Yuletide story! a time to refrain from embracing (Kings, PG-13)
As posted on Archive of Our Own
Title: a time to refrain from embracing
For: christycorr (who ended up writing my story as a pinch hit -- thank you so much!)
Fandom: Kings
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Het, Slash, unrequited, political intrigue
Pairings: David Shepherd/Jack Benjamin, David Shepherd/Michelle Benjamin
Summary: "I swear to you from this moment on, I am your friend." Jack had broken that promise too. He tried to redeem it, now that they were planning together for the fight that would remove King Silas from the throne. David was changed, in this their sanctuary. Grown colder, harder, the naïveté tarnished to something approaching cynicism, yet Jack judged him still nowhere near as jaded as a Benjamin. ~4300 words.
My gratitude to Tigress35, Chicklet Girl, and Bettina for their thoughts on my first draft, and to Serial Karma for wrangling verb tenses.
a time to refrain from embracing
by Pouncer
Butterflies fluttered around David, wings nearly touching his golden hair.
Of course, Jack thought, he's the chosen one.
* * *
Once upon a time, when he was a boy, Jack's father took him into the fields. Hands skimmed grain almost ripe enough for harvest, and Jack gazed upward at the man who cooked him breakfast in the morning, tucked him into bed at night.
"This will be yours," his father said. "All of it from God's grace."
The King spoke of God often, of signs and portents and messages from the Divine. Reverend Samuels presided over the blessing at state dinners where Jack had to wear a suit and tie, restrictive as his mother's rules for manners at table. The Reverend broke bread, sipped wine, lit candles, and the King stood with a beatific smile.
It was one of few times Jack remembered seeing his father at peace.
* * *
Shiloh had been a prison long before Jack found himself locked in with his lady wife, charged to produce an heir.
The military had been one way to escape, the clubs and boys another when fighting was denied him.
Michelle conformed, battled only for socially acceptable causes, but how could Jack be a leader if he never got to make choices of his own?
* * *
David knew nothing of the Queen's rules, and so shattered them. He was a lummox, cow-eyed and certain of the rightness of his actions.
No wonder Michelle found herself fascinated by him, drawn into his orbit more and more, even as she tried to resist.
Jack had seen his mother's fingers pulling strings for so long that he marveled at Michelle's artlessness. How could she believe that she'd ever be allowed to forge her own path?
At Joseph's funeral, Jack marveled that he'd once been certain he could hide his own silent rebellion and take something for his very own.
The King had the vision granted by God's favor. Who could hide before that?
The Queen had a ruthless soul. Who could withstand her will?
* * *
"Shush, Jack." His mother's voice was curt, her attention on the upcoming equinox fête.
All Jack wanted was to tell her about winning the military academy's strategy prize.
Father was locked inside his rooms, or else haunting the halls muttering about music no one else could hear.
Michelle was in hospital, again, and Jack's feelings about his twin and her long illness were too complicated to articulate or even think upon.
It would be nice, once, not to have to compete. Nice to be praised for his accomplishments, instead of molded into the image of the flawless heir presumptive to the throne.
* * *
"The thing you don't understand, Jack," David said, and Jack should protest, demand to be called by his title, but what did it matter now, with both of them in exile? "I never wanted the throne. I never wanted power. All I wanted was to serve my King, my country."
"Your idea of service," Jack spat at David, "might as well have been intended as treason from the start."
* * *
The squalling infant, wrapped in a purple blanket, was carried away in the Queen's arms.
The bed sheets were stained red, Lucinda's lifeblood poured out with the girl child.
Jack wouldn't even be allowed to name his daughter.
His wife's corpse lay with tangled hair and eyes closed by the doctor who had failed to save her.
The smell gagged Jack. He pushed past the guard, into fresh air for the first time in months.
His escape was almost easy after that. He'd done his duty to the family succession, and so was no longer cared about.
* * *
Photos of Michelle were printed in the Shiloh Guardian, newspapers smuggled to their shelter, heralding her return to the capital after long absence and convalescence.
Jack caught David poring over the broadsheets, stroking paper and ink as if he could feel skin.
"She looks pale," Jack said. "Is she ill?"
David shook his head. His eyelids closed, he breathed in, then out. "She had my child," David said, voice rough. "A boy. I had word."
Wildly inappropriate, Jack laughed and laughed and laughed.
Once he'd regained composure, Jack explained the source of his humor.
"Cousins?" David asked, eventually.
"A boy and a girl," Jack said. "Maybe they'll redeem our sins."
* * *
My dearest David,
It is doubtless foolish to trust this shall reach you unaltered, yet I must have something to place my faith in or I shall go mad. And there are those who promise reliability and loyalty, even amidst the intrigues of court.
So many intrigues. I wonder how I ever thought that my family ruled for the good of the people, rather than the good of ourselves. Clear as crystal, now, how many opponents and obstacles vanish at my father or mother's whim.
I have not seen Jack in months, nor heard word of his location. It is as if he were never my brother, erased from our family and Shiloh's memory by royal fiat. Mother smiles for the cameras and utters lies disguised as honey. Father treats me as a child, still. Far too often, I cry myself to sleep at night to the memory of your face, or our son's tiny fingers wrapped around mine own. I hold tight to our vows, to the promises we made one another, and try to endure.
