Author: Regency

Title: Thunder In the Distance

Pairing: (past) Bridget Jones/Mark Darcy

Contains: angst, breaking up

Summary: (Set pre-BJB.) On their tenth anniversary, Bridget called it quits. Mark really should have seen it coming.

Prompt: Mark's reaction/POV after breaking up with Bridget

Author's Notes: Come hang with me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, settings, or plot elements recognizable as being from any incarnation of the Bridget Jones series by Helen Fielding. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun. The title is from the song "Love Me Like That (feat. Carly Rae Jepsen)" by The Knocks.

In retrospect, Mark must have known it was coming. Their fights became less common and much quieter (less passionate). He'd thought it was a sign that they were becoming of one mind, that there was less for them to fight about. He hadn't seen it for what it was: Bridget losing heart, losing interest…falling out of love with him and all the baggage he carried with him.

After ten years, he hadn't thought that could happen. They had not once wanted for passion. They fought like it was the end of the world. They grieved like the dead when it broke down. That was how it should have been. Not a quiet, stilted last goodbye where they couldn't look each other in the eye. Not monotone voicemail messages about picking up the last of his things, as if dividing a shared life could ever be so neat as what was packed in boxes.

Mark ought to know about dividing a life; he'd been divorced, but even that hadn't lasted as long as his relationship with Bridget. He hadn't had long to leave his partner in disappointment before she sought to ameliorate her feelings, her loneliness in other ways. She lasted a fortnight of late work days and working dinners. A fortnight. His disappointment for that prior failing had yet to abate–he should have been a better husband. Would she have remained faithful had he been more devout? Would Bridget have remained at his side had he done the same?

Ten years. Birthdays, holidays, matching jumpers, pregnancy scares, pregnancy hopes, lovemaking, makeup sex, shouting rows, slammed doors, and then silence. It was the silence that chilled him. Her silence spoke of resolution. Bridget prattled when shaken to her core, but Bridget with her mind made up could put a barrister to shame with a pointedly spoken word. Brevity, still the soul of wit. How long must the idea to leave him buzzed in back of her mind before she acted on it? How many last, final chances must have leaked through his slack hands, unnamed, unnoticed by him, too satisfied in his loving reality to note it slipping from his grasp?

The evidence was there. The air of tension that never quit cleared after their fights anymore. The frequent twist of discontent in her expression she schooled before he could ask, and then he didn't ask, because Mark Darcy considered it impolite to bring attention to the things others didn't want him to see. But someone who loved her who have asked, however discomfiting the experience. Someone who loved her as he ought would have wanted to be sure she was as happy under the surface as the facade she displayed to others.

Maybe that was the danger of happiness. It made a man complacent. Happy now surely meant happiness for all time. It prompted him to forget that happiness wasn't set in stone, it was a matter of hardship, of effort. Happiness was earned. He couldn't name a person who had earned it more by elbow grease than Bridget Jones, only he had had left her working for both their happy endings alone.

"Even when we're together, you've got a foot out the door to the next exciting place you just have to be. You never give a thought to me. I drop outings with friends, I skip work 'dos at the snap of your fingers if you say you'll be home." Her eyes had shined with threatening tears. "And then you don't even show up! God, if I wanted an unreliable fuckwit I'd have married Daniel Cleaver. It's not like he didn't ask me. At least I could be sure I was what he wanted. I never know with you."

Mark labored to recall what counterarguments he must have made to her accusations. He hadn't known Daniel had asked her to marry him, that she'd chucked him in favor of…what? Had she chosen Mark over the lovable rogue? Was she reverting to type now that whatever Mark represented had fallen through? Mark's thoughts were a screen door in a storm, banging on and on, no end in sight, no sign of peace on the horizon.

"I even changed how I dressed just to fit in with your stodgy work friends. You never even noticed. I don't know why I bothered, but I'm finished trying to fit you. I never fit you and you've made no efforts to do it for me."

He had, actually. He had skipped out on profitable cases that would have raised his profile to take her on mini-breaks, all sacrifices he considered worth it. He had put up with her mother's prying insinuations–babies, marriage, a house in the country, when when when? He had made-up with her friends despite the part they played in their previous troubles, and he little doubted this one as well. He put up with the cigarette butts littering the apartment in places she thought he wouldn't see (he had lost a beloved cousin to lung cancer as a young man; he found it too painful to explain). He put up with a worrisome parade of wine bottles clinking away in the bin. Her room, their bedroom, in perpetual disarray. Small things in the scheme of a great love, but he had put up with them though they ran counter to his fundamental nature. Perhaps even because of them. She was the hurricane of his attractive opposite, free-spirited where he held himself in check. Open-hearted and trusting where his heart held a still visible crack.

