Title: How
Fandom: The Bletchley Circle
Rating: PG
Length: 1300 words
Content notes: Millie/Susan (possibly one-sided), Timothy/Susan. Vague spoilers through to the end of the second episode of the second series - set sometime a little after it.
Author notes: Millie kicked my brain and this happened. (I may have a weakness for Rachael Stirling. *grins*) (Shock, sometimes I do write things which aren't Rayearth...)
Summary: “I’ll answer you if I can – I make no promises, mind you. If it’s official secrets you want to hear, or anything of Susan’s-“

“Nothing like that. You love my wife, don’t you.”

oOo

“I have a question, if you don’t mind?” Timothy leant slightly against the doorframe, slightly on his cane, blocking a little of the light from the sitting room.

Millie started, looking up from the knitting pattern she had been studying. The half-made jumper was a translation of code into form – perhaps it was no wonder Susan was good at it. Nor that she found it boring. “Go ahead?” She said, with a slightly strained smile. She didn’t know quite how to relate to this man Susan loved enough to try to hide who she was. “I’ll answer you if I can – I make no promises, mind you. If it’s official secrets you want to hear, or anything of Susan’s-“

“Nothing like that. You love my wife, don’t you.”

The emphasis made it clear he was not talking of friendship. And Millie’s pause lasted too long for him to not see that she understood precisely what he meant, though she tried, rattled, to pull some kind of defence together. “Well, yes, we all of us grew close during the war, I suppose-“

“You are in love with my wife. With Susan.” He said it so very calmly, with none of the befuddled confusion she’d glimpsed in these few weeks since they had saved Alice – since he had learned that one secret he wasn’t meant to know, which must have explained so much, but given him so many questions as well. Millie had been hoping he wouldn’t ask her any of those – wouldn’t ask why Susan had chosen him, after Bletchley.

Not because she didn’t have an answer for him, but because she did.

This – was not the kind of question she had been expecting.

“And,” he continued, stepping into the room and shutting the door quietly behind himself, sitting down facing her. “I think, at some point, you told her as much. She knows, anyway. I suppose she might have worked it out.”

“Has she-“ There were the shouts of children playing, outside, and Millie flinched, but they didn’t approach the door to this house. Both she and Timothy had beaten Susan home, this time. She rather hoped that this conversation would be over before she returned.

Timothy was shaking his head. “No, she hasn’t said anything to me. This one is your secret, I think, to her – but I love her, too. I… recognised the pattern, if you will.”

“She’ll make a code-breaker of you after all, perhaps.” Her voice was a fraction too rough in her attempt to be cheerful, and she couldn’t meet that straightforward look. “I-“

“I’m not looking for apologies, if that’s what you’re about to offer me. Not explanations, nor anything like that. Not my place. It wasn’t my question, either. Why would I have to ask about what I can see with my own eyes is true? I just – I want to know. Need to know.”

It was Timothy’s turn to take a breath, and Millie looked up in time to see his hands tighten on his stick. “

“I’m not looking for apologies, if that’s what you’re about to offer me. Not explanations, nor anything like that. Not my place. It wasn’t my question, either. Why would I have to ask about what I can see with my own eyes is true? I just – I want to know. Need to know.”

It was Timothy’s turn to take a breath, and Millie looked up in time to see his hands tighten on his stick. “You were together, at this – Bletchley place. You’ve seen her working. So please, tell me – how do you love her? Keep on loving her, knowing that for all the smiles and the, the agreeing – knowing she’s always that much brighter than you? A step ahead of everyone else in the room.”

“Three steps, usually.” Millie told him, with something rather like a laugh, but not quite. She reached for a cigarette, then put the box back in her coat pocket, unopened – then finally pulled them out again, needing something in her hands. “Not that we don’t all have our specialties. Languages are mine. Susan sees patterns in letters, numbers; I deal in sounds. But you’re right.

“I told her.” She heard herself say, distantly, calmly. “We had… all these plans, you see. To travel the world together. See some of those places we had been reading messages about, for all those years. Some of the world we tried our best to help save. Do our bit for. Whatever that means. And it could have been – it was almost easy to ignore in the middle of the war. Or not ignore, but not – not let it interfere. She was always so focused all the time on work, and there was always something new to throw our minds at. But afterwards, away, just the two of us… I didn’t want it to be awkward, if she found out in the middle of some hotel in the Far East with no one else to turn to. So I told her.”

Millie had to pause then, looking down at her fingers as they played with the cigarette box. “Then it was awkward, and – there wasn’t time for it to be anything else. She’d already met you, you see. We… had plans to travel, to adventure. But you gave her the chance for stability, comfort, love and a family. A home. All those things the war threatened to steal forever.” She looked up, aware her voice was trying to break and unable to stop it. “Children. I could never have given her that, and she wanted it. So I travelled, and she –chose you.”

There was a pause, both of them holding their breath, almost afraid to end the silence in case something broke. But three heartbeats, and Timothy sighed, almost deflating in his chair. “I wonder if she regrets it.”

“I asked her that, not long ago.” A smile fell across Millie’s face, hopeless and heavy but amused all the same. “Do you want to know what she said?”

“…What?”

“Not usually.” Looking up, she met Timothy’s eyes, her smile not as forced as it should have been. “The answer you want? You’re asking the wrong person. Because this is the thing: you already knew she was brilliant. You can’t love her and not know it. Not even while she was trying to dim herself down a little, fit in – have some peace and quiet for a while! You knew. You don’t love Susan in spite of the fact she’ll see patterns and puzzles you never can, will solve things you’re completely incapable of seeing. You love her because of it. And because she’s kind, and quiet, and – stubborn as that proverbial mule, sometimes! She never wants to hurt people, and she always wants to help. However she can. She loves you, she chose you – and she’s brilliant. You just have to trust her to leap ahead, sometimes; wait for her to finish, then ask her to explain the steps she leapt over, the place she lost you. Learn to keep up, as well as you can. But trust that she loves you even when you’re hopelessly lost, too. All of us get lost, sometimes.”

“…Thank you.” Timothy said, softly.

Millie took a breath, then rushed up out of her chair, taking her folded coat with her. “I should leave. Before- she’ll be home soon, you don’t need me intruding-“

“You will stay for dinner, and you are welcome.” Timothy rose as well, holding his free hand out for her coat. “It isn’t an intrusion. If – while we’re abroad, if you felt like travelling again… you should come and join us. I think Susan would like that.”

Millie stared, bewildered, as he took her coat and hung it in the hallway. “How do you take your tea?” He called, as he moved a little unevenly down the corridor, voice making up for balance what his body lacked in that field. “I’ll put the kettle on, while we’re waiting. You can’t tell me any official secrets, of course, but I’m sure there must be some stories about Susan we can share, while we wait.”

oOo