You Don't Have to Stay Forever.

The day before your life changes forever, it’s a normal day. Tom unlocked the door of his house and slipped off his jacket, he headed to the kitchen and grinned at the smell of a meal cooking, it maybe was Steak Diane, with mashed potatoes. As he entered the kitchen he took a moment to appreciate his girlfriend’s form standing by the stove, her long legs showing off due to her wearing a pair of shorts.

For the past week he had been arriving home to this, and he couldn’t feel happier. It was starting to become a routine. A routine he loved and wanted to keep on for months, years, decades.

It was a normal day, at least for Tom.

His arms wrapped around Anna’s waist, his head burying in the crook of her neck to smell that scent he still couldn’t describe. He placed a loving kiss on her collarbone and waited for her usual giggle and flush, but this time there was no giggle. Anna smiled weakly and got out of his grasp before turning off the heat.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, feeling nervous.

“Nothing is wrong, it’s time for dinner.” She stated, placing their dinner in the counter and waiting for him to join her. Tom followed and took a sit in front of the blonde girl, who was enjoying the mashed potatoes.

Anna’s mind was racing, she had to tell Tom about her pregnancy, her grandmother was right, he had to know. But Anna wasn’t ready for his reaction. So she was trying to find the right words to make him understand that she was not ready for this, but that she wanted him to wait for her to be ready.

Her silence was killing Tom, he usually didn’t like silence, it was in the silence between the family meals when his parents announced to him and his sisters that they were getting a divorce.

He certainly didn’t want to make her upset by asking again if there was something wrong, he knew something was up, it was there lingering in the air and also in the silence between them.

“Annie, you’re not yourself, lately.” Tom reminds her.

“Who am I, then?” Anna’s green eyes look away from Tom’s blue ones, and it’s then when he knows that something bad is bound to happen.

But instead of demanding an answer, he shrugs. “No one I know.”

Then, with all that being said and weights lifted off their shoulders, Tom places his empty plate in the sink and leaves for the living room. He looks back only once, but Anna wishes he wouldn’t have because Tom’s face is heartbreaking enough.

And Anna is left worrying more than before. Is this selfish thought worth losing Tom?

After loitering outside in the backyard (left alone with a pack of biscuits and a pack of thoughts), Anna heads up to their room, ignoring Tom’s eyes following her. His silent stare is nothing new. It’s everything Tom had already told her.

So instead of going up, she takes a seat next to him in the couch.

This is new, and Tom is shocked. “You’re keeping something from me, again,” he says, a hint of strange emotion in his voice. The same one he had earlier.

“I know.”

“You can trust me.”

“I know.”

“I’m going mad.”

“I know, Tom,” Anna groans.

“You won’t tell me,” Tom yawns, smacking his lips and closing his eyes, voice sounding lost like a widow weighed down by her husband’s death.

Anna wants to yell or snap at Tom for telling her what to do, but she’s too caught up in the man’s form on the couch. His lashes are kissing his cheek, and the moonlight is lighting the tips of them into the perfect shade of brown. And Anna has never seen more perfect lashes. A perfect man...?

So Anna lightly pushes Tom over in the couch and climbs in with him, feeling guilty and lost.

Is this selfish thought worth losing Tom?

When was she going to grow up?

-

Anna has been brooding.

She knows she has been, knows she’s been right downright miserable, but she can’t help it. She’s trying to take back her throne as Tom’s girlfriend and kick these fears out of her life. It should be easy, she thinks. Kicking the stupid fear out of her life and reunite with her lover should be her top priority. But, the night she decided that the abortion was the only way for them to be happy, the first nightmare appeared.

She watched Tom chase after the blonde toddler around the Kensington gardens. Watched, screamed and sobbed... because the moment she tried to touch either of them, they vanished. They slipped off her fingers slowly before disappearing. She had lost both of them.

“You look exhausted,” Georgia tells her, about a week after the nightmare, handing her a cuppa.

“I’m dandy,” Anna lies. It’s the easiest thing to do. She accepts the brew and downs it one giant gulp, the hot liquid burning her tongue, scorching her throat, paining her in the same way she pained Tom.

“Liar liar, pants on fire,” Georgia chants, studying her friend, as if she were an artist studying a white canvas.

Anna frowns. She hates when her friend studies her. Watching her like someone who might break anytime. A fragile piece of glass that might shatter... She’s not! How can Georgia, her grandmother and everyone else think she is?

“Something’s wrong, and you better tell me soon.”

“Tom doesn’t know yet.” Anna says, it’s almost like a growl. “I bet he’s going to leave me soon.”

“Anna...” Georgia sighs.

Anna shakes her head, not wanting to hear her nagging, gripping the mug in her hand, tighter. Her knuckles are turning white, and her face is stony. She’s trying so hard to refrain from crying, shouting, weeping like the lost little child she feels she is.

“You’re making it worse, if you keep this to yourself any longer. I’m afraid you go mad and start jumping in front of cars.”

