"Come Change a Ring with Me, My Love..."
May. 2nd, 2007 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psalm_onethirtyoneIs a thingy, a thingy...!
A Zara/Florian fic for Manon. Spoilers for The Beggar Queen.
And No Birds Sing
It was near midnight; Zara was falling asleep over Florian's papers. There were always more, since he'd taken the consulship, piling up on the table. Especially there were letters: requests, threats, pleading; everything from people who wanted him to visit and have dinner with them to people who wanted him to lay his hands on them, certain that her Florian, with his faded blue greatcoat and his weathered smile, could bless them well with his very personality. He'd appointed her his secretary in the time of peace, and it made her uneasy and angry, lost in a position she couldn't properly fulfil but didn't trust anyone else to take. Besides, he'd given it. It was a sign of his trust, and she wouldn't give it up, but she hated taking things in to him because she didn't know the meanings of some of the words. She always burned the threats out of hand, but she didn't know what to do with the cool, vaguely hostile letters from the noblemen. She hated them. Florian insisted on answering them.
It was never-ending work, and she was tired; she'd meant to keep at it all night, but now her head was falling forward, and she kept shaking herself to stay awake.
And then the shooting started.
It had been endless enough during the war. She'd learned to go to sleep to the sound of gunfire, to hear it in the distance like birdsong in an ordinary world, but here it was out of place and it was wrong. She leapt to her feet as the door splintered under boots and the butts of muskets.
"Florian!"
The cry left her before she had time to choke it back, and she scrambled into his room in a split-second, shaking and dragging at him. What went through her head was so fast and so incoherent that she couldn't understand it, only knew that there was fear mixed with it. Florian slept in his chair in his clothes, with his shirt unbuttoned, and she threw his coat over his shoulders as she pulled him to his feet, unable to put anything into words, just making rough noises of urgency at him and dragging him towards the window. There was a pistol on his table and she snatched it up.
By this time the boots had come to his door and were breaking it down, too. Florian asked no questions as she smashed the window with her fist wrapt in her skirts and struggled through; as soon as she had he followed her. He was a minute too slow. The door came down and the soldiers burst into the room. Zara saw the flashes of fire and smoke hazy through the window and didn't hear the gunshots, but Florian fell through the window and she caught him before he hit the ground. His narrow chest was red and wet with blood. It stained his shirt and coat. Without almost realising, she lifted the pistol in her hands and began firing into the soldiers, bullet after bullet until the gun was empty.
She had always been thin as a beggar, but she had a panther strength when she was angry, and fear made her furious. They had shot Florian. It was the worst crime conceivable, the single bar keeping her wild temper in check, and it had been broken, and at first she couldn't see with rage. Then rapidly she buttoned his coat up the front to hide the blood and slipped her arm around his waist, bracing him, and struggled through the gardens into the street, away from the soldiers milling at the broken window. His head lolled on her shoulder.
Further into the city a man looked at them curiously; Zara drew a breath and smiled and shrugged, mouthing 'drunk'. She was shaking.
Halfway to the safehouse Florian stirred. In a rasping voice he said, "Zara--"
"Shut up!" she whispered. "We're almost there!"
"Divinity."
"Shut up, shut up." It sounded like a sob against the inside of her throat.
She threw herself against the door of the safehouse when they arrived, knocking with her body, her hands occupied in keeping Florian upright and, though she hardly realised it, touching his face and hair with quick, rough gentleness. He was still in his stocking feet.
A young woman with dark hair cracked the door open and looked out. "--Firedrake?"
"Thorn! Let me in." Her voice had taken a note of cold command, and Thorn immediately stood aside and let her bring Florian in. The young woman was visibly torn between awe at seeing Peregrine and his famous blue coat in her own house, and fear for the blood that was seeping through the thick blue cloth. She hurried Zara to a back bedroom and Zara lay Florian down, opening his coat and pulling off his shirt.
"Get me water!"
Thorn obeyed. Zara set to washing the blood away. She had seen blood a thousand times, had drawn it, had bled it herself, but it was wrong to see it on Florian. It was wrong. He was infallible, he was invulnerable. Nothing should make him bleed. Never. (and, said a voice in her head, if she had taken proper care he wouldn't now. It was her business to keep him safe. He trusted her, he trusted her and her sharp tongue and her angry ways to keep him safe, and she had failed.)
