signy1
in
tinman_fic
To Me A Kingdom, 3/?
Title: To Me A Kingdom
Author: Signy
Characters: Glitch, Azkadellia
Pairing: none
Warning: none.
Summary: Forgiving someone who hurt you isn’t always easy. Forgiving yourself isn’t always possible. Glitch and Az have a lot to talk about.
Disclaimer: These characters are not my property.
Notes: The myths discussed in this chapter are drawn from some of the later Oz books.
Previous chapters:
One: http://community.livejournal.com/tinman_fic/108716.html
Two: http://community.livejournal.com/tinman_fic/124535.html
The problem with finding people in castles, Glitch mused, was that there were so many places it was possible for a person to be that narrowing it down to the one single place he or she actually was could be a tad tricky. And that didn’t even take into account the fact that they might have moved from the place they were to another place in the time it took someone to check someplace else.
Nonetheless, the moment he set to climbing the stairs that led to the topmost tower, something deep inside of him relaxed minutely. This was correct. This was where he was supposed to be.
When, at last, he arrived at the terraced roof of the topmost tower, he knew he’d been right to trust his gut; Azkadellia was standing at the very edge of the roof. This wasn’t actually as dangerous as it sounded; sturdy railings had been installed some centuries ago and had been kept in perfect repair ever since. This tower was one of the oldest parts of the castle, and had served, in its time, as a lookout, a garden, a prison, a hermitage, a shrine, a magic circle, and probably a half-dozen other things not considered worthy of an official record. It had also been the site of more dolls’ tea parties than Glitch (or, he suspected, even Ambrose,) could recall. Azkadellia had always loved the view from the heights.
“Are you watching the sunset?” he asked.
“It’s over now,” Azkadellia said, not turning. “It was beautiful.”
“Well, at least the stars are coming out,” he said, moving to stand beside her at the rail, careful not to look down. “I like watching the stars.”
“I know,” she said. “When I was very small, if I had trouble sleeping, you’d bring me up here and we’d watch the stars together. You told me such wonderful stories about all the constellations. I remember thinking you were making them all up as you went along; it wasn’t until annuals later I found them in books and realized that you hadn’t made them up after all.”
“Were you disappointed?”
“Of course not. Although… I will say that you told the stories better than the books ever did. The books were a bit disappointing, in comparison.”
He grinned. “High praise.” One by one, the stars had appeared around them. He pointed at a particularly bright one. “That’s the Pole Star, right?”
She peered at it. “No. I don’t know what that one is, but the Pole Star is in Quox, the Dragon constellation. Over there, see?” She pointed. “The Pole Star is at the very tip. The story goes that the dragon had a light in the very tip of his tail, so that he could always find his way, wherever he was going.” She paused, then went on. “There’s more to the story; he lived in a faraway country, all the way around on the other side of the earth, so that the only way to get there was to fall though a tunnel that went from one side of the world to the other, and that everyone in that country was a king, or a queen, or a princess. And there was a Slipper in the tale, too-not the first Gale; another one. It’s a very complicated legend.”
“And is that one of the ones I told you?”
She smiled a bit. “Of course. Except that when you told it, you would do all the voices. You had a wonderful dragon-growl.”
He actually chuckled at that. “Well, that’s a good talent to have, I guess.” His neck began to complain, and he rubbed it. “It’s hard to believe we managed to get through that whole long legend-with the voices-without doing both of our spines permanent damage, though. I’m getting a crick in my neck already.”
“Oh, well, as to that,” Azkadellia said, a hint of mischief in her eyes, “we weren’t standing up like this. After all, the whole point was to get me to go to sleep. We would lie down and look straight up. Much easier that way.” Suiting the action to the word, she knelt and began lying down.
“Hey, don’t do that, Az,” Glitch half-scolded, exactly the way Ambrose- her informal, big-brotherly, adored Ambrose-would have. He slid out of his long coat and spread it on the ground, exactly the way he always had. “The ground gets cold at night. Are you trying to make yourself sick? Here. Try that.”
She shifted her position, and stretched herself out onto the jacket. It felt very much as it always had, except that she was a bit taller than he, now, and the coat was no longer enough to keep all of her safe and off the ground. She nestled her head into the collar, anyway, and set her teeth against a swarm of memories.
