Chapter Text
The first week away from Wuthering Heights, Isabella wishes the whole experience had been a nightmare, but the wounds are still too fresh to laugh about them and life is too dark to be positive about any better future let alone forgeting. She has found a small but suitable place for a single woman in London, not even close to her childhood home but at this point nothing could be worse than returning back to the place she left, and for a while Isabella enjoys healing the wounds of her soul and body in solitude.
In loneliness you survive not as you wish to but as you can. And if you can do a lot to help yourself you can only lick your wounds until they heal. Isabella has a lot of time for that.
Life is not easier, if any she’s looking at a different difficulty, luckily Isabella learned a thing of two about getting away in one piece from Wuthering Heights, there aren’t a lot of things in life that compare to that hell out of a house. Isabella is free from Heathcliff but not form prying eyes judging a young woman in disgrace although things like being judged doesn’t affects her vanity the comments aren’t reduced to her appearance or poverty but the ideas and prejudices they have of her. And those attacks at her back only get sharper and louder when a sign she ignores starts presenting in her; pregnancy. People always notice things when they are bored enough to look away from their dull life and seeing a suspicious bump may be the most interesting thing in the neighbor when the one that has it is apparently single and has no family. The thing she is carrying can’t be more than a bastard. There will be those who reproach her for a supposed life of excesses of which they have no idea, and those who look at her with pity, knowing the heavy burden that awaits her from now on. Of course, all this is done with the minimum possible modesty. At first, Isabella does not care about the gossip. People can say what they want far away from her and the worrying life growing in her womb, but when the news reaches Yorkshire, too far away for her to silence it with her own voice, that is when things start to become a concern.
Voices are loud but they never travel fast, actually they start losing power when they get to her brother. The shameful gossip about Isabelle is not something worth concerning those old houses in the country. As much as she would like the support of her family her only relative is not coming at her and she understands it, it does not mean his rejection stings less. Edgar’s silence never felt as loud, his younger sister needs him, and he is not aware of that because of her past mistakes, it’s fair if she thinks about it but Isabella doesn’t like that fairness. She dies from inside waiting to write Edgard another ignored letter and telling him about his nephew but doubts and fear, fear of Heathcliff finding out too, keeps her silent until the very last moment.
From Edgar’s side her silence is a small blessing, a long soft breath. It’s true that he will not be pleased once he hears about it, he doesn’t want to know, Edgar is too busy as he is, too tired from it all, genuinely invested only in his little Catherine. His baby is his whole world and her whole world is inside Thrushcross Grange, day and night he looks for his baby’s comfort, Caty is yet too young, but he fears external dangers shattering her small universe. That’s why he is indisposed at the moment for news, they are never good anyway. When news comes from Nelly they are even worse, she is like Edgar’s personal angel of bad omens, each time she comes to tell him something he hopes nothing related to happiness.
Heathcliff almost misses the news, being honest it's something he could have not mind missing. The first time he hears something like this, he couldn't care less about what his bitch of a wife is doing or whose child it might be. He doubts very much that it is his until a little more awareness forces him to see that it is unlikely that Isabella, as foolish as he sees her, would have been able to take another lover during her time at Wuthering Heights, if not by the lack of them inside then by her own disgusting being, that is, if she is really very pregnant; otherwise, her new lover concerns him less... Or he would be, until it occurs to him that whatever that baby is, it could be a boy, and if that were the case, it would be better for him to make Linton his heir before the mother puts all kinds of ideas against him in the child's head.
Still, he keeps himself from acting immediately, he is so depressed he can’t give that idiotic events importance, nothing matters these days, even his rage towards Linton sometimes loses any purpose now Catherine can’t see how much his love for her defeats whatever dull feeling Edgar gives to her. He is simply unable of take Isabella back; no woman should step inside the house if it’s not Catherine, he will never allow it again. Besides, Isabella can’t compare to the most perfect woman that ever touched this earth, he already proved it, her presence alone is a nightmare, her and a baby would only bring more tragedy. Heathcliff decides he doesn’t care about her whereabouts neither her wellbeing.
No one looks for Isabella in months, not during her pregnancy and not after, it´s both relaxing and despairing and no one’s fault, it was on her going where she can’t be found. There is no way her brother could have found out without a sign from her. Luckily neither her husband.
She gives birth to a small baby, some little being that gives light to her life from the very first moment he opens his eyes.
When she first carries his tiny body in her arms the whole world stops and starts rolling incredibly fast. Life itself finally plays a visit after so many knocks at the door form death. Her baby becomes her world, her home. In silent declaration for him against whatever that could want to take it from her hands Isabelle named him Linton. A claim against the last name he is forced to bear for his mother’s mistakes, Linton first, her first wish for him is to make a good boy out of him in a way that Heathcliff loses all the dark power his name gives to any of his stolen properties.
