(no subject)
I. "My super power is everyone smiles at me, I don't know who to trust."
To say that Elizabeth was paranoid was an understatement. He only noticed it on the nights that he slept at her apartment. Half asleep, in a daze after sex, she'd lock every door, window and cupboard. Then check them all again. Every stove top was made sure to be left off, all the electrical items that weren't important for the next however many hours were turned off.
So after awhile, he turned it into a game, he'd try to tire her out so much with sex that she wouldn't want to get up. He managed to make her too tired to check everything a second time. After six months of watching her do this, but never at his house, he had to know why.
So she talked him through it, half naked with him in pants, and her in a silky bit of nothing, he followed her around the house as she went over everything little thing. The doors was for Thomas Seymour, who at 40 years of age, crept into her room at night when she was 14 and teach her all the wrong things at the wrong time. The cupboards were because she scared of rats getting out and biting her. When she was 12, her brother had been bitten by a rat in the cupboard and was in hospital for a week. The electrical items and stoves, were for her mother, who Elizabeth constantly had to look after, and frequently when drunk, would light small fires when trying to cook in her inebriated state.
Which led to the next question, why she never did at his apartment. Now that he knew her reasons, it didn't seem so paranoid, more like life preserving habits, and god knows for how many years he had been a secret agent, he'd known people with worse himself included. But she smiled, ran her hands over his shoulders, smoothing his hair out before ruining her own work by twisting it around her fingers. "Because," she didn't look up at him, and he amused himself with being so close and counting her eyelashes. "I know you won't let anything happen to me." He hadn't thus far, failed her in anything he had promised to do for her, even if sometimes he was later then said. Because even when he was sleeping, he wrapped himself around her, and when she woke with nightmares, he was always awake before her. All these reasons summed up into one simple thing. "Because," she looked up finally, pressing her chest against his, "I can trust you."
That was more then she had ever said in such a straight forward way, that he had to kiss her.
II. "Middle of the night, I wake up smelling coffee, smiling I make it to the kitchen before I realise you're still dead."
They had been stuck in this modern world for nearly 8 years, when she went up and disappeared on him. He didn't really need to guess where she went, it had been on her mind for awhile, but the note eased his fears some. Anne was upset of course, but not so much as he was. But nor did he doubt that she wouldn't come back -- of all the things that could be doubtable, her love him was not it. But there was one thing that compromised that, and it was her England. Nor could he chide her for it, she never reproached him when he became melancholy about Konoha.
After the end of the first week, they got a letter. He read it to Anne, but didn't tell her the things he noticed otherwise, where the ink had blurred as she had cried when writing, the letters shaky with her sadness. After the second week, they got a post card, of a castle that he knew all too well. The week after was a gift to Anne, and the last one was a address for him to find her, fittingly, it was one right across the road from her beloved court. He didn't know why she hurt herself like that, with things that were no longer hers, and memories that he knew had to be more then painful.
Still, he organized for Anne to stay with a colleague for a week, then went to find her. Not really knowing what to expect, he knocked on the door to her hotel room and waited. She called him in, the door was unlocked. "I knew you would come today."
"Why did you leave like that?"
"I just... couldn't let you come with me. I knew you would have wanted to, you'd have wanted to bring Anne, and let her be proud of me, her mother, a Queen, and I wouldn't have found it in my heart to tell you no."
"Elizabeth, it's not like that..."
She continued, seemingly not hearing him. "... But I can't, I can tell her stories, of us. That's not a problem, I never did anything so grand as loving you." She smiled weakly, finally looking at him. "But... god, she can't know. She's old enough to understand what murder is, Hashirama."
"You're not a murderer, Elizabeth, you never were."
She shook her head, and gestured to a pile of books on the bed. They were all biographies and history books. "I held off so long in reading them... They call me indecisive and as cruel as my Father, vain and tempestuous. They hold me accountable -- as they are right to -- for what I ordered. You killed in battle, and no one can fault that. You didn't even seek to expand your empire, but I? I killed my own cousin... family members, then people speculated to be my lovers, I had them tortured. I've no secrets, I am judged, and found wanting." Her eyes closed, "they say my whole family was violent and harsh. I knew this, even then. I sought to be better, but I could not it seemed, this is how I am remembered."
He had no idea how to even address half of that. Any part of what she said, but he knew that guilt, he wished there was something he could say to make it better. "... It's not so simple as that."
"Is it not?" She turned away from him. "I read how I died, have you?"
He shook his head, he hadn't even wanted to contemplate it. She pressed on. "I die alone, after everyone I cared about, and helped me, dies as well. I out live them all, and fall apart. It's what they say. 'Fits of Melancholy'." She wasn't looking at him, staring out the window, head resting on her propped up hand, lips pressed to her knuckles. "Why am I always left alone? It's punishment, I know it is. I cannot keep my children, I cannot acknowledge you whom I love so much, I cannot do any of these things, and then, I die alone."
He walked to her then, and he was glad that Anne wasn't here. She didn't need to see her mother in such away, so wretched, so broken. Gently he touched her shoulder, turning her back to him. "Isn't it enough, to have what we can while we have the time?"
"It has to be enough, because I am allowed nothing else." It was a bitter admission, and it turned his stomach. Not wanting to hear her say such things again, he turned her head to him.
"Your country remembers you, and they love you still. For them, it is worth it. You gave them peace after so much death. Did you read that also, you made England whole and bandaged it's wounds." In this, he and England had much in common. So before she could protest, he kissed her, for he knew no quicker way to silence her fears and heartaches.