Chapter Text
They had been together for four years, and lived together for three. They were in a relatively stable situation—Thomas had gotten a promotion at his real estate agency very recently, and Ellen, with her health issues, was unable to work full time, but she went to work at a hole in the wall book shop for a few shifts a week, and came home happier than when she left, and she volunteered with Anna as much as she was able.
They were committed. They were doing well.
When they first met they had talked about marriage—not them getting married of course, but their opinions on its existence, and she had said it was an outdated institution, and meant to bind women, with anger in her tone, and the romantic in him winced, but he conceded the point nonetheless.
It didn’t contradict what he knew of her. She lived on the more alternative side, goth and artsy, and she had strong opinions on the world, and how things should be and of course he loved that about her. His partner—so strong and caring.
They didn’t have to get married if they didn’t want to—-it was all fluff and spectacle anyway, they knew they loved each other, that was all that mattered.
But recently he had caught her looking longingly at the weddings in the period dramas he loved, and then glancing at him. Then shaking herself. After the first few times he could only wonder if perhaps she had changed her mind.
He broaches the subject again one night, while they are changing out of their day clothes, fully prepared to drop it immediately at the first hint of discomfort.
“Would you—would you ever want us to get married? I know you said it wasn’t for you—it’s fine if that’s still the case, but recently I’ve noticed…..”
She freezes from where she is standing, turned towards the dresser, hands clutching the nightgown she had planned to change into tightly. “There is something I have to tell you,” she says. Nervousness fills him.
Ellen can be….intense. Sometimes she speaks as though the world were at stake about something that turns out to be rather small. Or it could be a segue into a matter just as intense as her tone implied—something deadly serious.
Like that she had been thinking of leaving him. Please, please, let it not be that.
“…..Ellen?” He says, and she turns around. She’s biting her lip. “Are you alright?”
“I don’t think you’ll look at me the same way anymore when I say it.”
“Are you—is this—are you leaving me?” He can’t keep the crack out of his voice.
“You will want to leave me when you hear it!” she cries.
What? How could he ever want to leave her? Had she killed someone? Even so—
“I don’t think so,” he says. Then he pulls her into his arms.
“I was married before,” she whispers. Is that that all? Surprising, but not really a problem. Or perhaps not surprising, a bad marriage would put someone off starting another.
“Ellen,” he says, “this isn’t the eighteen hundreds, of course I’m not upset you’ve been married before.”
“I’m still married,” she says, pulling away from him, “technically.”
What? Well there was no way she had some sort of second life—they spent way too much time together.
Unless her husband had been away at sea somewhere, but Ellen hates the military. She would never be with a soldier. She even dislikes Friedrich having deals with the navy—and she says as much, starting a verbal fight with him, that Thomas and Anna wait out, whenever it’s brought up.
“Technically?” He asks.
“He never signed the paperwork, and I couldn’t deal with him anymore so I just ran. I moved to a different city and got my contacts changed, but it was never finalized.” She looks so guilty and she has no need to be.
Anger wells up in him. How manipulative. That’s not moral. It’s not right. Poor Ellen.
“Love, that’s on him not you, and that’s not really still being married, or I don’t feel that way, at least. I do wish you’d felt you could have told me.”
Something crosses Ellen’s expression too quickly for him to decipher, before it turns into gratitude. She lets him pull her down to sit next to him on the bed.
“I want to marry you,” she says, “I want all of it, the proposal and the venue, family and friends, all of it. We—me and my ex—weren’t sentimental about the process. It was all pre-nups and contracts, and courthouses, not affection or romance.”
“Alright,” Thomas says, with his heart full of emotion, and the sound of it leaking into his voice, “we can still do all that. I would love to marry you. We can just…call him—do you still have his number?” She nods, “—and ask him to finish the divorce paperwork. How long has it been?”
“I was twenty one,” she says, with unnecessary shame. He pulls her closer.
“Okay, seven years ago, he must have moved on by now. Maybe he’s just forgotten he never signed it, and he’ll appreciate the reminder.”
There is a doubt in her eyes at this statement that fills him with dread, but all together he is not too concerned. You can’t just not agree to getting a divorce—that’s not what people do. Maybe some people, at first, if they’re in denial, but after seven years apart? Absolutely not. Because that would be insane.
“Will you be with me when I make the call?” She says, leaning against his shoulder.
“Of course I will. I’m free tomorrow—if you want to do it then. No house tours or office work. It’s okay if you don’t. I understand if you want to prepare for a bit.”
Ellen considers, then shakes her head “no, no, putting it off any longer will be worse. We’ll do it tomorrow, after breakfast.”
“Then I’ll make some pancakes and eggs for us. We’ll gather our strength,” he says, bumping her shoulder. She laughs, but there is a stressed quality to it Thomas tenses to hear.
After breakfast he watches Ellen sit and stare down at her phone for close to an hour, a frown on her face and a wrinkle in between her brows, and Thomas starts to think, ridiculously, that perhaps getting married isn’t worth the stress she’s being put under.
But it’s not just that, there are other concerns that come into play here. Like the fact Ellen has several medical issues, her seizures, her depression, and a sleep disorder, and while Thomas is her emergency contact, and has been since they moved in together, legally speaking if she became incapacitated and couldn’t speak for herself, her ex would have authority over any medical decisions.
It terrifies and frustrates Thomas, in spite of his understanding of her reasoning, that he wasn’t aware of it, especially since they have had several very close calls. A total stranger to him, and seemingly a particularly untrustworthy one, could have had so much power over his best friend, his partner, and he would have been beside himself in a hospital room, completely unprepared.
Still he says, “maybe we could try another time,” at the forty five minute mark.
Ellen, hands on either side of her head, elbows resting on the table, says “No. I’m doing it now.” Then she continues staring down at her cell phone.
