Without Borders (Kel x Aly)
Fandom: Tamora Pierce's Tortall.
Pairing: Keladry of Mindelan x Alianne Crow.
Theme set: Epsilon.
Disclaimer: Fair use. Not for profit.
Rating: PG-13.
Without Borders
#01 - Motion
Kel watches as Aly swirls across the dance-floor with each changing partner, wishing that she could, like her husband, be glad in the certainty that she would go home with no one but him (however false that certainty is).
#02 - Cool
Summer in Rajmuat is almost unbearable, and when Aly quickly elects to introduce Kel to her favorite relief, they spend hours a day lounging together in the cool bathwater.
#03 - Young
Though she is, in fact, three years her senior, Aly can’t help but think of Kel as the younger, and Kel berates her with a blank, offended face.
#04 - Last
Kel comes to her office with a basket of the last mangoes of the season, and they share them, oblivious to their sticky fingers and mouths.
#05 - Wrong
When she watches Aly and her husband play with their children on the grass, or in the water fountains, Kel knows how wrong what they’re doing is; at all other times she manages to push it down into the farthest corner of her mind.
#06 - Gentle
Their first time together, Aly touches Kel with slow, gentle fingers; only weeks later does she confess that she’d never been with a woman before, either.
#07 - One
Once she thought one day would be enough, would be plenty, but as time passes, Aly gobbles her hours with Kel as they come, yet always wanting more.
#08 - Thousand
There are a thousand times when they might have been caught, and might still be, and Kel dreads them even as she suspects that Aly relishes the danger.
#09 - King
The Copper Isles have no king, and Kel wonders if they ever will, when she catches the Queen’s wayward glances at her comely spy-mistress.
#10 - Learn
They learn to be quiet, when time runs short and their liaisons are confined to one or the other’s office, locked, but surrounded with curious ears.
#11 - Blur
Aly’s vision grows blurry, and Kel urges her to see a healer, mentally cursing at her lover’s intolerable stubbornness.
#12 - Wait
The triplets are five, and some days are harder than others; Aly knows that she keeps more than her work waiting for her, when they take up all her time.
#13 - Change
One of Aly’s constant worries is that the luarin will not adjust to the change of regime, and revolt against it; she says she’s read too many history books and Kel sighs when her shifting and turning in bed wakes her up, yet again.
#14 - Command
When Aly learns that Kel was offered the command of the King’s Own as incentive to return, she can’t decide whether she should ask Kel about it, or not.
#15 - Hold
She has a hold on her; otherwise she would have returned when her nomination to the ambassador’s office expired.
#16 - Need
On balmy nights, when she lies alone in bed, Kel stifles the urge to scream at those children that she needs their mother just as much as they do.
#17 - Vision
Aly’s eyes have deteriorated, and Kel finds this out through the gossip of her maid, who heard a laundress tell a junior cook that she saw the Captain’s wife at the healer’s wing, in front of Master Ysul’s door.
#18 - Attention
Eventually, the clerks pay no mind when the stranger visits their duani in her office, in the afternoons, nor when duani locks the door behind them.
#19 - Soul
There is an old raka legend about a demon that eats corrupted souls, and Aly is startled when she hears Chenaol relate it to the children, describing the crimes of the tarnished in gratuitous detail.
#20 - Picture
Aly shows Kel the royal portraits, lingering in front of a picture of two yellow-haired girls, the previous queen and her half-sister, half-cousin, the woman whom Aly says her mother killed.
#21 - Fool
Her letters to Neal mention a friendship with the daughter of his former knight-mistress, her former idol, but when she writes to Yuki, she describes their trysts more truthfully, knowing what her old friend’s response will be before the letter is even sealed.
#22 - Mad
Rumor spreads quickly that the Captain of the Royal Guard is angry with his wife, and she is bedding in the palace’s guest wing, at least officially.
#23 - Child
A few days after Aly moves back into her home, Taybur finds her knocking on his door in tears; she is with child, and he can’t understand why this upsets her so.
#24 - Now
This is the time when Aly is most constrained, with everyone making demands on her, from her husband, still half-estranged, to her three children, unbearably jealous of their unborn sibling; the more she thinks of it, the more she despairs of ever having a moment to herself.
#25 - Shadow
Aly throws caution to the wind when she pulls Kel into a shadowed corner of the ballroom and kisses her hard, hoping against hope that her visible belly won’t drive the other woman away.
