Work Text:
This ring has been with me for a very long time
You roll the wedding band between your fingers as you wait for Teresa to arrive. You look over the blueprints in front of you, occasionally marking a detail that needs adjusting in this house you can already picture housing the two of you and, perhaps, someone else...
You are not sure it will go the way you want it to, that she will answer the way you hope. But you will try anyway.
It has obvious significance with my past
That ring reminds you of Angela. It reminds you of Charlotte. And not wearing it on your finger anymore does not weigh on you the way you thought it would. You managed to move forward, thanks in part to Red John's death.
You know, now, that keeping it in your pocket does not mean denying them, but finally accepting what happened. Before, you did not want to. Now it is so simple.
But it also represents meeting you
She arrives with sandwiches and you pull her away, to the other side of the lake. You sit on the ground and eat together. These are the things you could never give up. These moments.
You do not care about the kisses, about her taste, about the two of you tangled up in the sheets. Not that it is not important, of course, but you like being like this, with her, without needing words.
The contact between you is something wonderful, but it is an extra. Your connection is spiritual. Would you ever have believed it?
If I didn't had this ring, I would never have met you
You take the wedding band out again, trying to make her understand how important it is to you—not the ring itself, but what it represents. How happy the idea of seeing her happy by your side makes you.
You want her to know that you will never run away again. You will live together, as it should be, for as long as possible. Till death do you part, if everything goes the way you want it to.
So, in a sense, it has the potential to represent my future, as well
And this is what you want. To see her by your side every day of your life. To live together, to walk together, to have picnics, to travel, to make love again and again because you will never have enough of her. To take your children to school—if you have any—and drive them to basketball practice and run with them. And if you have daughters, to spoil them like princesses.
And I'm not expecting you would ever wear it
You look into her eyes, moved. No, you do not expect that she could wear it, because perhaps it frightens her. The idea that something so small and at the same time so meaningful could now belong to her frightens her. It does not matter if she shuts it away in a drawer and never opens it again. It does not matter. You know she is the one who should have it, because now that ring represents your future. It represents her.
But I want to share it with you
And when you tell her, her heart skips a beat. She, a small, insecure and strong woman with an immense heart, still does not believe she deserves all this.
And that is what leaves your mind in a haze, what keeps you from understanding what she is thinking. Because she knows she deserves respect—that respect you did not give her when you ran away—but she fears, timidly, that you are too much for her. When in truth it is the opposite.
She is too much for you. And that is why you want to give her that object that proved you rose from the ashes.
And I want it to represent our future together
Risen from the ashes thanks to her and no one else. Thanks to her constant presence in your life. Thanks to her stubbornness.
That ring is, as one of the many traditional vows says, without beginning and without end, like the future you see with her.
New hopes and new desires—that is what you mean with that small circle of gold.
I want you to be my wife
And that is why you never wanted to take it off before this moment. Because before, you considered yourself married. To Angela. And when Teresa came into your life, the terror that your love for her might overshadow the love you felt for your old family kept you from taking off the ring.
Had you remained married, had you kept the band, you would have loved and remembered them both. But it would not have been right.
For Angela's memory, because a married man who values his marriage should not betray.
For Teresa's life, because she does not deserve a man who cannot give her one hundred percent of himself.
Will you marry me?