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The last time Demelza had run into Molly she had been in a terrible state and still pregnant. It's a testament to how busy she's been in Darrow that she realizes she hadn't baked anything for her or brought over anything for her child, but only at the sight of Molly now, walking ahead of her in a beautiful coat the likes of which Demelza knows she'll never be able to wear, does she realize she should have done something.

Molly has had the baby now, of course, and it seems as though she must be back to work, but when Demelza checks the time she assumes Molly must be finished for the day. She would love to be back at work herself, but she still has several weeks to go before her agreed return to Tintern Abbey and she's doing her best to follow their arrangement. They'd urged her to take an entire year, but she's nearing four months now and feels absolutely stir crazy already, so five will have to be enough for Demelza Poldark.

If Molly is back at work already, though, she must have a much more understanding employer -- though the management at Tintern is lovely and she'd never say a word against them -- and Demelza hurries to catch up with her, glad the children are with Abby for the day.

"Molly," she calls when she's close enough, slipping between a few people to fall in step beside the other woman. "Hello. I'm that sorry, I just saw you and I wanted to apologize for not having come to visit after your baby was born."

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If the last few months have been exhausting, the last few days have been infinitely more so. As much as she'd like to, Molly can't pretend otherwise, either. There's a welcome relief in finally being back at work, in having something to focus on and not just staring at the walls of an apartment that's distinctly missing one presence, but after so much time off and with so much else on her mind that she's trying to get sorted out, it's draining in a way she isn't used to. They're less than three months out from an election, and she hasn't the faintest fucking idea where the last year went. What she does know is that she's bound and determined to find a way through this. She's come back from too much other shit to let this be what does her in now.

She's heading back to her building, debating whether or not she should take a detour to look at some vacant apartments in the area or if she would be better off waiting until she's got some more things settled first, when she hears her name and instinctively turns in the direction of the voice that's spoken it, smiling when it's a familiar face she's greeted with. She's met Demelza only the once, but given the state she had been in at the time, never mind how memorable that day itself had been for the loss of two people so close to her, the other woman's kindness isn't something she could soon forget. It meant far too much to her for that. "Oh, trust me, there's nothing to be sorry for," she says, the warmth in her voice genuine, even though what follows is an understatement to say the least. "I haven't been very good company anyway. It's so nice to see you again."

"And you," Demelza answers and she has to resist the urge to drop into a small curtsy, knowing it's considered strange by many here and yet feeling like she must regardless. Molly may not dress as the gentlefolk did in her time, but she still looks refined in a way Demelza knows she never will herself. Still, she manages not to curtsy and instead offers Molly a curious, but sympathetic smile. In the days following Julia's birth, she had been well enough, finding herself right back in the kitchen where she felt as if she belonged, but with Jeremy it had been different and she hadn't felt quite like herself.

Happy enough to be certain, but at a bit of a loss, as if she were floating along. No one had expected her to work, they had outright tried to prevent her, and she had found it disconcerting.

"Have things been difficult since the baby?" she asks. "You must tell me, did 'ee have a boy or a girl?" She'll wait a few minutes so as not to appear too overbearing, then offer help if Molly needs. Demelza is desperate for something to do until she's allowed back at work.

Difficult is one word for it, and that's been even more the case this past while, since Lee disappeared and left her thrown for a loop, having to try to figure out how to deal with all of this on her own. Even before that, though, Molly can't exactly say it's been easy, in ways she wouldn't have the words to try to explain. So many times she's had to wonder what's wrong with her that she doesn't feel about any of this the way she's supposed to, that when she tries to summon up even a fraction of that feeling, all she finds is an empty space in her chest. She can attempt it, she can even fake it, but what should be there simply isn't.

Maybe she was never cut out for this in the first place. If that's so, it isn't like she ever gave herself a chance to think about it, doing what she felt she had to rather than what felt right, never even getting as far as what she wanted. That last part, at least, she's glad for. This is all hard enough as it is without her losing something she'd pinned all of her hopes on.