#26 - Goodbye
Her last letter to her brother never reaches him; when her spies bring word of Anders of Mindelan’s death, Aly wraps her arms around Kel, and Kel lets her think it helps.
#27 - Hide
She plays hide and seek with the children, invariably caught when the baby boy tied to her back starts wailing, and thinking all the while that perhaps they’ve forgiven her, even if their father has not.
#28 - Fortune
The Queen has made her wealthy with salary and land grants, just as King Jonathan had her parents, and so Aly casually brushes away Kel’s comments about her amazing luck.
#29 - Safe
Aly teases Kel about her title - which Kel privately feels is pompous and unearned - saying she feels even safer with the Protector’s arms around her, to which Kel responds that she is not so small.
#30 - Ghost
Sometimes Aly cannot sleep, and Kel says there are yurei haunting her, the vindictive spirits of the dead; Aly balks, and once slips up and says, they were only children.
#31 - Book
Nuritin and Winnamine are writing a history of the rebellion, and Aly requests that Dove order them to leave her name out of it; that night, she asks Kel if any histories were written about her role in ending the Scanran war.
#32 - Eye
Rumor in Rajmuat has it that the Queen’s Eye misses nothing, and sometimes Kel thinks she can feel that eye on her, and wonders whether anyone can have access to that much information, and not use it ill, once or twice.
#33 - Never
Kel hasn’t said she will never leave the Isles, but Aly has inferred it, and is glad.
#34 - Sing
Ulasu sings a hymn on the tenth anniversary of Queen Dovasary’s coronation, and Kel watches Aly watch her, her face warm with pride in her little daughter (and Kel thinks she has never looked so beautiful before).
#35 - Sudden
There are days when she is not in her office, she leaves without warning, and Kel has learned to recognize in the clerks’ faces when such a day comes.
#36 - Stop
Kel carefully never asks Aly when she will divorce her husband; instinct tells her she would dislike the answer.
#37 - Time
Past midnight, Junim and Ochobai are still awake, two stubborn ten-year-olds whose raucous play wakes their little brother from his sleep, drives their father to the barracks to drink with his soldier friends and makes their mother wonder why she had children at all.
#38 - Wash
Aly is never more at peace than when they are together in the warm water, and she lets Kel wash her hair.
#39 - Torn
Anyone who knows her says Kel is the most staid person they’ve met, except Aly, who doesn’t bother sending her ripped sarongs to be mended, for fear of provoking the palace tailors’ suspicions.
#40 - History
Once again Nawat has had enough, and once again Aly sneaks out of the window of Kel’s bedroom in the black pre-dawn, and Kel remembers what Lord Raoul said once about history repeating itself, wondering if she will ever learn.
#41 - Power
Shortly before the Queen celebrates her twelfth year of reign, Kel finds Aly wandering the gardens, still a little dazed from the god’s visit and vehement reprimand that this queen must not be his last.
#42 - Bother
For weeks, Kel dares not bother Aly, who is holed up in her office, reading endless reports of raka notables, most marriageable first.
#43 - God
He visits her now as regularly as he did during the rebellion, but she’s afraid of him now as she never was then.
#44 - Wall
The bumps in the wall chafe her back, but she hardly minds, hardly wonders what has prompted Kel’s sudden, forward kisses.
#45 - Naked
Kel trails a finger down Aly’s bare back, afraid to ask why her lover no longer confides in her.
#46 - Drive
Though she is the queen’s closest confidante, Aly doesn’t ride in the royal chariot, with the duchesses and Princess Petranne; in a way, she rather prefers riding alongside the officers in the open air, with a clear view of the crowd from the height of her bronze stallion.
#47 - Harm
Selym cries and the triplets scream and Aly wonders, not for the first time, how badly their rapidly crumbling marriage hurts the children.
#48 - Precious
She lives off of an allowance that Inness sends her, twice a year, and the young raka women who sometimes come to her house to learn self defense, but Kel has given up more than gold in leaving Tortall, and she knows it; she has given up her calling.
#49 - Hunger
In the rare night when Nawat reaches over to touch her, Aly doesn’t find it in herself to deny him, although he probably knows whose kisses she really craves.
#50 - Believe
For all the hardship, the fights, the loss and strife, they both believe themselves better with each other than without.
