WHO: Danielle Kettleburn and Donovan Rookwood
WHAT: Secrets from their past are revealed from unlikely places?
WHERE: A cafe, then his flat
WHEN: The other day lmao idk



Danielle had gotten off her lunch break five minutes later than she thought she was going to, and while it really wasn’t that much of a difference, she really hated to leave Donovan waiting. Any anxiety he might still have with her and her very sketchy past involving not being in certain places at certain times...well, she did not want to trigger any bad feelings. Things were a lot better than when she’d arrived back in England nearly a year ago, but Danielle did not feel comfortable with treading back on the past.

She burst into the cafe, the catalogs and pamphlet she’d collected almost scattering to the floor. They were supposed to meet for lunch and they were supposed to decide on which of the rather impressive flats they were going to decide on. A few of the offers were done by the end of the month, so Danielle had of course been very stressed with making a decision and meeting the deadline. She spotted Donovan in a booth near the back and rushed over. Danielle leaned forward and greeted him with a quick kiss before sliding into the seat across from him (it was easier to display her findings). She let out a breath and slumped back,

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she started, noticing for the first time that Donovan had a pile of paper work in front of him as well. They didn’t look like her housing catalogs, however, they looked more like torn open letters, “My patient refused to get dressed...what are you looking at?”

While Danielle was trying not to relive the past, Donovan had no choice but to face it head on after meeting with his mother for breakfast that morning. She had requested that he meet her at some ungodly hour, because she had something she wanted to discuss with him – if he knew then what he knew now, he would have understood that she wanted to give him plenty of time to process the bombshell she had just dropped right on top of him. He felt as though he couldn’t breathe, when she explained to him why there were so many envelopes bound together in leather on the breakfast table.

He wasn’t even looking up to notice that Danielle was late, and didn’t even notice that she had arrived until she was approaching him, snapping him out of his daze for the first time. A half empty cup of tea that was probably cold by now was settled on the table next to the envelopes. He had been sitting there for quite some time – a few hours, at least, giving him more than enough time to read and re-read, and even re-re-read the letters that had been given to him earlier. He kissed her back, and watched as she settled into the seat across from him. He was looking at her, but his mind was anywhere but in the café.

Not until she asked about what it was he had been looking at. He swallowed, reaching up to rub at his forehead as he cleared his throat.

“…letters.”

He spoke quietly, and then turned his eyes back up to meet hers. He was sure she would recognize her own handwriting, even if she so much as glanced down at the paper.

“Letters I think we need to talk about…”

Danielle was of course confused and leaned forward to try and read the crinkled parchment upside down. Were they letters from the real estate people, telling them they had lost the places they’d been interested in? Oh, she would be devastated if they couldn’t get the one with the large windows, she’d been daydreaming about reading on that sill for days now, it would really be such a loss...

Her eyebrows knitted and Danielle reached forward to take one of the envelopes sitting on the pile. Once she’d brought it to herself she recognized it immediately and let out a short, shocked gasp. That was Donovan’s address on the front of the letter, but she had written it, she knew her own scrawl of course and---Danielle pulled the parchment out of the envelope and checked, she just had to check---the date, of course it was what she’d been thinking. These were the letters she’d sent him over her five years in Colombia that he’d never responded to. Why would he have pulled these out now? Was this some sort of test?

“Why are you showing me these?” she asked, trying to remain calm and looking him in the eye. If Donovan needed more evidence that she was devoted to him, that she wasn’t going anywhere, she had to keep her senses straight.

His eyes dropped to the table between them, his head still clouded – this changed everything. This made him re-evaluate the last 5 years, and wonder how much could have been different if he hadn’t just been handed letters he was supposed to have read such a long time ago. He remained quiet for a moment, still staring at the table even after her question was directed at him. He owed her an explanation, but it was all just a lot to process, and it took her repeating his name to get his attention before his eyes were back on hers.

He swallowed again, searching the pretty hues of her eyes with the mixture of grey and blue speckles that made up his own – like a storm at sea, crashing waves that could make someone drown if they got caught in the intensity of his gaze, though at the moment he looked drained – like he was deflating, because nothing was as he believed it to be anymore.

