fic - snoverse interlude, Van/Stef
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last_herald_magebecause once you have 4000 words down it is hard to keep pretending you're not writing something no matter how gratuitous it is >< This feels more like an interlude between two other events than a story, but unfortunately it's the only part I felt like writing down as of yet.
SFW, obviously AU, and this is about bereavement and also about epic relationship drama. Stef POV, for the first time in this series.
I knock before I slip into the King's study, but inside, it seems like no one even heard me. There's no one left awake who'd bother with formality, and only Tantras greets me, and that from midstream of a solemn conversation with Treven and Jisa. I drop my sheaf of paper on the desk, and Vanyel takes it without looking up at me. Trev is at his shoulder in a moment, and I don't even know if I'm meant to be here any more. I'm sure Van would ask me to leave if he wanted me to. I can't tell, from his tired eyes and evidently fading concentration, if he does or he doesn't.
I've no idea where he expects me to be. Wonder too hard, and I only see red light behind my eyelids again.
The thought's been hanging over my head since the bell tolled, and tolled again; we planned for this. We all knew how little time he had left. And I thought I knew how I felt about that and I blithely assumed that all the Council's tidy transition plans would fall into place and we could sleepwalk through this dismal fog between one king and another. I didn't think there'd be so much to worry about outside of myself. I thought I'd have my lifebonded standing by me, helping me know what to do and what to say.
There's nothing to be done or said - never anything. A lot of activity, a lot of words passed between minds and voices and pen and paper, and it all feels like nothing. There's silence in me that can't be moved. I haven't sung or played all week outside of morning exercises or rehearsing funeral music with the Bards, and after so many months of daily, ever-harder attempts to offer Randale ease and comfort, I don't even know how to start making my music again. I'll have to, I have engagements next week, but whenever I try, nothing happens. I can't stop thinking about how I watched two dear friends die - I helped them go peacefully, or something not close enough to it. There's no joy left for me in music; I feel like I've lost my voice, I've no one to sing to any more. My silence is seven beats of emptiness and one hateful quaver of relief that it's all over at last and at least I'm through with watching him get worse no matter how hard I try, and I'm so sorry that even a tiny part of me feels that way, and I wish there was someone I could talk to about it but Van's not making himself available for midnight whispers and no one else would ever even try to understand.
There's been so much to do that it's left me fretful about all the diplomatic moving parts, the hurry, constantly feeling like we must have dropped something, and I really hope we haven't because we've a king to bury at noon tomorrow and it must be close to midnight now. And then we've a king to crown the day after; we should have waited months for that, let word travel to every border and let winter pass in quiet mourning, but the Council won't risk the instability. Crown him now and fret the details later. Show no hesitation. I wonder, doesn't haste seem equally weak?
Vanyel is skimming through the pages I handed him, passing each one to Treven as he finishes reading it, still not looking at me. No matter, I'm just passing words, like I might just be providing background music, invisible. I wrote very few of them, anyway; Dellar claimed the traditional right to ghostwrite Randale's eulogy on Treven's behalf, but he respected that I knew Randale better than any other Bard and he let me help him draft the speech and add something of what I knew of him to its tone. Knowing that what had once filled all my days had gone, Dellar also encouraged my presence at a few of the meetings between himself, the Archpriest, Treven and Vanyel regarding the funerary rites, so I could continue to serve Randale beyond his last. Not sure why he did that. Not sure he even likes me. Maybe he'd worry about what I'd get up to otherwise.
And it shouldn't have fallen on Vanyel, but the whole situation is almost unique within records; we have no King's Own. I keep hearing everyone say they died together, and it makes me want to run away and bury my head between my knees because if only they had - I would have given anything to spare her those last few hours without him, when her lover had gone and unwittingly taken the whole of her energies with him. She was a husk of pain fighting only to escape from us and find him again, and I tried. I tried so hard, I gave her everything I had but I hadn't saved enough strength to keep her from hurting. I wasn't ready. I was already an exhausted bag of nerves. We'd spent a moon all but waiting for Randale to be Called and it could have been this day or that or tomorrow and I could only ever guess and pray that I'd see him again the next day, I'd be useful again, I'd have enough strength and he'd have enough time and somehow, it would all happen at the right moment. I shouldn't have hoped for so much.
After the sleepless disaster of our night before, I should have predicted that Randale hadn't another day left in him.
Without a King's Own, Vanyel has to conduct these formalities. No one seems to know how long that will last. I'm told Taver has not left the Palace grounds, but he's not been sighted in days. He has his own mourning to do. Gods, I'd never thought before about what he must go through to be what he is - Choosing and losing, surviving one rended bond after another. How does he ever find the strength to bond again? I'll never understand - Van, Van would understand, but even on a good day I wouldn't dare to ask him.
Never mind. It's past too late to do anything to help him, and there was never anything I could have done. We can only do right by the morrow. Dellar turned in for the night as soon as I left his quarters, and the Archpriest went to bed long ago - the gods frown on those of us who waste candles - and I can tell Jisa wants to. She's exhausted. I'm amazed by her strength, orphaned and cast interregnate, no more a king's daughter and not yet a king's wife; I see her wavering from role to role, and leaning on Vanyel whenever she falters. (She doesn't know his strength has limits; he'd never let her know.) I step over to where she sits, on an unassuming footstool in the corner of the study, and rest a hand on her shoulder. She reaches up to lace her fingers with mine, and the tenacity of her grip reassures me. Tantras, watching us, gives me an odd half-smile.
