[Wild Roses] Some Kind of Love Song
Title: shared memories
'Verse/characters: Some Kind of Love Song; Arianhrod, Ulysse
Prompt: 11B "love", 'one thread working loose from intricate embroidery' (klgaffney), 'green tea' (billradish)
Word Count: 477
I would have preferred not to have that conversation. Certainly not with the man who had introduced to my husband, too many years ago.
I might have been able to cope with my little brother, my mother, even--Winter forbid--my uncle or my father, but not Ulysse, who came to me one fall morning with a pot of tea cupped in his hands against the chill, and asked without words if he could sit with me.
We sat in silence for a while, before he looked at me sidelong, then away, towards some distant shore.
"Who is he?" he asked, and I flinched, which made him flinch, too. "I mean no insult," he said quickly, and did not say any variation of my name aloud, though my brother's name for me hovered over us for a moment, "but you seem . . easier, than you have been."
I looked away, trying to keep myself from crying, and I could hear him moving before a long thigh brushed against mine and a gentle hand settled me against his side, my head cradled against his shoulder. He smelled, as always, of the water, salt and fresh both, and of tea, ship wood and whatever soap they were using in the camps right now. A thread of the embroidery on his shirt had worked loose, tickling my cheek.
"I miss him too," he told me softly, my husband's grin flashing briefly before both our eyes, the wicked smile he'd introduced himself with, in sunnier times. "I think he would have wanted you with someone, long before now."
I coughed a choked-up laugh. "You know me. Can't let go."
His arm squeezed me into his side for a moment, nowhere near hard enough to hurt me. "Aria, I--"
"Please," I said, and he left his thought as unfinished as my own.
Some time later, I took a breath, admitted "I'm scared."
"Of forgetting him?" he asked, conversational thumb laid directly over one of my terrors, and I remembered, again, why he was so very dangerous. Blood of my mother he might not be, but Winter he was her son as much as I was her daughter.
"Half the time I'm picturing Madeleine's smile instead of his, these days," I replied, non-answer that was an answer, too. "I know the things he loved, but he's been gone so very long--"
"Aria," he interrupted me, and to my shame I hiccuped as I closed my mouth.
"Aria, he loved you enough to wish you happiness. Don't hide from that."
I buried my face in his shoulder and wept. That thrice-cursed fox was tearing off my scabs, pulling down the spiderwebs I'd wrapped around myself, and it hurt, so badly, because it would have to end, someday, one way or another.
My brother pet my back, his tea somewhere, and hummed me a hoarse bass lullaby while I cried.
'Verse/characters: Some Kind of Love Song; Arianhrod, Ulysse
Prompt: 11B "love", 'one thread working loose from intricate embroidery' (klgaffney), 'green tea' (billradish)
Word Count: 477
I would have preferred not to have that conversation. Certainly not with the man who had introduced to my husband, too many years ago.
I might have been able to cope with my little brother, my mother, even--Winter forbid--my uncle or my father, but not Ulysse, who came to me one fall morning with a pot of tea cupped in his hands against the chill, and asked without words if he could sit with me.
We sat in silence for a while, before he looked at me sidelong, then away, towards some distant shore.
"Who is he?" he asked, and I flinched, which made him flinch, too. "I mean no insult," he said quickly, and did not say any variation of my name aloud, though my brother's name for me hovered over us for a moment, "but you seem . . easier, than you have been."
I looked away, trying to keep myself from crying, and I could hear him moving before a long thigh brushed against mine and a gentle hand settled me against his side, my head cradled against his shoulder. He smelled, as always, of the water, salt and fresh both, and of tea, ship wood and whatever soap they were using in the camps right now. A thread of the embroidery on his shirt had worked loose, tickling my cheek.
"I miss him too," he told me softly, my husband's grin flashing briefly before both our eyes, the wicked smile he'd introduced himself with, in sunnier times. "I think he would have wanted you with someone, long before now."
I coughed a choked-up laugh. "You know me. Can't let go."
His arm squeezed me into his side for a moment, nowhere near hard enough to hurt me. "Aria, I--"
"Please," I said, and he left his thought as unfinished as my own.
Some time later, I took a breath, admitted "I'm scared."
"Of forgetting him?" he asked, conversational thumb laid directly over one of my terrors, and I remembered, again, why he was so very dangerous. Blood of my mother he might not be, but Winter he was her son as much as I was her daughter.
"Half the time I'm picturing Madeleine's smile instead of his, these days," I replied, non-answer that was an answer, too. "I know the things he loved, but he's been gone so very long--"
"Aria," he interrupted me, and to my shame I hiccuped as I closed my mouth.
"Aria, he loved you enough to wish you happiness. Don't hide from that."
I buried my face in his shoulder and wept. That thrice-cursed fox was tearing off my scabs, pulling down the spiderwebs I'd wrapped around myself, and it hurt, so badly, because it would have to end, someday, one way or another.
My brother pet my back, his tea somewhere, and hummed me a hoarse bass lullaby while I cried.