Evening did not fall over Springfield so much as descend — a slow, deliberate shroud settling over rooftops and chimneys, dimming the world to a palette of bruised violets and coal‑smoke gray. Lamps flickered to life behind wavering curtains, their glow fragile against the encroaching dark, like small defiances in a city that did not yet know it was standing on the edge of history.
Mary paused in the doorway of her sister Elizabeth’s parlor, her hand resting lightly on the carved frame. Elizabeth glanced up from her embroidery, offering a small, knowing smile — the kind that said she saw more than she ever commented on. Elizabeth had always been steady, composed, the quiet center of any room. Mary loved her for it, even when that steadiness felt like a mirror reflecting Mary’s own restlessness.
“Try not to startle him tonight,” Elizabeth murmured, half‑teasing.
Mary lifted her chin. “I don’t startle him. I wake him.”
Elizabeth’s smile deepened, but she said nothing more. She rarely did when Mary’s fire showed. She simply let it burn.
The room was warm, but the warmth felt borrowed, temporary — a thin veneer over the cold that seeped in from the unsettled nation beyond the windows. Mary could feel the tension in the air, the way one feels the pressure before a storm breaks.
And she knew, without being told, that he would come tonight.
Not because he had promised.
But because something in the world — some current she could not name — seemed to pull them toward each other with the inevitability of tides.
When Abraham Lincoln stepped inside, he looked as though he had walked through weather no one else could see. His coat was dusted with road grit, his hair wind‑tossed, his expression shadowed by thoughts that clung to him like damp wool. He paused, blinking as though adjusting to the lamplight, or perhaps to the fact of her presence.
Mary felt the shift immediately.
He carried storms inside him.
“Miss Todd,” he said, bowing his head with that awkward gravity that made her pulse tighten.
“Mr. Lincoln.”
Their names felt like the beginning of something dangerous.
He did not sit. He hovered near the hearth, long fingers brushing the mantel as though grounding himself. The firelight carved hollows beneath his cheekbones, deepening the melancholy that lived in his eyes.
“You appear troubled,” Mary said softly.
“I am always troubled,” he replied. “The question is only by what.”
She stepped closer. “Then let us begin with ambition. Is it a virtue or a flaw?”
He looked at her sharply — not offended, but awakened.
“That depends,” he said, “on whether ambition serves the world… or devours it.”
“And if it does both?”
“Then it becomes a burden.”
Mary tilted her head. “Or a destiny.”
Something flickered in his expression — a recognition, a warning, a spark.
Elizabeth watched them from across the room, her needle paused mid‑air. Mary caught her sister’s gaze — a mixture of concern and curiosity — before Elizabeth looked away, as though giving them privacy she knew they needed.
Around them, the parlor murmured with polite conversation, but the air between the two of them felt charged, intimate, almost perilous. She could feel the pull of him — not romantic softness, but something darker, deeper, more consuming. A meeting of minds that felt like the beginning of a fire.
He lowered his voice. “You speak as though you expect to shape the world.”
“I expect to shape my life,” she said. “And perhaps the life of the man who dares to stand beside me.”
The fire cracked sharply, as if startled.
Lincoln’s breath caught — barely, but she saw it.
He was a man who feared his own depths.
She was a woman unafraid of them.
And somewhere beyond the walls, the nation trembled — a country splitting along fault lines that neither of them could yet name, but both could feel.
The World Tilts
Springfield was a city of arguments.
Men shouted in taverns, in law offices, in the muddy streets where horses stamped and wagons rattled. Newspapers printed accusations in ink so dark it smudged the fingers of anyone who dared to read them. The country was fracturing — not cleanly, but like a bone splintering under pressure.
Mary walked through it all with her chin lifted, her mind sharp as a blade.
Elizabeth often accompanied her to debates, though she preferred to sit quietly in the back. Mary, however, leaned forward, absorbing every word.
One evening, a man scoffed at a speaker’s condemnation of slavery.
“Sentiment,” he muttered. “Women’s talk.”
Mary turned her head. “Then perhaps women should be running the country. We seem to be the only ones who recognize cruelty when we see it.”
Elizabeth’s hand tightened around Mary’s wrist — a silent plea for restraint — but Mary did not look away from the man.
He blinked, startled.
He had not expected to be challenged.
Certainly not by a woman.
Mary did not correct him.
She simply won.
Lincoln spoke rarely in these gatherings, but when he did, the room shifted. His voice was not loud, but it carried — steady, resonant, threaded with a sorrow that made even his opponents pause.
Mary watched him.
She watched the way he leaned forward when injustice was mentioned.
She watched the way his hands tightened when cruelty was excused.
She watched the way he seemed to absorb the world’s pain as though it were his own.
And she felt something inside her align with him — not in softness, but in purpose.
One evening, after a particularly heated debate, they walked together beneath a sky heavy with unfallen snow.
“You argue as though the nation is a single man,” Mary said.
“Perhaps it is,” he murmured. “A man torn between what he wants and what he fears.”
“And what do you fear, Mr. Lincoln?”
He hesitated.
“Failure,” he said finally. “And the cost of trying.”
Mary stopped walking. “Greatness always costs.”
He looked at her then — really looked — as though seeing the shape of his future reflected in her eyes.
And perhaps he did.
The Engagement
The engagement came quietly.
No grand gesture.
No dramatic declaration.
Just two people standing in a parlor, the air between them trembling with unspoken certainty.
He asked.
She said yes.
Elizabeth embraced her, whispering, “Be gentle with him. He is not like other men.”
Mary nodded, though she did not yet understand the depth of her sister’s warning.
For a moment — a brief, fragile moment — the world felt steady.
But Lincoln was a man built of contradictions.
He loved deeply but feared the weight of being loved.
He longed for connection but recoiled from expectation.
He wanted a future but doubted he deserved one.
The Break
The break came like a winter wind — sudden, sharp, merciless.
He withdrew.
He avoided her.
He vanished into his thoughts, into his melancholy, into the shadows that had always lived inside him.
Elizabeth found Mary sitting alone one afternoon, staring at the cold hearth.
“He is frightened,” Elizabeth said gently.
“So am I,” Mary whispered. “But I do not run.”
When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow.
“I cannot,” he said. “I am not… enough.”
Mary felt the words like a blade sliding between her ribs.
“Not enough for whom?” she whispered.
“For you,” he said. “For myself. For the life you deserve.”
She reached for him, but he stepped back.
And the distance between them — that small, terrible distance — felt like the width of a grave.
He left her standing in the parlor, the fire dying behind her, the shadows lengthening like hands reaching for her ankles.
For days, she moved through the house like a ghost.
Elizabeth tried to coax her into conversation, but Mary only shook her head.
Her sister finally said, “You are stronger than this.”
Mary looked up, eyes hollow. “Strength does not stop a storm.”
Elizabeth touched her cheek. “No. But it teaches you how to stand in it.”
The Aftermath
Lincoln returned weeks later, pale and shaken, as though he had been wandering through some private wilderness.
He apologized.
He explained.
He faltered.
Mary listened.
She did not forgive him easily.
But she recognized something in him — a man who feared his own destiny, yet could not escape it.
And she, who had never feared the dark, stepped toward him once more.
Not because she was weak.
But because she understood storms.
She had been raised in one.
She had become one.
And she knew — with a certainty that felt like prophecy — that their lives were already entwined, their fates already written in the shadows gathering across the nation.
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