Van finally looks up at me, last page passed over to our Heir. "I didn't catch anything missing from it. You can give Dellar my sincerest thanks." I nod politely, not even sure I'll end up seeing Dell again before he does. It's the formal bonds that count.
Trev is also nodding, skimming the last page and mouthing sentence fragments silently - at least no one expects him to read the thing from memory, but knowing it well will doubtless allay some nerves. Nerves? He deserves a case of crippling stage-fright, but I have faith in him to do well, because if he couldn't handle it I guess he would never have been Chosen. He's never spoken to a crowd before. He'll be made King in two days. Of course he looks apprehensive.
"Something wrong?" asks Vanyel absently.
Jisa turns her head away from our joined hands, and I don't know what who might have said to her in the silent whirl of thoughts that everyone else in this room can see so plainly, and myself so opaquely; I can imagine that she doesn't want to read it, doesn't want to turn around and accept that summary of a life until the last moment she has to. I don't know if tomorrow represents an ordeal or a release; her mother will be sent to rest at the Grove temple in the evening, as is the Heralds' tradition. We can't officially bury the King with his mistress, only set his King's Own beside him in the earth after a lapse of a few morally purifying hours.
Treven, and I drop his wife's hand as he glances at her, mulls over the simple question. "Not with the script, no..."
"Then what?" I'm so used to that tone of voice, where Vanyel should be too tired to care but never could be.
"What am I, how am I meant to carry this? If it's a tale of all the good he did, am I meant to celebrate that? What if I weep?"
Van folds a hand over his face, clutching the bridge of his nose. I can't feel the headache, only the memory of the past year of having his headaches gnawing at my skull. "You're going to weep, lad." His Majesty. Lad. "Don't fight it - don't let it seem like grief is a threat to your dignity."
Treven swallows hard. "Right."
Tantras clears his throat. "It's not just about you, either. You'll be giving permission for the rest of the congregation to mourn with you - don't close them out. They don't want to see their kingdom handed to a cold stranger."
"It'll be fine," Van adds, and he pats Treven's shoulder gently. "They'll expect something real from you - you can, and should, grieve in public with due humility, and have the strength to draw the line under that afterwards." A strange look crosses his face and he shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I -"
Jisa steps up to them and embraces both, one in each arm, her head resting against Treven. "It's alright. I know," and she trails off at that, and I know there's something being shared behind their veils of shielding, something like family or Mind-Gifts or mutual memories of her other father, and I realise I remember Van's tone from those private moments between him and Randale, when they forgot the entranced player in the corner of his room who was only ever making their communion possible. Randi was younger than him, and thinking of the wise and withered man that was all I ever knew of him, it's strange to think of that. But Randi was a boy once, and he'd looked up to Vanyel and sought his advice and his guidance, surely not even because Van was older, but because he'd suffered more. What you said to Treven, you said to Randale first. Or something like it. When his father died, when Elspeth died? I don't know. I just know that you did and you never wanted to say it to his heir and his daughter, to your own daughter. You never planned on being here when this happened. But you are, and you're suffering again and you're there for them because they suffer more.
Tantras appears to be looking at me, and I blink hard, trying to keep my feelings to myself. Hard, in this company.
Jisa pulls away from Vanyel, one arm still wrapped tight around Treven. "We should sleep. Long day tomorrow."
"Quite, for all of us," Van agreed. "Call it a night then. Tran, Stef," and he nods at us and leaves, Jisa and Treven a step behind.
Watching them go makes my guts feel twisted and cold, so I sink into the chair behind the desk and stare at that script again, and attempt to focus on mundane matters of whos and whoms. I could rotate a few more clauses before bedtime. Is it worth the wrath of the morning-shift secretary who would have to retranscribe the whole thing?
"So. Stef?"
Ah. I'd forgotten Tantras was still here. He belongs, in a way - Trev is related to Tran on his father's side (whereas Randale was his mother's cousin), and I don't doubt that will keep him close within this inner circle. "Huh?"
He walks near to me and slouches against the edge of Van's desk. Trev's desk. Whichever. "Did you know that I'm an Empath?"
Oh, fuck.
"No?" I reply. "Guess I'd missed that. Must be hazardous, about now."
"You could say that," he replies easily. "I'm also a bit of a stickler for courtesy, in some respects, and that seemed like a short end of it you just got."
"I did?"
"If you're rating less affection than Treven and no more of a goodnight than me? Seems rude, a man treating his lifebonded that way in public."
"You know he thinks it's unsafe and impolitic to show too much -"
"Since when did that matter around me, or Trev and Jisa?" Oh stop seeing through me. "And you want to tell me how he's treating you not in public?" I press my feelings down viciously, not replying. "Because I've had to stop by to see Van of an evening three times this week, and you've not been there."
"I was helping Dellar hash this out," I prod the pages of Treven's address malevolently. "And it's not like we don't see each other all the time! We had lunch with his parents today, just as we do every week."
"Which was your first meal together since when?"
Since a week ago, you nosy underhand bastard. We've been busy. He's been upset. And it's not like we've stopped having sex - he came up to my quarters two nights ago and bade me throw down my work and him right after it, and we fucked like a teenage dare, hard and half-clothed on my fireside rug because it was what he wanted. He left afterwards without kissing me goodnight, long before I was done wanting to hold and touch him. I fell asleep aching and alone, and my bed hadn't felt colder since the first time I slept in it last winter.
