How like a winter hath my absence been, a shakespeare fanfic

"How like a winter hath my absence been"

By Inviolable.voice, written for kuteki in the yuletide 2004 challenge.

Othello/Iago slash. Angst. Rated PG-13.

I am planning a strategy, I must be ready, efficient, swift. The new commanding officer arrives today, and the camp is tense with expectation, because he will affect our lives for the next few months or perhaps longer (but not for ever - there is after all no real need for me to worry). I am one of several who can read, and we are crowded in a dim, hot tent. The smells of sand, cooking and excrement are overwhelming in the noonday heat.

Of course we stand at attention when he enters, but he waves us back to our work. Did I mention the smallness of the tent? (Or it seems small, with all the men in it, large and sweating.) I am nervous and young, quiet, still periodically turning sick at the sight of blood. (Blood in itself is not too bad, but blood coagulated, clotted with flies - I am not a strong-stomached youth). When he gives the orders his voice is curt and clear, but even beneath the curtness has a sinuous rhythm. He did not speak Italian first, but some other language.

He must sense that I am nervous, for he puts his large hand on my shoulder and tightens it there for a moment. Why would he do that, if not to reassure? Even though it was so terribly hot, the hand seemed to hold a good warmth.

I am now in a cold country, one of those German states - politics do not interest me, but only the bags of silver which the Holy Roman Emperor pays readily. He has largesse to scatter; I am - of course - a good Catholic. Heretics will burn.

It is very cold, however, and the men who can afford it dress in furs. Which have a dusty-musty-spicy-musk scent about them. Our breath freezes in the air like fountains. It's horrible, seventeen have died, but only five of those were battle-deaths. Sickness is in the ranks.

The fires are small, because things are badly organised, we are not well provisioned. So we have to sleep very close together, two men wrapped in one bedroll, warmth occupies my mind incessantly.

I am a marked man. More than two years in the cold take their toll - I have been thought for a native, being fair-faced and fair of hair, but my constitution is Florentine, and now I cough and cough and cannot rest. One day I wake even colder than usual and the whole of our tent seems to be swimming round me in giddiness, where it is laced shut, at the door, the points of light (where the lacing is not perfectly meeting itself) are like spinning stars. This sort of delicate description suggests that I will not lose myself in the whirl. But I can't, somehow, seem to rise because there is a pain in my chest holding me down.

He comes in (he always rises earlier than I do, he watches the dawn) and I try to explain about the pain which is vexing me, keeping me from my duties, but the words are not clear, so my face becomes hot with embarrassment. He says, "Hush, Iago. Hush." His voice purrs over me, I hold myself still so that I will not do anything silly. There has been a lot of holding myself quite still, quite straight, in the last few months, since Antonio died and I was given my promotion - since we have shared these blankets. After all, what man could be completely open around his commanding officer? Though of course there is less of a gap than there was before.

He is feeling my hands and head, and somebody else has come in but the giddiness is so strong that I have to close my eyes.

There is a time of confusion, sometimes there is someone else here, but often it his him, and they put hot things on my chest and cold things on my brow; they sit me up and put steaming drinks or cool drinks to my lips.

I get well - or, I might say, am healed.

I am going back to the South, yet almost miss the cold. I think my body has forgotten warmth - or rather I am so used to the measures that we must take in colder climes that I feel naked when dressed only in thin cloth, when the wind can blow close to my skin like a kiss without imminent danger of sickness, of death.

There is less of huddling, more of freedom in our life now. Of course we are still a crowded army on board ship, but now there is distance and - most noticeable of all - sleeping alone. Have you ever noticed how, when you look at skin very closely, it alters and shifts in front of your eyes and there are whorls and complexities invisible to the casual eye? Have you ever noticed how, when you have been accustomed to the low glow of fires and to looking at sleeping skin very, very closely, the sky is not so charming when you sleep alone and it is all you see?

I am not healed. The warmth is not helping as I thought it would. The cough has returned and I have some small struggle not to let anyone realise that my duties are harder to perform. We are encamped on a grassy slope - most picturesque, if not ideal for an army wanting to drill and march - back in our old tents, when one night I wake extremely slowly, conscious of a gaze. I do not open my eyes, even though I can feel the gaze burning into me, making me quiver and crumple (not visibly, just on the inside). The reason for not opening my eyes, I must admit, is some sort of unquantifiable and wordless fear.

It takes me several minutes to master myself and lift up lashes just a fraction, during which time I know that it his breathing which surrounds me, and his eyes which gaze into me. When I can look - so that he cannot see me looking - his eyes have never seemed darker, he is an animal waiting to spring, energy in a tight coil.

But I am by nature languorous, not energetic, I can fight , but I prefer playing with my own mind and with those of my funny little subordinates. It amuses me. Will energy and languor entwine pleasurably, or will they injure each other. Irretrievably, is a word which rises unsummoned at this point.

I may be promoted again. He is a General now, and will have some sway over who is chosen, so I have little doubt. But it may take some months, these things can be difficult to arrange. It is a good thing that I have been so careful over this cough and this weakness - nothing must get in the way. There will still be a gap - in status, in years, in everything - but I am getting older and I am more experienced, in every way. I have tried it, I know what to do.

I have even married, because there were a few funny looks, they began a while ago, back in Julich, but it got worse. She doesn't change anything though, she is no more than a useful appendage.

We are in Venice, and there is a moon. I am braver now, enlivened by the vivid waters and the gilded Palazzi reflected, seeming twice as high as they really are. The illusion quivers but does not break as a gondola passes, far below my window. I dress in fine silks, all blues which show up the fairness of my hair. I pull on narrow leather gloves, I am slow, rolling them over each finger. I comb out my fair hair - which is not long, I am not a fop but a soldier, even dressed so beautifully I am a man - with a comb of carved ivory, and my wife anoints my locks with scent.

I step into the gondola, lean back and let my eyes close.

I step out of the gondola and run up the steps, throw open the door, tonight will be the night of declaration, my heart bubbles up inside me, a wellspring of joy...

A woman's low laugh rings out.