In some sense, he felt that he had been in a constant race to match her outpouring of affection. To meet her kiss for kiss, endearment for endearment. None of that was a hardship, mind. Bridget was easy to love. He had spoiled her with his adoration as he never had another, because he loved Bridget Jones as he had no other. Doesn't she know that she's the first woman I've ever truly loved? To have reached his age and never been in love despite his status as a divorcee rendered his neck and ears burning scarlet. Nothing very romantic about that. Even the besotted Bridget of old would have grappled to see that as charming.

He didn't know how to do this. Was this a time to fight or a time to yield? Did he dare ask for more information? How was it possible to have loved one woman for years and have no idea how to approach her? His stomach cramped from the stress, a novel response to stress Mark hadn't experienced since bar training when it became readily apparent he was well-suited to his line of work. He could stand toe to booted toe with despots, what he couldn't do was tell Bridget he loved her more than anything else. The clothes were immaterial, his snotty comrades were incidental, his work though important could not for a moment eclipse his love of her. Simple thoughts though they were, monumental effort would have been required to verbalize them.

Ten years. I should have been able to do this ten years ago. Perhaps she would have consented to marry him by now if he had. At some point in all that time they had gone from being imminently marrying to simply dating to…this. Formerly a couple, formerly an item. Others must have noted the holding pattern. His mother had remarked on it once or twice. As their social group paired off and spawned, he had been asked when the two of them intended to get on with it. His answer, said with a tolerant chuckle, had always been 'Soon, when we're ready.' He couldn't recall when Bridget had stopped laughing along with him.

He couldn't remember when they ceased to be in lock-step with regard to where their shared life was headed. When had she fallen one step to the left and behind him. The first time he had to fly off during a conversation about their wedding plans? The second time she had to take a pregnancy test with only Sharon to hold her hand? The one time it was positive and three months later, it no longer was, but he was in Jakarta and couldn't be reached? He still had the infant-sized Oxfords she'd splurged on from Savile Row. Though there might come a day when he didn't get emotional at the sight of them, hidden in a drawer in his study, that day likely wouldn't come soon.

Now that he thought of it, perhaps the question he should have been asking wasn't when she fell out of love with him, rather how she'd abided him for so long?

Mark sat considering that very question for what must have been hours. He could pick dozens of moments that added up to this. Incredible how obvious something could appear in hindsight when foresight yielded nothing, little more than apathy and happy ignorance with the promise of bliss.

A box of returned possessions posted at his side, Mark sat on his Holland Park front step so long one of his neighbors was compelled to ask after his welfare. Flushing in shame, he'd begged off their concern. He was fine. He'd be fine. He just…hadn't seen it coming. He'd thought for sure they were just going to have a nice dinner, watch a movie (her choice), and adjourn to bed to make love. He'd been looking forward to that. A difficult case behind him, nothing all-consuming ahead, he'd been eagerly anticipating celebrating their tenth anniversary. Ten years with Bridget, the love of his life.

She hadn't wanted to celebrate.

Mark repaired indoors to think. That was all there was to do. Bridget hadn't been inclined to speak long when he'd been present and he couldn't foresee a more welcoming reception if he returned home–to her home to see her. She had made a riveting case when she showed him the door. One a solicitor more given to drama might call 'irrefutable'.

"You don't love me, Mark. I'm convenient, and I can't do this anymore."

How could he hope to convince her otherwise–that his heart beat for her, his right lung breathed for her–when he quailed at even saying the words? Who was he to claim to be the man she deserved when he knew she deserved more?

Maybe she'll find that without me. I hope she will.

He needed a drink. No, several drinks. He wanted to blot out this day and skip ahead to the ones where he would no longer have to explain to his work mates that Bridget wouldn't be joining them for drinks anymore. Where he wouldn't have to tell his mother she was right.

"You can't make a girl like that wait, Mark. They don't come around every day."

He knew that. He'd waited almost forty years to meet the girl of his dreams and this was how he lost her, as arrogant generals had lost wars throughout history: carelessness.

Stumbling through his house toward the drinks cabinet, he realized he'd forgotten how plain his wedding cake house was without Bridget to fill it with sweetness. It's enormous bordering on cavernous. Cold. Sterile, even. His endless, stainless steel kitchen was a mere hindrance without her pratfalls to add humor to its humorlessness. His three levels were impractical frippery without her to race to the finish. He hadn't exaggerated when he said he preferred her home to his; its liveliness echoed hers. The keepsakes that packed every square foot to bursting mirrored the irreverence that filled its occupant to the brim. He loved it as he loved her. Like him, his house was emptier without her. Like my life without her.

This was Mark Darcy come full circle, one decade hence.

Heartbroken and alone, left to himself in an oversize house.

Only this time, there wasn't another man for him to blame.