As his chest washed clean, she found two wounds. One of the bullets had passed out through his back, but the other was still inside him, somewhere in his ribs. He needed a surgeon. She could bandage and splint things well enough, but she knew nothing about any of the more complicated parts of doctoring, and she saw this would call for someone who could remove the bullet. For once in her life Florian needed something and she couldn't do it herself.
A cold fear rose in her as she bandaged him.
After a little while she realised that Thorn was speaking to her.
"Firedrake," she said softly. Zara turned to her with blazing eyes.
"What?"
"You're hurt, yourself."
"What?"
"Your head's cut."
Zara put a hand to her forehead and found her hair was soaking and matted with blood. Something had cut deeply into her head, and the blood had run down the side of her face and begun to dry a little. Thorn helped her to wash it away and bandage her head, and as soon as that was done her attention was back on Florian. He was unconscious again.
Her fear was overtaken abruptly by something else. She couldn't trust a surgeon. Nobody could be trusted with Florian except her, because she loved him as much as she hated him, because her loyalty was fiercer than anyone else's admiration for a hero, because she was his panther (she had heard people say it, just as they used to call Pankratz the Minister's Mastiff, back in the days of Cabbarus--they called her Florian's Panther now) and she would bite out the throat of anyone who laid a hand on him to hurt him. She would not give him into anyone's hands but hers. The safehouse would do for now, but as soon as possible she'd find somewhere else to move him, somewhere no one knew about. She would hide him somewhere and she would be the only person to know, so there'd be no chance of betrayal.
She bent over him as he stirred.
"Dear child," he said, low.
"I got you out."
"Yes, I know." He smiled tiredly. "You did well."
"You're a fool."
"Naturally." With an effort he lifted a hand to her bandaged head. "I see you've been hurt."
"It's not hurt if it don't hurt. It's just blood."
"You're wrong. It's your blood."
"Quiet," she said desperately, taking his hand.
"I don't intend to die from this, but if, by some chance, it should happen--"
"No." Zara stood.
"It may happen. You cannot pretend that I am invulnerable, Zara."
"I'm not pretending."
His eyes grew suddenly weary and dim. "Very well. Let us both idolise me a little while longer. Sit again, please."
She did at once.
They talked briefly, at intervals. Florian did not sleep. Zara straightened his blankets, worried his bandage, fed him when Thorn brought hot broth. He never took his eyes from her, even when she could not look at him and sat with her gaze firmed fixed on the floor, plucking at her black dress, or walked around the room angrily, her hair shining under the moonlight that came through the single window. She had grown thinner since the war ended, as had he. They were neither of them suited to peace. His hair was full of grey now, and it would have been easier to take him for fifty than thirty, while she was so bitter and pinched that first glance made her seem like an old woman instead of a girl of twenty-two. His face was tired; he had seen too many children killed. Hers was full of fury that had never been calmed. Now, as he lay in the bed, she sat beside him and held a cold cloth to his forehead, his neck, his shoulders and what of his chest wasn't wrapt in bandages. Once he smiled at her again.
In the morning she moved him to a safehouse in the student quarter, one that was for the most part abandoned. A young law student named Niko lived there--he had come from the country filled with stories of Peregrine, Shrike, and Kestrel, and gladly sworn himself loyal. Zara did not trust him, and though it was a safehouse she informed him that she was taking care of her brother, who was also loyal to Peregrine, and who had been shot in one of the many small skirmishes that had arisen the day the directorate took over. Niko evidently believed her, and turned his attic rooms over to her, moving his own things to the second floor. There she hid Florian.
In three days she gave up. His wounds festered and he grew feverish; he talked nonsense to her and begged her not to leave him, and sometimes mistook her for his mother, he pleaded with her until she knelt by the cot and held his hands and let him kiss her gratefully. Other times he cried commands to her and ordered her into battles that had been fought long ago. She washed under the bandages, trying to clean the infections away with clean water, but it did little good. Finally she couldn't escape the fact that he would only worsen and die if he was left in her hands, and she wrapt a shawl around her bandaged head and went to find Theo. That morning he had come out of the fever worn and tired, with his eyes sunken and his face achingly thin and shadowed with stubble. He asked her for Kestrel and a doctor. She went to find both.
She brought Theo and Torrens back to the attic while Niko was out, and after Florian had spoken to the one the other began to attend him. Zara hated the court physician because he was the court physician and watched him warily, without trust; when he sent her out to get lancets and tools from a medical student at the University she only agreed because it was for Florian, and she returned as quickly as she could. Theo might protect Florian from Torrens, and Florian might even vouch for the man, but she would trust no one but herself.