Glitch folded himself gracefully to the cold ground beside her, apparently not too worried about getting sick himself. His head-as always-was pillowed on the sleeve of his jacket, just a few inches to the right of her own, and the rest of him pointed off in the opposite direction. She turned her head to look at him; he was staring dreamily at the sky, and even upside-down he looked peaceful. He noticed her watching him after a moment, and he grinned. “You were right,” he said. “This is much better. Though I bet we used to remember to bring a couple of blankets.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “But you would always wrap me up in your jacket, anyway. It… it made me feel safe.”
He nodded, and they were quiet for a while. “You said that one was Quox, right?” He pointed. “So that one over there… the U-shaped one… don’t tell me. That’s the, uh… wait, I’ll get it… it’s the, uh… the, uh…”
“The Love Magnet,” she finished. “You do remember. That was my favorite story of all. I must have made you tell it to me a hundred times.”
“Will you tell it to me, then?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said automatically, then hesitated. “Well… it was ever and ever so long ago,” she began.
“Don’t forget to do the voices,” Glitch teased.
She almost laughed at that. “All right,” she promised, most of the quaver gone from her voice, which made him happy. He settled in to listen. “It was ever and ever so long ago, in a little town on the Other Side,” she started again. “In that little town, there lived a very sad young lady, and the reason she was sad was that nobody really loved her. She had no parents, and no sisters or brothers or sweethearts or friends, and the only thing she really wanted in the world was for someone to love, and to love her. But nobody did.
“One day she happened to meet a good witch. Because, you see, there are a few, even on the Other Side, but generally they don’t like for anyone to know about their magic. So the sad young lady didn’t know that the witch was anything more than an ordinary old lady, and they had a cup of tea together and chatted about the weather and cookie recipes and such things.
“With one thing and another, the sorceress realized how lonely and sad the young lady was, and that she deserved better. So she gave her a present, a little silver magnet in the shape of a horseshoe, and she told her that it would change her luck. Then the good witch finished her tea and said goodbye, because she was a very busy person and had a great many things to do that day.
“Well. From that moment on, the sad lady seemed to make a new friend every time she peeked out of her door. Everyone in town suddenly seemed to want to be her friend, and they kept coming to her house to invite her to parties and teas, and to tell her that she was the most wonderful person they’d ever met.
“And every young man in town fell head over heels in love with her at once. If she happened to walk down the street, she was sure to have to tell at least five different men that she didn’t want to marry them, at least not yet. Sometimes she wouldn’t even know their names before she had to gracefully decline their proposals, and that was always a bit embarrassing.
“You’d think she would be happy with all the attention she was getting, but nothing could be further from the truth. It didn’t take her long to realize that the little magnet the witch had given her was magic, and that it was the reason that everybody suddenly loved her. And that only made her sadder than ever. It wasn’t real love; it was only magic love. False love. She started crying every time somebody so much as gave her a bouquet, and she got a lot of bouquets.
“About that time, a Slipper came through town. He was a wise, gentle old man, who had seen magic before and understood what it could do. He saw how unhappy the magnet was making the poor girl, and he knew what he had to do. Even though the spell was working on him, too, and he immediately felt like he loved her, he knew that love means wanting to make the person you love happy, and that the only way for her ever to be happy again was to get that magnet away from her.
“So he stole it one day when she wasn’t looking, and the very moment he’d done it, the spell changed. Now everyone in town loved him, instead. All except for one shy young man. He hadn’t needed the magic magnet to fall in love with the lonely young lady, and he didn’t stop loving her once the magnet was gone. If anything, he loved her even more than he ever had before, which was saying something. They were married soon afterwards, and neither of them was ever lonely ever again.
“And as for the Slipper, he didn’t particularly want it either. So he brought the magnet with him to the O.Z. the next time he wandered that way, and he offered it to the Queen, because, as he said, everybody already loved her, and so owning the magnet wouldn’t make any real difference to her.
“But the Queen had a better idea. She used her magic to put the magnet into the stars, so that forever, from that day to this, and into all our tomorrows, every time the people of the O.Z. looked up at the sky, they would all see the magnet, and feel loving and loved.”
“That’s a nice story, too,” Glitch said, after a while.
“I always thought so,” Azkadellia replied. Then, before she could lose her nerve, she went on. “DG told me,” she said flatly. “About Raynz.”
“Oh,” Glitch said. “That. Yeah. That’s a heck of a thing, huh?”
“Ambrose,” she said, cutting him off mid-ramble. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I have to apologize. I am so, so sorry for what I did to you.”
“Don’t, Az,” he said. “Just… don’t. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault, any of it-I mean, I’m still smart enough to know the difference between you and the Witch, and of the two, you’re not the one who has anything to feel bad about.”