"I guess it has been, yeah," she says, the simplest way she can put it, though she keeps her voice light, her expression even. "And I had a girl. Abigail."

"That's a beautiful name," Demelza says with a smile, but she's watching Molly curiously. She hasn't said anything out of the ordinary and Demelza believes most mothers find the first several weeks and months -- and possibly years -- to be rather difficult, but there's something else hidden in her tone. She's had to be perceptive since she was only a child, it had been the only way to escape her father's more brutal beatings. Learning to read his level of anger had kept her safe, for she had stayed put for his less violent fits, allowing herself to be hit so long as the blows wouldn't kill her.

And when she sensed his anger to be too much, that was when she disappeared. So she's learned how to read people relatively well and although she doesn't want to presume and knows she can still be wrong often enough, she suspects there is more than what Molly is telling her. Which is, of course, her right, but Demelza has a curious nature and no embarrassment about pushing.

"Are you not settling in?" she asks lightly, with no judgment in her tone. "I've heard tell it can be quite an adjustment for many new mothers. When I had Julia I had so much help I scarce knew where she was unless she were hungry, which eased the burden greatly."

She isn't, not really, not at all, but even being asked outright, Molly can't quite make the words come. Even without knowing her well, she doubts Demelza would be one to judge her for it, not after how kind the other woman had been when she'd been having a panic attack in the park, but it still feels like so much a shortcoming that it's hard to admit to. Though she can't be the first or only new mother in this position, nearly everyone she's known has taken to it more easily than she has. Mindy's son showed up without any kind of warning, and even she'd seemed to have an easier time of it than Molly has found herself having now. Some women are just more cut out for this sort of thing than others, she thinks. She used to believe that she would be, one day, that she would settle down and start a family, but for whatever reason — and she has her guesses as to where that might have started — that's no longer the case, nothing that makes sense for her anymore.

Instead of saying so, what comes out is something entirely different. "My boyfriend — Abigail's father — disappeared a few days ago," she replies, a deceptive calm in her voice. It's more like the end of the story than the beginning, but she can always backtrack if need be. Right now, it says all she needs to. "So I've been... I mean, I have a couple friends who've been really helpful, but there's a lot to figure out on my own all of a sudden."

"Oh, Molly," Demelza says, surprised by the news. She can't imagine how much that must hurt, how it must feel to know the man who fathered her child has returned to his home, leaving her here on her own to take responsibility for their child and for her entire life. If Ross were to ever disappear, Demelza knows she would make the best of the situation, she would do everything for Julia and Jeremy, but that doesn't mean for a moment it would be easy. She would miss him with every fibre of who she is, down to her very core, and she knows she'd never love another. Never. Ross is the beginning and the end for her.

And yet she would survive because she must. Molly will survive.

"I'm that sorry," she says. "Do 'ee need anything at all. Even if only to look after your daughter while you get some sleep, I'd be happy enough to. Ross can look after ours if he's home from work or we have help from a nanny, I could come at nearly any time at all."

"I — I'd appreciate that, thank you," Molly says, just a bit taken aback by the offer, but grateful even so. It's been as difficult to try to process people wanting to see if she needs help as anything else, just adding to how surreal the situation is and driving home how badly she needs it, but whatever she's been thinking about and whatever she has yet to figure out, she's not so proud that she'll try to do this all on her own. That's part of the problem: she knows she can't, and she doesn't know if it's fair to try, not when she's the only one affected here. Her plan was always to make sure this didn't infringe on her career. That was just a lot easier when Abigail had a father, even with Lee being busy with law school. "It's not really something I considered, you know? That I'd have to try to juggle all of this without anyone else."

That same steady calm is in her voice, a necessity as much as anything else. She's always been good at compartmentalizing, but in this case, if she can't hold herself together, it's too likely that she'll completely fall apart, and she's just too tired for that.

