Sacrifice
Title: Sacrifice
Author:tehkandrewfan
Rating: T, for safety
Characters/Pairings: John Bates; Anna/Bates
Warnings: None
Word Count: 294
Mere hours before his life is set to end, he can’t sleep. So he thinks.
Anna has given up so much for him. She gave up the right to a proper courtship; he’d been cautious about their relationship, knowing all-too well what people would say. She’d accepted his reluctance to court her openly with grace, the image of propriety at all times when they were out in the village together, even when he knew that she longed to take his arm and claim him.
She almost gave up so much of herself when she found him in Kirkbymoorside, offering herself to him as nothing more than a mistress, a cheap, worthless version of the wife who ought not to have been his. He’d looked into her eyes and seen the willingness to throw everything that she’d ever known away so that she could be with him. He’d vowed that he wouldn’t treat her like a whore who didn’t get paid at the end of the time.
She gave up so much when he married her. He can only imagine the sneers, the whispers that circulate. Wife of a convicted murderer. Perhaps a willing accomplice. He should never have allowed her to sacrifice so much for him. And yet he has.
But he vows that she won’t sacrifice her life after he has gone. He’ll convince her to go on living. She will, of course, deny that she can be happy again. Her grief will be profound. But he needs to know that she’ll move on with her life.
Anna is due on her final visit tomorrow. And he is determined to make her see that she can move on. Because he is not worth the ultimate sacrifice of a life of loneliness and grief.