“I was still in there with her, and I should have done something. I should have stopped her, somehow-I should have died before I let her do what she did,” Azkadellia got out. “I destroyed you, and I killed DG, and oh, gods, so many others. I remember all of them, and I didn’t stop any of it! How can you just forgive me like that? I don’t deserve to be forgiven-I didn’t stop her! I didn’t stop any of it!” She was crying now, choking on the self-loathing. “Why didn’t I stop her?”
Glitch was sitting bolt upright, now, and had twisted to face her. “No, Az! Don’t say that. Don’t even think that! Oh, Az. Shh. Here.” He put his arms around her, and scooped her neatly into his embrace, just as if she were still the little girl she knew he could no longer really remember.
And just as though she really were still that little girl, she flung her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder, soaking the thin linen of his shirt, until the tears slowed and stopped of their own accord, a thing she hadn’t let herself do since the eclipse, and that the Witch hadn’t let her do for all the annuals before that. She was more than a little amazed to realize how much better she felt as the tears receded, and she let herself rest on his shoulder for just a few moments more, almost afraid of what would happen once she raised her head.
“That’s my girl,” Glitch said quietly, as she got herself back under control and straightened. “Feeling better?”
She nodded.
“You know, Az,” he continued, “we were both different people back then. It was a long time ago, and we’re both different. Azkadellia isn’t the Witch, and Glitch isn’t Ambrose. We could just start over, you see.”
She didn’t say anything, but her face, even illuminated only by moonlight, made it fairly clear that that wasn’t an option.
“Or else,” he continued, “we could compromise. I don’t forgive the Witch, and I don’t think she deserves forgiveness, and I bet Ambrose-and Azkadellia-would agree. Right? Right. I don’t think Azkadellia has anything she needs to be forgiven for, but you don’t agree, and we don’t have a viewer here to ask Ambrose. So. I will forgive you for what she did to him, and then we can all go on from there and stop worrying about it. Would that work?”
“That’s too easy,” Azkadellia objected. “It can’t be that easy.”
“I’m sick of things not being easy,” he said, with a hint of anger, for the first time, in his voice. “Nothing is easy. Waking up in the morning and remembering my name isn’t easy. Just for once-good gods, just once-can’t we let things be easy? Make them be easy?”
“No!” she cried. “I can’t just forget.”
“It’s my brain in that jar, Az,” he shot back. “Mine. It was me this happened to. If I can forgive and forget, why can’t you?”
There was a very long silence.
“You may forgive me,” she whispered, “but Ambrose won’t.”
He thought about that. “If Ambrose is the sort of person who would hold a grudge over things you couldn’t help-and we both know you couldn’t-then I’m not all that sure he’s the sort of person I’d want to be. He sounds like a real jerk, in fact. Did he hold grudges?”
“No,” she admitted, unwillingly. “But he ought to.”
“But he wouldn’t. And I don’t. So…?”
“That just makes it worse,” she said, finally.
“All I want is for you to stop being so sad, Az,” he said plaintively. “I don’t want to be someone who makes you feel guilty and miserable every time I walk in the room. I can’t do that to you, Az. I’ve known you for… a long time, haven’t I? I think so. And I care about you. I know I do. I just want you to be happy again. Can’t you let me do that much, at least?”
It wasn’t fair, Az thought vaguely. None of it was fair. It wasn’t fair that he’d suffered what he had; it was even less fair that she was making him suffer more by her inability to accept his forgiveness. Proof-as if more proof were needed-that there was something structurally wrong inside her, somewhere. DG would have argued the point, but DG was biased. Ambrose was arguing it, too, but he was simply wrong.
She’d never proved him wrong before, and not-as a child-for lack of trying, either. It was a hollow triumph.
She didn’t realize that she’d forgotten to answer him until he spoke again, his face etched with the same painful defeat that had driven her from the Council table. “You came up here to be alone, didn’t you?” he asked gently. “Would it help if I left?”
She managed to nod.
He sighed, almost inaudibly, then, in one graceful motion, was on his feet. She was still sitting, frozen, on the skirt of his coat, a fact she didn’t notice until he bent over, picked up the coat by the collar, and draped the top half of the jacket over her shoulders. Without touching her. “Stay warm,” he said, and walked briskly to the door.
She heard him start the lengthy journey down the stairs, and she might have wept again if there had been any tears left in her. Instead she sat very still, holding the sleeves around her in an empty approximation of an embrace that gave no comfort, and stared sightlessly at the endless expanse of uncaring stars.