Demelza nods her understanding, because although Ross is here with her now, although she has his help in every way, there had some time before his arrival here, time when she and Julia had been alone. She had been terrified during those weeks, worried about how she would properly provide for her daughter, wondering how she would ever explain it to Julia as she grew. That it wasn't her father's choice not to be here, that they'd been taken from him.

It had come as such a relief to have him arrive and while she knows she would have done whatever was necessary to take care of Julia, having him here makes it better. Easier.

"Julia and I were without Ross for a little while when we first came here," she says. "I had such trouble trying to decide what to do, where to begin. Everywhere I looked, things seemed terribly overwhelming and I felt as though I couldn't possibly make it all work. I understand and even so, all the help in the world doesn't make you feel better." She touches her fingers gently to her chest. "Not here."

"No," Molly says with a slight shake of her head, not much more than an exhale, the closest she's yet gotten to admitting how hard this has been for her beyond just the logistics of it. She can shove her own feelings into a box and push it as far away as she can, throw herself into starting work again and trying to make sense of the mess of a life she's got ahead of her instead of anything more personal, but that doesn't mean it isn't there or that it's easy. She loved him, or she thinks she did, the feeling still an entirely unfamiliar one to her. She spent two years of her life with him, two years that she won't get back, and if there's anyone who knows how significant that is, it's someone like her, living on borrowed time.

That's all the more reason to try to put things right as soon as she can instead of sitting around and grieving like someone's died, but the very fact of it is still a simple, indisputable one. "It doesn't. I... I already had no idea what I was doing, and now I really don't."

Though they've not known each other long, Molly's strength is been apparent to Demelza since the day they met, a woman thrust into a situation not entirely of her making and doing what she can to get on with it regardless. That's something Demelza well understands, having been thrown into such a situation herself at such a young age, forced to care for six younger brothers after their mother's death, the youngest a mere infant.

Perhaps that's why she's always loved Drake best. She was the one who soothed him when he cried and she was the one to hold him and care for him, the one to make sure he survived.

"What is it you want?" she asks. "However unreasonable you might think it to be, what is it you truly want?" Time cannot be undone, but knowing whether or not Molly wishes it could be is certainly vital.

"I..." Molly says, and hesitates a moment. Demelza isn't much more than a stranger, though Molly has learned enough from the times they've spoken to know how kind she must be, someone who'd stop and help a woman panicking whom she'd never seen before. A question phrased like that leaves room for any number of possible answers, anyway, not just the easy ones. Still, it's hard to give voice to something like this, or not to worry that she won't be judged for it, branded as selfish as she knows she must be. At least she knows it of herself. It makes it just a little easier to answer with that being the case. "I want my life back."

Wishing for Lee to come back is pointless, and so is wanting back the two years she spent with him and has now effectively lost. There's no undoing what's been done. All she can do is try to find a way to move forward, and, God, does she miss who she used to be, the girl who walked into Patrick Bateman's apartment that night and never walked back out, whom it's hard to imagine ever being in a serious relationship of two years, having a boyfriend she lived with and, now, a baby. She knows how and why that girl got lost, but she still wishes she could find her again.

She pulls a face, sheepish. "That sounds awful, doesn't it? I just — I don't know how I got here. Or I do, but it's still like, at some point, someone else came and took my place."

"No," Demelza says. "I don't think it sounds awful at all."

It sounds honest and she appreciates honesty above so many other traits others deem to be more important. Demelza has no particular interest in power or money, she sees little need to pretend to be someone she isn't in order to win the approval of those who care for nothing but status and coin. She had tried for Ross and she knows, without considering it for even a second, she would have continued to try for him every single day were they still in Cornwall, but it's a relief not to have to face that scrutiny all the time.

Demelza values love and compassion and forgiveness and honesty. But forgiveness must be extended to oneself as well.

