A/N: There's a self-harm trigger warning here. I mean, this whole story is a warning, but you know. Just a heads-up.

Winter of 1870

"How do you deal with it, Papa?" asks Anne the second George opens the door. Her eyes are focused on the window situated on the far side of the room, but even from this distance, he hears the strange removal in her voice.

"Deal with what, liakadía?" He takes a tentative step closer, thinking that if he steps with too much force, she could break.

"Your wife. How much Ray looks like her. Doesn't her ghost ever leave you?" She turns towards him, but her gaze lands on the entrance from whence he had come.

"Ghosts are about as real as fairy stories, Anne. They are not important. What is important is you getting better. Would you like me to tell the cook to make you cream puffs? You adore those. Or maybe shepherd's pie? You need to eat. Look at how thin you've become."

"Pumpkin pie."

George freezes, then forces himself to relax. Anne has always been observant. She sees it all; how he clenched his jaw, how his body had tensed up...

"You want some pumpkin pie?"

"No, the girl. The one in the red dress. The one that looks like Ray. She's always around you. She smells like pumpkin pie. That is your wife, am I correct?"

"How much laudanum did you take?" he asks incredulously. Still, it is chilling. She could not have known that. She could not see what died a long time ago.

She yawns, crawling back under her blankets. George knows. For years, he has depended on laudanum, and he recognizes the same spacey removal that always comes after overdosing on it. Still, he lets Anne go. He cannot speak after that.

"I drank some of it. Maybe more than I should have. Either way, she's real."

"Go back to sleep, Anne. None of this is good for you."

She shifts away from him, curling herself up into a ball.

"Tell Raymond that. Let him go back to school where I can't trouble him. I'll be all right in the end."

"He won't like that."

"I don't care. Now go," she says dismissively, leaving George speechless. That is not the girl he considered his own daughter for nine years. That steady, aloof tone is not the voice girl he watched his son fall in love with. She is not the girl who rode on his shoulders until she had become too big to carry.

So George doesn't go. Instead, he walks over to her, ruffling her dark hair.

"She doesn't like it, you know. She's the one who always tells me to hide your laudanum bottles and whiskey. She hates how they smell. She told me that you... you're supposed to smell like paint and wildflowers, not tobacco and alcohol. She hates it. She likes the paint better. Wait... you paint?"

That slight rise of her voice is the first semblance of emotion he hears from her. It makes him tell her the truth.

"I used to. I made that painting on the mantle. It was supposed to be my wedding gift to her."

"And she never got to see it?"

"No. She wasn't my bride long enough to be able to."

Anne breathes in, gaze still on the space right behind him.

"She's sorry, you know. And she has seen the painting," Anne murmurs, sadness seeping into her tone. "She likes it, but I... I still do not know her name. She hasn't told me. I also don't know why she left so early. All I know is that it wasn't her choice, and she regrets it. She... misses you."

Her name. That is the one thing he will never bring himself to say again.

"Raymond wishes to see you," he says, attempting to divert attention from what may or may not be his spectral wife. "He wants you to know that he is sorry for whatever he did to make you hate him."

At last, she meets his gaze. Fury and sorrow shadowed her face.

"I don't hate him. I could never hate him," she says. She sounds so tired, so empty. No girl her age should ever sound like that. "It's just that... I want to protect him because it would be hard for him to want to spend his life with somebody like me. I don't want him to love me. Not the way I love him. I don't want him to destroy himself over something he can't have."

George embraces her, the girl who would someday actually become his daughter if she lives through this.

"Then you underestimate him. He knows, Anne. He's always known how unstable you could be even if you've never showed it. He's just been denying it. You ought to know that. You've both lived your lives stealing every moment you could with each other. He's spent years and years pulling himself together just so he could ask you to marry him. That boy... I'm proud of him. Even if I couldn't raise him as well as any other father could have, I am proud of what he has become. He should spend his life with someone like you because he deserves someone made stronger by the things you've faced."