He was born a rebel in looks; it is expected he will be one at heart too. Linton is an angel, Isabelle gets amazed each time she looks at him. Her son fits perfectly in her arms, his skin is so white and his hair looks like gold, so opposed in looks to Heathcliff and she loves it, after knowing him all the charm in his looks disappeared, a copy of him would have been a torture to raise but Linton looks nothing like him, not in the slightest if she doesn’t pays attention at his nose and unusual quietness for a baby. She takes his look as a second win over the demonic man, only time will tell if his attitude is another great step from the creator or not.
Not everything comes easy, as beautiful as he is he is not exactly a healthy baby. One week after being born Linton sickness start and it goes but always come back and his young mother is the only one responsible for him, life feels painful again, difficult and more painful now she is not the only one affected. Life is not as different as death; they come together although Isabella wished she wasn’t that aware of the possibilities that comes with Linton’s fragility. Each first sweet moment, from his first laugh to first babbles come by the hand of tense moments when fever has him crying his small lungs out.
Just like the father, Linton becomes the first reason of her sadness and night torments for different reasons than him. Isabella’s torment was Heathcliff being an idiot with perfect health despite having the worse habits but her lack of sleep with Linton is fearing he will not make it out of sickness whenever it is fever, stomachache, colic or something else she can’t tell on time.
Sometimes Isabella fears Linton could not get to turn one year but he proves her wrong, Isabella was never happier for not being right. Each time Linton falls sick he recovers and the mother gets positive yet never less careful the next time something affects him. Linton acts normally peacefully, but sickness gets the worst of him and during those days and nights he becomes louder in cries unable to vocalize his pain. More than once, someone will look at her bad after a bad night as if her neighbors never experienced something close to it with their own children. At least no one had come yet to her door at midnight screaming at her to shut her baby.
If Linton does not start improving soon, she will not be surprised this time, fever again, someone will really knock on her door very violently.
It ends up happening, maybe she thought so much about it, Isabella is not afraid to open her door and prepare a very coherent apology when it happens. She has the exact words she is about to say in the tip of her tongue when she opens her door expecting an elderly woman lecturing her for her raising mistakes when all words scape from her.
In her defense motherhood kept her busy for a whole year, so busy she didn’t pay attention to old wounds and painful memories, they all come to her making her freeze when the face of her suffering meets her with the same fierce eyes only a beast can have. All mothers will know how hard it is to keep a little being alive, it’s a tiring activity if not exhausting, painful and sweet at times. For Isabella it’s worth the effort although she sacrificed her already sacrificed remains from youth. She is aware of the way her hair looks, the way her figure gets smaller, and her face adorned only by eyebags without a sight of round and rosy cheeks, it stopped matter until this demon greets her by telling her.
“And I thought you were disgusting before…” By instinct she slams the door right at his face before he continues talking, demons like Heathcliff learned how to enter houses but as much as she is aware he’d never crossed through one.
His voice, however, is sharper than Linton and she hear him through the door which means he hears her steps not going away from the door and a baby crying inside. But he is not screaming yet, he is not asking, just complaining with that ability of him that makes everything an insult.
He is not welcomed. Isabella almost ignores him when he says her name but not when he says nonsense.
“Return to Wuthering Heights immediately with that thing you have hidden there. I will only make this offer once but you are coming back one way or another. I know you can hear me.”
That’s the only thing she hears from him, at the same time Linton loses his fight against tiredness and falls asleep hiccupping, Isabella returns to him before going close to the door again and for a moment Heathcliff passes from a bad lucid memory, he is not there even half an hour after when she slightly opens her door.
But as the plague Heathcliff is, she sees him again next morning, early bothering her sleep and Linton’s with intense hits on the door. His rude manners don’t get him far this time, even if she is forced to stay inside Isabella is not opening her door and risking him interrupting inside. He gets the memo an hour later outside the door, that should be enough for anyone to lose hope but since he is not moved by hope but cruel stubbornness Heathcliff remains in his exact position for one and two hours. His patience, lack of it, gets him before he spends one minute more outside and he decides to talk from outside.
“I have been here for two hours, Isabella, and I still hear cries. Who is? A girl? You had a boy, Isabella?” She notices exhaustion in his voice, the same she feels from him and Linton´s sickness combined. She is not moved tho, any pain Heathcliff feels he should feel it twice.
“It will not matter if that baby of yours can’t grow.”
Isabella doesn’t answer his provocation.
Not until he keeps going.
“I told you to come back.” She will not, never. “Come back if you want that baby have a chance to turn at least five. I can see how bad you’re trying to raise on your own.” Never, ever.
“Leave.” She says by impulse, not like he doesn’t know she is inside. She opens the door only to see him in the face when she finally dares to speak back at his face. “What can you even do if not kill everything around you? Who are you to tell me I am not doing it right?”