If this does reach you, write back to me? Even if I must burn the paper after committing words to memory to keep you safe, I shall cherish the merest instant of shared touch. Fanciful as it is, I plan to seal this letter with a kiss, and hope that you will be able to place your lips to the same spot, no matter how much distance separates us.
Love, always,
Michelle
* * *
Decisions made in pique, in year after year of derision and waiting: Jack realized, too late, how bad they could be. Plot with a viper uncle, seize the crown, and watch it crumble to rust and blood before the implacable will of King Silas returned.
God rejected Jack as surely as Michelle rejected suitor after suitor until Shepherd came along. No touch of divine blessing, no whiff of power granted freely.
Reverend Samuels made clear Jack's fate: never would he rule.
After the shared confidence of secret children, David confessed to Jack that King Silas had told him God intended David for the throne. Signs of favor, signs of destiny, a tirade before a fireplace poker and a beating turned back upon the King.
Maybe the price of Divine esteem was insanity in the end. Jealousy for him who would succeed and tear the spotlight away from his predecessor.
* * *
Shadows dappled the ground, outlined the leaves freshly sprouted on apple trees. Petals from their blossoming blew away like clouds in the last wind storm.
Jack reveled in the feel of the sun on his skin, the pounding of his feet as he sprinted up and down the orchard's straight lines of trees. The grass planted between them was long, and he must focus all his senses on anticipating drops and snags and holes seen only at the last second. The rush of physical sensation, of motion and freedom, almost overwhelmed him after so long in confinement.
He ran until his lungs burn, his muscles ached, and sweat gathered on his skin.
The next day, Jack ran again.
The day after, David appeared and ran in a parallel allée, stride easy and long.
Jack attempted to ignore David, not wanting to make this a competition. He was running for the joy of movement, for the discipline of it, for the honest exhaustion that allowed him easy access to sleep at night instead of a spiral of regrets and worry and wakefulness. Still, his steps reached for more earth, his heart beat even faster, and he managed to draw ahead by one tree. Two.
The trip shocked him, even as his body relaxed into the fall he'd learned in session after session of hand-to-hand combat training at the academy. Jack rolled, hoped the pain in his ankle was momentary, and tried to remember how to breathe.
The sun disappeared behind David's head, haloed in gold. "Are you -" he began to ask.
"Fine," Jack gasped.
"Come on," David said, and held out his hand. "We'll get you back to the house."
Jack stared for a second, then reached out. David pulled, bearing Jack's weight easily off the ground.
His limp disappeared before they reached the borders of the orchard, but David's hand hovered close to Jack's back until they were inside the manor.
* * *
They run together after that, unscheduled yet always in sync.
One morning, David's voice broke the silence as they walk toward branches beginning to swell with green fruit.
"Will you fight against your father?"
The question was almost casual in the asking, but Jack knew the utter seriousness underneath David's tone.
"Whatever he once was, he's a monster now. I will fight."
Jack let David pull a little ahead on the first lap.
He could win tomorrow.
* * *
Up and down and round and round. Patricide planned and yet Jack unable to fulfill deed, unable to take action and mark his father for death. Not that it mattered, in the end, Port Prosperity being riven enough by their transfer to Gath that Silas became a hated enemy.
Jack thought for a while, until his uncle proved who truly ruled, that his struggles were over. Jack saved David then, returned the favor from the day the Goliath was slain.
It had seemed so clear, so certain, the words Jack said to David: "We're rid of the poison. My father is gone. It's my turn to rule, and I want to do it well."
David's decency and appreciation of simple right and wrong appealed mightily then.
"I swear to you from this moment on, I am your friend."
Jack had broken that promise too. He tried to redeem it, now that they were planning together for the fight that would remove King Silas from the throne.
David was changed, in this their sanctuary. Grown colder, harder, the naïveté tarnished to something approaching cynicism, yet Jack judged him still nowhere near as jaded as a Benjamin.
* * *
First Night, Jack had begun the process of sullying David's innocence. When Jack arranged for drink and women, he didn't allow himself to wish for the opportunity to bruise David's fair skin. He didn't let his gaze linger on dimples, or muscled shoulders, or the vulnerable softness behind ears.
Jack didn't fantasize about pressing David down into bed, fingers locked around wrists. He didn't think about the line of David's neck as he threw his head back to gasp. He didn't let himself imagine what David would feel like as Jack pressed inside, the way his breath would stutter, the way he'd tense and then moan in release.
Instead, Jack let soft hands caress his side, let alcohol burn going down his throat, and expounded on his mother's efforts to make the Benjamins into something more than human.
He rejected Joseph, not once but twice, told him to leave, did as the King bade him for sake of the crown.
His father was graced by God, after all. He must know better than his dissolute son.
* * *
For a while, it seemed that every ally they had in Shiloh was discovered and punished.
"How does he do this?" Jack raged after one old friend had vanished on the way home from his Unity Hall office, sudden and unexpected. "It wasn't like Caleb was an active agent. He only passed along news sooner than we'd get it otherwise. Let not the king sin against his servant - my father told me that, had it enshrined in the Charter, even, but he kills without compunction or remorse, takes people without trial -"
Jack would have gone on, would have spilled all the bile he'd held in reserve, but David's hands on his arms caught Jack's attention instead.
It had been so long.
No thought went into the kiss, only desperate impulse, the need to reaffirm life amidst chaos. David's lips were lush, sweet, and Jack's fingers on the back of David's neck pulled him closer. Their bodies hit the stone wall of the office and every cell within Jack surged forward in an effort to claim, to rut, to find pleasure.