“…because I only just received them this morning.”

Danielle blinked, not understanding. She stared hard at Donovan, taking in his sunken shoulders, his sad expression. What did he mean? Why would he have only---her letters had not been returned, she’d always been heartbroken about that. It had made her think that Donovan was receiving her letters and just refusing to respond to her, to make it hurt more. Why was he just opening them now? Why was he just receiving them this morning?

It didn’t take long for her mind to jump to the final conclusion. Donovan wasn’t the only person living at this house, and he probably wasn’t the one retrieving the post. Actually, in the few times she had been there for breakfast, a house elf brought the post straight to his mother. It took Danielle seconds to envision Donovan’s mother pushing her letters away, out of her son’s eyes to keep him from getting hurt or---or whatever Mrs. Rookwood thought she was saving him from.

She looked down at the letter in her hands, skimming over the words she’d written so long ago. Danielle remembered where she was when she had felt the need to write him, it was in a field with the flowers that reminded her of cherry blossoms. Her stoic expression cracked and with a short gasp Danielle began to cry, the letter dropping out of her hands and under the table of their booth.

Five years of thinking he hated her! Danielle’s hands covered her face as her tears grew stronger and she shook her head, finding the whole situation absolutely unbelievable and terrible.

Donovan nearly flinched when she finally lost her composure, and even as his hand extended forward to cover hers, she was hiding her face behind them, leaving him to curl his fingers against the cold, flat surface of the table before he stood up from his side of the table to sit beside her on the other side. His one arm wrapped around her, pulling her against him as his other hand stroked her hair, trying to regain the ability to speak so he could say what he wanted to her.

“I never knew…” He whispered to her, close to her ear as he continued to run his fingers through strands of honey and gold. He let out a breath through his nose, eyes shutting as he thought about all the chaos that could have been prevented if he had known about even one of those letters – if he had never doubted how she felt about him.

“I didn’t-…I didn’t know what to say, when she explained what they were…all of them, untouched and unread…but each of them addressed to me.”

She felt like she didn’t know anything. For Danielle, whose life revolved around facts and logic, feeling as if everything she supposedly knew was a lie and fake felt like her brain had erupted and left all of her memories and thoughts in piles of ashes. She needed a pensieve, to sort through what was real and what was not. It had been such a terrible feeling, one that she could still feel the echoes of in her chest, thinking that Donovan had completely removed her from his life. She had never thought she would have to trade her studying in Colombia for him, but those years away had made her believe that she could never have everything, that she would always have to choose and never be complete.

Danielle pushed hard into him, embarrassed for crying in such a public place but unable to control herself. At least---he had felt like she was the bad guy, that he was the victim; she had been the one left thinking he had completely forgotten her existence. Danielle attempted to calm her breaths, and she put an arm around Donovan to pull him closer.

“Can we go to your flat?” she croaked, quite sure that she was going to have to report back to the hospital late.

Her simple request made him nod his head. “Of course…” He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, keeping his face buried in her hair for a little while longer before he pulled away from her, slid from the booth, and extended both his hands for her to take hold of to help her to her feet. He held her against him as he pulled out a knut or two to pay for his tea, and then reached forward with the same free hand to grab the letters before escorting her out.

When they got outside, Donovan walked them to a quiet area where he could gather his thoughts long enough to pull out his wand and apparate the two of them back to the door of his flat. He flicked open the lock with a swish of his wrist, and then lead her inside, letting her settle down on a couch cushion as he bent his knees in front of her, crouched down with his hands holding onto hers once the letters were down on the coffee table beside him.

They were silent for a while, aside from the sound of her quiet sobs, and eventually he let go of one of her hands to drag the pad of his thumb against her cheek, drying it momentarily of tears that had already fallen, only to be replaced by newer, fresher ones.

“…Danielle…” His voice was only barely there, and he cleared his throat again. It was hard, knowing what he now knew, and seeing her like this. “…do you remember much about what you said in those letters?”

There was a point to his question, he just wanted to see how she would answer before he approached the next delicate subject – something else that changed things about how he viewed the whole situation.

