I'd have liked to have come to you as someone who was worth taking a risk on. Someone with prospects. It festered in me, back then, to be with you and to know that I would never be able to win your hand.
[ It feels like they're sifting through the ashes of a pyre looking for jewels that might have survived the heat; like they rob their own graves. Like they do this again and again, brought back by some dark compulsion, some creature that starves and hunts the same barren ground, ignoring the lands in sight where things grow.
It is a life they didn't live, a life that didn't happen, there is nothing there but shards of bone to keen over. It makes the skin of her shoulders crawl like he walks her into a corner and wants to keep her there until she gives him something he wants, even if she doesn't know what it is. Like every time she speaks of it she does the same to him. ]
Perhaps if you had asked, papa would have taken you. For all you were disinherited you were gently born, and my papa kind; he might have heard a story about a cruel and vengeful father and believed it unjust punishment. He knew what I had been made, wished to see me loved more than he wished me married well. I am a fifth daughter, more free to make such choices, and my family wealthy without my needing to buy it with my hand.
Perhaps then when I knew I loved you I could have loved you as a husband without the fear that rent us. Or perhaps you would have found yourself tied to a creature crazed with terror, convinced you played a game. Convinced you took her for land, or wealth, or status, that every moment you were absent you laughed at her in secret with some other lover. That she was nothing to you. Less than nothing. A wife who could not hear a single word you said in love, could not be touched without flinching, who wept wretched and broken and feared you. Perhaps Emile, who was making me her weapon, would have made sure the latter came to pass.
Perhaps we would have loved and had a home. A life. A family. Perhaps you would have come to hate me.
[ She is reaching for his hand again, eyes glittering with tears in the candlelight. ]
But what is there in any of this that could be of the slightest use to us now? None of that happened, and we cannot write over what did. I am here now, I love you now. Can we not simply love each other now? I do not want to make new fractured moments to regret.
[ It's not a good speech to give. Maybe if Byerly were in a certain mood, he'd admire the nihilism of it, but right now, when all he wants to hear is something that makes him feel like less a piece of shit for being so utterly unable to be the one she could love enough not to betray, it's not a good speech.
By the end of it, he's practically shimmering with self-loathing. He doesn't take her hand. ]
Ah, good. Knowing it was always hopeless does make the memories so sweet.
[ She is going to break on this one day. One day the dogged ceaseless stubborn way she loves him will not be enough to pull her off the floor to take another swing at the dogged ceaseless stubborn way he hates himself.
She has never felt a match for this. Never felt on sure footing. It feels a constant swing between stumbling into hurting him and begging to be forgiven for the missteps made she doesn't understand.
In that soft and broken haggard sound that marks the interim between the times she gathers herself to stumble through the unforgiving underbrush again: ]
What do you want of me?
You must help me. I cannot but do wrong, speak wrong. You must teach me to love you in a way that you can feel.
[ There is naked shock in her face when she looks up.
He thinks it was aimed at him. The bitter blow she'd aimed at herself, he thinks it was meant for him. ]
Not you. Me. I would have fucked it up anyway.
You did nothing wrong. [ She reaches again for his hand. Tries to reach again. ] You loved me, but I was too afraid to be loved. You were safe, but I was too afraid to be safe. The moment that I knew I loved you he was inside of me laughing and I could hear nothing else.
He left a killing trap in me, waiting for someone I could love to make it spring.
[ A Bard. Retired, perhaps— if Bards ever are— but with more years of work than either of them had years living.
Emile is... complicated, still. She had loved Alexandrie, but she had loved her like a favourite blade. She had protected Alexandrie, but she had protected her from everything that might have touched her heart. She had given Alexandrie wings, but not to fly free. Emile had given her wings to stoop, and kill. ]
She disappeared during the coup in Minrathous. I thought her dead, did not hear from her until she began to send me messages nearly a year later. Did not see her again until the day of my wedding.
Alexandrie misses the chair with her first unseeing grab for it. Finds it the second time, pulls at it until she can sit without letting him go.
She doesn't like to talk about Emile. She doesn't like to think about Emile. Emile had loved her and saved her and cared for her. Thinking about her means touching the part that understands that Emile had also kept her broken. ]
Her voice. Still there. Part of Alexandrie is still there. Terrified, in tears, throwing herself into the arms of the only thing in the world that made sense. ]
She was so calm.
[ Her eyes are dazed. Wild and begging for him to understand what it had meant in that moment to have someone she trusted without question tell her what was right to do. ]
[ (He doesn't understand, of course. How could he? He's never had guidance from anyone - with the exception, perhaps, of a lover or two who used him for some misadventure or another. To manipulate a person, you have to care about them at least a little, and when he was a boy there was no one who cared for him even that tiny amount.)