For a moment, it worked.
And then David pushed Jack away, gently. His eyes were startled and his mouth red.
Jack wanted to flee like a coward. Have I lost everything again?
"Jack," David started.
"I know," Jack said, all too aware, now, that David wasn't a toy that could be shared between siblings as a distraction.
"I love your sister." Of course David would have to speak the words.
"I killed my beloved." Jack hadn't meant to tell, hadn't even made the link himself consciously, but he couldn't stop once begun. The sordid tale of Joseph's "suicide" spilled out: hidden affair, recorded confession, discovery, the Queen's quick action to shield her son from the revelation.
"All to keep the truth from going public," Jack said. Tears slipped onto his lips, bitter displacing sweetness. "Because it was too important that the heir conform to their expectations. He died to save my image, not even the real me. They never wanted to see that."
"Jack," David said, and then must have decided words were not enough, because he gathered Jack into an embrace and held on while the sobs, so long denied, broke loose.
* * *
One night, over Gath liquor and before a fire, David told Jack stories of his childhood. Youngest of seven brothers, growing up on a farm where there were always chores: livestock to feed and milk and pasture, fields to till and sow and harvest.
"There's a cycle to it," David said, sipping his glass and hardly wincing at the taste anymore. "A rhythm to the year, with many demands. But at the end of it, you've nurtured food for your family, for every family."
Jack thought of his father's grocery shopping trips, ones where he was dragged along as his father stroked peaches and discarded potatoes and discussed the merits of marbled beef with the butcher. Ones where the store was empty, save for employees and security guards and royalty pretending to be common for an hour.
* * *
In newspaper pictures of court, Andrew Cross sat near the King, pale and expressionless. In childhood, Jack had seen Andrew pulling the wings off flies and making the palace cats squeal from rough fingers as he petted them.
And this is how exiles change places, Jack thought.
For the crime of manslaughter, an accident never proven to be anything more, Andrew was sent forth from Gilboa. He was spared imprisonment at the Queen's insistence and William Cross' grasp on the keys to the treasury, despite suspicions that the strange, silent nephew of the Benjamins had intended the death of his rival.
If Jack counted those lost thus far because of connection to him - Joseph, Katrina Ghent, Lucinda - he would drown in guilt. Innocents and one who was anything but, yet they would have been safe if not for his touch upon their lives.
Instead, he examined intelligence reports brought by officers of his former unit. Bonds forged in combat were not easily broken, and their knowledge was essential.
Together, Jack and David planned.
* * *
Paranoia was a natural condition in political families. It was hard not to be ambushed by remnants of the suspicion Jack had felt toward David, the certainty that this latest battlefield hero must be ruined or else he'd supplant Jack.
Everything had seemed so clear then. Jack's imagination had spun tales of romance, the princess and the farm boy brought together by valor of deeds, staying together because of fancy and love and the calculated decision to discard a playboy son who would never continue the dynasty of his own volition.
Now that analytical mind collaborated with the hero's directness. Jack and David traced strings of influence, nets of economic and diplomatic and military power cast wide and deep for one purpose only: the defeat of Silas Benjamin.
* * *
Deals and connivances begun in desperation led to utter ruin. Jack didn't trust his judgment of people's motivations any more. He ceded to David approval or disapproval of their partisans.
The King of Gilboa was no longer loved or regarded as infallible. Instead, he was seen as a tyrant to rival Vesper Abedon, and common folk listened to whispers of rebellion and traveled to beseech their Prince to save them.
David and Jack met the pilgrims in the manor's common room. A plain table surrounded with slat-back chairs, uncomfortable for long audiences.
David never seemed to need more than a few minutes. He listened to the stories of abuse and temper, of relatives disappeared and coercion nakedly displayed. He looked into their eyes: men and women, old and young, black and white, and would nod his head in sympathy.
They also hosted emissaries from halls of power, those who read the signs and change of the wind and saw their fortunes dwindling and their desires unfulfilled. They came clothed in finely tailored suits or bright silks, shod in exquisite shoes, then blinked when Jack and David entered in the trousers of day laborers and the henleys and sweaters of the poor.
Jack always preferred the fatigues he wore in the field, no matter how anonymous, to the wardrobe his mother procured from designers. Substance over style, here in the midst of their uprising.
"This one," David told Jack, after a morning encounter. "This one is the key."
Jack nodded his head. He too had seen the lynchpin come within their grasp.
* * *
They spread rumor. Their pilgrims were sent back home with stories to whisper in taverns, at workplaces, during random conversations.
Tell what happened to your sister, your mother, your son, your beloved. Tell how King Silas wronged them. Murmur his injustice, his desertion by God, his unworthiness to rule. Crops die from lack of rain, livestock sickens at pasture, all because of the King's crimes.
He has betrayed the Charter.
The Prince is coming.
Be prepared.
Rise.
* * *
My dearest David,
I hide your letter in a secret spot from childhood and pull it out at night. The paper comforts me, knowing that you touched it, wrote your words for my eyes to read.
It was a greater comfort to learn that you and Jack are together now, when I am not afraid that your position will be betrayed. To lose brother and husband both would rend my heart, already bruised and battered, near to desolation.
Unity Hall is tense. People walk about with eyes averted and voices lowered, only to turn silent when the King or Queen approaches. She is a viper, smiling as she strikes. He is lunacy incarnate, gentleness once cherished now turned to fury. I am chaperoned almost always, unable to move freely.