I can keep my silence but I can't keep my cool much longer, not with those warm doglike Empath brown eyes working over me like a crowbar. "Stef," he says softly. "I truly don't mean to pry, but - I've been friends with Van for a long time and I care about him quite a lot, and I've never seen him half so happy as he was once you two..." He shrugged in lieu of euphemism. "If you don't mind me saying, I care about you as well. Whatever's gone wrong with him - letting him close you out isn't going to help fix it."
"He just needs a little time to himself." I barely still believe that one myself.
"That so?" He slips his fingers into his belt, leaning back towards me. "Because he never seemed to need to hide from you before he came back from the Ice Wall with all those new scars."
Don't cry, I tell my eyes firmly. Tran pivots his head to me, slowly, and I press my lips together, trying to ignore all that damned perceptive kindness. I am not going to cry, I don't deserve to. Nothing's wrong for me, I'm just having to sleep alone again because my lifebonded was raped.
Because my lifebonded was raped.
And it's still a palpable stab to my heart that leaves me blinking and hiding my head in my hands. "Dammit, Tran." And he's touching my bent back gently and I know how this works, that he's reading me through his fingers and levering me open to pull words out of the place where I'd bottled them up. Damn all Empaths. "He - if he can't take being around me when he's hurting, I'm n - not going to force him to - I just give him bad dreams and - and he -"
"Breathe, Bard," he advises me. "That's what's wrong? Nightmares?"
"Oh, I wish it had only been nightmares." I shake my head, twitching away from his touch. "He - last time we shared a bed - well, all I know is I woke up and there was red light everywhere and he was screaming, but he says he almost killed me."
"He what?"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" I snap back. "He didn't cast anything at me." And gods help me, but I know what I was dreaming about right before then and that means it was my own indulgent fault. "He never would. He couldn't hurt me, and he burned his own channels raw pulling the power back. He'd never, ever hurt me. But he says I'm not safe around him, he doesn't want me around, and if that's his choice, I can't tell him..." Tran bows his head toward mine, and I realise I'm flinging pain at him in raw handfuls. Which is what he goaded me into doing, but gods, I shouldn't have given in.
"Time to himself, huh? If I know him, he's probably convinced that you're respecting that and keeping clear of him because you've abandoned him over it." I know. Oh, I know. But what else can I do that won't hurt him worse? "You know, I thought he was joking when he used to talk about that."
"Say what?"
"That he slept alone because if he had a lover, he might try to kill him in his sleep."
I'm shaking from frustration and everything else behind it. "It's not so damn funny when -"
"It never was." He grimaces, that way Empaths do at things that feel wrong. "So, he got mad at himself and threw you out?"
I sigh. "Later that night, yes. I got myself together after he'd pulled the spell, and I sang to him for maybe half a candlemark - he hurt himself, magically, so I guess whatever he was casting..."
Tran picks up the words I dropped. "Was at lethal force?"
I swallow hard. I wasn't scared, when it happened - not me scared, just backwash from his terror, and I knew what to do, how to soothe him and mute his pain. It was afterwards when the shakes set in, alone in my rooms and just thinking of what he could have done to - not me, never me - himself. He knows what a broken lifebond feels like, so of course he'd be horrified at the thought of going through that again. Of course he had to get rid of me. I tried to help him, and only made him feel haunted and guilty.
Tantras is looking at me gravely. "Stef, there's no way he can just pretend that never happened. The both of you need to see a Mindhealer."
I know, is the worst part. "If I could find one in Haven who he'd trust, and if we ever both had time for fixing anything personal." I only hope Tantras understands that Vanyel wouldn't take his troubles to Jisa, even without knowing the primary reason why.
He shakes his head. "I don't see how even Van could put it off -"
"Oh, he'll find a way," I assure him bitterly. "If there's anything he can put before himself, he will."
"And before you?"
There he goes again. Prying. "I'll go talk to him about it, alright? Thank you," I add. "I'd been trying not to think about..."
"Doesn't work, does it?" He claps me on the back, and then slides up from his perch on the desk. "Don't put it off. I swear letting Van pine over things never works half so well as he thinks it does."
"Too true," I admit. I forget how well Tran knows him, but then, he probably remembers Van before he closed himself off from the world, and he is an Empath. "I'll stop in on him before I sleep." I square off the pages I'd been fumbling with, and haul myself to my feet. Tran gets the door for me, and I'm feeling fragile enough that it's worth a tentative smile of thanks. I doubt Van will have gone straight to his room - most likely, he walked Jisa and Treven to theirs, and may have stayed to enjoy a little more of their company, which I'm sure is less wearying to him than mine.
I knock on his door a couple of times, but my instincts are telling me he's elsewhere. Well, he never used to mind... I step inside, feeling oddly like a stranger; everything's too neat, in a way that makes me think Vanyel's barely been here himself recently. I sink into my favourite chair, and remember that it's only my favourite when he's in the one next to it. There's a fire built in the grate, and I'd light it if I thought I might be spending the night here, but I'm surely not so I've only the ashes to stare at as I think about what I need to say.
It's not long before I hear the door swing open behind me. "Stef?"
"Hey again." Have to keep calm, have to keep everything easy on him. "Don't mind me, I just wanted a word with you before I headed upstairs."