Anna knows that her friend is right. The guilt is slowly eating her up, making her see blonde toddlers everywhere she goes. And Tom’s blue eyes are so full of sorrow, she’s afraid they might turn into black holes. But if she did jump in front of a car, she feared that since god was not very fond of her, he would send Tom to save her. Save her from herself.

It all came down to her silly, selfish, self. The longer she took to tell Tom, the longer it would take him to forgive her.

“I won’t, I promise.” Anna mumbles.

“Promises only matter if you believe them.”

Anna removes her eyes from her whitened knuckles to look up at Georgia with her pursed lips and dismal eyes. With a trembling lip, Anna asks, “Don’t you believe me, Georgia?”

Georgia shrugs, standing up to take back Anna’s cup. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Annie.”

There is silence, the two friends look at each other, both with taciturn eyes, challenging the other to speak, to contradict. Anna breaks the silence, first, voice quivering and sore from the scorching tea. “I know what I believe in.”

“And what’s that?”

“Nothing,” Anna says before going back to stare at her knuckles, she had nothing to believe in because there was nothing else she could do but find a way to be sincere with Tom. He deserved that, and so much more.

-

Anna is pissed off her face. She’s slumped against the door of her and Tom’s home, hands trying to unlock the door without making too much noise. Her speech is slurred and her eyes are glassy. She had gone to the pub for a pint, fully aware that it might hurt the child growing in her womb. But Anna knew that she needed the alcohol to be brave and face Tom.

Today was her lucky day.

“Foul, tasteless drunkard!” she whispers before picking the right key and swinging the door open.

Anna wants to eat a snack, take a shower and crawl quietly in bed so Tom doesn’t wake up, but she’s too clumsy and she loses her balance, face-planting right to the ground. She hears some noise upstairs; her boyfriend is probably up and will find her here, rat-arsed and dead.

“So this is how I’m going to die,” Anna says, dryly, “drunk, and smelling like rat piss.”

“Anna?”

She lets out a shaky breath, boozy air splaying onto the floor at the sound of her name. She braces her body, waits for something awful to happen, but it never comes. Two strong arms wrap around her waist and lift her up.

Tom sits her in the couch before rushing into the kitchen to fill a glass of water.

“Who’s that?” Anna’s head is spinning, and she can’t open her eyes. She’s close... so close to dripping out of consciousness.

Splash!

Water is dumped on her face, droplets snapping her eyes open and seeping into her mind, fixing the hole that had been there earlier. And holding her hand is Tom Hiddleston, wearing his jimjams, clearly scared that she might be on drugs.

“What are you doing?!” Anna demands, angrily.

“You couldn’t even get up, let me get you upstairs.” He gets a grip on her waist, lifting her up. After much struggling and muttering curses, he finally gets her to their bedroom, laying on the bed, hair mussed beyond belief.

“Bugger off!” Anna grumbles, eyes still shut because the light of the bedroom burns her eyes.

Anna doesn’t see it, but Tom’s eyes turn wild with fury, and he leans down to hiss in her face, a feral kind of growl to his voice that sends shivers and waves through Anna’s body. “That’s really what I should do, isn’t it? I should fuck off after you ignored me for an entire week!”

“I’m a disease,” Anna slurs, one eye peeking to catch the fiery glint in his eye, those blue calm pools turned into a savage ocean in just a second.

“A fucking disease?” he hisses, “What the fuck, are you talking about?”

“Go away! Leave me now that I’m so tanked I won’t remember anything.” She shouts, loudly, boozy breath hitting his nostrils strongly. Anna wishes she could move, but she’s afraid of leaving a piece of her behind, so she’s stuck, cornered by Tom and all his fury.

“I told everyone how stupid they were for not believing in you. I told them to give you a chance!” he shouts back, he was fuming. “I thought you wouldn’t stop loving me. I thought you were different. You were different.”

Anna, in all her drunken humour, laughs loudly and clumsily. “I’m no different than a cheap whore, fucking useless.”

Had Anna’s eyes been open, she would have seen the way Tom’s eyes turn stony, glazed over by an emotion Anna knows all too well. Tom lets out a sigh, his own breath smelling succulent as it falls over Anna in a wave. “I’ll sleep in the couch.”

Anna grumbles, eyes opening. This time she knows that he needs to know, he’s tired of trying and she’s tired of seeing him walking away with more doubts in his mind than anything else.

This is certainly not how she wanted him to know that he was going to become a father, maybe she should have bought that t-shirt that read ‘Best world’s dad’ Anna knew that the look on his face would be something to cherish for years, it would also mean that she was not alone, he was on board too.

“I shouldn’t tell you this way,” Anna says before sitting up carefully and staring at Tom’s back, he was about to leave the room, her heart was pounding against her ribcage as he spun around to face her, and the moment she stared into his begging blue eyes, the words slipped out of her mouth without a second thought. “I’m pregnant.”

He doesn’t say a word, trying to understand what he just heard, trying to hold back his excitement. Because Anna is probably not done with opening up to him, she finally stopped keeping herself away from him. Tom stays up late night with Anna, setting his anger to the side and falling asleep, leaning against each other. Their minds let go of life, of dreams, of nightmares, of catastrophes and of what awaits ahead of them... if only for a night.