Anne's resolve crumbles in front of him. It is like watching a storm break to finally let in the sun's rays.

"But I don't deserve him!" she cries. "And he doesn't deserve the hell he has to go through because he has to love me! I-I don't think I could take it if I had to watch him die that way. I wouldn't be able to handle it if I knew that I'd handed him the gun to shoot himself with."

"He doesn't have to love you. He only does this because he wants to. How many nights have I heard him sobbing because he doesn't think you will ever love yourself enough to realize that someone can and will always be there for you? He cried when he was eleven, Anne. After he asked you to marry him and you refused. The last time he came home, I watched him carve out his own skin to remind himself what he had to lose so he could make you happy. He could leave you right now and end the pain you are causing him because you keep saying that you could never bring yourself to hurt him by showing him that you care, but he won't. Most people would have left after you told them to, but he stays even if you claw and scream and swear at him. Even if he has to pretend that it doesn't hurt him. That boy would carve out his own heart and push it into your chest if you told him that you do not love him because you don't have the heart to."

He would. Anne knows he would, but if he did? She would destroy that heart just like she destroyed her own. She would end up killing them both.

"But I love him! I wanted to set him free by ending myself because he would never learn what being loved back by someone whole felt like if I was the one he had to be with. He deserves more than bits and pieces that only try to fracture even more. I wanted to give him anything better than what I was. He's not... he's not some boy that I am killing myself over! He is the one that has watched my bedside more than my mother has when I was sick. He is the one that has to constantly put up with all of this since we were young! Is it so bad that I am repaying my debt to him by making sure that he never has to bear such a responsibility ever again?"

"He wouldn't want anything that isn't you. And you are lying. You wouldn't do this over some damned notion that you would free him by ending your own life." He had seen right through her, and it makes her pull the blankets up to hide her face. She has never felt so ashamed. No matter how hard she tries to make herself feel that way, no matter if her heart already treats it as truth... She knows.

"If you could only see how he beats himself up. I have to pretend not to see the bloodstains on his pillows. I pretend to not see those bloodied gear teeth, ice picks, kitchen knives or whatever he uses to harm himself on his nightstand because he would crumble if he knew that I had found out. He would crumble if he learned that you knew what he does to keep himself sane."

"He could just leave." No matter how much she wanted him to, he wouldn't.

"Tell me," he says, ignoring her previous statement. "Tell me why you tried to do it. I want your real reason."

She almost refuses. She hadn't- would never- tell Raymond. If she wouldn't tell her Raymond, that poor victim caught in this damned maelstrom, then she sure as hell ought to not tell his father, but... George would understand. Through all the things that made her love him as the father she did not think she would ever have, he was still broken and imperfect and ruined. There were scars all over his body from childhood lashings, the letter opener he used to slice his skin with until she had stolen it, and with past attempts to end his life the way she had tried to. If there was anyone who could understand, it was him.

"I want to stop being a burden to everyone," she says weakly. "I know that society doesn't like Mama because she refuses to get rid of her sick devil's child daughter. I see the little frown Raymond wears when he tells me not to let the whispers affect me. Society hates him for spending his time with a girl wasting away. I am a burden to Aunt Ellie because she cannot stop working. She has to find a cure for me, take care of me right after fits. She is only forty, and most of her hair is already silver. The only people I am not a burden to are you, and my real Papa." All this time, she speaks so softly that George is certain that he does not hear her right. Her voice is becoming raspy again.

"I am not a burden to you because the lady in the red dress tells me how to act around you. And you do not care when polite society tells you to chain me up in an asylum where I can just die. My real Papa must be happy right now, too, wherever he is. Whenever he hears news of the woman he married and the child he left behind, he must feel glad that he had not stayed. At least I am making someone happy."

George gently coaxes her to pull the blanket down. Her face is stained with tears.