I can almost see the reactions chasing over his face - his lingering guilt for what happened, the caution borne of all the poisoned water between us, the memory of a recent time when he wanted me here to be here when he came home. I pity him, in some detached way - he doesn't have a choice but to get rid of me, does he? He has to be alone with all that damned power in his head.
He pulls off his boots as he watches me, and pads over to his chair, sits on the edge of it. "What is it? The eulogy, again?"
Hang the eulogy. "Tran cornered me after you all left," I tell him gently. "He cares about you a lot, you know? He's worried about you." That's as good as a lie - he's worried about us.
"What did you tell him?" Van asks quickly, warily.
"Only about - the nightmare. But he'd noticed something was wrong with you."
Van's looking away from me, and breathing hard. I don't think he's spoken about what happened to anyone but me, though he'd known that others might comment on his artful scars. He hasn't had his hair trimmed in months, and now he looks more than half Tayledras and I think it's just to hide the damned things whenever he's shirtless in public. "Thanks for the heads-up. Is there anything else you needed to tell me?"
I let patience dampen the hurt I might feel at that brush-off. "Van, he says that you - well, you thinking you nearly killed me is enough trouble that we ought to go find a Mindhealer at once, both of us. I know there's too much else going on, but I was thinking, you've been trying to reach Starwind and Moondance anyway, and if you'd trust anyone with this, I know you'd trust Moondance..."
He's put a hand to his temple and I watch his face crease, knowing I can't touch, I can't soothe him with Gift and instinct, I can't treat him like he's my beloved partner. Not until he stops telling me not to be. "I would. And I need to see them, but even if we can get away..." He shakes his head. "Stef, I'm not looking forward to any part of it. I don't want to think about building a Gate right now, and I might have to make three of them in quick succession. They won't be happy about me asking to take Brightstar to the Ice Wall, and I doubt there's any other way to deal with what Leareth did to the land - and it's not like I want to show him all that bloodfilth, either. And I hate bearing bad news. They'll want to offer Savil traditional honours in the Vale, and I don't know if I can..." His rapid breaths catch up with him, choking off his words.
I have to stretch out a hand, and he accepts it, clutching my fingers tight. "Some of winter's wounds still need cleaned. We weren't there to see her buried..."
"Too busy seeing her avenged." The word's slanted bitterly, an insult to himself and his morality. "It lingers. All of it does."
"It'll linger until you deal with it. You know you're going to have to go tell them eventually, and it's going to hang over you until you do." He frowns, not wanting to admit it's the truth. "How soon can we go?"
"We've enough work to do here to see out the year -"
"And honestly, how much sleep are you likely to get in that time?" Never mind me. Do not ask me about me. "I really think - whatever comes of it - we'll at least be a sight more useful to Trev and Jisa if we can commit to seeing a Mindhealer. I got to know a few of them while they were studying me last year - someone would make time for us if I asked. Please?" The act's slipping and I don't even care, I need him to know that I need him, I've not given up, I can't, and sometimes I can't hide that I'm hurting too.
He looks up at me suddenly. "Got any plans for the night after tomorrow?"
Right after the coronation? I think Breda wanted to get nastily drunk with me, but she's forgiven me for welshing on her before now. "No, why?"
"Because if we're leaving it has to be before Treven first formally convenes the Council. If I'm not there, he might even leave them hanging until after Sovvan except for urgent business."
I mentally run over the list of godawful cancellation notes I'll have to write before going to bed tonight but I'm so grateful I don't even mind. I'll pass Medren as much of the business as possible; I trust him to butter up after my snubs. "Thank you. I mean it." I didn't save my bondmate from being tortured to death so I could watch him slip away from me through the cracks in his own mind. "Van, I swear, however hard it is I promise I'll be there whenever you're hurting. I won't leave your side, I'll sing as long as I have to." He swallows, and I know what he's going to say. "Yes, you do deserve it. We're worth fighting for, alright?"
He manages a small smile. "That we are. That's - good to know." He casts a glance past me, to his oversized bed, and I feel his expression freeze. "I still - I'm so sorry I -"
"I was going to ask you one more favour." And I'm not at all sure if he'll grant it. "Could I just - bed down right here? If I grab a spare blanket, I'll be fine sleeping in a chair. I'll go upstairs if you prefer, but I've missed - you know. Being close by, seeing you in the morning. I've been lonely," I admit.
He's breathing hard again and to my great surprise, I see tears at the edge of his eyes. "Oh, ashke - you'd really..." I bite my lip, because I'm not answering any part of him that's really paranoid enough to even think I want our closeness only for sex. "If you'd do that, I - I'd -"
I can't bear it any more. "Can I hold you?" He nods, and I'm as gentle as I still can be when I've been aching from not touching him for so long; he rests his head against mine, and I feel fragile masks abandoned to my attempts at comfort. Just let me care. Please. It's all I ask. I don't need anything back, I don't need sex, I don't want to hear how guilty he feels for almost cooking me to death. Just don't push me away again.
*
-that feels like a stopping-point but I do have a paragraph for right afterwards:
We compromised. We did make love first, the sweetest and easiest kind, just for the closeness of it - wound in a loop on his bed, sucking each other in imperfect asymmetry. After that, after exhaustion intruded on our embraces and senseless kissing, he got fretting about how my joints might ache in the morning if he let me sleep in a chair, but I refused to put him out of bed, and I ended up lying along the footboard, perpendicular to him, wrapped in a blanket atop his covers. No contact, but I could be there if he had another rough awakening. Blessedly, he didn't.