Before he began to operate on Florian, Torrens told her she was permitted to stay. Zara made a fierce noise through her teeth. Permission meant nothing. She had failed Florian already, and she wouldn't again, and she wouldn't leave him for anything.
Taking the bullet out meant blood. Torrens undid all her careful bandages and surveyed the wound with displeasure, while Florian remarked wryly upon it. Zara sat on the floor on his other side and he clasped her hand tightly when the first of the iron instruments Zara had brought back disappeared into his chest. He laughed, and she told him he was a fool; he agreed, and she gritted her teeth against the pain as his fingers clenched around hers.
Once he cried out, just as the bullet came out in a tiny hooked thing which Torrens had boiled hot before he used. Her own chest ached and she leaned forward, stroking his hair and murmuring angrily to him, unashamed by Torrens' presence. Eventually Florian faded into an ill sleep while Torrens spread ointment on the cleaned wound and bandaged it up again with an expert hand that showed how poorly Zara had done her work. Torrens nodded sharply at her, instructed her on changing the bandages and cleaning and salving the wound. Zara memorised his words without trying, and told him to get out.
He only obeyed for a while.
All of them, Torrens, Augusta, Theo, kept coming back and looking at Florian, but Zara stayed with him constantly. Sometimes someone brought her food and she ate a little herself and tried to persuade Florian to eat as well, but he rarely did. His fever had taken him again.
Now he spoke less to her. What he thought of was mostly battles, and he let out war cries and called orders, spoke to Justin, to Stock, to Luther, to her. Once he rescued Rina from a skirmish Zara hadn't known she'd come along for. He dreamed of death. Theo listened in on these fights with strange horror on his face, and Zara thought of throwing him out, but wouldn't move from Florian's side long enough to do it. She wondered what Niko thought of the noise above him. One day she was alone, when even Torrens had gone out, and she kissed Florian fiercely, pressing him against the bed; he lifted a hand to her hair and then dropped it. She was filled with a certainty of his death. His skin was stone cold.
For the rest of the day she lay on the bed beside him, warming him as best she could with herself. She was too thin to give much heat, but she had some, and they had done this before, sometimes, in the worst of the war, when he had permitted her to sleep with him so that neither of them would freeze. Winter was coming to Marianstat now and he needed her. The attic was as cold as the outdoors. She wrapt her thin arms around him and let his head rest on her shoulder and glared as sharply as broken ice at Torrens when he opened the door.
The next day Florian's fever broke while she still lay by him. She had fallen asleep for all her efforts, and he woke her by saying her name.
"Zara."
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes quickly. There was a ragged ache in her head. "What?"
"Dear child." His hand was at her cheek, a lightness of touch he had never used for her before. "How long have you been here?"
"Since yesterday morning."
"Thank you."
"It's not worth thanking over."
"You have given me many gifts in the years I've known you. Every one of them was worth thanks."
She hid her face and wept, bitterly, angrily. It wasn't for his words, it wasn't for the touch. All the fear inside her for the last ten days, and all the hatred and stifled frustration of the last two years, she wept with ugly, choking sobs while he watched her quietly and laid his hand on her shoulder.
When she stopped he smoothed her hair.
"Please bring me Theo and Queen Augusta."
"I'm not. Go to sleep."
Florian smiled at her wearily. "My good sense. All right. But go and eat. I'll wager you haven't."
"I'm staying here unless you'll eat too."
"Very well, I'll do that, too."
Zara slipped out of the bed and went to the door, looking over her shoulder at him. When she brought food he let her feed him; he was too weak to hold anything himself. After that he slept.
She still stayed by him. His divinity, his panther, his child.
They had both seen each other with nothing, and they knew each other's truths and secrets, and it did no good. He needed her and he needed her faith, and he needed her loyalty and her anger to fight for him and to die for him, and he needed her ruthless judgement, as he always told her, to keep him humble. He didn't need her love. He would not answer with love. Too much stood against it.
She accepted that.
The time had passed when she sat at a table outside his door and read the letters that came to him, picking and choosing what he should answer. He needed her for something else now. She had always been ready, and while he slept she watched him; when he woke and asked it of her she would give it, whatever it was.
It was near midnight, and as she watched him she began to fall asleep.
A Zara/Florian fic for Manon. Spoilers for The Beggar Queen.