He does understand that this emotion goes far beyond the hurt of realizing that someone had infantilized you and taken your power away. Beyond a rich fellow realizing that his footman would hide his shoelaces to make sure he needed help to get dressed. He's not sure, however, how to deal with that emotion. He's not even sure how to identify it. ]
There is so much fighting to be true in her at once, songs playing over each other until she cannot sort them into anything but noise.
No-one had known what to do with her. Without Emile she knows would have wasted slowly, month on month, until one day she simply did not wake. She had been cared for, loved, of that she had no doubt— beyond dressing her, beyond attending to her every need, Emile had been at her side for over a decade of patient tutelage, quiet holding, drying of her tears when she had healed enough to cry, reassuring her that if she learned and practiced what she was taught she could be something that could not ever ever be hurt again. Emile had been everything; a mother, a sister, a teacher, a friend.
But how much of that had been by her design? Alexandrie had felt abandoned, withdrawn from by everyone but Emile, even Geneviève. How much of that distance had the kindly woman made? She was a Bard, a good one. How simple it would have been to slowly pull a young and shattered woman away from everyone who might have seen the cold and vicious blade she was being shaped into and tried to stop the forging and make it seem as if they were the ones who pulled away?
And how could love, real love, have watched the joy in life bloom back into her with the way Byerly had doted on her— had been gentle, wanted to be by her side, and wished only for her happiness, to be the one who could make her happy again— and calmly, kindly, tell her that in order to be safe she had to cut that flower down. ]
Yes.
[ It is spoken in near whisper, slow in the way of word and realization coming at once, and if it is anger it looks nothing like any anger of hers that he has ever seen. Not cold and sharp, not hot and wild; it is numb and diffuse, a thing that has not found a way to coalesce yet. She speaks it again, is trying to make it real. ]
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I'd have liked to have come to you as someone who was worth taking a risk on. Someone with prospects. It festered in me, back then, to be with you and to know that I would never be able to win your hand.
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[ It’s soft. They’ve spoken about this. He does not want the life that comes with her hand.
But she does not know if he once did. ]
Or is it only that you wanted to believe you could have it.
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[ His smile is bitter. Because the answer is, honestly: ]
If there were any chance, back then, that you'd have accepted my proposal, I'd have asked in a heartbeat.
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Why is it cruel? Marriage is not about love alone, especially for the peerage. Often it is not about love at all.
[ Fragile, when she continues. ]
You had all the heart that I had to give, for all that it turned out to be a sharp and shattered thing that bled you. What did you want from a hand?
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[ Then another shrug. ]
I know I am a louche and vulgar man. But that doesn't mean I didn't want a life. Back then, I actually thought I could have one, if you can credit it.
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It is a life they didn't live, a life that didn't happen, there is nothing there but shards of bone to keen over. It makes the skin of her shoulders crawl like he walks her into a corner and wants to keep her there until she gives him something he wants, even if she doesn't know what it is. Like every time she speaks of it she does the same to him. ]
Perhaps if you had asked, papa would have taken you. For all you were disinherited you were gently born, and my papa kind; he might have heard a story about a cruel and vengeful father and believed it unjust punishment. He knew what I had been made, wished to see me loved more than he wished me married well. I am a fifth daughter, more free to make such choices, and my family wealthy without my needing to buy it with my hand.
Perhaps then when I knew I loved you I could have loved you as a husband without the fear that rent us. Or perhaps you would have found yourself tied to a creature crazed with terror, convinced you played a game. Convinced you took her for land, or wealth, or status, that every moment you were absent you laughed at her in secret with some other lover. That she was nothing to you. Less than nothing. A wife who could not hear a single word you said in love, could not be touched without flinching, who wept wretched and broken and feared you. Perhaps Emile, who was making me her weapon, would have made sure the latter came to pass.
Perhaps we would have loved and had a home. A life. A family. Perhaps you would have come to hate me.
[ She is reaching for his hand again, eyes glittering with tears in the candlelight. ]
But what is there in any of this that could be of the slightest use to us now? None of that happened, and we cannot write over what did. I am here now, I love you now. Can we not simply love each other now? I do not want to make new fractured moments to regret.
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By the end of it, he's practically shimmering with self-loathing. He doesn't take her hand. ]
Ah, good. Knowing it was always hopeless does make the memories so sweet.
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She has never felt a match for this. Never felt on sure footing. It feels a constant swing between stumbling into hurting him and begging to be forgiven for the missteps made she doesn't understand.
In that soft and broken haggard sound that marks the interim between the times she gathers herself to stumble through the unforgiving underbrush again: ]
What do you want of me?