SFW, obviously AU, and this is about bereavement and also about epic relationship drama. Stef POV, for the first time in this series.
I knock before I slip into the King's study, but inside, it seems like no one even heard me. There's no one left awake who'd bother with formality, and only Tantras greets me, and that from midstream of a solemn conversation with Treven and Jisa. I drop my sheaf of paper on the desk, and Vanyel takes it without looking up at me. Trev is at his shoulder in a moment, and I don't even know if I'm meant to be here any more. I'm sure Van would ask me to leave if he wanted me to. I can't tell, from his tired eyes and evidently fading concentration, if he does or he doesn't.
I've no idea where he expects me to be. Wonder too hard, and I only see red light behind my eyelids again.
The thought's been hanging over my head since the bell tolled, and tolled again; we planned for this. We all knew how little time he had left. And I thought I knew how I felt about that and I blithely assumed that all the Council's tidy transition plans would fall into place and we could sleepwalk through this dismal fog between one king and another. I didn't think there'd be so much to worry about outside of myself. I thought I'd have my lifebonded standing by me, helping me know what to do and what to say.
There's nothing to be done or said - never anything. A lot of activity, a lot of words passed between minds and voices and pen and paper, and it all feels like nothing. There's silence in me that can't be moved. I haven't sung or played all week outside of morning exercises or rehearsing funeral music with the Bards, and after so many months of daily, ever-harder attempts to offer Randale ease and comfort, I don't even know how to start making my music again. I'll have to, I have engagements next week, but whenever I try, nothing happens. I can't stop thinking about how I watched two dear friends die - I helped them go peacefully, or something not close enough to it. There's no joy left for me in music; I feel like I've lost my voice, I've no one to sing to any more. My silence is seven beats of emptiness and one hateful quaver of relief that it's all over at last and at least I'm through with watching him get worse no matter how hard I try, and I'm so sorry that even a tiny part of me feels that way, and I wish there was someone I could talk to about it but Van's not making himself available for midnight whispers and no one else would ever even try to understand.
There's been so much to do that it's left me fretful about all the diplomatic moving parts, the hurry, constantly feeling like we must have dropped something, and I really hope we haven't because we've a king to bury at noon tomorrow and it must be close to midnight now. And then we've a king to crown the day after; we should have waited months for that, let word travel to every border and let winter pass in quiet mourning, but the Council won't risk the instability. Crown him now and fret the details later. Show no hesitation. I wonder, doesn't haste seem equally weak?
Vanyel is skimming through the pages I handed him, passing each one to Treven as he finishes reading it, still not looking at me. No matter, I'm just passing words, like I might just be providing background music, invisible. I wrote very few of them, anyway; Dellar claimed the traditional right to ghostwrite Randale's eulogy on Treven's behalf, but he respected that I knew Randale better than any other Bard and he let me help him draft the speech and add something of what I knew of him to its tone. Knowing that what had once filled all my days had gone, Dellar also encouraged my presence at a few of the meetings between himself, the Archpriest, Treven and Vanyel regarding the funerary rites, so I could continue to serve Randale beyond his last. Not sure why he did that. Not sure he even likes me. Maybe he'd worry about what I'd get up to otherwise.
And it shouldn't have fallen on Vanyel, but the whole situation is almost unique within records; we have no King's Own. I keep hearing everyone say they died together, and it makes me want to run away and bury my head between my knees because if only they had - I would have given anything to spare her those last few hours without him, when her lover had gone and unwittingly taken the whole of her energies with him. She was a husk of pain fighting only to escape from us and find him again, and I tried. I tried so hard, I gave her everything I had but I hadn't saved enough strength to keep her from hurting. I wasn't ready. I was already an exhausted bag of nerves. We'd spent a moon all but waiting for Randale to be Called and it could have been this day or that or tomorrow and I could only ever guess and pray that I'd see him again the next day, I'd be useful again, I'd have enough strength and he'd have enough time and somehow, it would all happen at the right moment. I shouldn't have hoped for so much.
After the sleepless disaster of our night before, I should have predicted that Randale hadn't another day left in him.
Without a King's Own, Vanyel has to conduct these formalities. No one seems to know how long that will last. I'm told Taver has not left the Palace grounds, but he's not been sighted in days. He has his own mourning to do. Gods, I'd never thought before about what he must go through to be what he is - Choosing and losing, surviving one rended bond after another. How does he ever find the strength to bond again? I'll never understand - Van, Van would understand, but even on a good day I wouldn't dare to ask him.
Never mind. It's past too late to do anything to help him, and there was never anything I could have done. We can only do right by the morrow. Dellar turned in for the night as soon as I left his quarters, and the Archpriest went to bed long ago - the gods frown on those of us who waste candles - and I can tell Jisa wants to. She's exhausted. I'm amazed by her strength, orphaned and cast interregnate, no more a king's daughter and not yet a king's wife; I see her wavering from role to role, and leaning on Vanyel whenever she falters. (She doesn't know his strength has limits; he'd never let her know.) I step over to where she sits, on an unassuming footstool in the corner of the study, and rest a hand on her shoulder. She reaches up to lace her fingers with mine, and the tenacity of her grip reassures me. Tantras, watching us, gives me an odd half-smile.