Danielle stared, sniffling and feeling like a fool. What did he want her to say? That the letters his mother had hidden weren’t even half of the ones she had written him back in Colombia? That she’d torn up so many because of how upset she was, or how angry she was, or how hopeless she felt? Danielle held onto Donovan’s hands tightly and she looked up toward the ceiling, trying to recall as much as she could. Maybe this was a test, maybe he really did want to see how much she’d changed.

“They were---I couldn’t go more than a week without sending one,” she’d always felt weak for that, as if she should have built up the nerve to stop trying to contact him after the first few failed attempts, “And---I couldn’t finish one without apologizing, and----” She felt silly, “I explained what I’d done that week, hoping you’d be proud of me, or I described some plant, or I told some story. I tried to act like you cared about what was going on with me---” Danielle looked back down at him, her mouth twisting as she tried to finish, “Sometimes I cursed you for doing this to me...I was so mad at you for not responding to me, but I couldn’t stop trying----”

She let out a shaky breath, still gripping his hands tightly, “I begged you not to hate me anymore.” Seeing those letters just brought back that terrible feeling and she felt her eyes well with tears again.

Seeing her this upset was heart wrenching, but he had to keep his head clear so he could get through all of this – so they could get to the bottom of it all, and figure out what was real and what was being kept from them. When she had left 5 years ago, he knew his parents had never been happy with his girlfriend of choice – he knew they could be ruthless, and had put a lot of time and energy into convincing him of all the ways she was wrong for him. He couldn’t even keep track of how many times his mother had told him to just forget about her when she saw how angry he was at the whole situation – her lack of a goodbye, and her lack of letters on top of that.

He squeezed her hands again, nodding along with what she was saying, his jaw clenching when she brought up all the pleas she had put into her writing, asking him to forgive her…though that wasn’t why he was asking her that question.

“I’ve spent all morning, and most of the afternoon reading 5 years worth of writing that never got to where it was meant to go…” He adjusted himself on the floor, looked down at their hands, and then looked back up at her, his thumbs brushing along the backs of her knuckles. “…and in between your stories of plants, or all the things you told me that I would have been so proud of you for…there was one thing I didn’t understand. One question you asked me that just…didn’t make sense, no matter how many times you wrote it, or how many different ways you phrased it.” He paused, giving her some time to collect herself before continuing.

“You asked me why I never came to say good-bye – why I didn’t come to see you off when you were leaving for Colombia…” A beat.

“…but I did. I waited, thinking you and your Mum were just running late…but after sitting there for over 4 hours, I couldn’t take it any more. I went to your house…and when your mother opened the door, she said that you were already gone. She told me that you said if you saw me again…that you would never leave….” He searched her eyes, brows furrowed, desperate to understand.

Why would she have asked him why he didn’t show up if she hadn’t wanted him to – if it was her plan all along?

Danielle blinked, not understanding. The last image that had been burnt into her mind when she’d left England was the door of the portkey depature floor not opening, not revealing Donovan coming in to wish her luck. Danielle couldn’t figure out what he was saying, what he meant. He was there? He said hed stayed for hours? The place was so small, they would not have missed each other, there was no way...Danielle felt as if every last ounce of blood had been drained from her body as her mind whirred to a conclusion. She couldn’t look at Donovan anymore. She couldn’t look him in the eye because it was her fault that he’d arrived too late at the port, it was her fault that Donovan believed she’d walked out of his life forever.

She stared at the ceiling, unable to look at him. How could she tell him what she knew? What she’d just realized, and figured out? He’d think she was an idiot, a naive little fool. All those years of worrying about how his parents could sabotage their relationship and it had been...

“My mother rescheduled the portkey,” she said through gritted teeth, determined not to cry anymore. She didn’t deserve to, she was stupid for not realizing it at the time, for still believing he hadn’t shown up until just a few minutes ago, “She told me she talked to you and confirmed the new time.” Her voice cracked and Danielle shifted in place, her hands limp in Donovan’s. “I believed her, why would my mother lie to me? All she wanted what was best--she just wanted what---”

Everything from the last five years of her life was a lie. Danielle felt like a potion that had a wrong ingredient tossed into its brew, the boiling bubbles dropping to a flat silence that left the entire cauldron useless. She couldn’t look at him, she’d ruined their lives, “I’m a complete idiot, I--I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry Donovan.”

