"Outside's the Rain, the Driving Snow..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

Happy very late birthday, julietveiled! >_> Hopefully this will help with the stress a little. ♥ I love you very very much.

Lynet/Gaheris, as requested.

Then Sprang the Happier Day from Underground

She's twenty-one; it's her twenty-first birthday. It's a weekend, and she comes back from college to be with him, laughing at him when she gets off the Greyhound and he's waiting there for her, looking up at her with a strangely shy smile.

"Hey, old man!" she says, hugging him, her suitcase banging his ankles. Her long hair is longer than ever, ponytailed up. He notices that she's wearing makeup, which he never thought she'd do, somehow--a little blush and eyeshadow, and when she kisses his cheek he can feel the smoothness of the lipgloss--she laughs again and rolls her eyes. "Hello? Are you going to say hi?"

"Hi," he says. "How are you?"

"The trip was shitty. All these layovers."

She's twenty-one. He shouldn't do it, but he murmurs, thoughtlessly, "Language."

Amy pokes him. "Yeah, yeah. Hey, let me get home and dump my stuff, and we can go out and do something."

"Are you sure your parents don't want to--?"

"I'll see them later. It's fine. It's my birthday, I get to do what I want. And I want you to take me out to the movies and dinner."

"Okay."

"What? Are you--ohhh, is it going to make you stay up past your bedtime, Gramps? Do you have to get home and take your pills before nine?"

Gaheris sighs. "And I need my Depends."

"And I guess you can't have your teeth in that long." She slaps him in the head with her open palm. "Then you'd better hurry up, huh, so we can get it done before your aide gets pissed off and comes after me."

"How's school?"

"Fine."

"Yeah? Classes okay?"

"Yeah, everything's good," with a slight smile cast at him. "You're doing the dad thing again. You want to make up your mind what relative you are, exactly?"

"Maybe I'm just the weird guy who lives down the street from you."

"Oh, right."

They walk to her house and leave her suitcase in her room, and then she borrows her father's car to drive them to the restaurant for dinner. She picks Red Lobster. In between interruptions by the waitress, Gaheris gets out of her that school is going better than she expected, but she's lonely; and she makes him tell her how his pictures are selling, and asks him about his trip to Orkney. His trip to Orkney, she says, not his trip home.

"It was fine," he tells her, looking away. "No problem."

"Oh, come on."

"No problem. And Mike's okay. Our nephew's doing real well, he's already three. George and Lizzy are going to come up to visit with him soon."

"Changing the subject," she says, moving her fish around on her plate with her fork. "I know you are, you bastard."

He admits it with a laugh.

She picks the movie, too, and he doesn't even know what it is, really. The theatre is dark and the ads and commercials fly coloured across the screen, and the noise is a little bigger than he expected and shocks him. He thinks instead of watching. It's been so long since he met her, so long, and now she's a woman, she lives far away from him most of the time--her college is in New York. He wonders, a little, what college is like, having never gone himself. He wonders what she thinks, and how she thinks, and how he never used to look at her and think anything but that he knew her, and he wanted a friend in her, and how now sometimes when she comes home to him he wants more, and tries to shake it out of his head. It's different now, it's too late. She's not the same. It can't be the way it was before, because she'll never remember, because what Clar says is always the truth.

But he dreams of their daughter, dreams of her all the time, and he wonders what Amy's hair would feel like, if he could run his hands through it. He shouldn't think these things. He shouldn't. But she truly is unremarkable and beautiful, and once she was his wife--

Something explodes onscreen, someone says something, a cell phone goes off in the audience. Amy steals his popcorn. Gaheris tries to pull his mind away from Orkney, where it goes if he lets go of it for even a moment.

After the movie they walk down by the unexpected park, and kick at soda and beer cans. They talk about each other, and she laughs, telling him how she used to tell her parents he was her teacher.

"So they wouldn't think it was skeevy that you were walking me home," she says.

"I forgot about that," he tells her. "I just remember going to your baseball games."

"Yeah, because you yelled at the umpire once for me. Moron."

"He made a bad call."

"You were so embarrassing."

"And wretchedly poor."