Van finally looks up at me, last page passed over to our Heir. "I didn't catch anything missing from it. You can give Dellar my sincerest thanks." I nod politely, not even sure I'll end up seeing Dell again before he does. It's the formal bonds that count.
Trev is also nodding, skimming the last page and mouthing sentence fragments silently - at least no one expects him to read the thing from memory, but knowing it well will doubtless allay some nerves. Nerves? He deserves a case of crippling stage-fright, but I have faith in him to do well, because if he couldn't handle it I guess he would never have been Chosen. He's never spoken to a crowd before. He'll be made King in two days. Of course he looks apprehensive.
"Something wrong?" asks Vanyel absently.
Jisa turns her head away from our joined hands, and I don't know what who might have said to her in the silent whirl of thoughts that everyone else in this room can see so plainly, and myself so opaquely; I can imagine that she doesn't want to read it, doesn't want to turn around and accept that summary of a life until the last moment she has to. I don't know if tomorrow represents an ordeal or a release; her mother will be sent to rest at the Grove temple in the evening, as is the Heralds' tradition. We can't officially bury the King with his mistress, only set his King's Own beside him in the earth after a lapse of a few morally purifying hours.
Treven, and I drop his wife's hand as he glances at her, mulls over the simple question. "Not with the script, no..."
"Then what?" I'm so used to that tone of voice, where Vanyel should be too tired to care but never could be.
"What am I, how am I meant to carry this? If it's a tale of all the good he did, am I meant to celebrate that? What if I weep?"
Van folds a hand over his face, clutching the bridge of his nose. I can't feel the headache, only the memory of the past year of having his headaches gnawing at my skull. "You're going to weep, lad." His Majesty. Lad. "Don't fight it - don't let it seem like grief is a threat to your dignity."
Treven swallows hard. "Right."
Tantras clears his throat. "It's not just about you, either. You'll be giving permission for the rest of the congregation to mourn with you - don't close them out. They don't want to see their kingdom handed to a cold stranger."
"It'll be fine," Van adds, and he pats Treven's shoulder gently. "They'll expect something real from you - you can, and should, grieve in public with due humility, and have the strength to draw the line under that afterwards." A strange look crosses his face and he shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I -"
Jisa steps up to them and embraces both, one in each arm, her head resting against Treven. "It's alright. I know," and she trails off at that, and I know there's something being shared behind their veils of shielding, something like family or Mind-Gifts or mutual memories of her other father, and I realise I remember Van's tone from those private moments between him and Randale, when they forgot the entranced player in the corner of his room who was only ever making their communion possible. Randi was younger than him, and thinking of the wise and withered man that was all I ever knew of him, it's strange to think of that. But Randi was a boy once, and he'd looked up to Vanyel and sought his advice and his guidance, surely not even because Van was older, but because he'd suffered more. What you said to Treven, you said to Randale first. Or something like it. When his father died, when Elspeth died? I don't know. I just know that you did and you never wanted to say it to his heir and his daughter, to your own daughter. You never planned on being here when this happened. But you are, and you're suffering again and you're there for them because they suffer more.
Tantras appears to be looking at me, and I blink hard, trying to keep my feelings to myself. Hard, in this company.
Jisa pulls away from Vanyel, one arm still wrapped tight around Treven. "We should sleep. Long day tomorrow."
"Quite, for all of us," Van agreed. "Call it a night then. Tran, Stef," and he nods at us and leaves, Jisa and Treven a step behind.
Watching them go makes my guts feel twisted and cold, so I sink into the chair behind the desk and stare at that script again, and attempt to focus on mundane matters of whos and whoms. I could rotate a few more clauses before bedtime. Is it worth the wrath of the morning-shift secretary who would have to retranscribe the whole thing?
"So. Stef?"
Ah. I'd forgotten Tantras was still here. He belongs, in a way - Trev is related to Tran on his father's side (whereas Randale was his mother's cousin), and I don't doubt that will keep him close within this inner circle. "Huh?"
He walks near to me and slouches against the edge of Van's desk. Trev's desk. Whichever. "Did you know that I'm an Empath?"
Oh, fuck.
"No?" I reply. "Guess I'd missed that. Must be hazardous, about now."
"You could say that," he replies easily. "I'm also a bit of a stickler for courtesy, in some respects, and that seemed like a short end of it you just got."
"I did?"
"If you're rating less affection than Treven and no more of a goodnight than me? Seems rude, a man treating his lifebonded that way in public."
"You know he thinks it's unsafe and impolitic to show too much -"
"Since when did that matter around me, or Trev and Jisa?" Oh stop seeing through me. "And you want to tell me how he's treating you not in public?" I press my feelings down viciously, not replying. "Because I've had to stop by to see Van of an evening three times this week, and you've not been there."
"I was helping Dellar hash this out," I prod the pages of Treven's address malevolently. "And it's not like we don't see each other all the time! We had lunch with his parents today, just as we do every week."
"Which was your first meal together since when?"
Since a week ago, you nosy underhand bastard. We've been busy. He's been upset. And it's not like we've stopped having sex - he came up to my quarters two nights ago and bade me throw down my work and him right after it, and we fucked like a teenage dare, hard and half-clothed on my fireside rug because it was what he wanted. He left afterwards without kissing me goodnight, long before I was done wanting to hold and touch him. I fell asleep aching and alone, and my bed hadn't felt colder since the first time I slept in it last winter.
