Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be mine. I can just cry over them.
Rating/Warnings: Teen: nudity (though not in a sexual way), unseen but spoken-of graphic violence
Time frame: mid-The Clone War
Notes: Okay so basically tumblr users jyncassians and dyingsighs have both recently expressed an ardent desire for more Bail (and Breha) fic that isn't about Leia, and me, being me, saw that and decided, "I can do that!"
Many thanks to my roommate the kells for all her help (even though she's not even close to being in the sw fandom), as well as tumblr users princess-sansa-of-ithilien and absynthe-minded.
Title and section headers are taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.
Every Wand'ring Bark
i.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
There is exhaustion in his bones, blood on his robes, and the ash of war in his eyes. Bail steps from the ramp of the ship that bore him to Alderaan, feeling in every step down to the earth of his home the hours that he has not slept, and the hours he has spent overseeing death and destruction with only the paltriest of healing condolences.
Breha meets him there, at the border between heaven and earth, and takes his hands in hers as he steps onto Alderaan for the first time in what must be years. "Welcome home, my love," she murmurs, and pulls his head down so that she might kiss his cheek. They are not alone on the landing pad, and so the kiss is chaste and, though warm, distant: a dozen guards line the path from ship to palace, and two dozen more staff—councilors, administrators, ambassadors, courtiers—wait to smile and bow before their monarchs. The eyes of their world are on them, hard and heavy and demanding, and they know it.
Bail fights to keep from shuddering away from her touch. The stain of war which clings to him, he thinks, should never so much as touch her lips.
There is a strange look in her eyes as Breha pulls back, and a gentle strength in her hand as she presses a palm against his cheek. She looks at his face, and then the sense that she looks deeper still, until she reads every tired line around his mouth and every worn shadow beneath his eyes. "Come," she says, and in that moment it is just the two of them—her hand against his cheek, her eyes meeting his, and the understanding that tries to pass between them—and she draws him away from the ramp of the ship and wholly onto the world that is theirs.
Holocams and media crew stand at the edges of the landing pad, and their voices fill the air with questions and demands for comments, the rabid desire for speculation and provocation swelling to a feverish pitch that was easy to ignore. The images they manage to capture will be enough for them: Queen and Consort walking together, silent and serious, with her arm wrapped around his waist. Only those whose speculation is the most provocative will realize that the way they walk, the way they touch, is all that keeps him upright and moving forward.
It is more difficult to ignore the rest of those who line the way to the palace doors. The guards stand stiffly at attention, and between them the councilors and administrators, ambassadors and courtiers step forward and smile, press their hands against his in welcome, murmur words that are meant to be joyful and comforting.
He smiles and presses his hands against theirs in return, bows his head in quiescent acknowledgment of their respect, and hurries past them all, rubbing the memory of their touch and their voices from his hands as soon as he is beyond their sight.
The walk from the landing pad to their rooms, high in the west wing of the palace, is trod in silence. For a moment Bail is surprised that Breha remains with him—it customary for her to depart after her official welcome of him, a quiet and comfortable, agreed-upon way of theirs to maintain their public images—but then she tightens her arm around his waist, and at the doors she dismisses the serving staff who have already flocked to their room in anticipation of settling Bail back into the palace and preparing him for the evening, he knows why she has remained by his side. He needs to be alone—alone with himself, alone with her—and she knows it.
The doors close behind the last of the departing staff, and for the first time they are completely alone, standing in a luxurious drawing room that nearly glows with the light of the setting sun, warm reds and rich beiges and deep maroons soaking in the fire that spans the western sky. Bail stands just inside the doorway, Breha still at his side, and for a long moment they simply are a man and a woman standing together in the dying light of day.
Again, it is Breha who speaks first. "What is wrong, my love?" she asks at last, and she turns to face him, lifting both hands to cup his face. "What has happened?"
Suddenly it is too much: her voice, her understanding, her love. Bail pulls away. Her touch lingers, a warm memory against his skin as he steps away from her, turns his cheek and then his back to her dark eyes. He moves to stand before the barren fireplace, hands clasped in front of him. He cannot stand the sight of his hands and he cannot stand the sight of her, beautiful and caring and understanding.