She snorts. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"You're not going to agree? You always used to agree--"

"You're just trying to be passive-aggressive pathetic. Doesn't work on me."

"Nothing works on you."

"Not when the person trying it is as old and boring as you are, no."

"God!"

"And you are shit poor, too."

"Great. Thank you."

"No problem. Earn some money, do something interesting, get a good pick-up line--"

"I thought you told me you liked me because I didn't have a thing for you."

"Who said I liked you, loser? I said I tolerated you."

After that they wander back to the car and start home. Gaheris has a tendency to look out windows, and he struggles to keep his eyes on the road; the drive is mostly silent, because Amy isn't saying anything, and Gaheris worries about saying the wrong thing too much to try starting a conversation. So they're quiet, and after a while it starts to rain. He flicks on the windshield wipers and brights.

Suddenly she stiffens beside him.

Gaheris turns to her at once. "Are you all right? Amy?"

She stares at him, wide-eyed in the flickering light of the cars alongside them. He doesn't know what she's thinking. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't understand, but he pulls off the road onto the emergency strip of thick black paving, newly laid down last month. Just as he puts on the parking break and turns to her again to ask her again, she scrabbles at him suddenly, pulls at his shirt, pulls him to her and kisses him, then pushing him back against the seat kisses him again.

"Stupid--fucking-- husband," the word, as if it were pulled from her terribly. There are tears in her eyes. She gets hold of his hair with one hand and drags him across to her. They're still the same height.

"Wait, wait," he says, ineffectually protesting. "Amy--"

"Lynet. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm sorry. Clar said you wouldn't remember, and I thought it would make everything bad if I told you, or you wouldn't believe me--"

She cuts him off with another kiss. "You idiot. You complete idiot. Don't listen to her! What does she know? I'm me. I'm your wife. You're such an idiot." She's sobbing now, and touching his face with her fingers. "It's been so long."

Gaheris pulls her close and strokes her hair in the ponytail. "I know. I know. It's been years. I know."

"Moron. For Christ's sake--you bastard, never telling me--"

"I'm sorry. Shhh. Lynet."

"Don't shhh me! You should have told me!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Beloved, beautiful, my lady, thou my lady," then, over and over, until she subsides into tears only, and from them into shaking sighs, and silence. "My love, my lady, beloved, sharp-tongue. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Finally she says, in a small, tearstained voice, "Fucker."

"I'm sorry."

"Is Lunete here?"

"Who?"

"Our daughter."

"Oh, God." He laughs, hopelessly. "Her name. I didn't know her name. I never knew--I forgot. Lunete--Lunete?"

"So she's not." Amy sighs again, as if all the anger is in her throat and has to be breathed out. "But you are, husband, and I am. And we are not the same."

"No."

"Thou art much the same in looks," softly, reaching to touch his face again.

"So thou art," he tells her.

"What will we do?"

"Will you come to our house? Just--stay with me, for a while? I don't know what else--"

"Hush. Fool. I'll come."

Slowly they straighten, and somehow, somehow, Gaheris drives them back to Mordred's house. Together they climb the steps and then the stairs, avoiding the others, somehow, thank God--she leaning on him a little and still shaking. He straightens his bed for her and she lies down in it, looking around his room. Finally, he lies down beside her.

"Fool," she whispers again.

"I know," he says. "I know. I'm sorry."

She takes his hands and kisses them. "So long, my lord."

"Forgive me, lady."

"What to-morrow?"

"I love thee," he says, unable to answer her, unable to explain anything to her, but certain, at least, of that. She smiles sourly at him.

"Aye, I love thee."

He smiles back, and she closes her eyes and puts her head against his chest.

"Fucking bastard," she adds.

Gaheris lets out a helpless little snort of a laugh and holds her tightly, tightly to him, and buries his face in her hair. They lie in the way for hours before either of them falls asleep, her hands knotted in his shirt and his arms close around her, and he knows he's fearful, truly, of her waking up and having forgotten everything again, as if this were only one chance, one moment, that slipped through, and Clar is right (Clar is always right)--but eventually he sleeps, too, without meaning it.

And he does not dream, and makes no sound, until in the morning she wakes him up by kissing his shoulder until he stirs.