"Well... That's a start." He kisses her temple the way he used to when he tucked her in at night as a child. "But you make people happy. Every time you and Raymond dance one of those slow dances, everyone silences. I see how their faces light up when he twirls you. They talk about it afterwards, and they describe it as nothing short of magic. It sticks around longer than the news of whether or not Lady Arianne Liddell had a fit. Besides, I see how Raymond smiles when he sees you. It is like he is falling in love with you all over again. Every day. If that is not making someone happy, then I do not know what is."

"Ray's scars," she asks, paling. "Why have I never felt them? Why have I never seen them?" All those times she had held him while they danced. All those times they had almost lain together, when she had stripped him bare and laid him before her. His body had been unblemished. Soft and smooth under her touch.

"That is because he hides, Anne. Most are new, but the ones that have faded are where you cannot see them, even if he lies naked for you. They are on the back of his neck, behind his thighs and knees. I have not seen the worst of them, I do not know where they are."

But she does. The 'birthmarks' on his wrist. The 'chopping accident' on his arm. That one had seemed too deep to have been a simple knife slip.

"Papa... Just... Please hold me. It's my fault that Ray does that. I hope he finds someone else to fancy, because... Children? Love? I'm not capable of giving those things to him. I was born too weak, and I can't force myself to love someone who deserves a better chance."

"But you already love him."

"I already love him. I always have." There is that tone in her voice again. She just sounds so sad. He embraces her.

"Did you ever plan to accept his marriage proposal?"

Again, Anne wants to lie. Again, she does not.

"No. No matter how much I wanted to, I was going refuse to wear that ring so I could break his heart and he would never have to look me in the eye again. I want him to be happy, and if his definition of happy was me? He would have to suffer, and I couldn't do that to him. I wanted to be happy too, but... I thought of him first." It hurts whenever she has to lie to him about wedding plans and children and seaside cottages. These were the things that tear at her heart the most. Knowing she could never give these things to him.

"But you don't want to break his heart. You want to break your own because you want the pain, don't you? You want to make yourself hurt so you could feel."

Her eyes widen.

"How would I know that? It's because that is what I feel, Anne. Every day. It is what stops me from wanting to end it all. And I would never wish that pain on anyone, much less you. I was older than you when I lost her, and... you are just so young. You and my son deserve everything this life has to offer, and you simply can't have that if you keep telling yourself that you can't."

Raymond deserves it. All of it. Maybe more. But Anne thinks she doesn't. Her chances should go to Raymond, for all the smiles he had causes and for all the love he has given her.

"Anne, if you try this again, it would kill him. He doesn't want to tell you, but he barely touches his food anymore, and his lungs are always on the verge of collapsing because he is so damned worried. If you truly loved him, then you should stop lying to him. Tell him about your reasons and listen to his own. I've had nothing to do with it, but he grew up with a good heart, and that deserves more than a dead beloved. He is just as attached to you as you are to him, so don't even think for a second that he doesn't bleed for the wounds you have inflicted on yourself. My greatest wish is for both of you to throw away those doubts and be happy together, and neither of you can have that if you remain silent."

The girl in the red dress smiles approvingly, but she is not looking at Anne. Where she stands lays a journal.

"Anne?" George asks, making her gaze back at him.

"Yes?"

"Will you tell him the truth?" She can't. She can't. Listening to Raymond's voice was difficult enough, but what more would be hearing him reassure her? It would give her false hope and it would burden him even more.

But the girl comes closer, laying an ethereal hand on Anne's shoulder. It is warm and reassuring. Motherly, almost. The smile she gives Anne is reminiscent of cozy winter evenings with a roaring hearth and wool stockings.

"In my own time," she says, looking up, but the girl in the red dress already gone. Still, it gives her a little bit of hope. If she moved worlds to see her husband again, then Anne could at least try to be honest to the woman's son.

She could do it. At the very least, she could try.

She owed him that much. Owed him more. More than just an effort.