And No Birds Sing
It was near midnight; Zara was falling asleep over Florian's papers. There were always more, since he'd taken the consulship, piling up on the table. Especially there were letters: requests, threats, pleading; everything from people who wanted him to visit and have dinner with them to people who wanted him to lay his hands on them, certain that her Florian, with his faded blue greatcoat and his weathered smile, could bless them well with his very personality. He'd appointed her his secretary in the time of peace, and it made her uneasy and angry, lost in a position she couldn't properly fulfil but didn't trust anyone else to take. Besides, he'd given it. It was a sign of his trust, and she wouldn't give it up, but she hated taking things in to him because she didn't know the meanings of some of the words. She always burned the threats out of hand, but she didn't know what to do with the cool, vaguely hostile letters from the noblemen. She hated them. Florian insisted on answering them.
It was never-ending work, and she was tired; she'd meant to keep at it all night, but now her head was falling forward, and she kept shaking herself to stay awake.
And then the shooting started.
It had been endless enough during the war. She'd learned to go to sleep to the sound of gunfire, to hear it in the distance like birdsong in an ordinary world, but here it was out of place and it was wrong. She leapt to her feet as the door splintered under boots and the butts of muskets.
"Florian!"
The cry left her before she had time to choke it back, and she scrambled into his room in a split-second, shaking and dragging at him. What went through her head was so fast and so incoherent that she couldn't understand it, only knew that there was fear mixed with it. Florian slept in his chair in his clothes, with his shirt unbuttoned, and she threw his coat over his shoulders as she pulled him to his feet, unable to put anything into words, just making rough noises of urgency at him and dragging him towards the window. There was a pistol on his table and she snatched it up.
By this time the boots had come to his door and were breaking it down, too. Florian asked no questions as she smashed the window with her fist wrapt in her skirts and struggled through; as soon as she had he followed her. He was a minute too slow. The door came down and the soldiers burst into the room. Zara saw the flashes of fire and smoke hazy through the window and didn't hear the gunshots, but Florian fell through the window and she caught him before he hit the ground. His narrow chest was red and wet with blood. It stained his shirt and coat. Without almost realising, she lifted the pistol in her hands and began firing into the soldiers, bullet after bullet until the gun was empty.
She had always been thin as a beggar, but she had a panther strength when she was angry, and fear made her furious. They had shot Florian. It was the worst crime conceivable, the single bar keeping her wild temper in check, and it had been broken, and at first she couldn't see with rage. Then rapidly she buttoned his coat up the front to hide the blood and slipped her arm around his waist, bracing him, and struggled through the gardens into the street, away from the soldiers milling at the broken window. His head lolled on her shoulder.
Further into the city a man looked at them curiously; Zara drew a breath and smiled and shrugged, mouthing 'drunk'. She was shaking.
Halfway to the safehouse Florian stirred. In a rasping voice he said, "Zara--"
"Shut up!" she whispered. "We're almost there!"
"Divinity."
"Shut up, shut up." It sounded like a sob against the inside of her throat.
She threw herself against the door of the safehouse when they arrived, knocking with her body, her hands occupied in keeping Florian upright and, though she hardly realised it, touching his face and hair with quick, rough gentleness. He was still in his stocking feet.
A young woman with dark hair cracked the door open and looked out. "--Firedrake?"
"Thorn! Let me in." Her voice had taken a note of cold command, and Thorn immediately stood aside and let her bring Florian in. The young woman was visibly torn between awe at seeing Peregrine and his famous blue coat in her own house, and fear for the blood that was seeping through the thick blue cloth. She hurried Zara to a back bedroom and Zara lay Florian down, opening his coat and pulling off his shirt.
"Get me water!"
Thorn obeyed. Zara set to washing the blood away. She had seen blood a thousand times, had drawn it, had bled it herself, but it was wrong to see it on Florian. It was wrong. He was infallible, he was invulnerable. Nothing should make him bleed. Never. (and, said a voice in her head, if she had taken proper care he wouldn't now. It was her business to keep him safe. He trusted her, he trusted her and her sharp tongue and her angry ways to keep him safe, and she had failed.)
As his chest washed clean, she found two wounds. One of the bullets had passed out through his back, but the other was still inside him, somewhere in his ribs. He needed a surgeon. She could bandage and splint things well enough, but she knew nothing about any of the more complicated parts of doctoring, and she saw this would call for someone who could remove the bullet. For once in her life Florian needed something and she couldn't do it herself.