I rarely see Jack's daughter Tamara, but when I have she has been well. My longing for our son overwhelms me. I think of him as I last saw him, only days old, and wonder how he has grown. You must return, David, so that we three may be a family in fact as well as devotion.
You must return. I cannot bear this waiting much longer.
Love, always,
Michelle
* * *
The newspapers reported the death of William Cross - a heart attack. He'd been found by a maid one morning, in his last refuge at the southernmost tip.
Jack and David locked eyes across the breakfast table.
"Assassins?" David asked.
"Assassins," Jack affirmed.
"We'll have to be more cautious with our guests."
They finished eating their porridge in silence.
That evening, David played etude after etude on the manor's piano, lost in the cascading notes and patterns of the music. Jack listened and let himself be soothed, if only for the night.
* * *
When the attempt came, they reacted as one.
The knife targeted David, but Jack's hand was around the woman's throat only a second before David's boot swept sideways and they all crashed down to the stone floor.
Restrained, the woman was dignified in her refusal to talk.
They turned her over to the Gath military, whose prisons were known for their habit of losing enemies of the state.
* * *
"It was when Michelle told your parents about us, that his affection turned to hatred. He'd asked me for my darkest secret, and I said I could keep nothing from my king." David traced the route of their incursion on the map.
"But you did keep something," Jack said.
"It was not my secret to tell." David's chin lowered, and he nudged a company token further to the east. "I begged her to let me -"
"My sister was ever one for meeting expectations," Jack interrupted. "I understand."
Jack did not say that his talent was for breaking expectations. David knew that already.
* * *
A kingdom is a delicate creation, made more than the sum of its parts by belief in the rightness of its rulers. When that belief falters, the kingdom sways, creaks, splits asunder.
After all their preparation, all it took was a single push.
* * *
Jack remembered Chancellor Scolar from his childhood, remembered his retirement following Michelle's last, gravest bout with cancer. He did not remember the tale of scorned service, the admission that the Queen had decided to wage war on Gath, because the King was too distraught over his ill daughter to care for matters of state.
A man who'd carried out the King's orders for years and years had many favors to call due, knew all the secrets hidden away that could be leveraged to their benefit.
When the electrical grid went down, the border patrol melted away, Shiloh's streets emptied of its residents. They'd all listened to the rumors.
* * *
Silas came out of the city to meet them, tank against tank.
Neither Jack nor David wanted a prolonged military battle, but they were prepared to wage one if necessary.
The field where they faced off held wheat stubble, harvested only a few weeks previous.
Jack saw the faces of his father's most loyal soldiers peering from inside their armored behemoths.
The King scorned protection, walked forward with Thomasina a pace behind. Her loyalty to the Benjamins was absolute, Jack knew. It all depended on what she thought that meant.
There was no place for snipers to hide, no ground that hadn't been scouted for traps and treachery en route to the capital. Jack spotted journalists equipped only with telephoto lenses to the rear of the King's echelon, and knew they might be the most potent weapon available for this fight.
The King gazed upon his son and David, opened his mouth as if to begin one of his famed speeches, then inhaled, sharply.
From out of the clear blue sky they descended, orange wings fluttering, bodies darting amid a cloud of their own making. They hovered in between the two armies.
Everyone turned to see what sign God had sent forth.
A moment, two, Jack's lungs aching from the need to breathe. He stood shoulder to shoulder with David, and almost laughed when the butterflies turned toward them. A feeling of triumph bubbled up from deep within his soul, because his father could not deny the truth of this omen, not when he'd proclaimed his crowning at every official ceremony for decades.
Antennas quivering, wings flared wide, the butterflies began to circle David's head, landing for an instant.
Jack did laugh, then, because it was so clear how this was going to go, and David taking the throne made Jack feel nothing but freedom and possibility for the first time in his life.
Of course, Jack thought, he's the chosen one.
The hush was broken by Thomasina's voice, even and firm as always. "Sir," she said.
Silas' shoulders slumped.
"Come, sir. I'll take you to Serenity."
Jack let himself look his father straight in the face for the first time in months and months, and the part of himself not about to succumb to celebration was shocked to see how worn Silas appeared.
Silas drew himself upward, and spoke directly to David. "Take good care of your kingdom," he said. "And my daughter. The Queen," he stopped. "Rose should be sent away, I think. If it pleases you."
David nodded, dislodging the butterflies from his golden hair. "No harm will come to her," he promised. Jack thought it far more likely that harm would come to them at his mother's hands. She'd need watching.
The soldiers in the Gilboan tanks began to emerge, silent and respectful as they observed their former king depart.
The rebels peered out of their vehicles, still cautious until Jack waved them forward.
"My friends," David said, and Jack started to grin, listening to his new King describe their plans for peace.
When David finished, when the two lines of soldiers had disappeared into one, Jack turned and embraced his brother.
"We did it," David said, sounding stunned.
"We did." Jack was moved to be flowery, even as his smile shaded toward sardonic. "A new day dawns in Gilboa, one of promise and freedom."
* * *
God had been on their side, but Jack fancied it was their hope for justice and their forgiveness of past transgressions that had won the field.
Now to reunite with family long separated, and begin David's reign.
Jack wasn't sure what he would do, other than hold his daughter for the first time and make sure she always felt able to choose her own path.
That would be the most satisfying and lasting victory of all.