I can keep my silence but I can't keep my cool much longer, not with those warm doglike Empath brown eyes working over me like a crowbar. "Stef," he says softly. "I truly don't mean to pry, but - I've been friends with Van for a long time and I care about him quite a lot, and I've never seen him half so happy as he was once you two..." He shrugged in lieu of euphemism. "If you don't mind me saying, I care about you as well. Whatever's gone wrong with him - letting him close you out isn't going to help fix it."
"He just needs a little time to himself." I barely still believe that one myself.
"That so?" He slips his fingers into his belt, leaning back towards me. "Because he never seemed to need to hide from you before he came back from the Ice Wall with all those new scars."
Don't cry, I tell my eyes firmly. Tran pivots his head to me, slowly, and I press my lips together, trying to ignore all that damned perceptive kindness. I am not going to cry, I don't deserve to. Nothing's wrong for me, I'm just having to sleep alone again because my lifebonded was raped.
Because my lifebonded was raped.
And it's still a palpable stab to my heart that leaves me blinking and hiding my head in my hands. "Dammit, Tran." And he's touching my bent back gently and I know how this works, that he's reading me through his fingers and levering me open to pull words out of the place where I'd bottled them up. Damn all Empaths. "He - if he can't take being around me when he's hurting, I'm n - not going to force him to - I just give him bad dreams and - and he -"
"Breathe, Bard," he advises me. "That's what's wrong? Nightmares?"
"Oh, I wish it had only been nightmares." I shake my head, twitching away from his touch. "He - last time we shared a bed - well, all I know is I woke up and there was red light everywhere and he was screaming, but he says he almost killed me."
"He what?"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" I snap back. "He didn't cast anything at me." And gods help me, but I know what I was dreaming about right before then and that means it was my own indulgent fault. "He never would. He couldn't hurt me, and he burned his own channels raw pulling the power back. He'd never, ever hurt me. But he says I'm not safe around him, he doesn't want me around, and if that's his choice, I can't tell him..." Tran bows his head toward mine, and I realise I'm flinging pain at him in raw handfuls. Which is what he goaded me into doing, but gods, I shouldn't have given in.
"Time to himself, huh? If I know him, he's probably convinced that you're respecting that and keeping clear of him because you've abandoned him over it." I know. Oh, I know. But what else can I do that won't hurt him worse? "You know, I thought he was joking when he used to talk about that."
"Say what?"
"That he slept alone because if he had a lover, he might try to kill him in his sleep."
I'm shaking from frustration and everything else behind it. "It's not so damn funny when -"
"It never was." He grimaces, that way Empaths do at things that feel wrong. "So, he got mad at himself and threw you out?"
I sigh. "Later that night, yes. I got myself together after he'd pulled the spell, and I sang to him for maybe half a candlemark - he hurt himself, magically, so I guess whatever he was casting..."
Tran picks up the words I dropped. "Was at lethal force?"
I swallow hard. I wasn't scared, when it happened - not me scared, just backwash from his terror, and I knew what to do, how to soothe him and mute his pain. It was afterwards when the shakes set in, alone in my rooms and just thinking of what he could have done to - not me, never me - himself. He knows what a broken lifebond feels like, so of course he'd be horrified at the thought of going through that again. Of course he had to get rid of me. I tried to help him, and only made him feel haunted and guilty.
Tantras is looking at me gravely. "Stef, there's no way he can just pretend that never happened. The both of you need to see a Mindhealer."
I know, is the worst part. "If I could find one in Haven who he'd trust, and if we ever both had time for fixing anything personal." I only hope Tantras understands that Vanyel wouldn't take his troubles to Jisa, even without knowing the primary reason why.
He shakes his head. "I don't see how even Van could put it off -"
"Oh, he'll find a way," I assure him bitterly. "If there's anything he can put before himself, he will."
"And before you?"
There he goes again. Prying. "I'll go talk to him about it, alright? Thank you," I add. "I'd been trying not to think about..."
"Doesn't work, does it?" He claps me on the back, and then slides up from his perch on the desk. "Don't put it off. I swear letting Van pine over things never works half so well as he thinks it does."
"Too true," I admit. I forget how well Tran knows him, but then, he probably remembers Van before he closed himself off from the world, and he is an Empath. "I'll stop in on him before I sleep." I square off the pages I'd been fumbling with, and haul myself to my feet. Tran gets the door for me, and I'm feeling fragile enough that it's worth a tentative smile of thanks. I doubt Van will have gone straight to his room - most likely, he walked Jisa and Treven to theirs, and may have stayed to enjoy a little more of their company, which I'm sure is less wearying to him than mine.
I knock on his door a couple of times, but my instincts are telling me he's elsewhere. Well, he never used to mind... I step inside, feeling oddly like a stranger; everything's too neat, in a way that makes me think Vanyel's barely been here himself recently. I sink into my favourite chair, and remember that it's only my favourite when he's in the one next to it. There's a fire built in the grate, and I'd light it if I thought I might be spending the night here, but I'm surely not so I've only the ashes to stare at as I think about what I need to say.
It's not long before I hear the door swing open behind me. "Stef?"
"Hey again." Have to keep calm, have to keep everything easy on him. "Don't mind me, I just wanted a word with you before I headed upstairs."
I can almost see the reactions chasing over his face - his lingering guilt for what happened, the caution borne of all the poisoned water between us, the memory of a recent time when he wanted me here to be here when he came home. I pity him, in some detached way - he doesn't have a choice but to get rid of me, does he? He has to be alone with all that damned power in his head.
