You find the letter folded neatly, tucked between the weathered pages of Edward’s journal like he couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy it. It’s old, the paper creased a hundred times over and you expect it to be a map, but penned at the top is a name that stops you cold.

Catherine.

The ink is smudged in places, as if written in the dark, or with hands that didn’t know if they should write at all. But the words are sharp and sincere, familiar in ways you wish they weren’t.

'I’ll come back for you. I swear it. Just a little longer out here, love. Just a little more gold. Then I’ll be the man you deserved from the start.'

You sit back, heart pounding. Not because of jealousy- though that flickers too- but because of how he wrote it; with hope and conviction and love.

When he returns home, soaked through and smelling of rum and rain, he sees the drafted letter in your hand before you can say a word. He freezes like a deer under a hunter’s aim, the bravado dying in his eyes immediately. "You weren’t supposed to see that," he mutters, turning away, jaw clenched. "It was just words. Doesn’t matter now."

Silence stretches.

"She was my wife," he explains eventually, voice rough. "Before any of this, before I knew how to be good to anyone. I wrote that when I thought I still could be something to her.” He doesn’t reach for the letter, doesn’t attempt to defend it, and he doesn’t ask for forgiveness. Instead, he just stands there in the candlelight, soaked and weary and guilty. And he waits to see if this is the thing that finally drives you away.