"I think it's good 'ee know," she says. "And I think perhaps knowing means you may yet be able to find a way back. At least part of the way." Because experiences can't be undone and babies certainly can't be unborn, but she knows there are options in that regard as well. Plenty of women had done many different things in Cornwall to rid themselves of children, though Demelza knows such things would never be used here.

There's a sort of relief in that, an absolution. Molly still isn't quite so sure that it doesn't make her awful or selfish or any number of other awful things, but for now, it's enough to be told that this doesn't mean she is, and to think that Demelza must mean it. Growing up around politicians, going into politics herself, one thing it would have been impossible not to pick up on and that's part of her job description now is being able to read people. She'll hardly claim to be some prodigy, but these days — having learned from lapses in judgment — she's usually pretty good at knowing when someone is being earnest or trying to spin something, if there's truth in the words or just a carefully-hidden lie. Demelza doesn't strike her as someone who would be dishonest about this sort of thing. And while maybe the opinion of someone she's only met twice shouldn't be hugely significant, that of another mother does.

"I'm working on it," she admits. "I think... being back at work helps. I'm looking at apartments, I don't want to live where Lee did. It's a start." They're smaller problems, fragments of the whole. They don't change the fact that she's fucking clueless, or that she acted out of obligation rather than desire and now is trapped for it.

Given Molly's clothing, Demelza has a feeling her work is far more important than that of what is essentially a barmaid, but she knows she also feels the same. Even now, she's itching to get back to work, just to have something to do other than be at home with her children at day and she loves her children more than anything in this world.

"When you're used to being productive and always having work, it's terribly difficult to be told 'ee must back off from it just because you've had a child," she says. Perhaps it will help Molly to know Demelza feels the same, that such emotions are certainly not unheard of. "Where I come from, I always worked. First I cared for my brothers after my mother died, then I worked for Ross in his kitchen and even after we were married, there was always work t'be done. Between the kitchen and the barn and stables and the fields, I was very busy. Only days after Julia was born, I returned to the fields for the harvest, but here, after having Jeremy, I was told I must take a leave from work and I don't understand it at all. I don't wish to take a leave from work."

She pauses and then says, "I love my children, truly. I love them more than anything, more than I knew it would be possible to love someone, but I cannot stand bein' idle. Tis just... well, they're babies. They don't do terribly much at the moment, do they?"

She still spends plenty of time with them. Being allowed to be away for five or six hours a day really doesn't seem like she's asking for too much at all.

"No, they really don't," Molly says with a faint chuckle. Abigail doesn't do much but lie there grabbing at things, and while Molly can recognize that it's endearing, she doesn't really feel it in the way she thinks a mother ought to. It's more like babysitting a child she's very fond of, but long-term, and accompanied by all sorts of physical changes that she's still only just coming back from. She managed to squeeze into a great dress on New Year's, but she'll be happy when she has the body she recognizes as her own back, or at least the closest approximation to it that she can get.

In a way, she thinks that's part of her problem. What happened to her those few years ago changed her irrevocably, made her feel like her body, her life, wasn't her own. Getting pregnant and having a baby has only seemed to confirm that, in its way, making it more uncomfortable for her than perhaps it ought to be.

"And, I mean — It's not that I don't love her," she says, feeling somehow like she needs to clarify that, even though it seems too cold just to say so. "I do. Of course i do. I just... don't think I feel the way I'm supposed to. It's like she's someone else's and I'm just taking care of her. Or something. Especially now."

Edited 2017-01-25 19:19 (UTC)

Demelza is quiet for a moment, considering that. It's not something she understands herself, because her children are her world, more important to her than anything. When she's with them, she feels as if she's done something right and perfect in having them, not because they contribute to the world in any particularly special way, but because something inside her simply responds to their very presence.

But there are those who don't wish to be mothers. It isn't often women of miners are allowed to become anything besides mothers, but Demelza remembers hearing from several as she grew, whispers they'd rather never have a child at all. And there were those babies who were born and then vanished, likely tossed into abandoned mine shafts. Molly isn't going to do such a horrid thing, she's sure of that, but she finds herself wondering if there are alternatives.