He pulls off his boots as he watches me, and pads over to his chair, sits on the edge of it. "What is it? The eulogy, again?"
Hang the eulogy. "Tran cornered me after you all left," I tell him gently. "He cares about you a lot, you know? He's worried about you." That's as good as a lie - he's worried about us.
"What did you tell him?" Van asks quickly, warily.
"Only about - the nightmare. But he'd noticed something was wrong with you."
Van's looking away from me, and breathing hard. I don't think he's spoken about what happened to anyone but me, though he'd known that others might comment on his artful scars. He hasn't had his hair trimmed in months, and now he looks more than half Tayledras and I think it's just to hide the damned things whenever he's shirtless in public. "Thanks for the heads-up. Is there anything else you needed to tell me?"
I let patience dampen the hurt I might feel at that brush-off. "Van, he says that you - well, you thinking you nearly killed me is enough trouble that we ought to go find a Mindhealer at once, both of us. I know there's too much else going on, but I was thinking, you've been trying to reach Starwind and Moondance anyway, and if you'd trust anyone with this, I know you'd trust Moondance..."
He's put a hand to his temple and I watch his face crease, knowing I can't touch, I can't soothe him with Gift and instinct, I can't treat him like he's my beloved partner. Not until he stops telling me not to be. "I would. And I need to see them, but even if we can get away..." He shakes his head. "Stef, I'm not looking forward to any part of it. I don't want to think about building a Gate right now, and I might have to make three of them in quick succession. They won't be happy about me asking to take Brightstar to the Ice Wall, and I doubt there's any other way to deal with what Leareth did to the land - and it's not like I want to show him all that bloodfilth, either. And I hate bearing bad news. They'll want to offer Savil traditional honours in the Vale, and I don't know if I can..." His rapid breaths catch up with him, choking off his words.
I have to stretch out a hand, and he accepts it, clutching my fingers tight. "Some of winter's wounds still need cleaned. We weren't there to see her buried..."
"Too busy seeing her avenged." The word's slanted bitterly, an insult to himself and his morality. "It lingers. All of it does."
"It'll linger until you deal with it. You know you're going to have to go tell them eventually, and it's going to hang over you until you do." He frowns, not wanting to admit it's the truth. "How soon can we go?"
"We've enough work to do here to see out the year -"
"And honestly, how much sleep are you likely to get in that time?" Never mind me. Do not ask me about me. "I really think - whatever comes of it - we'll at least be a sight more useful to Trev and Jisa if we can commit to seeing a Mindhealer. I got to know a few of them while they were studying me last year - someone would make time for us if I asked. Please?" The act's slipping and I don't even care, I need him to know that I need him, I've not given up, I can't, and sometimes I can't hide that I'm hurting too.
He looks up at me suddenly. "Got any plans for the night after tomorrow?"
Right after the coronation? I think Breda wanted to get nastily drunk with me, but she's forgiven me for welshing on her before now. "No, why?"
"Because if we're leaving it has to be before Treven first formally convenes the Council. If I'm not there, he might even leave them hanging until after Sovvan except for urgent business."
I mentally run over the list of godawful cancellation notes I'll have to write before going to bed tonight but I'm so grateful I don't even mind. I'll pass Medren as much of the business as possible; I trust him to butter up after my snubs. "Thank you. I mean it." I didn't save my bondmate from being tortured to death so I could watch him slip away from me through the cracks in his own mind. "Van, I swear, however hard it is I promise I'll be there whenever you're hurting. I won't leave your side, I'll sing as long as I have to." He swallows, and I know what he's going to say. "Yes, you do deserve it. We're worth fighting for, alright?"
He manages a small smile. "That we are. That's - good to know." He casts a glance past me, to his oversized bed, and I feel his expression freeze. "I still - I'm so sorry I -"
"I was going to ask you one more favour." And I'm not at all sure if he'll grant it. "Could I just - bed down right here? If I grab a spare blanket, I'll be fine sleeping in a chair. I'll go upstairs if you prefer, but I've missed - you know. Being close by, seeing you in the morning. I've been lonely," I admit.
He's breathing hard again and to my great surprise, I see tears at the edge of his eyes. "Oh, ashke - you'd really..." I bite my lip, because I'm not answering any part of him that's really paranoid enough to even think I want our closeness only for sex. "If you'd do that, I - I'd -"
I can't bear it any more. "Can I hold you?" He nods, and I'm as gentle as I still can be when I've been aching from not touching him for so long; he rests his head against mine, and I feel fragile masks abandoned to my attempts at comfort. Just let me care. Please. It's all I ask. I don't need anything back, I don't need sex, I don't want to hear how guilty he feels for almost cooking me to death. Just don't push me away again.
*
-that feels like a stopping-point but I do have a paragraph for right afterwards:
We compromised. We did make love first, the sweetest and easiest kind, just for the closeness of it - wound in a loop on his bed, sucking each other in imperfect asymmetry. After that, after exhaustion intruded on our embraces and senseless kissing, he got fretting about how my joints might ache in the morning if he let me sleep in a chair, but I refused to put him out of bed, and I ended up lying along the footboard, perpendicular to him, wrapped in a blanket atop his covers. No contact, but I could be there if he had another rough awakening. Blessedly, he didn't.