Pairing: Keladry of Mindelan x Alianne Crow.
Theme set: Epsilon.
Disclaimer: Fair use. Not for profit.
Rating: PG-13.
Without Borders
#01 - Motion
Kel watches as Aly swirls across the dance-floor with each changing partner, wishing that she could, like her husband, be glad in the certainty that she would go home with no one but him (however false that certainty is).
#02 - Cool
Summer in Rajmuat is almost unbearable, and when Aly quickly elects to introduce Kel to her favorite relief, they spend hours a day lounging together in the cool bathwater.
#03 - Young
Though she is, in fact, three years her senior, Aly can’t help but think of Kel as the younger, and Kel berates her with a blank, offended face.
#04 - Last
Kel comes to her office with a basket of the last mangoes of the season, and they share them, oblivious to their sticky fingers and mouths.
#05 - Wrong
When she watches Aly and her husband play with their children on the grass, or in the water fountains, Kel knows how wrong what they’re doing is; at all other times she manages to push it down into the farthest corner of her mind.
#06 - Gentle
Their first time together, Aly touches Kel with slow, gentle fingers; only weeks later does she confess that she’d never been with a woman before, either.
#07 - One
Once she thought one day would be enough, would be plenty, but as time passes, Aly gobbles her hours with Kel as they come, yet always wanting more.
#08 - Thousand
There are a thousand times when they might have been caught, and might still be, and Kel dreads them even as she suspects that Aly relishes the danger.
#09 - King
The Copper Isles have no king, and Kel wonders if they ever will, when she catches the Queen’s wayward glances at her comely spy-mistress.
#10 - Learn
They learn to be quiet, when time runs short and their liaisons are confined to one or the other’s office, locked, but surrounded with curious ears.
#11 - Blur
Aly’s vision grows blurry, and Kel urges her to see a healer, mentally cursing at her lover’s intolerable stubbornness.
#12 - Wait
The triplets are five, and some days are harder than others; Aly knows that she keeps more than her work waiting for her, when they take up all her time.
#13 - Change
One of Aly’s constant worries is that the luarin will not adjust to the change of regime, and revolt against it; she says she’s read too many history books and Kel sighs when her shifting and turning in bed wakes her up, yet again.
#14 - Command
When Aly learns that Kel was offered the command of the King’s Own as incentive to return, she can’t decide whether she should ask Kel about it, or not.
#15 - Hold
She has a hold on her; otherwise she would have returned when her nomination to the ambassador’s office expired.
#16 - Need
On balmy nights, when she lies alone in bed, Kel stifles the urge to scream at those children that she needs their mother just as much as they do.
#17 - Vision
Aly’s eyes have deteriorated, and Kel finds this out through the gossip of her maid, who heard a laundress tell a junior cook that she saw the Captain’s wife at the healer’s wing, in front of Master Ysul’s door.
#18 - Attention
Eventually, the clerks pay no mind when the stranger visits their duani in her office, in the afternoons, nor when duani locks the door behind them.
#19 - Soul
There is an old raka legend about a demon that eats corrupted souls, and Aly is startled when she hears Chenaol relate it to the children, describing the crimes of the tarnished in gratuitous detail.
#20 - Picture
Aly shows Kel the royal portraits, lingering in front of a picture of two yellow-haired girls, the previous queen and her half-sister, half-cousin, the woman whom Aly says her mother killed.
#21 - Fool
Her letters to Neal mention a friendship with the daughter of his former knight-mistress, her former idol, but when she writes to Yuki, she describes their trysts more truthfully, knowing what her old friend’s response will be before the letter is even sealed.
#22 - Mad
Rumor spreads quickly that the Captain of the Royal Guard is angry with his wife, and she is bedding in the palace’s guest wing, at least officially.
#23 - Child
A few days after Aly moves back into her home, Taybur finds her knocking on his door in tears; she is with child, and he can’t understand why this upsets her so.
#24 - Now
This is the time when Aly is most constrained, with everyone making demands on her, from her husband, still half-estranged, to her three children, unbearably jealous of their unborn sibling; the more she thinks of it, the more she despairs of ever having a moment to herself.
#25 - Shadow
Aly throws caution to the wind when she pulls Kel into a shadowed corner of the ballroom and kisses her hard, hoping against hope that her visible belly won’t drive the other woman away.
