![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manninessTarrant steps into the room, glances down at the floor beside Alice’s bed and sighs. “Let’s just dispense with the necessary facts and acknowledge that, yes, you did somehow manage to convince Tarra – or someone equally gullible – to let you out of bed and go galumphing around the castle.”
“There was no galumphing,” Alice asserts on a rasp. She doesn’t bother to deny that she’d... wandered. The spike of guilty alarm that had made her heart leap had confessed her crime.
“Your slippers have been moved,” he says, offering up the evidence.
She doesn’t refute him. “Tell me how the trip went.”
He does.
Alice listens to a tale of mirror-aided time travel, a sword fight, a damsel in distress, and a...
“Lord Manchester... You honestly believe that Lord Manchester could have murdered his own son?”
“Tam believes it.”
Alice swallows as she considers that additional burden on her son’s already weighted mind. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him about monsters and men and mothers who fight for the sake Underland.” Tarrant glances away. “I think I managed to get all the words in the correct order...”
Alice opens her hand, reaches for him. “What does Hamish think of Lord Manchester’s...?” She cannot say it. Despite having known Lowell, she cannot say the words “kill” and “son” in the same sentence. “How is Winslow?”
He tells her. “Winslow is... distressed, of course. Hamish mentioned that he’d quite recently grown very close with his grandfather.”
Alice closes her eyes and curses the past. This is why the past must stay where it is. Nothing good ever comes of revisiting it! “How are Hamish and Margaret... managing that?”
“Hamish – with Winslow’s assistance – is in the process of investigating, although, should he find a witness willing to speak out against Lord Manchester or should he manage to locate the man whom Manchester had hired to... do the deed, he is not optimistic that anything will come of it.”
“Winslow won’t have to apprentice with Manchester Manufacturing, certainly!” Alice protests.
At last, Tarrant sinks down onto the edge of the bed. He looks tired. Perhaps fighting his natural inclination to give in to her had taken too much out of him when he is already at the edge of his limits. “Yes. Perhaps that will be the one bright point in all of this. Hamish mentioned something called blackmail, which sounds rather difficult to read, in all honesty, but he seems quite confident that it will be effective in allowing Winslow a choice in his future.” He looks down at Alice’s hand (and the heart line climbing up the back of it) where it rests on top of the quilt. “Who am I to question such certainty?”
She lets his assumption about blackmail pass. Perhaps later she will explain that while the intent of the correspondence is dark, the message is often written with the Light of Truth, making it very legible, indeed.
He reaches out and plays with the ends of her fingers. She plays back, tapping his fingertips with brief caresses. “Tam, you’ll be happy to hear, does not seem to have suffered from his overly sensible decision to confide his misadventures in Margaret and Hamish. Winslow has forgiven him.”
“We should reward him for that,” Alice remarks, thinking of their son’s selfless bravery. “It was uncommonly mature of him.”
“Yes. I already have. At least in part. What is more worrisome,” he continues before Alice can ask what Tam’s reward had been, “is that he is very conflicted over what he... that is, what he saw at the battlefield.”
“Is that why he didn’t come with you to see me?”
She had received visits from nearly everyone thus far today:
Tarra had been the first, of course. And, Alice dares to hope that her apprentice is no longer quite so angry with her.
Mally had come next, blustering and demanding answers: “There I was, hidden away in the hood of that damn cloak, waiting for Tarra to talk us outta trouble an’ then she went an’ talked us inteh it! That ’s what you taught her to do?!”
“Mally, a Champion has to think about the ramifications of―”
“Rami... Rami...! I’ll ram you if you ever, ever, EVER―! ” The dormouse had been too incensed to continue for a moment. Then she had taken a deep breath and, with a swish of her tail, had turned away and marched for the door. “Don’t let me catch you using princesses to cut your throat, again! If anyone’s got the right to slice you open, that’d be me! ”
She’d even managed to slam the door rather soundly behind her.
Thackery had arrived shortly, declaring, “Tea!” He’d shoved the tea tray onto the bedside table and had thrown a spinach puff at her. “Nae time teh chat! A mahn’s berries need lookin’ afteh!”
“Feather-brained and pompous, hm?” Sir Fenruffle had rumbled by way of greeting, causing Alice to wince and flounder for words.
But the gryphon hadn’t come for an apology, apparently. He had, instead, continued, “Very fortunate the Hatter was so nearby and had sewing thread and a needle on hand. Very fortunate considering how fast Uplander blood is. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing the blade touch your throat...”
“You must have blinked,” Alice had told him as his beady, golden eyes had glared down on her, not blinking once.
Leif had bothered her next: “First let me just say, damn you Alice for teaching Tarra how to be so blasted stubborn!”
There had been a bit of shouting and bit of blaming and then, with his well of frustration dry – for the moment – he’d moved on to making jokes at her expense.
“Got quite the collection of scars, don’t you?”
“Jealous?”
“Oh, most definitely. It must take real talent to flail about in battle, cutting your hand on your opponent’s blade by accident. ” He had shaken his head, his mane rippling.
