Work Text:
When they buried her, so still in the chilled winter soil that had been almost too stubborn to excavate for even a grave as small as Beth’s, she was buried in a black frock with a pattern of pale daisies on the collar. The dress had been embroidered so carefully and so patiently by Meg that it was almost too much of a shame for something so beautiful to be kept in a place so solemn as a grave, but then again, so was Beth.
Even on the eve of her wedding, Amy’s grief had ebbed and flowed with the unpredictability of the tide in a hurricane, so much so that Laurie had offered many times to postpone their elopement until after she had returned home to her remaining sisters. But Amy had remained steadfast in her dedication to him, and equally as steadfast in her dedication to her sisters, and progressed in tandem through matrimony and mourning as if they were always meant to be companions.
While her nights were spent in the arms of her new husband, she found that in her dreams she wished dearly for the company of her sisters; for Meg’s stern voice and quirked brow, or Jo’s busying hands in her hair, and most of all, for Beth’s soft shoulder which was always available for her head to rest on. The pair of them, the youngest March sisters, were so entirely different than Meg and Jo in many ways but entirely similar in others. While Meg and Jo were busy in the world of boys and upper society and manners and slippers that pinched at the toes, a world Amy had spent so much of her childhood longing for, she and Beth had become permanent fixtures in their household, with Beth constant at the piano and Amy always flitting between the chaise lounge their Aunt had passed on to them and the mantle, the two most commanding positions in the parlor.
Beth had tried to tamp Amy’s passion with soft acoustic lullabies or mimicries of Jo’s stories, but it was Amy who would become a constant comfort for Beth, a fierce balm for her shyness when the women in town would whisper at their turned backs, or when the neighbor boys would raise a snide brow at the perceived prejudice from the silently repulsed Beth. Beth longed for love, surely, but not in the way that Laurie loved Jo (she speculated) or that Amy loved Laurie (she knew). She longed for a kind of love that was softer and fiercer still, a love that would have one day taken a form even beyond conventions of marriage or society or economy; Beth felt truly deserving of a love that would rescue her from those things entirely. Amy understood this without Beth ever having to explain herself, and so she became the primary protector of Beth’s heart.
Laurie carried his wife’s grief eagerly, at her elbow always with a comforting hand or soft kiss to her temple. He too had grieved Beth, the way that she seemed to soften even Jo at the edges, Jo who was nothing if not sharp corners and harsh lines rubbed raw by abuse. His grandfather had been considerably inconsolable in the days following the news, so Laurie had tucked away his grief, not unlike how one would stuff a handkerchief in a coat pocket. But now, with Amy, he felt the grief begin to spill out and pool with hers, and soon every memory that was hers was his too, although lacking the vibrant clarity that Amy remembered them in. He too felt Beth’s absence in his life like one would the sudden removal of an arm or leg. It ached, sometimes, in ways it would not before, because now Amy ached and she was a part of him now, so her aching became his and he was steadfast that both of them would bear it.
Following her sister’s death, Meg had busied herself with countless house chores, hemming curtains that had barely begun began to pull loose, darning socks with no holes, and sweeping day and night. Her and John’s house, which she had always thought of as too homely and too humble for the dreams that Jo had once proclaimed that Meg was destined for, suddenly seemed like the extravagant estates in Concord, with too many rooms to clean and not enough time in the day.
While Meg’s imagination allowed herself respite from the harshness of her reality, it was also the one place where she could find Beth as she had always remembered her; her littlest little sister, still a girl in her mind, with twin red braids of hair and a splash of unruly freckles across her face. In mending and sewing, she could not help but be transported to the many mornings she had spent teaching Beth when they were girls together, on days when Marmee was too preoccupied in town and Jo clawed at the walls from being kept at home. Amy had also refused to sit still, instead following Jo’s lead as she always liked to before Jo got older and they began to really quarrel. Only Beth sat patiently and watched in awe as Meg showed her how to bring the end of a thread through the minuscule eye of a needle, her own fingers pricked pink from previously failed attempts.
John observed his wife’s restlessness with a furrowed brow, but often found himself absorbed into balancing the family’s finances (he had shared part of the cost of Beth’s funeral, at his own insistence) and working commissions in Concord. Tutoring jobs had yet to cease for the season, and he and Meg had agreed that he would continue working to ensure they would have enough money going into winter. Daisy and Demi remained a constant comfort and irritation at the same time, too little and too kind to realize what the absence of their Aunt Beth meant. All they knew was that one day she was there, and the next day she wasn’t, and their family seemed sadder because of it.