You must help me. I cannot but do wrong, speak wrong. You must teach me to love you in a way that you can feel.
Please.
[ A quiet little hiccup of a sob. ]
I want to be good to you.
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It is not the grandest thing in the world, to admit a tender dream and to be told that you probably would have fucked it up anyway.
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He thinks it was aimed at him. The bitter blow she'd aimed at herself, he thinks it was meant for him. ]
Not you. Me. I would have fucked it up anyway.
You did nothing wrong. [ She reaches again for his hand. Tries to reach again. ] You loved me, but I was too afraid to be loved. You were safe, but I was too afraid to be safe. The moment that I knew I loved you he was inside of me laughing and I could hear nothing else.
He left a killing trap in me, waiting for someone I could love to make it spring.
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A deft enough hand could have disarmed it. [ A swallow. ] A worthy enough hand.
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[ Which she raises now, slowly, to kiss. ]
It was not only his trap against you, then.
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What do you mean?
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Emile.
[ A Bard. Retired, perhaps— if Bards ever are— but with more years of work than either of them had years living.
Emile is... complicated, still. She had loved Alexandrie, but she had loved her like a favourite blade. She had protected Alexandrie, but she had protected her from everything that might have touched her heart. She had given Alexandrie wings, but not to fly free. Emile had given her wings to stoop, and kill. ]
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He shakes his head very slightly. ]
You could have dismissed her, if you'd wanted to.
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No. I was broken when she came to me, Byerly. Truly broken. When she built me again, she...
I loved her. I trusted her. She knew always what was best for me. She knew more of me than my parents. More than Geneviève.
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Maybe so.
[ But. ]
But you have made the choice to break from her tutelage since then.
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She disappeared during the coup in Minrathous. I thought her dead, did not hear from her until she began to send me messages nearly a year later. Did not see her again until the day of my wedding.
I had taken myself back, by then.
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[ It's an appealing sort of thing to think. Or - no. Not appealing. But neat. It would be so neat. ]
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[ She has to sit down.
Alexandrie misses the chair with her first unseeing grab for it. Finds it the second time, pulls at it until she can sit without letting him go.
She doesn't like to talk about Emile. She doesn't like to think about Emile. Emile had loved her and saved her and cared for her. Thinking about her means touching the part that understands that Emile had also kept her broken. ]
She...
[ Numbly: ]
She made herself all I had.
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It's not uncommon amongst the upper servants. Lady's maids, butlers, footmen. Dependency protects them.
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[ One, two. Breathe, little bird.
Her voice. Still there. Part of Alexandrie is still there. Terrified, in tears, throwing herself into the arms of the only thing in the world that made sense. ]
She was so calm.
[ Her eyes are dazed. Wild and begging for him to understand what it had meant in that moment to have someone she trusted without question tell her what was right to do. ]
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He does understand that this emotion goes far beyond the hurt of realizing that someone had infantilized you and taken your power away. Beyond a rich fellow realizing that his footman would hide his shoelaces to make sure he needed help to get dressed. He's not sure, however, how to deal with that emotion. He's not even sure how to identify it. ]
Are you - angry?
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There is so much fighting to be true in her at once, songs playing over each other until she cannot sort them into anything but noise.
No-one had known what to do with her. Without Emile she knows would have wasted slowly, month on month, until one day she simply did not wake. She had been cared for, loved, of that she had no doubt— beyond dressing her, beyond attending to her every need, Emile had been at her side for over a decade of patient tutelage, quiet holding, drying of her tears when she had healed enough to cry, reassuring her that if she learned and practiced what she was taught she could be something that could not ever ever be hurt again. Emile had been everything; a mother, a sister, a teacher, a friend.
But how much of that had been by her design? Alexandrie had felt abandoned, withdrawn from by everyone but Emile, even Geneviève. How much of that distance had the kindly woman made? She was a Bard, a good one. How simple it would have been to slowly pull a young and shattered woman away from everyone who might have seen the cold and vicious blade she was being shaped into and tried to stop the forging and make it seem as if they were the ones who pulled away?
And how could love, real love, have watched the joy in life bloom back into her with the way Byerly had doted on her— had been gentle, wanted to be by her side, and wished only for her happiness, to be the one who could make her happy again— and calmly, kindly, tell her that in order to be safe she had to cut that flower down. ]
Yes.
[ It is spoken in near whisper, slow in the way of word and realization coming at once, and if it is anger it looks nothing like any anger of hers that he has ever seen. Not cold and sharp, not hot and wild; it is numb and diffuse, a thing that has not found a way to coalesce yet. She speaks it again, is trying to make it real. ]
Yes.
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