Author: Signy
Characters: Glitch, Azkadellia
Pairing: none
Warning: none.
Summary: Forgiving someone who hurt you isn’t always easy. Forgiving yourself isn’t always possible. Glitch and Az have a lot to talk about.
Disclaimer: These characters are not my property.
Notes: The myths discussed in this chapter are drawn from some of the later Oz books.
Previous chapters:
One: http://community.livejournal.com/tinman_fic/108716.html
Two: http://community.livejournal.com/tinman_fic/124535.html
The problem with finding people in castles, Glitch mused, was that there were so many places it was possible for a person to be that narrowing it down to the one single place he or she actually was could be a tad tricky. And that didn’t even take into account the fact that they might have moved from the place they were to another place in the time it took someone to check someplace else.
Nonetheless, the moment he set to climbing the stairs that led to the topmost tower, something deep inside of him relaxed minutely. This was correct. This was where he was supposed to be.
When, at last, he arrived at the terraced roof of the topmost tower, he knew he’d been right to trust his gut; Azkadellia was standing at the very edge of the roof. This wasn’t actually as dangerous as it sounded; sturdy railings had been installed some centuries ago and had been kept in perfect repair ever since. This tower was one of the oldest parts of the castle, and had served, in its time, as a lookout, a garden, a prison, a hermitage, a shrine, a magic circle, and probably a half-dozen other things not considered worthy of an official record. It had also been the site of more dolls’ tea parties than Glitch (or, he suspected, even Ambrose,) could recall. Azkadellia had always loved the view from the heights.
“Are you watching the sunset?” he asked.
“It’s over now,” Azkadellia said, not turning. “It was beautiful.”
“Well, at least the stars are coming out,” he said, moving to stand beside her at the rail, careful not to look down. “I like watching the stars.”
“I know,” she said. “When I was very small, if I had trouble sleeping, you’d bring me up here and we’d watch the stars together. You told me such wonderful stories about all the constellations. I remember thinking you were making them all up as you went along; it wasn’t until annuals later I found them in books and realized that you hadn’t made them up after all.”
“Were you disappointed?”
“Of course not. Although… I will say that you told the stories better than the books ever did. The books were a bit disappointing, in comparison.”
He grinned. “High praise.” One by one, the stars had appeared around them. He pointed at a particularly bright one. “That’s the Pole Star, right?”
She peered at it. “No. I don’t know what that one is, but the Pole Star is in Quox, the Dragon constellation. Over there, see?” She pointed. “The Pole Star is at the very tip. The story goes that the dragon had a light in the very tip of his tail, so that he could always find his way, wherever he was going.” She paused, then went on. “There’s more to the story; he lived in a faraway country, all the way around on the other side of the earth, so that the only way to get there was to fall though a tunnel that went from one side of the world to the other, and that everyone in that country was a king, or a queen, or a princess. And there was a Slipper in the tale, too-not the first Gale; another one. It’s a very complicated legend.”
“And is that one of the ones I told you?”
She smiled a bit. “Of course. Except that when you told it, you would do all the voices. You had a wonderful dragon-growl.”
He actually chuckled at that. “Well, that’s a good talent to have, I guess.” His neck began to complain, and he rubbed it. “It’s hard to believe we managed to get through that whole long legend-with the voices-without doing both of our spines permanent damage, though. I’m getting a crick in my neck already.”
“Oh, well, as to that,” Azkadellia said, a hint of mischief in her eyes, “we weren’t standing up like this. After all, the whole point was to get me to go to sleep. We would lie down and look straight up. Much easier that way.” Suiting the action to the word, she knelt and began lying down.
“Hey, don’t do that, Az,” Glitch half-scolded, exactly the way Ambrose- her informal, big-brotherly, adored Ambrose-would have. He slid out of his long coat and spread it on the ground, exactly the way he always had. “The ground gets cold at night. Are you trying to make yourself sick? Here. Try that.”
She shifted her position, and stretched herself out onto the jacket. It felt very much as it always had, except that she was a bit taller than he, now, and the coat was no longer enough to keep all of her safe and off the ground. She nestled her head into the collar, anyway, and set her teeth against a swarm of memories.
Glitch folded himself gracefully to the cold ground beside her, apparently not too worried about getting sick himself. His head-as always-was pillowed on the sleeve of his jacket, just a few inches to the right of her own, and the rest of him pointed off in the opposite direction. She turned her head to look at him; he was staring dreamily at the sky, and even upside-down he looked peaceful. He noticed her watching him after a moment, and he grinned. “You were right,” he said. “This is much better. Though I bet we used to remember to bring a couple of blankets.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “But you would always wrap me up in your jacket, anyway. It… it made me feel safe.”