Her apology caused her to finally look down at him, and her stone-like demeanor broke, her tears escaping her once again, “I’m---I’m s-so sorry!”

Donovan could see the color fade away from her face, and he adjusted his hold on her hands, even though she wasn’t really holding onto his anymore, but resting her them in his larger versions. He kept his eyes on her, despite everything – even when she turned her eyes up to his ceiling to avoid looking at him.

But then she spoke, and he flinched as though he had just been slapped in the face – new information hitting him like a battering ram to the stomach, and he finally let his eyes drop to the floor between them, letting go of only one of her hands to run one of his own down his face. He kept listening to her, appalled by the entire situation.

How could two people - two mothers - do this to their own children? They were both equally responsible for what had happened to them – like water to a flame, they had done everything in their power to keep their fire from burning…and it hurt. It stung, their betrayal. Why had her mother never told him? Why had she gone to such extreme measures to make sure he didn’t have the chance to say good-bye to the girl he had been in love with since their 4th year?

When he spoke to his own mother, she had claimed that she was just trying to ‘protect him’…but he hadn’t been able to speak to her, at the time. He was too furious, too hurt to do anything but get up and leave, taking the letters with him.

Her second version of her apology made him look back up at her, shaking his head as he lifted himself up to take a seat on the edge of the couch beside her, both of his hands going to the side of her face as he pushed her hair back.

“Don’t…please, just-…”

He shook his head, looking down at their laps as he tried to formulate the right words. His eyes closed again, feeling like the room was spinning as he continued to hold her in his hands, the dampness of her cheeks once again being wiped away in a futile matter by his thumbs. His lashes would open again, though he still wasn’t looking directly at her.

“I can’t have you blaming yourself for something you weren’t responsible for…”

It was then that his steely blues met the watery versions that were looking back at him.

“Please don’t…”

She felt like such a fool, but as he always had, Donovan was able to calm her crazed state with a few soft spoken words. Danielle still felt miserable, but as he held her and forced her to look at him she was able to find some sense. She let out a breath as her short breaths became more regular, and her hand drifted to rest on his leg. She could continue to be miserable about the division their mothers had caused in their young lives, or she could be grateful that they’d somehow found each other again.

“I love you, so much,” she said softly. Danielle knew that since they’d been back together quiet moments had been few and far between, and she was quite sure that the words were rarely spoken outside of the bedroom. Danielle blushed at the thought and put her hand to his wrist, taking a light hold of him. She loved Donovan, truly, madly, and forever. “That’s never changed, and it never will, I promise you, Donovan.”

Danielle smiled gently, squeezing his wrist. She was going to have to get Healer Zeller to cover the rest of her shift.

Donovan wasn’t the type to outwardly express all the chaos that was going on in his head – at least not until the right moment, preferably after copious amounts of alcohol when he didn’t have to worry about saying something that might upset of offend the wrong person. He’d have his moment to be able to say everything that he wanted to say about her mother, and his own, but this wasn’t the time or place. He was still trying to wrap his head around the whole thing, making it harder for him to coordinate his thoughts, and even harder to try and keep her grounded through all this when even he couldn’t find much clarity in this shit storm that had been built around them over the last 5 years, by their own family no less.

Her words caused him to take in a breath through his nose, keeping it held in his chest as his eyes dropped down to her hand on his leg, using one of his own to take hold of it as he exhaled what was in his lungs through the same passage – slow and steady, lifting his eyes to meet hers, searching them as he waited for her to be finished speaking.

The hand that was still holding her face moved, the backs of his fingers caressing her damp cheek.

“I know…”

He could say that with complete sincerity, now that they both knew the true story about what had happened. It hurt, that there had been a time when he had doubted that – when she had doubted his love for her.

“There’s nothing that can come between us, now…”