-end-
Notes: Title from Ecclesiastes 3, of course. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
Title: a time to refrain from embracing
For: christycorr (who ended up writing my story as a pinch hit -- thank you so much!)
Fandom: Kings
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Het, Slash, unrequited, political intrigue
Pairings: David Shepherd/Jack Benjamin, David Shepherd/Michelle Benjamin
Summary: "I swear to you from this moment on, I am your friend." Jack had broken that promise too. He tried to redeem it, now that they were planning together for the fight that would remove King Silas from the throne. David was changed, in this their sanctuary. Grown colder, harder, the naïveté tarnished to something approaching cynicism, yet Jack judged him still nowhere near as jaded as a Benjamin. ~4300 words.
My gratitude to Tigress35, Chicklet Girl, and Bettina for their thoughts on my first draft, and to Serial Karma for wrangling verb tenses.
a time to refrain from embracing
by Pouncer
Butterflies fluttered around David, wings nearly touching his golden hair.
Of course, Jack thought, he's the chosen one.
* * *
Once upon a time, when he was a boy, Jack's father took him into the fields. Hands skimmed grain almost ripe enough for harvest, and Jack gazed upward at the man who cooked him breakfast in the morning, tucked him into bed at night.
"This will be yours," his father said. "All of it from God's grace."
The King spoke of God often, of signs and portents and messages from the Divine. Reverend Samuels presided over the blessing at state dinners where Jack had to wear a suit and tie, restrictive as his mother's rules for manners at table. The Reverend broke bread, sipped wine, lit candles, and the King stood with a beatific smile.
It was one of few times Jack remembered seeing his father at peace.
* * *
Shiloh had been a prison long before Jack found himself locked in with his lady wife, charged to produce an heir.
The military had been one way to escape, the clubs and boys another when fighting was denied him.
Michelle conformed, battled only for socially acceptable causes, but how could Jack be a leader if he never got to make choices of his own?
* * *
David knew nothing of the Queen's rules, and so shattered them. He was a lummox, cow-eyed and certain of the rightness of his actions.
No wonder Michelle found herself fascinated by him, drawn into his orbit more and more, even as she tried to resist.
Jack had seen his mother's fingers pulling strings for so long that he marveled at Michelle's artlessness. How could she believe that she'd ever be allowed to forge her own path?
At Joseph's funeral, Jack marveled that he'd once been certain he could hide his own silent rebellion and take something for his very own.
The King had the vision granted by God's favor. Who could hide before that?
The Queen had a ruthless soul. Who could withstand her will?
* * *
"Shush, Jack." His mother's voice was curt, her attention on the upcoming equinox fête.
All Jack wanted was to tell her about winning the military academy's strategy prize.
Father was locked inside his rooms, or else haunting the halls muttering about music no one else could hear.
Michelle was in hospital, again, and Jack's feelings about his twin and her long illness were too complicated to articulate or even think upon.
It would be nice, once, not to have to compete. Nice to be praised for his accomplishments, instead of molded into the image of the flawless heir presumptive to the throne.
* * *
"The thing you don't understand, Jack," David said, and Jack should protest, demand to be called by his title, but what did it matter now, with both of them in exile? "I never wanted the throne. I never wanted power. All I wanted was to serve my King, my country."
"Your idea of service," Jack spat at David, "might as well have been intended as treason from the start."
* * *
The squalling infant, wrapped in a purple blanket, was carried away in the Queen's arms.
The bed sheets were stained red, Lucinda's lifeblood poured out with the girl child.
Jack wouldn't even be allowed to name his daughter.
His wife's corpse lay with tangled hair and eyes closed by the doctor who had failed to save her.
The smell gagged Jack. He pushed past the guard, into fresh air for the first time in months.
His escape was almost easy after that. He'd done his duty to the family succession, and so was no longer cared about.
* * *
Photos of Michelle were printed in the Shiloh Guardian, newspapers smuggled to their shelter, heralding her return to the capital after long absence and convalescence.
Jack caught David poring over the broadsheets, stroking paper and ink as if he could feel skin.
"She looks pale," Jack said. "Is she ill?"
David shook his head. His eyelids closed, he breathed in, then out. "She had my child," David said, voice rough. "A boy. I had word."
Wildly inappropriate, Jack laughed and laughed and laughed.
Once he'd regained composure, Jack explained the source of his humor.
"Cousins?" David asked, eventually.
"A boy and a girl," Jack said. "Maybe they'll redeem our sins."
* * *
My dearest David,
It is doubtless foolish to trust this shall reach you unaltered, yet I must have something to place my faith in or I shall go mad. And there are those who promise reliability and loyalty, even amidst the intrigues of court.
So many intrigues. I wonder how I ever thought that my family ruled for the good of the people, rather than the good of ourselves. Clear as crystal, now, how many opponents and obstacles vanish at my father or mother's whim.
I have not seen Jack in months, nor heard word of his location. It is as if he were never my brother, erased from our family and Shiloh's memory by royal fiat. Mother smiles for the cameras and utters lies disguised as honey. Father treats me as a child, still. Far too often, I cry myself to sleep at night to the memory of your face, or our son's tiny fingers wrapped around mine own. I hold tight to our vows, to the promises we made one another, and try to endure.
If this does reach you, write back to me? Even if I must burn the paper after committing words to memory to keep you safe, I shall cherish the merest instant of shared touch. Fanciful as it is, I plan to seal this letter with a kiss, and hope that you will be able to place your lips to the same spot, no matter how much distance separates us.