Suddenly he finds he cannot face her, not with his hands so stained and his eyes so marked by the ash and blood of war.
"Nothing," he lies—and the bitter taste of what his life has become creeps up his throat and onto his tongue.
"It is not nothing," Breha says, coming up behind him and resting a small, warm hand on his shoulder.
Once again Bail pulls away from her touch. "I am simply tired from the journey," he says, stepping toward the hallway that connects the drawing room to their bedroom. This second lie is easier to say, but no less bitter.
Breha sighs, and follows him out of the drawing room and into the hallway shrouded in encroaching shadow. "I can see it in your eyes," she tells him. "Something went wrong."
"Breha." Her name is a little more than breath against his lips. He stops dead, turns and looks at her, takes her shoulders and holds her at arms' length. "Please," he says, harsher than he means, "leave me be."
Her dark eyes harden. "Bail," she says, and his name is as hard from her lips as hers was soft from his. It is a warning as well as an entreaty.
"Not now," he says, and he drops his hands and turns away once more. "Do you not have a council meeting?" he asks over his shoulder, his back to her.
She remains for another long moment, her presence a silent mountain at his back. Then, without another word, she turns and departs, leaving only the lingering junaberry and peppermint scent of her skin to remind Bail of what he fears and all that he loves.
ii.
It is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
He falls asleep in the shower, the hot water he needed to wash the sweat and traces of ash and smoke from his skin streaming over his aching shoulders and stiff back. Breha finds him there, slumped over with his head resting on the tile floor, white suds of shampoo still clinging to his hair.
A touch wakens him, and he opens eyes filled with water to see her standing beside him, stripped down to her undergarments, hair still piled in intricate braids atop her head. She is silent as she pulls him into a sitting position beneath the flow of water, and then she kneels beside him and begins to run her fingers through his hair, carding out the last vestiges of shampoo.
She kisses him twice—once on the jaw, once against his closed lips—and then silently bids him stand. He does so, too tired now to fight her, the exhaustion in his bones too painful to deny the comfort she offers. She holds his head against her shoulder and softly, gently, lovingly, she washes the old sweat and the lingering scent of war from his flesh.
When she is done, she turns off the water, and together they step out of the shower.
Still they are silent, Bail lost within himself and Breha lost in waiting for him, and the silence is swallowed by the large bathroom until it becomes a hard, cold thing. The silence swallows them, and as they make ready for the evening, it grows more and more difficult for either to speak.
They dry themselves and dress in evening wear, Bail in dark pants and a high-collared tunic with a soft, draping overrobe, Breha in a simple gown. She pulls the pins from her hair, letting the dark tresses fall in waves down her back, and dries it into soft curls.
"Let me." The words as Bail utters them feel like bitten ice, but once they are spoken, a warmth blossoms in his chest that is unlooked-for. The heavy weight of his tongue loosens, and when Breha smiles and says, "Thank you," he is reminded with the strength of a mountain wind of his love for her.
Neither of them are capable of the intricate styles that court and title demand, and Bail less so than Breha, but Bail has spent many hours since their marriage braiding and unbraiding her hair, learning how to twist it up into simple knots and practical buns. He is competent enough that, when Breha hands him her brush and sits on a stool before the mirror, he is confident what he does will be acceptable, at least, for the evening.
He does not speak as he twists her hair into two loose braids, nor when he pins the two braids together at the base of her skull in an interlaced bun. She leans into his touch, and her long hair feathers around his fingers as he combs it smooth. Once again Bail feels the full force of his love for her.
She trusts him, completely and entirely, with her heart and mind and body. To no one else, he knows, has she allowed herself to be so vulnerable, so defenseless, as she does with him in this moment.
She should not trust him so, he thinks. She should hide herself from his eyes and from his touch, from his weakness and his cowardice. She should shudder at the stains that have grown on his skin and drip now from his hands.
