Like It's Do or Die

Several times, she opened her mouth to cut in, but there was never a good moment. Better, then, to let him finish and attempt to remember everything she wanted to say. By the time he finished, she was fuming. It was entirely likely that she was visibly furious, but that hardly mattered.

"Yes, well I damn well know all of that, don't I?" she blurted finally, rolling her eyes. "Do you want to know why I stayed with Pavel? You'll find out if you can give me a half-decent reason why you're legally separated rather than just divorcing the wench. Over a decade, you say? Since when? Since I left? If so, that's hardly on me. You could've returned to her and made it work, Marcus.

"This has, essentially, nothing to do with your role with Poppy. It's not like I'm unaware of how much they hate me, alright? I'm well and properly sure about it. So let's not pretend that this is a power play on my part. It isn't as though I don't recognize the things I've caused. The mistakes I've made. Of course I do. But how dare you think that you've any right to be angry with me for trying to avoid another one!"

There was a sort of fire behind her words that Ana had not felt for a long time, and it led to Ana tossing her hands in the air and walking to the other side of the room to put some space between them. An exasperated sigh left her as she turned to look at him again.

"What do you want, Marcus? To pretend nothing ever went wrong? That's impossible. Clearly, you're not past what I did. Nor should you be. But it's far too late to complain to me about it. It was far too easy to leave, when it shouldn't have been. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn't see a future there. Not while she was still in the picture. But guess what, Marcus? She's still there. On the fringes or not, she's there," Ana pointed in a random direction, talking with her hands a bit too much for her typical habits. Perhaps she had just felt too bland for too long to recognize this. "I can't worry about my kids getting fed up with me and leaving to live with you. Not now. Not when there's the possibility of a trial, which would only prove to them that they're right to leave. Okay? So either help me or leave me alone."

He had to take a second to absorb what she felt so threatened about.  He reached over to her desk, helped himself to a piece of scrap paper, scribbled a note on it, flicked his wand to create one of the ministry's paper bird messengers, and sent the bird out of the room.  


He sat calmly and silently, smoking his cigarette, not replying, for the two minutes it took for Flora, Robert's secretary, to come delivering a dossier to him. She didn't speak. She merely handed him the dossier and left again.


He opened it. Evelyn Belby. There were stacks of photos of her in the dossier. It turned his stomach to look at her.  There she was, flaming red hair always frizzled as if something in the cauldron had gone wrong, huge mismatched floral print dresses, godsawful heels, and always, always, the largest, most ridiculous Carmen Miranda hat. She had surely a million of them by now.  Makeup plastered all over her face, looking like it had been applied with a cement trowel. 


At the back of the dossier was a photo of the beautiful, vivacious, etherial redhead he'd fallen in love with--the woman who had died long ago and he never knew why.  He never had understood where she'd gone.


"This," he handed her the old photo first, "is what you think your competition is. Surely this is how you remember her. Take a good look. A very good look.  She died a long, long time ago."


He waited. Then he handed her the photos of the freakish, Halloweenish character she had become. "This, this woman here, this is who my children know as their mother, their abuser. This is who I protect them from. This is really who you think your competition is.  You can't possibly think I'm even remotely attracted to that, not even for old times' sake.  Ana, look around.  You're the one standing, poised to dash out of this whole thing.  If you haven't noticed, I'm still here. I'm still sitting. I'm the one who hasn't moved.


"You never once asked me why I didn't divorce her.  I don't know that I can give you one clear answer.  First, as her husband, I have the right to keep tabs on her and know where she is.  That helps me keep her away from my children, lets me notify Mum and Dad to take them on holiday if I'm working and can't get to them.

"Beyond that, nobody looks that way on purpose. You know that. Not if they're right.  Something with her has gone sideways, and somehow she's not right. I haven't ever been able to find enough to get her help, but God knows I've tried. Not because I'll ever go back to her. They can't make enough anti-vomiting potions for that. But, once I get past feeling revolted, I feel sorry for her. At this point, I'm the only one that has the legal authority to get her the help she needs if I ever get enough of a case to do it."


He got quieter, lighting a second cigarette with his first one before stamping out the butt in the ashtray.  "She certainly is no threat to you."

Ana didn't know what to do with herself when he sat there, so she let out an impatient huff and shifted her weight, turning her gaze away from him to her bookshelf. It was easier to pretend that she wasn't waiting for an answer, or was looking for something. But then the door opened and Ana spun around, her eyebrows lifted in a sort of unspoken question.

She was obviously frustrated, but she kept herself quiet. That outburst had probably been a bit too much for where they were in their semblance of a relationship. His voice reached her ears, and although she did hesitate for a few moments, Ana finally crossed the room to reach out and take the picture he presented to her. At first, she just frowned at the image. But then Marcus said something about her having died, and she squinted at him a bit.

After she finally looked at him, another picture was handed her way, and she had to actually draw back slightly upon seeing it, out of pure confusion. She was readying herself to draw a chair up and sink into it, but he pointed out the very fact that she was standing and it seemed strange to change that afterwards. It felt like she would have been admitting to something or giving up somehow.

But the story about Evelyn truly made Ana feel guilty. As much as she wanted things to change, she couldn't ask him to give up his ability to protect this woman he had cared for. She couldn't ask him to change that. She wouldn't dare. So when he put out the cigarette and concluded his explanation, she leaned against the desk again, and handed the pictures back.

"Okay," she replied quietly, nodding. She wasn't sure what else to say. "Fine."

How did she continue from there? It changed things, but it also didn't, and that confused her. So, really, it sort of felt like she had lost. Lost her drive, lost her chance. A part of her was massively curious as so what had made Evelyn change so much, but if Marcus didn't know, Ana never could. Assuming that it was just one of those things that would bug her for a time, she walked around and sank into the chair behind her desk.

Doing her best to adopt a fairly professional tone again, Ana tried to veer away from that topic. "Right. We'll deal with the custody paperwork after talking to the kids, and then, if Hayes or Mairen push for anything, we'll figure that out."