Love, always,
Michelle
* * *
Decisions made in pique, in year after year of derision and waiting: Jack realized, too late, how bad they could be. Plot with a viper uncle, seize the crown, and watch it crumble to rust and blood before the implacable will of King Silas returned.
God rejected Jack as surely as Michelle rejected suitor after suitor until Shepherd came along. No touch of divine blessing, no whiff of power granted freely.
Reverend Samuels made clear Jack's fate: never would he rule.
After the shared confidence of secret children, David confessed to Jack that King Silas had told him God intended David for the throne. Signs of favor, signs of destiny, a tirade before a fireplace poker and a beating turned back upon the King.
Maybe the price of Divine esteem was insanity in the end. Jealousy for him who would succeed and tear the spotlight away from his predecessor.
* * *
Shadows dappled the ground, outlined the leaves freshly sprouted on apple trees. Petals from their blossoming blew away like clouds in the last wind storm.
Jack reveled in the feel of the sun on his skin, the pounding of his feet as he sprinted up and down the orchard's straight lines of trees. The grass planted between them was long, and he must focus all his senses on anticipating drops and snags and holes seen only at the last second. The rush of physical sensation, of motion and freedom, almost overwhelmed him after so long in confinement.
He ran until his lungs burn, his muscles ached, and sweat gathered on his skin.
The next day, Jack ran again.
The day after, David appeared and ran in a parallel allée, stride easy and long.
Jack attempted to ignore David, not wanting to make this a competition. He was running for the joy of movement, for the discipline of it, for the honest exhaustion that allowed him easy access to sleep at night instead of a spiral of regrets and worry and wakefulness. Still, his steps reached for more earth, his heart beat even faster, and he managed to draw ahead by one tree. Two.
The trip shocked him, even as his body relaxed into the fall he'd learned in session after session of hand-to-hand combat training at the academy. Jack rolled, hoped the pain in his ankle was momentary, and tried to remember how to breathe.
The sun disappeared behind David's head, haloed in gold. "Are you -" he began to ask.
"Fine," Jack gasped.
"Come on," David said, and held out his hand. "We'll get you back to the house."
Jack stared for a second, then reached out. David pulled, bearing Jack's weight easily off the ground.
His limp disappeared before they reached the borders of the orchard, but David's hand hovered close to Jack's back until they were inside the manor.
* * *
They run together after that, unscheduled yet always in sync.
One morning, David's voice broke the silence as they walk toward branches beginning to swell with green fruit.
"Will you fight against your father?"
The question was almost casual in the asking, but Jack knew the utter seriousness underneath David's tone.
"Whatever he once was, he's a monster now. I will fight."
Jack let David pull a little ahead on the first lap.
He could win tomorrow.
* * *
Up and down and round and round. Patricide planned and yet Jack unable to fulfill deed, unable to take action and mark his father for death. Not that it mattered, in the end, Port Prosperity being riven enough by their transfer to Gath that Silas became a hated enemy.
Jack thought for a while, until his uncle proved who truly ruled, that his struggles were over. Jack saved David then, returned the favor from the day the Goliath was slain.
It had seemed so clear, so certain, the words Jack said to David: "We're rid of the poison. My father is gone. It's my turn to rule, and I want to do it well."
David's decency and appreciation of simple right and wrong appealed mightily then.
"I swear to you from this moment on, I am your friend."
Jack had broken that promise too. He tried to redeem it, now that they were planning together for the fight that would remove King Silas from the throne.
David was changed, in this their sanctuary. Grown colder, harder, the naïveté tarnished to something approaching cynicism, yet Jack judged him still nowhere near as jaded as a Benjamin.
* * *
First Night, Jack had begun the process of sullying David's innocence. When Jack arranged for drink and women, he didn't allow himself to wish for the opportunity to bruise David's fair skin. He didn't let his gaze linger on dimples, or muscled shoulders, or the vulnerable softness behind ears.
Jack didn't fantasize about pressing David down into bed, fingers locked around wrists. He didn't think about the line of David's neck as he threw his head back to gasp. He didn't let himself imagine what David would feel like as Jack pressed inside, the way his breath would stutter, the way he'd tense and then moan in release.
Instead, Jack let soft hands caress his side, let alcohol burn going down his throat, and expounded on his mother's efforts to make the Benjamins into something more than human.
He rejected Joseph, not once but twice, told him to leave, did as the King bade him for sake of the crown.
His father was graced by God, after all. He must know better than his dissolute son.
* * *
For a while, it seemed that every ally they had in Shiloh was discovered and punished.
"How does he do this?" Jack raged after one old friend had vanished on the way home from his Unity Hall office, sudden and unexpected. "It wasn't like Caleb was an active agent. He only passed along news sooner than we'd get it otherwise. Let not the king sin against his servant - my father told me that, had it enshrined in the Charter, even, but he kills without compunction or remorse, takes people without trial -"
Jack would have gone on, would have spilled all the bile he'd held in reserve, but David's hands on his arms caught Jack's attention instead.
It had been so long.
No thought went into the kiss, only desperate impulse, the need to reaffirm life amidst chaos. David's lips were lush, sweet, and Jack's fingers on the back of David's neck pulled him closer. Their bodies hit the stone wall of the office and every cell within Jack surged forward in an effort to claim, to rut, to find pleasure.
For a moment, it worked.