But she does not. She leans into him instead, and he can feel her smile as he runs his hands through her hair, pressings his fingertips against her scalp. She smiles, and she relaxes against his touch, and as he parts her hair, she tells him lightly, with almost a laugh, "You're gentler than any of my maids."
He loves her for it.
He fears her because of it.
With each deft movement of his long, dark fingers, still stained in his mind's eye with the blood of war, he whispers with silent breath the truths he cannot speak—truths that, in this moment, as his heart falters with self-loathing and bitter memories of smoke and screams and cowardice, are lodged within his throat and bound within his chest by his fear of losing her.
"You are my light," he weaves silently into the first braid.
"You are my hope," he coils soundlessly into the second.
"You are my life," he confides wordlessly to the final bun.
Only when he is done does he actually speak again. His words are but a pale fraction of his heart, and he knows it, but they are all his heart will let him confess. "You are a great woman, Breha Organa," he says, his hands resting, idle now, on her shoulders. The cloth of her gown is smooth and cool against his palms, hiding the warmth of the woman who wears it. He leans down, and presses a chaste kiss against the crown of her head. "I don't deserve you," he whispers.
She stands, turns, and once more takes his face in her hands. "I do not know what demons bite your heels tonight, my love," she says, "but I will chase them back into the depths of hell where they belong."
It is not what he had expected her to say, and for an instant he resents her for her words. This is not her battle to fight, nor are his thoughts her duty to absolve. But then his resentment fails, the warmth of her hands stark and impelling against the fear claiming his heart, and all he can think is that she is, and always will be, his savior.
iii.
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken
Dinner is a small but grand affair, meant to welcome the Prince Consort home from the war effort.
The dining room is resplendent with the Organa family colors, the walls hung with bronze and lilac banners emblazoned with Alderaan's crest, and the air glitters with the golden light of two chandeliers. The windows overlooking the mountains are closed and the midnight violet drapes are shut tight against the cooling autumn night, closing the dark wood-paneled room into a comfortable intimacy.
Bail sits at the end of the long table, with five men and five women between him and Breha, who is a wall between him and their judgment. She is gracious, her words as sweet as honey and as slippery as silk, her smiles warm and warning. Bail is silent, equal parts in love with her and hating himself.
"My lord," says Lady Calaria over soup, turning and piercing Bail with her sharp black eyes, "rumor has it that you are to be awarded by the Chancellor himself for your relief efforts in the war. What an honor that must be for you." She is of House Antilles, and is Bail's own cousin through his mother's sister, and he has never liked her. She was always too sharp with her words and too piercing with her thirst for power.
Her words, now, are as sharp as needles. They pierce his heart and make him gag, the sip of wine he had just taken turning to ash on his tongue. He sees again fire, and hears the screams of children as they burned, and tastes in the back of his throat the acrid bite of smoke and scorched ozone. Laughter—at Calaria and her words, always so short-sighted and self-centered—pushes against his teeth, bubbles in his lungs, and it is only more than ten years of politics that keeps Bail's face neutral, the insanity that he feels locked behind a mask.
Breha must see the way his fingers clench around the stem of his wine glass, however, and the way his eyes flicker, for she smiles and intercedes with her honeyed words and warning smile. "My husband," she says, and her voice is soft and demanding, drawing all attention to the head of the table where she sits, a queen though no crown adorns her brow, "pursues war relief measures in the name of Alderaan's heart, not for personal recognition. Surely you of all people understand this, Lady Calaria?"
His cousin blushes, the red stain as sharp as her smile. "But of course, my queen," she says, suddenly demure, though there is a hardness hidden in the deeps of her tone that Bail has known since they were children, when she would demand he play consort to her lady, or Padawan to her Jedi. "I simply meant that it is an honor for such efforts to be recognized. One can only hope that, by acknowledging and spreading awareness of such efforts, we can inspire others to charity and generosity."
"One can hope," the Queen replies.
After dinner, three of their dinner guests are invited to a sitting room for tea. Lady Calaria and her husband are not included.
