.

Ross' hands suddenly trembled and he clasped them to keep them still as he took another slow step forward, and his lungs felt constricted within him. His fists tightened at his sides. His fingers knew what they wanted, and he wanted the same thing: to touch his wife – how long had it been? He wanted to hold her and be held, to breathe her in, come alive against her, discover her again, caress her cheek with tenderness. With love.

Watching him close the space between them, Demelza's brow knitted with uncertainty, the hurt and fury she had been recently accustomed to suddenly giving way to other unexpected emotions; a complex, faltering web of loves and longings and betrayals and pain. She pulled in a ragged breath as hesitation enveloped her and worked at her resolve. The air hitched in her throat and her stomach flipped as she caught the glint of Ross' eyes as black as jet, watching her. The way he looked at her now...it made her feel as if she was coming back from the dead – for him, and that seemed an impossible thing, and an intimate one and she felt the colour rise involuntarily in her cheeks.

As he held his wife's gaze, time seemed to stutter and strobe, seconds swallowed up along the way and Ross felt poised on a single moment, a precipice beneath his feet. His heart raced, thrumming like a moth's wing in his chest, and his eyes widened in hopeful wonder.

And he waited.

So, I have the rest of the scene roughly written and if anybody likes this, I will post the rest when I get time to pull it together. Call this a taster if you like ! Thanks for reading. Please review and let me know if it's worth me continuing. x