“It was a classic Futterwhacken move, not flailing,” Alice had argued and had not told him that the cut on her palm had been necessary in transferring blood onto Tarra’s sword. And then, when Alice had grabbed her slit throat with her right hand, the additional blood from the cut on her hand had made Alice’s injury seem even more gruesome. It had all been planned. Of course, she will never tell him that.
And now, finally , the one person she most desperately wants to see and speak to and be with is here... But things are not all right. She cannot bluff or lie or tease her way out of this painful confrontation.
Tarrant does not meet her eyes as he says, “I have always hated what this position, as Queen’s Champion, demands of you. Tam is beginning to hate it as well.”
“I’ll speak to him later today,” she blithely assures him, eager for her punishments of the day to end and the rewards to make an appearance.
“And what will you say to heal him?”
That makes her pause. Alice knows what her husband wants to hear: he wants her to promise to quit, to announce that Tarra will take her place beside the queen. But Alice’s oath to Mirana is the one promise she must keep. It had been her first Underlandian promise. Even before she had sworn to Tarrant that she would return one day, she had taken up the Vorpal Sword, had slain. Those sorts of promises cannot be Undone.
She knows what it will take to heal Tam, to heal Tarrant, but she is not capable of offering either of them what they need.
“I’ll tell him that we’ll be going back to Iplam soon. The queen will not need her Champion again for a long time.”
He frowns – fiercely – and pulls his hand away. Her fingers feel cold without the contact.
“Tarrant...” she begins, knowing there is so Much they still need to discuss. The emotions engulfing his heart have not abated in the slightest despite the queen’s estimate that she will make a full recovery. She desperately wants to know why he still feels so... conflicted . The danger is past. Once again, they have triumphed... together.
So why does he seem so... defeated?
“The Barterment will begin the day after tomorrow,” Tarrant says softly, stubbornly, ignoring the presence of the lingering horror between them – horror at what Alice had asked of him, horror at what he had done to her at her behest, horror at what Tam had seen.
Alice would have nodded if not for the wrappings around her throat. “And I fully intend to be there for that.”
“You should rest.” Not so very long ago, she would have expected him to insist on that point. But now his tone wavers, uncertain. She focuses on the heart line, but the message Tarrant’s heart is currently sending her only makes her more confused: there is a resonance of sorrow, a twinge of panic-frustration-fear, and a distance that feels like nostalgia. If only that blasted knife wound hadn’t damaged it, the message might have been clearer! More easily discernible!
“I intend to help look after our Hightoppians,” she replies. “I’ll be there, Tarrant.”
Surprisingly, he does not argue. Tarrant collects her hand in both of his and raises it to his cheek. She obligingly fits her palm to the curve of his face and allows the touch to evoke her love for him. She Sends it.
He chokes.
“Tarrant?”
“I do not understand,” he lisps very softly. “How ye can luv me sae much... yet gi’ yer life teh th’ queen.”
In all honestly, Alice is not sure she understands it, either. But she thinks it might have something to do with...
“You are Underland... to me,” she murmurs. “I cannot let anything hurt your home, our home. You. I cannot let anyone hurt you. And if a revolution were to happen... If those children had managed to rise up against the queen... Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be out there, on the front lines again, with your sword, fighting for the White Queen. Don’t tell me it wouldn’t destroy you to hurt, maim, kill those sons and daughters of your people.”
She’s not sure if that makes any sense at all, but it must have made sense to him. His smile is sad when it tugs at his lips. “You have always saved me, Alice,” he muses. “And, perhaps wrongfully, I have always hoped you would.”
“We’ll save each other,” she insists, guiding his face toward hers.
He breathes out a long, warm sighing breath as her right hand tangles in his hair. And then his lips brush over hers softly, once... twice. On the third pass, she opens to him, invites him in although no invitation should be necessary. They have been lovers for nearly two decades; her body is his, as much as his is hers.
She hears his boots hit the floor, which is good – they’ll keep the bedroom slippers company now that her feet are not occupying them – and then he settles down on the bed beside her. He lies on top of the quilt, fully clothed, but Alice is in no condition to insist on fewer layers between them. He gently inserts an arm beneath her neck and wraps the other around her waist.
He kisses her even when his breath hitches and warm tears fall on her cheeks from his eyes. She does not understand precisely why he cries – perhaps he cries for Tam’s lost innocence or Alice’s never-ending obligations to Underland or his own complacency in allowing her to choose that path – but she does not need to understand it. She Feels it in her heart. She holds onto him, kisses him, and promises him:
“I will never let you go.”
He hides his face in her hair at that declaration. He does not refuse her vow and the silence of the room – Underland itself – witnesses it... and accepts it.
Notes:
So, why is Tarrant so upset? If you think it’s a little strange that he seems to be so miserable and grieving for... something, well. We’ll find out the reason for that... eventually. It’s all part of The Big OPK Plan. (^__~)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 07:24 am (UTC)BHHWWWAAAAAAA!! (I'm bawling now!)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 09:00 am (UTC)And yes! You were right! Alice is the one who "dies" because no one in Underland sews faster than Tarrant so he would have the best chance to help her. *applauds*
Please don't cry! I promise that everything will be OK. You trust me, don't you?
*more hugs*
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 07:51 pm (UTC)