Lies and the Girl, Cordelia, G
Title: Lies and the Girl
Author: Emma (nextian)
Fandom/Character: King Lear, Cordelia.
Rating: G.
Warning: Some misquoting.
Prompt: 119. We are not ashamed of what we have done, because, when you have a great cause to fight for, the moment of greatest humiliation is the moment when the spirit is proudest. -- Christabel Pankhurst.
Summary: You love your bonds; accordingly, your lord.
You swallow hard. "I love your majesty according to my bond; not more, nor less." You mutter it as though you spoke a curse, when all you're saying is the simple truth.
That's curse enough.
His face grows cold and thin and very old.
"Nothing will come of nothing; speak again." Oh, he is trying so hard to be kind, but it is not his way, and he is frail. You can forgive-- he's telling you the truth, and while he seeks your lies, he will not speak them for his own. It fills you with your love. The love that falls too short.
Oh what a king that breaks your heart.
The King of France is kind, and lifts your chin with careful fingers to peruse your face. "We'll take her," he says, softly. "She might do."
You stutter a thanks and follow on his arm. You know he said some charming thing to woo your father out of anger with his girl, to claim your heart the way he claimed your hand, but that's your curse: you hear the way you speak. Only the truth. None of the lovely lies.
And so you find yourself in foreign lands, bedecked in someone else's borrowed jewels, where things are beautiful and gilt and clean. You gasp the first time you hear minstrels play. (Here all the minstrels keep their lutes in tune.) Your husband laughs, and drops a mocking kiss upon your brow, and says, "How very sweet."
He means it, too.
Well, Regan's words were sweet. Not all the perfume of this lovely land could cover up that taste of tooth-rot, yes? You scrub away the kiss.
France overawes, and so your silence saves you from reproof, but when it's grown too late for you to hide in blushing English dirt you don't know what to say, or what to do, in courtly life.
"He's doing wrong."
"He's what?" Your husband turns to stare at your impertinent remark.
Does he believe you false? You can’t quite tell. You swallow your retort: He shouldn't say he promises his troops. He hasn't them. He comes a beggar to your honest throne and swears he wants to pay you in his coin, but if he has no coin--
"He cannot pay," you say, more quietly. Your husband frowns.
You make no friends.
But court begins to take a different turn, and when you hear the speech of criminals all decked in lordly robes you think you hear two speeches much less often, plain-speaking being better worth their time, and quietly you speak a little more.
Of Lear, before too long. Always of Lear.
"But why this fervor to return to him?" Your husband, once again. He's flushed with wine and shakes you by the hair to make you speak. As if you were a wooden toy. "He's mad, and poor, and he believes you false besides. What would you gain by seeking trouble?"
All that you can say is, "Lord, I love him well."
He isn't swayed, but neither does he curse, and later you can hear him call his friends and speak of England thoughtfully and long.
Nobody lies about the cause of war. It is unjust, the way they lead the land. Albany ought not be its ready king, and all the vile calumnies you heap upon their heads are no more than the truths their tongues so flee from speaking. Well, their course is set, and so is yours, and furthermore the course you run is lanterned by your love. Oh, all your love. For king. For home. For France.
(For king of France, who has become your home. You love his majesty, according to your bond; no more no less.)
When first you put your foot on dirty shores you think that you will cry for love and joy; here salty air is saltier than your tongue, here the rough speech of peasants isn't yours, here you are dulcet darling of the land.
Kent wears his tattered coats, and sings his love in nonsense songs with far too many words, and for this begs your pardon for his lies. Stand up, Cordelia, for the ravished truth - but you cannot. You smile. In his lies there is more salty flavor of the truth than in a thousand honest oaths of war.
“I have forgotten how to be a lord,” he mutters, underneath his better speech, and that boon you will grant him; you as well have only just remembered how to be the Queen, a delicate balance, dearly won.
And then you see your father once again, and nearly lose it all. All, all of your light. Like Gloucester you would take out both your eyes if only it would stop the sight of him, your father broken-witted, kneeling down.
You would have borne his stern and angry frown without a flinch. His sorrow is much worse. It presses in your chest and makes you curse (in silence, to yourself, you cannot scare his wits away again with too-loud speech), it calls you out as though you were a knight, it asks you questions that you cannot answer.
It makes the war you lost seem like a gift, because you now have suffered as he has. Your capture is so quick, and he so kind when you are chained together that you laugh, and dreamlike think that you are what he dreams, two birds kept in a pretty gilded cage, until the day the keeper opens it.
"I love my lord according to his bonds," you murmur, and you kiss his heavy chains. Your own will soon be light. You saw in Edmund's eyes -- a trifle, here.
"But where do they take you, dear? Where do you go?" He clutches at your arms, and all his wits are near to wandering. You kiss his brow.
"They go to set me free," you tell your king, and he believes you, false, like never true.
