Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-She laughed, warmly, a smile spreading across her face as Lady Macduff elbowed her husband out of his absentmindedness, shooing him towards Lennox who’d been trying to uphold a conversation for the past course-and-a-half.

She leant back, surveying the table as best she could from her seat between Fleance & Malcolm. The younger boy had practically begged her to sit next to him, hanging on her arm and whining dramatically the moment she’d shown Duncan his seat. Little Fleance was raised well under Banquo’s eye, but still  lacked the loving discipline of a mother.

So in lieu, he attached himself to her side as a barnacle does to its resting rock; and who was she to refuse him. It was a dinner among friends, and she only had one thing to worry about.
No.
She casted her gaze to the foot of the table, where a seat lay empty. She had two things to worry about, and one of them was hurting just as much as she was.

Chapter Text

Macbeth lingered in the doorway.
He seemed to be doing a lot of that these days, lingering.

Hovering just before thresholds, stopping as he passed clearings and cliffs, gazing out at open expanses of sky, empty. His servants would catch him staring down the case that held his weapons of war, not in awe or pride but as if searching for something, a summons, an order. They would question him gently, and he would blink & offer an apologetic smile, giving the same response about glory & reminiscing every time it happened. They learned to stay quiet about the troubled look on his face.
His wife would catch him on long days, staring at their bed like it had offended him personally, a kind of anger & resentment unseen at home in his own castle.

Macbeth lingered in the doorway, leaning stiffly against the frame. He’d long since lost track of the gentle chatter that echoed through the main hall, seeping into their quarters warm and bright. There wasn’t brightness here, no. Not since.

Approaching footsteps of a servant bringing more wine to the dining hall shook him out of his stupor, and he thoughtlessly slipped inside the room, gently shutting the door behind him.
It was only when he turned back to the room did he realize what he’d done.

He’d sworn never to step foot in here again. Not for the sake of his love, or preservation, but a silent promise to himself to fight back the sobs that built in his throat each and every time. It was a promise for his own sanity.
His eyes swept across the nursery, tracing the outlines of the wardrobe and the window with its violet shades, the basket of toys and the cradle.

He lingered there now. What man could tear his eyes from the sight, the tragedy his eyes beheld. The soft black shroud that’d been so carefully draped over the polished wood, the silhouette of a blanket and a hand-sewn fox that rested inside. Hands that laid the fabric still for the first time in weeks, stopping their insistent shaking for final moments. Hands that still clutched air to chest, that gripped elbow and shoulder and refused to let go. Let go, they’d said. He could never. She couldn’t for months, the first dual episode they’d have for years to come.

He felt the pull stronger than ever, now.

Fleance, almost a son in every way but the one that mattered. Bright and beautiful, looking so much like his father. Little Duff, headstrong and bold, growing into his family’s shoes with confidence, the perfect heir. Everything that could’ve been. And Young Siward, so golden-hearted and kind, just as fit to rule as Duncan was at 17, and yet not truly a man yet, a boy beyond his age. They’d burst in, so full.of life, so full of joy, so full of everything the Macbeths were missing. It’d hit him like a flurry of stones, pelting him, a hailstorm assaulting his mind with all the things that would never stop hurting.

And so he stepped towards the cradle, painfully aware of how loud his footsteps were in the quiet room. He did not utter a word. He would break the sacred silence, he would break himself.

He stood at the foot of the cradle, just.. staring. Thinking. Missing. The shroud was hand-woven, a parting gift from his mother-in-law before she left. She’d come for three weeks, to try and help her daughter piece herself back together and to keep her husband fed in his stillness. They’d barely moved in the first days. Sat, by the cradle, just as he was now, side by side. Leaning on one another, for what support could be offered. The only solace they had was themselves, in that time. Black to black, back to back. Two of them, no.     Macbeth tentatively, slowly, reached a foot to the cradle, nudging it ever so slightly, setting it gently rocking back and forth. He watched, watched until it slowed, slowed- stopped. No. No, no, no- He rocked it again, harder this time, dragging the shroud on the floor with its tipping, echoing on the flooring, it couldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop, his heart was only the size of an unripe apple and it couldn’t have just-

He stopped.

He sank (though his descent was closer to a collapse then a crouch) to the ground, sliding against the cradle with a heavy huff of breath.

Macbeth had cried for his boy a thousand times, and knew he would cry a thousand more before he joined him.

He cried each and every time his story was told, each and every time his wife brushed her fingers along the storybooks, a silent question in attempts to remedy what kept them up at night. He cried, he cried for his boy when Malcolm was given his first arms, when Macduff spent hours recounting his son’s first time riding & their first visit to Forres to be blessed. They both cried that time. The sickness had kept them home, and too much time passed. Rowan had offered Macduff to see their lands, and the three days of rest they were given after came as no surprise. The tears that flowed freely after Macduff had finally left, oblivious to his tragedy, were expressions of gratitude enough. All the firsts their boy had missed, all the ones they’d missed themselves.

In those moments, those final months, weeks, days, he’d been so powerless. There was nothing he could’ve done. It would have stopped all by itself. And yet he would never, ever, stop wondering if there was something he could’ve done.

But all he could do was rock the cradle.

All he could do was repeat every Amen until his throat was raw, embrace his wife with all his strength each time he returned safe from war. All he could do was steal glances at the bear Fleance gripped in the evenings, curled to his wife's side, hold onto Macduff's joy as if it were his own. All he could do was hold Fleance tight to his chest when the child ran to his arms, beckon Young Siward with them to steal still-warm desserts because he was still a boy, too. All he could do was cry out for his son when he thought no one could hear him, and do everything his boy would have been proud of him for.

Would his boy have been proud of him for this?

Was the rocking of the cradle truly what he was meant to do?

To go after things he would get with long, patient time,

To send how many to join his boy before he did?

What sin was he committing? He was going to kill, he was going to drive the knife through one of the only homes he'd ever known.

He could not do it. He could not sin such as this, he could not repent the lives he had taken, knew he would take however far it went. He could not lose the most important chance he ever had, the chance to get the one thing he’d always wished for since they lay the shroud on the cradle and closed the door with a gentle hand.

He couldn’t sin this way, and lose the chance to see his son again.

When his wife finally found him to call him to his deed, he looked up at her, frozen just as she had been all those years ago, when it was Macbeth who pulled the knob back towards the hall.

He couldn’t lose him. Not again.