A cold fear rose in her as she bandaged him.
After a little while she realised that Thorn was speaking to her.
"Firedrake," she said softly. Zara turned to her with blazing eyes.
"What?"
"You're hurt, yourself."
"What?"
"Your head's cut."
Zara put a hand to her forehead and found her hair was soaking and matted with blood. Something had cut deeply into her head, and the blood had run down the side of her face and begun to dry a little. Thorn helped her to wash it away and bandage her head, and as soon as that was done her attention was back on Florian. He was unconscious again.
Her fear was overtaken abruptly by something else. She couldn't trust a surgeon. Nobody could be trusted with Florian except her, because she loved him as much as she hated him, because her loyalty was fiercer than anyone else's admiration for a hero, because she was his panther (she had heard people say it, just as they used to call Pankratz the Minister's Mastiff, back in the days of Cabbarus--they called her Florian's Panther now) and she would bite out the throat of anyone who laid a hand on him to hurt him. She would not give him into anyone's hands but hers. The safehouse would do for now, but as soon as possible she'd find somewhere else to move him, somewhere no one knew about. She would hide him somewhere and she would be the only person to know, so there'd be no chance of betrayal.
She bent over him as he stirred.
"Dear child," he said, low.
"I got you out."
"Yes, I know." He smiled tiredly. "You did well."
"You're a fool."
"Naturally." With an effort he lifted a hand to her bandaged head. "I see you've been hurt."
"It's not hurt if it don't hurt. It's just blood."
"You're wrong. It's your blood."
"Quiet," she said desperately, taking his hand.
"I don't intend to die from this, but if, by some chance, it should happen--"
"No." Zara stood.
"It may happen. You cannot pretend that I am invulnerable, Zara."
"I'm not pretending."
His eyes grew suddenly weary and dim. "Very well. Let us both idolise me a little while longer. Sit again, please."
She did at once.
They talked briefly, at intervals. Florian did not sleep. Zara straightened his blankets, worried his bandage, fed him when Thorn brought hot broth. He never took his eyes from her, even when she could not look at him and sat with her gaze firmed fixed on the floor, plucking at her black dress, or walked around the room angrily, her hair shining under the moonlight that came through the single window. She had grown thinner since the war ended, as had he. They were neither of them suited to peace. His hair was full of grey now, and it would have been easier to take him for fifty than thirty, while she was so bitter and pinched that first glance made her seem like an old woman instead of a girl of twenty-two. His face was tired; he had seen too many children killed. Hers was full of fury that had never been calmed. Now, as he lay in the bed, she sat beside him and held a cold cloth to his forehead, his neck, his shoulders and what of his chest wasn't wrapt in bandages. Once he smiled at her again.
In the morning she moved him to a safehouse in the student quarter, one that was for the most part abandoned. A young law student named Niko lived there--he had come from the country filled with stories of Peregrine, Shrike, and Kestrel, and gladly sworn himself loyal. Zara did not trust him, and though it was a safehouse she informed him that she was taking care of her brother, who was also loyal to Peregrine, and who had been shot in one of the many small skirmishes that had arisen the day the directorate took over. Niko evidently believed her, and turned his attic rooms over to her, moving his own things to the second floor. There she hid Florian.
In three days she gave up. His wounds festered and he grew feverish; he talked nonsense to her and begged her not to leave him, and sometimes mistook her for his mother, he pleaded with her until she knelt by the cot and held his hands and let him kiss her gratefully. Other times he cried commands to her and ordered her into battles that had been fought long ago. She washed under the bandages, trying to clean the infections away with clean water, but it did little good. Finally she couldn't escape the fact that he would only worsen and die if he was left in her hands, and she wrapt a shawl around her bandaged head and went to find Theo. That morning he had come out of the fever worn and tired, with his eyes sunken and his face achingly thin and shadowed with stubble. He asked her for Kestrel and a doctor. She went to find both.
She brought Theo and Torrens back to the attic while Niko was out, and after Florian had spoken to the one the other began to attend him. Zara hated the court physician because he was the court physician and watched him warily, without trust; when he sent her out to get lancets and tools from a medical student at the University she only agreed because it was for Florian, and she returned as quickly as she could. Theo might protect Florian from Torrens, and Florian might even vouch for the man, but she would trust no one but herself.
Before he began to operate on Florian, Torrens told her she was permitted to stay. Zara made a fierce noise through her teeth. Permission meant nothing. She had failed Florian already, and she wouldn't again, and she wouldn't leave him for anything.