The hangman's rope is not so cruel to you.
Author: Emma (nextian)
Fandom/Character: King Lear, Cordelia.
Rating: G.
Warning: Some misquoting.
Prompt: 119. We are not ashamed of what we have done, because, when you have a great cause to fight for, the moment of greatest humiliation is the moment when the spirit is proudest. -- Christabel Pankhurst.
Summary: You love your bonds; accordingly, your lord.
You swallow hard. "I love your majesty according to my bond; not more, nor less." You mutter it as though you spoke a curse, when all you're saying is the simple truth.
That's curse enough.
His face grows cold and thin and very old.
"Nothing will come of nothing; speak again." Oh, he is trying so hard to be kind, but it is not his way, and he is frail. You can forgive-- he's telling you the truth, and while he seeks your lies, he will not speak them for his own. It fills you with your love. The love that falls too short.
Oh what a king that breaks your heart.
The King of France is kind, and lifts your chin with careful fingers to peruse your face. "We'll take her," he says, softly. "She might do."
You stutter a thanks and follow on his arm. You know he said some charming thing to woo your father out of anger with his girl, to claim your heart the way he claimed your hand, but that's your curse: you hear the way you speak. Only the truth. None of the lovely lies.
And so you find yourself in foreign lands, bedecked in someone else's borrowed jewels, where things are beautiful and gilt and clean. You gasp the first time you hear minstrels play. (Here all the minstrels keep their lutes in tune.) Your husband laughs, and drops a mocking kiss upon your brow, and says, "How very sweet."
He means it, too.
Well, Regan's words were sweet. Not all the perfume of this lovely land could cover up that taste of tooth-rot, yes? You scrub away the kiss.
France overawes, and so your silence saves you from reproof, but when it's grown too late for you to hide in blushing English dirt you don't know what to say, or what to do, in courtly life.
"He's doing wrong."
"He's what?" Your husband turns to stare at your impertinent remark.
Does he believe you false? You can’t quite tell. You swallow your retort: He shouldn't say he promises his troops. He hasn't them. He comes a beggar to your honest throne and swears he wants to pay you in his coin, but if he has no coin--
"He cannot pay," you say, more quietly. Your husband frowns.
You make no friends.
But court begins to take a different turn, and when you hear the speech of criminals all decked in lordly robes you think you hear two speeches much less often, plain-speaking being better worth their time, and quietly you speak a little more.
Of Lear, before too long. Always of Lear.
"But why this fervor to return to him?" Your husband, once again. He's flushed with wine and shakes you by the hair to make you speak. As if you were a wooden toy. "He's mad, and poor, and he believes you false besides. What would you gain by seeking trouble?"
All that you can say is, "Lord, I love him well."
He isn't swayed, but neither does he curse, and later you can hear him call his friends and speak of England thoughtfully and long.
Nobody lies about the cause of war. It is unjust, the way they lead the land. Albany ought not be its ready king, and all the vile calumnies you heap upon their heads are no more than the truths their tongues so flee from speaking. Well, their course is set, and so is yours, and furthermore the course you run is lanterned by your love. Oh, all your love. For king. For home. For France.
(For king of France, who has become your home. You love his majesty, according to your bond; no more no less.)
When first you put your foot on dirty shores you think that you will cry for love and joy; here salty air is saltier than your tongue, here the rough speech of peasants isn't yours, here you are dulcet darling of the land.
Kent wears his tattered coats, and sings his love in nonsense songs with far too many words, and for this begs your pardon for his lies. Stand up, Cordelia, for the ravished truth - but you cannot. You smile. In his lies there is more salty flavor of the truth than in a thousand honest oaths of war.
“I have forgotten how to be a lord,” he mutters, underneath his better speech, and that boon you will grant him; you as well have only just remembered how to be the Queen, a delicate balance, dearly won.
And then you see your father once again, and nearly lose it all. All, all of your light. Like Gloucester you would take out both your eyes if only it would stop the sight of him, your father broken-witted, kneeling down.
You would have borne his stern and angry frown without a flinch. His sorrow is much worse. It presses in your chest and makes you curse (in silence, to yourself, you cannot scare his wits away again with too-loud speech), it calls you out as though you were a knight, it asks you questions that you cannot answer.
It makes the war you lost seem like a gift, because you now have suffered as he has. Your capture is so quick, and he so kind when you are chained together that you laugh, and dreamlike think that you are what he dreams, two birds kept in a pretty gilded cage, until the day the keeper opens it.
"I love my lord according to his bonds," you murmur, and you kiss his heavy chains. Your own will soon be light. You saw in Edmund's eyes -- a trifle, here.
"But where do they take you, dear? Where do you go?" He clutches at your arms, and all his wits are near to wandering. You kiss his brow.
"They go to set me free," you tell your king, and he believes you, false, like never true.
The hangman's rope is not so cruel to you.