Their talk, seated on soft couches and armchairs and surrounded by plush pillows and warm colors, the room lit by soft lamps on side tables and a fire in the hearth, is kinder and more genuine than that which accompanied dinner. Breha sits beside Bail on a sofa, a hand resting on one of his knees, equal parts to steady to comfort him. He is still ill at ease, Breha can see and feel, his expression bleak beneath the mask he wears.
There is laughter, soft and genuine but distant from the sofa where Bail and Breha sit, when Rodérick Organa—a distant nephew of Breha's, who she has taken under her wing in an attempt to free him from his slowly suffocating family—says, as he pours the tea, "I do hope that dinner was not a precedent for tonight's affairs."
"Lady Calaria does not take chastisement well," says Aidréna, Lady of Morieer and wife of Malothar, the captain of Alderaan's Honor Guard. She shakes her head at the memory of Bail's unpleasant cousin, who had made no small show of subtle irritation for the entire duration of the dinner, and thanks Rodérick when he hands her a cup of tea.
Breha sighs, and squeezes Bail's knee gently. She can feel the muscles in his leg tense at the comment, and as close to him as she is, Breha can hear his breath quicken. She wonders yet again at what demons gnaw at her husband—but now is not the time to address his troubles, and so once again she pushes aside her speculation and concern, and instead moves once more to intercede on his behalf.
"She reminds me, at times, of Dorina," Breha says, and makes a show of looking pointedly at Aidréna, who smiles and shakes her head again.
All heads turn to Aidréna, expectant. She does not disappoint. "Indeed," she says, disdainfully. "Though I would say not even Calaria could compare to Dorina. She never could take no for an answer, even if it was in her best interest." She sniffs in pretty disgust, and takes a delicate sip of tea, looking at her husband, Malothar, who grins and chuckles softly. "I know this is petty, but I am still glad she was sent by her mother to the Mother's Convent."
"As I recall," Malothar says blithely, "you had no small part in ensuring she was sent to the Convent."
A small but wicked grin creeps at the edges of Aidréna's lips. "I make no such claim," she says, but all in the room, save perhaps Rodérick, know full well that she is as responsible for Dorina's fate as the moon is responsible for the tide.
Dorina had set her sights on marrying Malothar—and Aidréna had not taken her increasingly insistent advances well. Unbeknownst to Dorina—or to anyone in the court, at the time, save Breha who was a childhood friend of Aidréna's, and Bail who had already struck up a fast friendship with Malothar—Aidréna and Malothar had been courting since shortly after Bail and Breha's marriage.
When at last Dorina went so far as to attempt to blackmail Malothar into marriage, it was only a matter of days before she had disappeared from the court, only to reappear a few weeks later in the Mother's Convent in Coras as an acolyte.
There is more laughter, and a flurry of teasing exchanges as Breha, Aidréna, and Malothar reminisce over the past. Rodérick sits in an armchair, bright eyes flying back and forth as he follows their conversation, a lopsided smile softening the sharp angles of his chin and cheekbones. Bail is silent, but there is a calmness to his silence that has been absent that night, and Breha is glad for it.
Then a lull, a quiet moment in which they simply drink their tea and bask in the warmth of the room and the company. Bail relaxes, the tension bleeding out from beneath Breha's hand, and she can feel as much as see the hard edge smoothing out of his eyes, his lips, his shoulders. He takes another sip of tea, and then slides his hand beneath Breha's so that their hands are joined atop his leg, fingers laced together.
The warmth of his touch spreads through Breha's palm and up into her arm, reaches her shoulder, settles down into her chest. For the first time since he stepped off of the ship's ramp and onto the landing pad, Breha believes that her husband will be all right.
Then Malothar turns and says, "So, Bail, tell us—what brought you home so suddenly? Were you not planning on remaining on the Front for another nine days?"