Taking the bullet out meant blood. Torrens undid all her careful bandages and surveyed the wound with displeasure, while Florian remarked wryly upon it. Zara sat on the floor on his other side and he clasped her hand tightly when the first of the iron instruments Zara had brought back disappeared into his chest. He laughed, and she told him he was a fool; he agreed, and she gritted her teeth against the pain as his fingers clenched around hers.
Once he cried out, just as the bullet came out in a tiny hooked thing which Torrens had boiled hot before he used. Her own chest ached and she leaned forward, stroking his hair and murmuring angrily to him, unashamed by Torrens' presence. Eventually Florian faded into an ill sleep while Torrens spread ointment on the cleaned wound and bandaged it up again with an expert hand that showed how poorly Zara had done her work. Torrens nodded sharply at her, instructed her on changing the bandages and cleaning and salving the wound. Zara memorised his words without trying, and told him to get out.
He only obeyed for a while.
All of them, Torrens, Augusta, Theo, kept coming back and looking at Florian, but Zara stayed with him constantly. Sometimes someone brought her food and she ate a little herself and tried to persuade Florian to eat as well, but he rarely did. His fever had taken him again.
Now he spoke less to her. What he thought of was mostly battles, and he let out war cries and called orders, spoke to Justin, to Stock, to Luther, to her. Once he rescued Rina from a skirmish Zara hadn't known she'd come along for. He dreamed of death. Theo listened in on these fights with strange horror on his face, and Zara thought of throwing him out, but wouldn't move from Florian's side long enough to do it. She wondered what Niko thought of the noise above him. One day she was alone, when even Torrens had gone out, and she kissed Florian fiercely, pressing him against the bed; he lifted a hand to her hair and then dropped it. She was filled with a certainty of his death. His skin was stone cold.
For the rest of the day she lay on the bed beside him, warming him as best she could with herself. She was too thin to give much heat, but she had some, and they had done this before, sometimes, in the worst of the war, when he had permitted her to sleep with him so that neither of them would freeze. Winter was coming to Marianstat now and he needed her. The attic was as cold as the outdoors. She wrapt her thin arms around him and let his head rest on her shoulder and glared as sharply as broken ice at Torrens when he opened the door.
The next day Florian's fever broke while she still lay by him. She had fallen asleep for all her efforts, and he woke her by saying her name.
"Zara."
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes quickly. There was a ragged ache in her head. "What?"
"Dear child." His hand was at her cheek, a lightness of touch he had never used for her before. "How long have you been here?"
"Since yesterday morning."
"Thank you."
"It's not worth thanking over."
"You have given me many gifts in the years I've known you. Every one of them was worth thanks."
She hid her face and wept, bitterly, angrily. It wasn't for his words, it wasn't for the touch. All the fear inside her for the last ten days, and all the hatred and stifled frustration of the last two years, she wept with ugly, choking sobs while he watched her quietly and laid his hand on her shoulder.
When she stopped he smoothed her hair.
"Please bring me Theo and Queen Augusta."
"I'm not. Go to sleep."
Florian smiled at her wearily. "My good sense. All right. But go and eat. I'll wager you haven't."
"I'm staying here unless you'll eat too."
"Very well, I'll do that, too."
Zara slipped out of the bed and went to the door, looking over her shoulder at him. When she brought food he let her feed him; he was too weak to hold anything himself. After that he slept.
She still stayed by him. His divinity, his panther, his child.
They had both seen each other with nothing, and they knew each other's truths and secrets, and it did no good. He needed her and he needed her faith, and he needed her loyalty and her anger to fight for him and to die for him, and he needed her ruthless judgement, as he always told her, to keep him humble. He didn't need her love. He would not answer with love. Too much stood against it.
She accepted that.
The time had passed when she sat at a table outside his door and read the letters that came to him, picking and choosing what he should answer. He needed her for something else now. She had always been ready, and while he slept she watched him; when he woke and asked it of her she would give it, whatever it was.
It was near midnight, and as she watched him she began to fall asleep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 04:27 am (UTC)Oh, God, they break my heart. I love them.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 04:33 am (UTC)Ninja typist...part two?
Date: 2007-05-03 04:59 pm (UTC)*pets shiny fic and goes away again*
Re: Ninja typist...part two?
Date: 2007-05-03 08:43 pm (UTC)XD Zara wins at awful.