farina | An Inch, a Mile; A Minute, an Hour

Title: An Inch, a Mile; A Minute, an Hour
Fandom: When Calls the Heart
Words: 4,270
Summary: He'd been through the what-ifs tens of thousands of time. If only the rope had had more give to it. If only he'd arrived home sooner for lunch. If only he'd known Martin felt that lonely, or scared, or helpless. Maybe he could have been saved. {Or, Bill returns to the city to sell his family home.}
Pairing/Characters: Bill and Martin-centric, with a little Nora and Abigail
Prompt: "bill and feet" (for a body parts meme)
Rating: T for themes.
Warnings: Suicide
Genre: character study, angst, family, friendship

Notes:

BIG WARNING FOR SUICIDE! PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Bill’s a fun character and I was kind of shocked to see the lack of ‘fic about him, in particular pertaining to the loss of his son.

The canon for WCtH is pretty sparse when it comes to character backgrounds, and Bill is no exception. We know very little about him, his marriage to Nora, or his relationship to his son, but here are the things that canon does state outright:

His marriage to Nora was an obligation/a way to pay back a favor to Jonas, Nora’s father.
They married to protect Nora’s honor when she ran off with a man but returned unmarried and pregnant.
It’s implied that Martin was Henry’s son. Nora has “always had a blind spot” when it comes to Henry, and Martin is, well, a name shared by Henry’s actor. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Bill held Martin when he took his first breaths, and he held him as he took his last breaths. The implication that’s made here is that Nora was not there when Martin died.
Nora felt that Martin was always a burden to Bill, because he wasn’t his blood son.
Without Martin they had no reason to remain married and they both seem very aware of it.

There are more things that are said, but it’s hard to separate the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. Bill says his wife proposed to him, but this is before he admits he married her out of obligation. Either she did ask out of desperation (and he felt obligated to accept), or he was just over-simplifying things (by putting herself in a position where she needed him to step in, she was more or less asking him).

--

Okay, so here are the headcanons I constructed based loosely on what we were given in the canon:

Martin died as an adult. I know the picture of him is as a child, but the wife isn’t Nora and so I discard it personally and replace it with something that makes a little more sense. I like the idea of the picture being of a younger Martin, but that doesn’t mean he died at that age. I think Nora ran off with Henry when she was much younger, say, late teens, and returned pregnant and young with no idea what to do. Bill, who was raised by her father for the last years of his childhood, was about a decade older than Nora and not very close to her. Truly a marriage of convenience. But if Bill was in his late 20s when he married an 18-year-old Nora, then it’s been twenty+ years. I definitely headcanon that Martin died in his early 20s.
Martin killed himself. I know this is a good wholesome show but let’s not pretend tragedy doesn’t happen, okay? I chose hanging because I feel like shooting himself would put way too much guilt on Bill (for having guns in the house) and absolutely destroy Nora (the blood and mess all over her home would be beyond traumatizing). I constructed it as a deliberate act where Martin planned it to be at a time where his father may have been able to intervene, which is why Bill kind of focuses hard on tiny details. (It’s also something he’s good at, per his job.) This is a little extra tragic for Nora because she wasn’t there for it, and never got to say goodbye. If Martin had died of a long illness, I don’t think she’d be so broken up over his death years later. She is, so it must have been something extremely difficult to process and accept.
Martin had Anxiety and Depression. This is ultimately what drove him to making the call. He felt hopeless, confused, scared. He didn’t know how to ask for help, and in this time period, he’d be lucky if he didn’t end up placed in an asylum for speaking about the way he felt.
Martin was gay. This isn’t something I addressed in the story, because I don’t think Bill would have figured it out, but it’s a personal headcanon that means a lot to me.
Nora and Bill didn’t have a sex life. I think they care about each other in their own way, but neither of them trust the other with their heart and never did. I also feel that Bill would fully respect Nora not wanting him like that.
Bill loved being a father. But I also think for him, his relationship with his son, being shrouded in tragedy, is also a very personal and private thing.

These are only my personal headcanons; by no means do you, the reader, have to agree with them. This is just my interpretation of this aspect of Bill, Nora, and Martin’s relationship.

Anyway, I tried to write this with the idea of a small emotional distance existing between Bill and his memories. Like, I’m sure he sometimes gets lost in grief over his son’s death. I’m sure he cries sometimes when he’s by himself. I’m sure he cried when his son died. But he’s viewing it a few years down the road in this story, and he’s built some walls so that he can view it with some objectivity.

Bill is the sort of person to compartmentalize his hurt, and I got the feeling from what he does say of his son that it’s not something he likes talking about, but…he can. He’s started to move on and to stop blaming himself so much. It doesn’t take the hurt away, as many of you know, but it does help ease it.

Originally I had a small scene in here between Frank and Bill, where Frank talks about forgiveness, but of a kind not often talked about in the series: forgiving oneself. I took it out because it didn’t fit with the rest, and I think Bill has largely done this already. It just doesn’t have the power to keep him from thinking of the if-onlys and what-ifs. In a manner of speaking, selling the home he watched Martin grow up in is the final stage of his grieving process.

So it’s not that he doesn’t hurt. He does. But he feels it less, now, than he did, and he doesn’t feel it all of the time.

I also originally had a line in the scene toward the end where Bill remembers letting Martin crawl into bed where Martin apologizes for it and Bill forgives him, but took it out. It felt like just a bit too much.

And yes, the things Bill says to Martin are supposed to lightly reflect what AJ says to Bill in S5E8: Weather the Storm.

The song I thought of while writing was How Do You Get That Lonely? by Blaine Larsen. Don't watch this if you're emotionally fragile; seriously, it will mess you up.

An Inch, a Mile; A Minute, an Hour | When Calls the Heart