It is the wrong thing to say, and Breha knows it before the words have even finished falling from Malothar's tongue. Her husband tenses again, his fingers suddenly hard iron around hers, his entire body stiffening as if turned to stone. Breha turns to look up at him, alarmed and suddenly once more very worried, and the cup she has forgotten is in her hand tips to splash hot tea onto her skirt. She does not feel the heat.
"There was a Separatist attack," Bail says, and his voice is as stiff as his shoulders, as cold as the darkness of his eyes. "I was ordered to retreat." His words are terse, and there is a silent edge of warning in each syllable that promises retribution if pressed.
Rodérick frowns, then says carefully, "We heard no reports of an attack." He is sharply intelligent, and one of the best readers of emotion that Breha has ever met, and she can see worry in his eyes as he looks at the man he has come to call uncle. She thinks, though, that this time he should have kept his silence.
Bail's hand slides from hers like oil through water, and the loss of contact is a knife of ice against Breha's palm. "The Jedi Council and the GAR advised against public acknowledgment of the attack." He stands and says, suddenly tall and thunderous as a god, as a mountain in winter, "That is all I will say on the matter."
Then he is gone, disappearing from the sitting room before Breha can even make it to her feet.
iv.
Love alters not with [Time's] brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom
Breha finds him an hour later.
He is stripped down to the waist, his tunic and overrobe abandoned in a tangled pile by the door to the training room in which he has locked himself. His hair is damp with sweat, his face, shoulders, chest and back slick with it, and there is a fevered blush on his cheeks.
Breha stands silent for a long moment, watching him from the door. A staff is in his hands, and she thinks she recognizes a kata from Kral Sevant as he moves fluidly across the padded floor.
She waits until he is finished before announcing herself. The kata ends with him kneeling with his back to the door, head bowed, the staff tip pressed against the floor by his side. She does not think he hears her, or even knows that she is there, until she speaks.
"My love?" she asks, as gentle but firm as she can manage through her worry.
He does not look up for a long moment, and when he does he does not turn to look at her. Instead he stands, shoulders heaving as he fights to catch his breath, and brings the staff up and around to his side in a quick flourish. He is silent for a long moment, both of them still and waiting. And then, softly—so softly that Breha thinks, at first, her desperation may have imagined his words—he says, "I'm sorry."
Breha steps into the room, and the door slides shut behind her. She pauses to remove her shoes, then crosses to his side on silent feet. He turns at her touch, his skin jumping beneath the suddenness of her fingers on the skin of his shoulder, and when his eyes at last meet hers, Breha feels her stomach tighten in what can only be fear.
He turns away without a word, pulls away from her touch, away from her sight. "I'm sorry," he says again, as he crosses the room to the equipment rack hung with various lengths and weights of staffs. He mounts the staff he had been using in its empty slot, and then presses the button on a panel hidden against the wall, sending the rack back up into the ceiling.
Breha cannot keep the sigh that presses against her lips from escaping. She looks at her husband's back—at the sweat dripping down his spine, at the pale, barely visible scar on his neck from an assassination attempt nearly a decade old, at the stiffness of his shoulders—and she finds she does not know what to say.
And so she says the only thing that she can. "Bail," she says, and she stands there and looks at him, and waits for him to come to her.
He does. There is a long, painful moment where he stands and stares at the wall, hands hanging in fists by his sides. But then he turns, and with half a dozen quick steps, he crosses back to her, takes her in his arms, pulls her tightly to his chest. Breha wraps her arms around him, ignores the salt and the damp of his sweat, and reaches up to thread her fingers through his hair as he clings to her.
He is solid against her, muscle and memory and experience turning his body to steel—but he clings to her, and as Breha breathes against his bare shoulder, she smells his fear, his exhaustion, and beneath it all, a bitter scent that she knows he has long tried to hide from her: smoke, and burning ozone, and blood.
"I'm sorry," Bail whispers for a third time, as the steel of his body buckles.
"For what?" Breha asks at last. She speaks the words against his skin, and they sink slowly through his flesh and into his bones, making him tremble. She watches them, watches him, and when at last he gasps, his words and hers enough to make him choke, she pulls away just enough to reach up and touch his cheek. "Bail," she implores, calls, "talk to me."