"Do 'ee not want to be a mother?" she asks and her question is sincere, her tone without judgment. She's only trying to determine what comes next in such a situation and if she can ask questions without offending Molly. "You can say what's truly in your heart, I shan't judge 'ee."

Edited 2017-01-26 16:09 (UTC)

The question is so upfront, something she thinks she's been trying to dance around admitting even to herself, that for a moment, Molly can't answer. It isn't really as simple as that, anyway — nothing ever is — but right here and right now, in this situation, she thinks she knows what her response has to be, even if she hates herself a little for it. Maybe there's no way to win. Back home, she did what she had to, and here, she thought she did the same. Both times, she couldn't have known how the situation would actually turn out or what she might wind up regretting.

"I used to think I did," she settles on, speaking almost to herself, her voice soft, thoughtful. "You know, a long time ago, I'd figure that I would settle down one day, start a family. Then..." Then Mike Morris got her pregnant and left her on her own. Then Patrick happened, and it was a good year before she let anyone so much as touch her. She'd known, with Lee, that she couldn't end another pregnancy, that the guilt would eat her alive, but she'd thought that they would be doing this together, that both of them being out of their element, they would figure it out. She stopped being cut out for this, though, a long time ago, and that's more than she can do on her own. "This, what i have now... isn't the life I want for myself. And she deserves better than that."

Just because she doesn't understand it doesn't mean she can't sympathize, something taught to her years ago by the most wonderful woman she's ever had the chance to know. Verity may not be in Darrow with her, but she has taught Demelza so much and she honestly thinks the best way to honour her cousin is to hold them close and remember them and to stand true to what she's learned. Of everything she learned from Verity, the idea that one doesn't have to understand in order to feel stands foremost in her mind in this situation, and so she reaches over and places her hand on Molly's back, a steadying presence for a moment or two as they walk.

She'd meant what she said, there's no judgment in her. Different people are built for different lives and there's no shame in trying to find the best place in the world for who you are.

"It must be difficult," she says. "Feelin' that and still tryin' to do everything right by her. I can't imagine, 'ee must feel so much pressure." Because people have so many expectations of mothers, of women, of what it means to be both or either and what it says when they make certain decisions. Even here, when so much has changed, Demelza sees it hasn't really. Not in the sense it should have.

Molly nods, that being really the crux of it. Between the pressure and the guilt, even with the latter being self-imposed, it's hard to take so much as a step in any direction when it feels like any choice she makes will be the wrong one. If she toughs this out, dedicates the next eighteen years of her life and then some — if she even gets that long — to a child she isn't sure she wants, then she'll be doing herself a disservice, wasting this impossible second chance. If she gives Abigail up, even finding her a family who genuinely wants her, she'll have failed yet another child, and she doesn't know if she could carry that on her shoulders along with the weight of so much else.

She inhales a little sharper than she means to, and then figures she might as well come right out with it. Demelza may come from a time very different from her own, but she's promised not to judge, and Molly figures she may as well take a gamble here. She ought to own it, really, and if it doesn't go well, she deserves that. "Back home, I... I got pregnant, by accident. It was a whole mess of a situation, way too complicated to get into, but... To make a long story short, I went to a doctor and I had it taken care of," she explains, glancing at the sidewalk. "So when it happened this time, I... guess I felt like I had an obligation to do things right this time. I couldn't go through what I did before again. So on one hand, I never really wanted it this time either, but on the other... I feel like I owe her more."

A dozen questions rise up in Demelza all at once and she stamps them down immediately, knowing this is not the time or place to ask them. She makes a mental note, though, to ask at the library so that she might learn, because there are surgeons who do offer such services in her time, though she's heard them painful and dangerous. There are others, too, not doctors but those offering their services all the same, mixing herbs and plants, promising to bring the child early or to make it so the child never comes at all. She's heard those painful and dangerous as well.