#26 - Goodbye
Her last letter to her brother never reaches him; when her spies bring word of Anders of Mindelan’s death, Aly wraps her arms around Kel, and Kel lets her think it helps.
#27 - Hide
She plays hide and seek with the children, invariably caught when the baby boy tied to her back starts wailing, and thinking all the while that perhaps they’ve forgiven her, even if their father has not.
#28 - Fortune
The Queen has made her wealthy with salary and land grants, just as King Jonathan had her parents, and so Aly casually brushes away Kel’s comments about her amazing luck.
#29 - Safe
Aly teases Kel about her title - which Kel privately feels is pompous and unearned - saying she feels even safer with the Protector’s arms around her, to which Kel responds that she is not so small.
#30 - Ghost
Sometimes Aly cannot sleep, and Kel says there are yurei haunting her, the vindictive spirits of the dead; Aly balks, and once slips up and says, they were only children.
#31 - Book
Nuritin and Winnamine are writing a history of the rebellion, and Aly requests that Dove order them to leave her name out of it; that night, she asks Kel if any histories were written about her role in ending the Scanran war.
#32 - Eye
Rumor in Rajmuat has it that the Queen’s Eye misses nothing, and sometimes Kel thinks she can feel that eye on her, and wonders whether anyone can have access to that much information, and not use it ill, once or twice.
#33 - Never
Kel hasn’t said she will never leave the Isles, but Aly has inferred it, and is glad.
#34 - Sing
Ulasu sings a hymn on the tenth anniversary of Queen Dovasary’s coronation, and Kel watches Aly watch her, her face warm with pride in her little daughter (and Kel thinks she has never looked so beautiful before).
#35 - Sudden
There are days when she is not in her office, she leaves without warning, and Kel has learned to recognize in the clerks’ faces when such a day comes.
#36 - Stop
Kel carefully never asks Aly when she will divorce her husband; instinct tells her she would dislike the answer.
#37 - Time
Past midnight, Junim and Ochobai are still awake, two stubborn ten-year-olds whose raucous play wakes their little brother from his sleep, drives their father to the barracks to drink with his soldier friends and makes their mother wonder why she had children at all.
#38 - Wash
Aly is never more at peace than when they are together in the warm water, and she lets Kel wash her hair.
#39 - Torn
Anyone who knows her says Kel is the most staid person they’ve met, except Aly, who doesn’t bother sending her ripped sarongs to be mended, for fear of provoking the palace tailors’ suspicions.
#40 - History
Once again Nawat has had enough, and once again Aly sneaks out of the window of Kel’s bedroom in the black pre-dawn, and Kel remembers what Lord Raoul said once about history repeating itself, wondering if she will ever learn.
#41 - Power
Shortly before the Queen celebrates her twelfth year of reign, Kel finds Aly wandering the gardens, still a little dazed from the god’s visit and vehement reprimand that this queen must not be his last.
#42 - Bother
For weeks, Kel dares not bother Aly, who is holed up in her office, reading endless reports of raka notables, most marriageable first.
#43 - God
He visits her now as regularly as he did during the rebellion, but she’s afraid of him now as she never was then.
#44 - Wall
The bumps in the wall chafe her back, but she hardly minds, hardly wonders what has prompted Kel’s sudden, forward kisses.
#45 - Naked
Kel trails a finger down Aly’s bare back, afraid to ask why her lover no longer confides in her.
#46 - Drive
Though she is the queen’s closest confidante, Aly doesn’t ride in the royal chariot, with the duchesses and Princess Petranne; in a way, she rather prefers riding alongside the officers in the open air, with a clear view of the crowd from the height of her bronze stallion.
#47 - Harm
Selym cries and the triplets scream and Aly wonders, not for the first time, how badly their rapidly crumbling marriage hurts the children.
#48 - Precious
She lives off of an allowance that Inness sends her, twice a year, and the young raka women who sometimes come to her house to learn self defense, but Kel has given up more than gold in leaving Tortall, and she knows it; she has given up her calling.
#49 - Hunger
In the rare night when Nawat reaches over to touch her, Aly doesn’t find it in herself to deny him, although he probably knows whose kisses she really craves.
#50 - Believe
For all the hardship, the fights, the loss and strife, they both believe themselves better with each other than without.