Work Text:
Lima is not a big town.
Sometimes it feels even smaller than it physically is, when her job feels like a dead end and there's nowhere to turn, when she can't fit a new Pottery Barn shipping anywhere in the house, when her heart aches because she can't fit all this pain in her chest, because she needs more space, more life.
Sometimes it feels bigger, when her ankles hurt as a late symptom of hysterical pregnancy, when she walks down the street and everyone knows—everyone knows she failed, everyone knows she never got out of Lima to have the fairytale marriage and now that's over, too, over and it's her fault, her fault for trying too hard to salvage something that should've been left to straighten itself out. She feels watched and talked about and lost.
And sometimes it's just Lima, this place she's lived all her life, this place where she's grown, had all her ups and downs, sunk and resurfaced and tried to stay afloat. This place she hates—when not having Will around feels like drowning—and loves—when it feels like the best thing that could have happened to her, the final push, swimming towards a visible, tangible coast—all at once.
There are times she wishes it were bigger so she could disappear into a crowd, and there are times she wishes it were smaller so Will would be always around, so they'd stumble across each other at the turn of every corner, so she'd have a chance to talk to him before he had a chance to walk out.
But that's crossing a line, and it's not about the size of this town anymore—it could be New York or it could be one of those quaint little places on the CW, and that line would remain there, solid and heavy, keeping her from reaching out easily whenever she thinks it would be a good idea to face him, to try and get him back.
Then she tries to make her own dinner again, from scratch this time, and for once she doesn't burn it, and she thinks the space between them is a good thing, and the perfect size.