Vital

I knew I could not post here unless I had something original to add. There have already been so many wonderful stories which resolve the ending of the My Fair Lady story. For months I have felt I had nothing I could possibly add, especially after devouring every installment left by vcatrashfiend. I wondered if there was possibly anything new to say.

I hope this qualifies. This starts off with a bang, in that I will immediately make you privy to Henry's thoughts and he is, after all, a male with (repressed) desires. This works, this having it in the first page of the story, because we have the movie as preamble, and I think it in-character.

This begins with the scene at Mrs Higgins' house at the near-end of the movie and immediately changes the whole game. There is movie dialogue sprinkled throughout the first chapter, however.

Mine is, most simply, a story of sudden realizations and slow declarations.

"She's gone," Professor Higgins said, sounding distinctly confused and wretched.

"Well, of course, dear. What did you expect?" His mother sighed. As angry as she was at him, Mrs. Higgins found it impossible not to be moved by the state he was presently in. "I heard you with Eliza," his mother said cautiously. "You do not really suppose that the Colonel would propose marriage?"

Turning on his heel, Henry was now forced to really consider that quick, idle notion he had hurled at Eliza. "Would he marry her?" he asked himself out loud.

His rather impressive brain set at that problem and sussed it in short order. Pickering might, Higgins realized with a palpable start. And he pictured the unlikely pair in his mind. I suppose he just might - out of some desire to protect her.

He held a hand to his head while he tried to envisioned such a marriage. The union he saw was polite and friendly and antiseptic.

But glaringly, desperately wrong.

Because a marriage – not that Higgins had any use for one – was about more than protecting someone. At least, it was supposed to be.

And Pickering would never feel emboldened enough to... well, pursue something physical with their former pupil.

"God help me," Henry mumbled to himself when he realized the unforgivable and indiscreet direction his imagination had taken.

Higgins walked towards the far side of the room, as if afraid his thoughts could be overheard. What he saw in that moment - no matter how hard he tried not to let the thoughts come - was that should he marry Eliza, he would most certainly want that... something. He would want that fullness. That promise. The secret shared.

His mind supplied it then, succinctly, but traitorously. A vision. Eliza's pulse beneath his lips as he pressed to her.

Oh, dear Lord.

There was a moment's internal panic then that made him grip his chest, and there were more flashes of things he could not stop.

This should not be happening, he told himself by way of resisting. He was a man, yes. One who understood it was likely impossible to be devoid of these urges. But was he not a man apart? A reasonable and intelligent man, who had happily relegated these things to an ill-used corner of his mind and life?

He had these thoughts, occasionally. Certainly less often than he did 20 years ago. But they were, as a rule, anonymous. Rather abstract.

But just now he was being plagued by visions... and well, desires... that were entirely too specific in their chosen target.

Until it felt as if he had possessed her. Truly. Not only as a man might do at this distance, virtually and with something - some sanity - in reserve.

"Henry?" his mother prompted.

The unstoppable thoughts finally stopped. Cold showered as only a mother's voice can.

He never should have told Eliza that she could most likely marry Pickering. That was what had started all of this. "Damn me," he muttered, feeling quite angry with himself.

And damn this childish substitution of base desire for logical thought.

But this lapse didn't matter, he assured himself a second later. Any thoughts of a shared bed did not mean a thing. Because Higgins knew he wouldn't marry her. That much was easily obvious when rationality was applied. It had been a terribly foolish, regrettable stray thought, he told himself with a returning confidence. A brief loss of control. Nothing more.

Nothing more, he assured himself again with an adjustment to his waistcoat as he thrust his chin higher.

But... suddenly it was the word 'vital' that had beset him. Yes, yes, everyone who knew her considered her a vital, lively woman. But Higgins suddenly felt that she was vital to him. A necessary, life affirming thing.

He could feel his breathing coming quicker with his mind's renewed betrayal. And he saw Eliza again, behind his tightly closed lids. It was her smile that worked at him, the one she gave when she was most at ease, most happy. He felt her fingers run firmly across his shoulders (as they never had). The skin of her neck beckoned, warm. Inviting.

Henry? His name would escape her lips in a breathy, pleading sort of way.

He groaned. For six months he had avoided this path; these idiocies and these distractions, and now in one instance he had catapulted past the path entirely and to a quite detailed destination.

Oh. Bloody. Hell.

"Henry!" His mother's voice was louder now. "You are acting altogether quite strangely - even for you," Mrs Higgins pronounced as she walked closer to her son. She narrowed her eyes at him and seemed to take a moment to consider what she saw. "I won't ask if you are in love with her or merely wounded over losing you best toy. I don't trust you, frankly, to know your own heart. Or to give me an honest answer. "

He was nervously biting a knuckle now, but he stopped for a moment. "Don't be ridiculous, Mother."

"But," she continued, "what would you do if you were to suspect that she had fallen in love with you?"

Startled, he looked up from his inspection of the damage he had inflicted to his hand. "Has she?"

"I should think her fit for an asylum if she has, given the way that you have treated her recently..."

"But...?" Henry said, stepping closer, sensing there was more.

"But these things happen," his mother allowed. "Pupils fall in love with their teachers. Patients with their physicians. But it would be a feeble, temporary attachment. At least, I suspect it would."

"Yes, yes..." He hummed his non-committal sort of agreement.

"And that woman who assailed and impressed you with her speeches and her surety today? She will likely give way to someone else tomorrow."

"What are you trying to say?" he queried, roughly.

"I was going to counsel you to be patient, Henry. And understanding. To refrain from teasing Eliza, should she ever deign to meet with you again. But then I realized the folly of asking such a thing of you." She sighed her frustration. "She's a wonderful girl. And courageous, Henry, that she would spend half an hour in your company, let alone all these months. But I suspect that Eliza's not quite as strong as she pretends to be."

Henry seemed to weigh the words, but then in a fit of something akin to pouting, he could only demand of his mother, "But what about me? What am I to do?"

"Do without, I suppose," the sage woman replied.

He stammered. Inside, he was stumbling. And in that moment of confusion, he worked himself up to the best approximation of anger at Eliza that he could muster.

"And so I shall! If the Higgins oxygen burns up her little lungs, let her seek some stuffiness that suits her. She's an owl sickened by a few days of my sunshine. Very well. Let her go, I can do without her. I can do without anyone!"

His mother was not persuaded that there was any real rage in this tantrum, any more than in the hundreds of tantrums she had witnessed while rearing him. Still, this one was harder to watch.

She held her tongue, and a second later, Henry was gone with a flourish.

"Bravo, Eliza," Mrs Higgins pronounced, once she was alone.

/

tbc