He nodded, and they were quiet for a while. “You said that one was Quox, right?” He pointed. “So that one over there… the U-shaped one… don’t tell me. That’s the, uh… wait, I’ll get it… it’s the, uh… the, uh…”
“The Love Magnet,” she finished. “You do remember. That was my favorite story of all. I must have made you tell it to me a hundred times.”
“Will you tell it to me, then?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said automatically, then hesitated. “Well… it was ever and ever so long ago,” she began.
“Don’t forget to do the voices,” Glitch teased.
She almost laughed at that. “All right,” she promised, most of the quaver gone from her voice, which made him happy. He settled in to listen. “It was ever and ever so long ago, in a little town on the Other Side,” she started again. “In that little town, there lived a very sad young lady, and the reason she was sad was that nobody really loved her. She had no parents, and no sisters or brothers or sweethearts or friends, and the only thing she really wanted in the world was for someone to love, and to love her. But nobody did.
“One day she happened to meet a good witch. Because, you see, there are a few, even on the Other Side, but generally they don’t like for anyone to know about their magic. So the sad young lady didn’t know that the witch was anything more than an ordinary old lady, and they had a cup of tea together and chatted about the weather and cookie recipes and such things.
“With one thing and another, the sorceress realized how lonely and sad the young lady was, and that she deserved better. So she gave her a present, a little silver magnet in the shape of a horseshoe, and she told her that it would change her luck. Then the good witch finished her tea and said goodbye, because she was a very busy person and had a great many things to do that day.
“Well. From that moment on, the sad lady seemed to make a new friend every time she peeked out of her door. Everyone in town suddenly seemed to want to be her friend, and they kept coming to her house to invite her to parties and teas, and to tell her that she was the most wonderful person they’d ever met.
“And every young man in town fell head over heels in love with her at once. If she happened to walk down the street, she was sure to have to tell at least five different men that she didn’t want to marry them, at least not yet. Sometimes she wouldn’t even know their names before she had to gracefully decline their proposals, and that was always a bit embarrassing.
“You’d think she would be happy with all the attention she was getting, but nothing could be further from the truth. It didn’t take her long to realize that the little magnet the witch had given her was magic, and that it was the reason that everybody suddenly loved her. And that only made her sadder than ever. It wasn’t real love; it was only magic love. False love. She started crying every time somebody so much as gave her a bouquet, and she got a lot of bouquets.
“About that time, a Slipper came through town. He was a wise, gentle old man, who had seen magic before and understood what it could do. He saw how unhappy the magnet was making the poor girl, and he knew what he had to do. Even though the spell was working on him, too, and he immediately felt like he loved her, he knew that love means wanting to make the person you love happy, and that the only way for her ever to be happy again was to get that magnet away from her.
“So he stole it one day when she wasn’t looking, and the very moment he’d done it, the spell changed. Now everyone in town loved him, instead. All except for one shy young man. He hadn’t needed the magic magnet to fall in love with the lonely young lady, and he didn’t stop loving her once the magnet was gone. If anything, he loved her even more than he ever had before, which was saying something. They were married soon afterwards, and neither of them was ever lonely ever again.
“And as for the Slipper, he didn’t particularly want it either. So he brought the magnet with him to the O.Z. the next time he wandered that way, and he offered it to the Queen, because, as he said, everybody already loved her, and so owning the magnet wouldn’t make any real difference to her.
“But the Queen had a better idea. She used her magic to put the magnet into the stars, so that forever, from that day to this, and into all our tomorrows, every time the people of the O.Z. looked up at the sky, they would all see the magnet, and feel loving and loved.”
“That’s a nice story, too,” Glitch said, after a while.
“I always thought so,” Azkadellia replied. Then, before she could lose her nerve, she went on. “DG told me,” she said flatly. “About Raynz.”
“Oh,” Glitch said. “That. Yeah. That’s a heck of a thing, huh?”
“Ambrose,” she said, cutting him off mid-ramble. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I have to apologize. I am so, so sorry for what I did to you.”
“Don’t, Az,” he said. “Just… don’t. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault, any of it-I mean, I’m still smart enough to know the difference between you and the Witch, and of the two, you’re not the one who has anything to feel bad about.”