And then David pushed Jack away, gently. His eyes were startled and his mouth red.
Jack wanted to flee like a coward. Have I lost everything again?
"Jack," David started.
"I know," Jack said, all too aware, now, that David wasn't a toy that could be shared between siblings as a distraction.
"I love your sister." Of course David would have to speak the words.
"I killed my beloved." Jack hadn't meant to tell, hadn't even made the link himself consciously, but he couldn't stop once begun. The sordid tale of Joseph's "suicide" spilled out: hidden affair, recorded confession, discovery, the Queen's quick action to shield her son from the revelation.
"All to keep the truth from going public," Jack said. Tears slipped onto his lips, bitter displacing sweetness. "Because it was too important that the heir conform to their expectations. He died to save my image, not even the real me. They never wanted to see that."
"Jack," David said, and then must have decided words were not enough, because he gathered Jack into an embrace and held on while the sobs, so long denied, broke loose.
* * *
One night, over Gath liquor and before a fire, David told Jack stories of his childhood. Youngest of seven brothers, growing up on a farm where there were always chores: livestock to feed and milk and pasture, fields to till and sow and harvest.
"There's a cycle to it," David said, sipping his glass and hardly wincing at the taste anymore. "A rhythm to the year, with many demands. But at the end of it, you've nurtured food for your family, for every family."
Jack thought of his father's grocery shopping trips, ones where he was dragged along as his father stroked peaches and discarded potatoes and discussed the merits of marbled beef with the butcher. Ones where the store was empty, save for employees and security guards and royalty pretending to be common for an hour.
* * *
In newspaper pictures of court, Andrew Cross sat near the King, pale and expressionless. In childhood, Jack had seen Andrew pulling the wings off flies and making the palace cats squeal from rough fingers as he petted them.
And this is how exiles change places, Jack thought.
For the crime of manslaughter, an accident never proven to be anything more, Andrew was sent forth from Gilboa. He was spared imprisonment at the Queen's insistence and William Cross' grasp on the keys to the treasury, despite suspicions that the strange, silent nephew of the Benjamins had intended the death of his rival.
If Jack counted those lost thus far because of connection to him - Joseph, Katrina Ghent, Lucinda - he would drown in guilt. Innocents and one who was anything but, yet they would have been safe if not for his touch upon their lives.
Instead, he examined intelligence reports brought by officers of his former unit. Bonds forged in combat were not easily broken, and their knowledge was essential.
Together, Jack and David planned.
* * *
Paranoia was a natural condition in political families. It was hard not to be ambushed by remnants of the suspicion Jack had felt toward David, the certainty that this latest battlefield hero must be ruined or else he'd supplant Jack.
Everything had seemed so clear then. Jack's imagination had spun tales of romance, the princess and the farm boy brought together by valor of deeds, staying together because of fancy and love and the calculated decision to discard a playboy son who would never continue the dynasty of his own volition.
Now that analytical mind collaborated with the hero's directness. Jack and David traced strings of influence, nets of economic and diplomatic and military power cast wide and deep for one purpose only: the defeat of Silas Benjamin.
* * *
Deals and connivances begun in desperation led to utter ruin. Jack didn't trust his judgment of people's motivations any more. He ceded to David approval or disapproval of their partisans.
The King of Gilboa was no longer loved or regarded as infallible. Instead, he was seen as a tyrant to rival Vesper Abedon, and common folk listened to whispers of rebellion and traveled to beseech their Prince to save them.
David and Jack met the pilgrims in the manor's common room. A plain table surrounded with slat-back chairs, uncomfortable for long audiences.
David never seemed to need more than a few minutes. He listened to the stories of abuse and temper, of relatives disappeared and coercion nakedly displayed. He looked into their eyes: men and women, old and young, black and white, and would nod his head in sympathy.
They also hosted emissaries from halls of power, those who read the signs and change of the wind and saw their fortunes dwindling and their desires unfulfilled. They came clothed in finely tailored suits or bright silks, shod in exquisite shoes, then blinked when Jack and David entered in the trousers of day laborers and the henleys and sweaters of the poor.
Jack always preferred the fatigues he wore in the field, no matter how anonymous, to the wardrobe his mother procured from designers. Substance over style, here in the midst of their uprising.
"This one," David told Jack, after a morning encounter. "This one is the key."
Jack nodded his head. He too had seen the lynchpin come within their grasp.
* * *
They spread rumor. Their pilgrims were sent back home with stories to whisper in taverns, at workplaces, during random conversations.
Tell what happened to your sister, your mother, your son, your beloved. Tell how King Silas wronged them. Murmur his injustice, his desertion by God, his unworthiness to rule. Crops die from lack of rain, livestock sickens at pasture, all because of the King's crimes.
He has betrayed the Charter.
The Prince is coming.
Be prepared.
Rise.
* * *
My dearest David,
I hide your letter in a secret spot from childhood and pull it out at night. The paper comforts me, knowing that you touched it, wrote your words for my eyes to read.
It was a greater comfort to learn that you and Jack are together now, when I am not afraid that your position will be betrayed. To lose brother and husband both would rend my heart, already bruised and battered, near to desolation.
Unity Hall is tense. People walk about with eyes averted and voices lowered, only to turn silent when the King or Queen approaches. She is a viper, smiling as she strikes. He is lunacy incarnate, gentleness once cherished now turned to fury. I am chaperoned almost always, unable to move freely.