"I'm a coward."
They are not the words that Breha thought to hear, and they are as sharp as acid against her ears, spoken with such disdain and hatred and bitterness that they should be enough to burn Bail's tongue as they leave his mouth.
"I'm a coward, Breha. Thousands are dead, and it is my fault."
She knows better than to contradict him yet. And so she simply asks, one hand still against his cheek, the other on his shoulder, "Why?"
"We thought the Separatists had been all but defeated. Their ground forces had retreated to the western continent, and their fleet had been destroyed by our navy. I was there with the relief aid."
Breha nods. She already knew all of this.
"We were wrong," Bail says, and Breha feels her gut clench. She has never heard her husband's voice so hollow before. "They had kept a number of aircraft in reserve on the ground, hidden from our scans. They waited until relief efforts were in full effect before striking." He falls silent, lost in memory or in thought.
"That is hardly your fault," Breha says, once the silence has stretched on for an uncomfortable few seconds. "Bail, you cannot blame yourself for the Separatists' vile strategies."
Bail shakes his head. "No," he admits. "That's true. But, Breha…" He takes a deep breath, and then looks down into her face, meets her eyes, until all she can see is his broken expression. "I ran," he tells her, voice cracking, breaking, splintering into a dozen shards. "I was notified that the bombers were coming, and I retreated. I ran."
"You saved yourself and your crew," Breha says evenly. "How is that wrong?"
"Because I left everyone else! I could have saved at least some of them, Breha. I was in a hospital when the warning came. There were so many there, Breha—so many wounded, so many dying, so many women and children and old men wailing, and crying, and begging for help. And I looked at them, and knew that they were about to be killed, and I abandoned them to their fate."
He tries to pull away but Breha stops him, grabs his face with both hands and turns him back to her so that she can see the fullness of the revolted expression on his face. There is anger in it, and hatred for himself, and disgust, and it is enough to make Breha want to cry.
"Could you have saved them?" she asks, looking him dead in the eye, demanding that he meet her gaze. "If you had stayed, if you had taken the time to evacuate any of them, would they have been saved?"
Bail looks at her, and the emotion is stark and naked in his eyes. There is fear, and horror, and something deeply disturbing in their depths, rotten and rotting, all-consuming.
"Bail?"
"I heard them screaming." And then, suddenly, the words are rushing out of him, like blood from an torn vein. "I heard them screaming as they burned, Breha. The bombs fell, and the hospital and the refugee camp and everything in between burned, and I could hear them screaming as they died. I was right there, Breha—I was right there. I could smell it. I could hear it. And I couldn't do anything."
"Oh, Bail," Breha murmurs. "My sweet Bail."
But he cannot hear her. His eyes are bright, his body trembling as he once again relives the memories. "There was a girl," he says, voice soft and tremulous. "She had lost an arm, and both her mother and her little brother. I sat with her as they staunched the bleeding. She saw one of the guards give a little boy a stuffed bantha, and she asked if she could have one. I promised I'd get one for her. I was on my way back when the call came in.
"They wouldn't even let me go back to get her."
And then he breaks. At last—at last—he breaks. "They wouldn't let me," he says, a sob splintering his words, and he breaks.
He breaks, and Breha catches him, and holds him tightly as he sobs. She holds him—holds his body, holds his heart and his soul and the memories that scorch him—and strokes his back in slow, soothing circles, runs her fingers through his hair.
"It wasn't your fault," Breha tells him once, twice, a dozen times, whispering it into each of his sobs, promising it to each of his tears as they tracks through the salt of his sweat. She whispers, and she prays he understands—will, one day, understand and accept that he is not to blame.
"I love you," Breha tells him once, twice, three times, against his shoulder, against his lips, into his eyes as she presses his forehead to hers. "I love you, Bail, and that will never change."
She holds him, and with each of their breaths they force the demons back.
She holds him until, inch by inch, he finds he can stand on his own once more.
End notes: I hope you all enjoyed it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!