It must no longer be the case and she's terribly curious, but Molly is the wrong person to ask. Even Demelza, for all her curiosity and lack of tact, knows that.

"It shouldn't be an obligation," she says gently. "I can understand your feelings, especially after it having happened to 'ee before, but I think bein' a parent is difficult enough even when it's something you terribly, desperately want." She has no idea what the solution might be, not now that the child is here, and she wishes she could offer something more, but has nothing.

"No, I guess it shouldn't be," Molly agrees, her voice soft. It's not like she regrets the decision she made. She didn't the first time, either, knowing she had no other choice, even if she's never managed to shake her guilt over it. The situation is just an awful one all around, now, when whatever decision she makes, it won't feel right. This, too, she'll have to carry around with her for the rest of her time here. Maybe, though, just maybe, she can find a way to minimize that. At least talking about it feels a little like clearing her conscience, not just keeping it all bottled up inside her own head. "And I... It wouldn't have been, I don't think. Lee and I were going to figure it out. But now that I'm on my own..."

She presses her lips together in a thin line, looking over at Demelza with clear appreciation before she swallows hard, figuring she might as well continue. "I've been wondering... I've been wondering if maybe she might be better with another family. People who do really, desperately want that."

The very thought makes Demelza's chest ache. She doesn't mean for it to happen, she doesn't mean to think of the situation as being her own, to consider what she might feel if she were to have to give up either of her children, but she does all the same and it makes her feel as if something is crushing her slowly.

It being the wrong decision for her, however, does not mean the same for Molly. She's promised not to judge and she breathes out slowly, reminding herself of that as she wills the ache to ease. Later, when she inevitably cries on Ross' shoulder, he'll be bewildered, but he'll do what he can to comfort her.

"Tis a very difficult decision to make," she says. "But I believe you must do what you think is best, both for her and for yourself. Whatever that may turn out to be, you must follow your heart and head alone in such matters." Because there will be those who have their opinions, those whi might try to sway her one way or the other.

It's where she runs into trouble, because Molly isn't sure there is a best decision here. Best would have been for Lee not to disappear, for all that she tries not to let herself dwell on that. Best would have been for her not to get pregnant again at all, or for it not to have happened in the first place, though it's hard to imagine what her life here might be if not for that. Certainly she wouldn't have taken half as well to it as she did with the knowledge that this is all she'll ever get, her only chance of having a life. She can deal with this, she knows she can — she's dealt with worse, after all — but it's still far from easy.

"I just wish I knew what my heart and my head were saying," she says with a small, wry smile. "Or that they could say one thing clearly."

"That is so often the trouble, isn't it?" Demelza asks, smiling in return. There's truly no escaping such a thing and so many difficult decisions will never feel entirely settled one way or the other. There will always be regrets and there will always be moments in which someone will wonder what might have become if they'd made another decision.

Demelza wonders regularly what might have become of their lives had she not been so insistent on matching Verity and Captain Blamey. It's a difficult thing to regret, because Verity deserves happiness and love, but it had come at such a cost and with so much betrayal.

"Whatever you decide, should 'ee need someone to listen, I'd offer myself," she says sincerely.

"Thank you," Molly says, and for half a moment, the words almost stick in her throat. It isn't like she hasn't had people who've been helpful, who've been kind. There are a few she still has left to turn to, and she doesn't know what she would do without them now, those like Katie and Clarke who've been so present for her. Demelza is a near-stranger, though, however serious the circumstances of their two meetings have been, and it means all the more, somehow, an offer of assistance like that coming from someone she barely knows.

She has people, but it's so easy to feel alone with something like this when she's lost so many, too, including the ones she would have been first to turn to. Ultimately, this decision can't be anyone's but her own, but that doesn't make it an easy thing to have in her head. "And hopefully you won't be sorry you offered. I think I really will need it."

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