I rarely see Jack's daughter Tamara, but when I have she has been well. My longing for our son overwhelms me. I think of him as I last saw him, only days old, and wonder how he has grown. You must return, David, so that we three may be a family in fact as well as devotion.
You must return. I cannot bear this waiting much longer.
Love, always,
Michelle
* * *
The newspapers reported the death of William Cross - a heart attack. He'd been found by a maid one morning, in his last refuge at the southernmost tip.
Jack and David locked eyes across the breakfast table.
"Assassins?" David asked.
"Assassins," Jack affirmed.
"We'll have to be more cautious with our guests."
They finished eating their porridge in silence.
That evening, David played etude after etude on the manor's piano, lost in the cascading notes and patterns of the music. Jack listened and let himself be soothed, if only for the night.
* * *
When the attempt came, they reacted as one.
The knife targeted David, but Jack's hand was around the woman's throat only a second before David's boot swept sideways and they all crashed down to the stone floor.
Restrained, the woman was dignified in her refusal to talk.
They turned her over to the Gath military, whose prisons were known for their habit of losing enemies of the state.
* * *
"It was when Michelle told your parents about us, that his affection turned to hatred. He'd asked me for my darkest secret, and I said I could keep nothing from my king." David traced the route of their incursion on the map.
"But you did keep something," Jack said.
"It was not my secret to tell." David's chin lowered, and he nudged a company token further to the east. "I begged her to let me -"
"My sister was ever one for meeting expectations," Jack interrupted. "I understand."
Jack did not say that his talent was for breaking expectations. David knew that already.
* * *
A kingdom is a delicate creation, made more than the sum of its parts by belief in the rightness of its rulers. When that belief falters, the kingdom sways, creaks, splits asunder.
After all their preparation, all it took was a single push.
* * *
Jack remembered Chancellor Scolar from his childhood, remembered his retirement following Michelle's last, gravest bout with cancer. He did not remember the tale of scorned service, the admission that the Queen had decided to wage war on Gath, because the King was too distraught over his ill daughter to care for matters of state.
A man who'd carried out the King's orders for years and years had many favors to call due, knew all the secrets hidden away that could be leveraged to their benefit.
When the electrical grid went down, the border patrol melted away, Shiloh's streets emptied of its residents. They'd all listened to the rumors.
* * *
Silas came out of the city to meet them, tank against tank.
Neither Jack nor David wanted a prolonged military battle, but they were prepared to wage one if necessary.
The field where they faced off held wheat stubble, harvested only a few weeks previous.
Jack saw the faces of his father's most loyal soldiers peering from inside their armored behemoths.
The King scorned protection, walked forward with Thomasina a pace behind. Her loyalty to the Benjamins was absolute, Jack knew. It all depended on what she thought that meant.
There was no place for snipers to hide, no ground that hadn't been scouted for traps and treachery en route to the capital. Jack spotted journalists equipped only with telephoto lenses to the rear of the King's echelon, and knew they might be the most potent weapon available for this fight.
The King gazed upon his son and David, opened his mouth as if to begin one of his famed speeches, then inhaled, sharply.
From out of the clear blue sky they descended, orange wings fluttering, bodies darting amid a cloud of their own making. They hovered in between the two armies.
Everyone turned to see what sign God had sent forth.
A moment, two, Jack's lungs aching from the need to breathe. He stood shoulder to shoulder with David, and almost laughed when the butterflies turned toward them. A feeling of triumph bubbled up from deep within his soul, because his father could not deny the truth of this omen, not when he'd proclaimed his crowning at every official ceremony for decades.
Antennas quivering, wings flared wide, the butterflies began to circle David's head, landing for an instant.
Jack did laugh, then, because it was so clear how this was going to go, and David taking the throne made Jack feel nothing but freedom and possibility for the first time in his life.
Of course, Jack thought, he's the chosen one.
The hush was broken by Thomasina's voice, even and firm as always. "Sir," she said.
Silas' shoulders slumped.
"Come, sir. I'll take you to Serenity."
Jack let himself look his father straight in the face for the first time in months and months, and the part of himself not about to succumb to celebration was shocked to see how worn Silas appeared.
Silas drew himself upward, and spoke directly to David. "Take good care of your kingdom," he said. "And my daughter. The Queen," he stopped. "Rose should be sent away, I think. If it pleases you."
David nodded, dislodging the butterflies from his golden hair. "No harm will come to her," he promised. Jack thought it far more likely that harm would come to them at his mother's hands. She'd need watching.
The soldiers in the Gilboan tanks began to emerge, silent and respectful as they observed their former king depart.
The rebels peered out of their vehicles, still cautious until Jack waved them forward.
"My friends," David said, and Jack started to grin, listening to his new King describe their plans for peace.
When David finished, when the two lines of soldiers had disappeared into one, Jack turned and embraced his brother.
"We did it," David said, sounding stunned.
"We did." Jack was moved to be flowery, even as his smile shaded toward sardonic. "A new day dawns in Gilboa, one of promise and freedom."
* * *
God had been on their side, but Jack fancied it was their hope for justice and their forgiveness of past transgressions that had won the field.
Now to reunite with family long separated, and begin David's reign.
Jack wasn't sure what he would do, other than hold his daughter for the first time and make sure she always felt able to choose her own path.
That would be the most satisfying and lasting victory of all.
-end-
Notes: Title from Ecclesiastes 3, of course. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."