It's early and already hot like only late July can be, but it isn't the weather that wakes her. Instinctively, she knows that Bill isn't there as she reaches out for him, and, just as instinctively, she knows where he will be. So she rolls out of bed and walks out of their cottage, down to the shore, and settles herself beside him in the sand.

The tide is coming in, slowly, but they're still a long way from the water.

He must know that she's there, but he doesn't acknowledge her presence at all, still staring, unseeing, out across the sea. So she follows his lead and says nothing.

A soft breeze rustles her nightdress. It blows a few tiny grains of sand across her feet, and she stares hard at them. Once, they would have been part of the cliffs that their home now stands on. But that was many years ago, and this is now.

She feels she's beginning to understand a little about the passage of time.

Neither of them speaks, but after a while, Bill reaches out to take her hand. She's sat on his left, so her right hand holds his left, and she can feel the wedding band on his third finger. It makes her wonder about the expression "to know something like the back of your hand". It's a silly expression, she thinks, because she doesn't know the back of her own hands that well, really, but she could write a tome on Bill's hands alone.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," he says calmly, as she thinks about rough hands and long books.

She knows he's thinking of yesterday, and the fight George had with their mother about his drinking (again) and the way her Bill had to be the one (again) to step in the middle and stop it. The way he has to be the one to stop Charlie drifting away, to pull Percy back from the edge, to be the place Ron runs to, over and over and over. The way he has to be the one responsible for holding the cracks in his parents together. The Weasleys all look to Bill to fix them, and she could forgive that, but she can't—won't—forgive them for not seeing that he needs fixing, too.

Only Ginny seems to get understand. Last week, at one of the excruciating Sunday lunches they have to sit through and pretend there isn't a ragged crater where Fred's chair should be, she caught her staring at Bill with the same bleak expression she sees on her own face too often. She'd matched Ginny's bleak look with a bleak look of her own, and they'd stared at each other, bleakly, over the peas for the rest of the meal. When they'd come to clear up, she'd felt like something had shifted—for the better—in their relationship. But a cautious friendship isn't enough, yet, and besides, it's too much to expect Ginny to save her brother, not when she has her own healing, and Harry's, to contend with.

So she's on her own.

A girlfriend might say "You don't have to!" or "It won't be forever!" or even "Let me! I can do it for you!". But she's a wife now, and she can't deal in such reductions. So she tells him the truth.

"You do not 'ave a choice. You 'ave to carry on." There is no point saying that she would do it for him. He knows that. But the Weasleys don't want her, they want Bill. She may as well say she'll go to the moon for him. She would, but it would do as much good.

"Maybe," he replies eventually, "maybe we can stay on the beach forever."

"Maybe," she nods. It seems reasonable. He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes his back.

"I don't want to carry on like this. And I don't want to have to," he says. He doesn't say it in a petulant way, nor in an angry way, or a sad way, or, really, with any emotion at all. It would be easier if he did, because then she would know what to give him in return. Instead, he says it in the same tone he might say "Today is Sunday," or "I think it might rain later." It is a fact, immutable and true.

"I know," she says, equally as calm. He glances at her sidelong, then. She's never been known for her patience, or her even temper. Or her good relationship with his mother. She should be railing against his family for treating him like this, but a death will change everything. Even her.

"I don't have a choice, do I?" he asks softly.

"No." She keeps her gaze fixed out to sea, refusing to look back at his ripped up face. Torn apart, he is still beautiful to her, but if she looks at him now, she will falter. And she doesn't think he could take that.

"I don't think I can carry on much longer," he says eventually, and she turns back to look at him, finally. "Not without them finding out that I'm...I'm...I'm...not, as well."

Her English is good enough now to know that, grammatically at least, this isn't how words are supposed to work. The problem is, she doesn't really know how you'd phrase it in French, either, or Bulgarian, at least so it would be grammatically good enough. That's probably the thing about grief, she concedes. No matter what language you speak, it will never be good enough.

Still holding onto her hand, he leans back, nestling against the jagged rocks they're perched on. "I suppose this is it," he says, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. He gestures around with his free hand. "Rock bottom." It's not a very funny joke.

She leans back, too, and it hurts. Or, it's uncomfortable. These days, it takes a lot to make her feel true pain.

"If you are at the bottom," she says slowly, picking her words carefully. "I can be there with you—"

"I know," he says at once. "I know." He expects it.

"No," she says angrily. "I do not mean, I will 'old your hand. Or that I will stand beside you. I do not want to be...zhat. I mean I shall..." She curses inwardly. She isn't sure in which language. She isn't sure it matters.

"If there is...rock bottom," she gestures around, to the rocks they are sitting on, but she tries to get across that she is talking about more than just actual stones on a beach. He nods. "If you are there. I shall be there too. And I shall lie back, like zhis." She demonstrates, lowering herself fully onto the jagged rocks even though there is only a soft cotton nightgown between her and the stones, and they are cold and rough and jut into her body. "And then," she adds, as he appears to wake up, somehow, and realise that this can't exactly be fun for her, "and then. You can lie down on me, and it will not be fun and you will still be at the bottom, but you will not be there alone."

"Fleur," he croaks. A moment passes, and then he yanks her upright, off the rocks, and onto his lap in almost one smooth motion. "Fleur."

She looks back at him.

"I never...I don't mind lying on the rocks, sometimes," he says. "At least I'm feeling something when I do that."

"Neither do I!" she replies fiercely, almost before the words have left his mouth.

"I know but—I—I don't want...you can't..."

"I cannot make it better," she acknowledges. "I cannot be what your family want. I cannot fix it. I cannot bring back Fred." His expression flickers for a second, but he doesn't look away from her. "But maybe...maybe I can make it 'urt the most smallest bit less."

"Darling girl," he sighs, then pulls her up, off her back, onto his lap. He wraps her hair around him like a blanket, and she closes her eyes, inhaling him. His face smells ever so slightly of salt, and she will pretend, for his pride, that this is because they are sat by the ocean, and not because he has been crying.

"Do you know what I think zhat we should do?" she asks eventually. He looks at her and shrugs, but it is clear by his face that he trusts her implicitly. She could tell him they're going to build a bridge to the moon made of the bones of everyone who has ever walked on this beach, and he would accept it, bringing a hammer and his trust in her to help construct it.

"Come on," she says, standing. Their hands are still linked, and so she pulls him up too.

She walks towards the sea with purpose. They cannot stop the tide coming in, no matter how much they might wish it and will it. It is immutable, like his family's grief, like his grief, like her own. And if they wait for it to reach them, they will drown.

So, instead, they walk out to meet it. The waves still lap around them; the tide still pulls. But Bill's arms are strong around her, rooting her to the sand, and she looks up at him, through her lashes, when they are waist deep in the water. There's a difference between waving and drowning, between being forced under and choosing to surrender, and between telling someone those three words and knowing them to be true.

But she tells him anyway. These days, the world needs every scrap of love it can get.

I'm planning a longer Bill/Fleur multi-chap, about their lives during the war and what impact it has on their relationship. This, clearly, isn't it, but it wouldn't leave me alone so I had to write it. I hope you enjoyed :)