“I was still in there with her, and I should have done something. I should have stopped her, somehow-I should have died before I let her do what she did,” Azkadellia got out. “I destroyed you, and I killed DG, and oh, gods, so many others. I remember all of them, and I didn’t stop any of it! How can you just forgive me like that? I don’t deserve to be forgiven-I didn’t stop her! I didn’t stop any of it!” She was crying now, choking on the self-loathing. “Why didn’t I stop her?”
Glitch was sitting bolt upright, now, and had twisted to face her. “No, Az! Don’t say that. Don’t even think that! Oh, Az. Shh. Here.” He put his arms around her, and scooped her neatly into his embrace, just as if she were still the little girl she knew he could no longer really remember.
And just as though she really were still that little girl, she flung her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder, soaking the thin linen of his shirt, until the tears slowed and stopped of their own accord, a thing she hadn’t let herself do since the eclipse, and that the Witch hadn’t let her do for all the annuals before that. She was more than a little amazed to realize how much better she felt as the tears receded, and she let herself rest on his shoulder for just a few moments more, almost afraid of what would happen once she raised her head.
“That’s my girl,” Glitch said quietly, as she got herself back under control and straightened. “Feeling better?”
She nodded.
“You know, Az,” he continued, “we were both different people back then. It was a long time ago, and we’re both different. Azkadellia isn’t the Witch, and Glitch isn’t Ambrose. We could just start over, you see.”
She didn’t say anything, but her face, even illuminated only by moonlight, made it fairly clear that that wasn’t an option.
“Or else,” he continued, “we could compromise. I don’t forgive the Witch, and I don’t think she deserves forgiveness, and I bet Ambrose-and Azkadellia-would agree. Right? Right. I don’t think Azkadellia has anything she needs to be forgiven for, but you don’t agree, and we don’t have a viewer here to ask Ambrose. So. I will forgive you for what she did to him, and then we can all go on from there and stop worrying about it. Would that work?”
“That’s too easy,” Azkadellia objected. “It can’t be that easy.”
“I’m sick of things not being easy,” he said, with a hint of anger, for the first time, in his voice. “Nothing is easy. Waking up in the morning and remembering my name isn’t easy. Just for once-good gods, just once-can’t we let things be easy? Make them be easy?”
“No!” she cried. “I can’t just forget.”
“It’s my brain in that jar, Az,” he shot back. “Mine. It was me this happened to. If I can forgive and forget, why can’t you?”
There was a very long silence.
“You may forgive me,” she whispered, “but Ambrose won’t.”
He thought about that. “If Ambrose is the sort of person who would hold a grudge over things you couldn’t help-and we both know you couldn’t-then I’m not all that sure he’s the sort of person I’d want to be. He sounds like a real jerk, in fact. Did he hold grudges?”
“No,” she admitted, unwillingly. “But he ought to.”
“But he wouldn’t. And I don’t. So…?”
“That just makes it worse,” she said, finally.
“All I want is for you to stop being so sad, Az,” he said plaintively. “I don’t want to be someone who makes you feel guilty and miserable every time I walk in the room. I can’t do that to you, Az. I’ve known you for… a long time, haven’t I? I think so. And I care about you. I know I do. I just want you to be happy again. Can’t you let me do that much, at least?”
It wasn’t fair, Az thought vaguely. None of it was fair. It wasn’t fair that he’d suffered what he had; it was even less fair that she was making him suffer more by her inability to accept his forgiveness. Proof-as if more proof were needed-that there was something structurally wrong inside her, somewhere. DG would have argued the point, but DG was biased. Ambrose was arguing it, too, but he was simply wrong.
She’d never proved him wrong before, and not-as a child-for lack of trying, either. It was a hollow triumph.
She didn’t realize that she’d forgotten to answer him until he spoke again, his face etched with the same painful defeat that had driven her from the Council table. “You came up here to be alone, didn’t you?” he asked gently. “Would it help if I left?”
She managed to nod.
He sighed, almost inaudibly, then, in one graceful motion, was on his feet. She was still sitting, frozen, on the skirt of his coat, a fact she didn’t notice until he bent over, picked up the coat by the collar, and draped the top half of the jacket over her shoulders. Without touching her. “Stay warm,” he said, and walked briskly to the door.
She heard him start the lengthy journey down the stairs, and she might have wept again if there had been any tears left in her. Instead she sat very still, holding the sleeves around her in an empty approximation of an embrace that gave no comfort, and stared sightlessly at the endless expanse of uncaring stars.