Twenty minutes later, she abruptly rises and leaves the room, and he calls out “….Ellen?” To no response.
She returns a minute later with a piece of paper containing a phone number. “Dial it for me?” she says handing it over.
He does, and they both stare at the phone as it rings.
It goes to automated voicemail. Ellen deflates into both relief and disappointment.
“It’s Ellen,” she says into the receiver, firm in spite of her fear, “call me back.” Then she presses end.
“I guess now we wait,” he says. Her face becomes even more strained. “How about we put on a show to distract ourselves.”
They spend the next thirty minutes tensely scrolling through options on Netflix. It only sort of works as a distraction, until the phone rings, and they both jump. Ellen reaches over and picks it up, hand shaking a little, and he grabs her other hand and they thread their fingers together.
He hears a muffled voice from where he’s sitting, he can’t make out the individual words—but he’s clearly angry, and there’s an accent he can’t place.
“I didn’t run away, I told you I was leaving you, and I did,” Ellen says, interrupting, with frustration replacing, or more likely resulting from, her nerves. His hand is squeezed tighter.
The voice continues—louder, angrier, and Thomas frowns. Actually this might be a worse situation than he’d first assumed. “No—no. No,” she says, her voice tight, “you don’t get to call me a liar, I did not lie. You lied to me.”
“—it—that’s not the point. Stop baiting me. It’s still over, I need you to sign the paperwork. Now.” The man on the other side calms down, but something in Ellen’s expression tells him this is not necessarily a good thing.
“‘Maybe I did find someone else, someone better,” a very inappropriate jolt of happiness flashes through him, and he smothers it, “I don’t see how it would be any of your business considering we are no longer together.”
The voice becomes the loudest yet and Ellen winces and moves away, Thomas can make out “eternal oaths” and “belong.”
Oh no, her ex might actually be the insane person he had dismissed as impossible the night before.
Ellen is yelling back “I am much too old for you to be lecturing me, and as it is very clear to me that you haven’t changed at all, I am hanging up!” And she does, and flings the phone down.
Her lip wobbles from where she’s biting it, and Thomas’ heart sinks, and then she’s crying into his chest. He strokes her hair. “I’m going to marry you,” she says muffled.
“I appreciate it,” he says with a little humor.
She smacks him lightly on the shoulder. “He’s not going to sign it,” she groans.
The humor dies.
“Well he has to,” Thomas says, “he can’t—we could get a lawyer. I’m sure Friedrich—“
She jolts up quickly, to look him in the eyes, “no, I don’t want Anna to know.”
“I don’t think she would judge you,” Thomas says, “didn’t you say she knew you in high school?”
Ellen had been a rebellious teenager—wild and resistant to her fathers pressures. Sneaking out, getting high, drinking. The same spirit he adores in her now, punching outward because of the heavy restrictions placed upon her. She has mellowed with her freedom.
(Thomas thinks they would not have interacted if they’d known each other back then. He was a gangly wallflower, shyer than he is even today, with the front-facing nature of his profession forcing him to leave his shell. Ellen says she would have taken one look at him, and decided to drag him along with her, same as Anna. She always likes the more difficult paths.)
“Yes, but with the baby—”
“Another one?” Thomas asks, interrupting unintentionally, in his surprise, It still feels like they just had Louise, though she’s already in Kindergarten, and Clara is in first grade.
“Oh, has Friedrich not told you yet?” Thomas shakes his head. Maybe he plans to do it when they next get lunch. “Yes, she found out a month ago, I don’t want to put all of my life’s stresses on her when she’s pregnant.”
Not again, she doesn’t say. She has told him she still feels guilty for ‘burdening’ Anna when she was about to have Clara, arriving unexpectedly, and asking for a place to stay and recoup after she had disappeared for three years.
(Anna had welcomed her with open arms, Friedrich less so, and Ellen was with her when Clara was born. Anna had her named godmother and Thomas had been asked to be Clara’s godfather, and they’d stood awkwardly side by side at the baptism, having met just once before then.)
Now he has a hint to the reason for her disappearance. She hadn’t liked to talk about it, seemingly beyond any of the other rough points in her life—turning sharp with him when he pressed, (and she was not usually so, as she was often with other people—he and Anna had the privilege of her heart), so he had left it alone. Maybe he should have tried harder. Maybe it would have ruined things.
“Okay, we won’t,” Thomas says, unsure of what to do. Can they afford a lawyer on their own? How expensive is it for this sort of thing? He can probably tighten the budget, cut down on a few things, if he needs to. If worse comes to worst, they might have to take out another loan. Thomas almost shudders at the thought.
“I will go confront him,” Ellen says, determination filling her eyes.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Thomas asks. “He seemed like a…character.” A rather spiteful and rude and entitled character.
“I can handle him, and he’s not going to do this to us,” she says with anger, but her tone, almost as if itching for a fight, sets Thomas on edge.
“Ellen….I’m not sure…I don’t want you to get hurt,” and she frowns at him.
“He’s hurting us now,” she says, put out.
“Yes. But are you sure you’re not….” And at her expression he trails off. He’s starting to get the sinking, unsettling suspicion that this one of her plans she really won’t be able to be persuaded against.
“If you’re going, I’m going too,” he says, instead of arguing further. It looks like he’ll have to take off work. Maybe aside from dealing with this man, it’ll be a nice trip. “Where is he right now?”
“Munich,” she says. Oh. Munich is far. “He is from Romania, originally, but he can’t go back on account of. Well. Some things he did there,” she says with way too much nonchalance. As much as Ellen can on occasion be too intense for a situation she can also sometimes be much too unaffected.
“What?” Thomas manages to squeak out.
Ellen grimaces.