Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: Work's been busy-tourism companies in the summer...absolutely crazy. Went to see a bunch of movies recently. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was good-particularly Dominic Cooper's character-and now I want to read the book to see how it compares. Brave was also really good. Definitely one of my favorites. The new Spider-Man was also pretty good. I would've liked some more snout on The Lizard, but Andrew Garfield did a great job, as did Emma Stone.
"How familiar the two of them sounded with each other. Like two sides of a coin, like two faces of the same man."
Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke
He pretends he doesn't look for it. The slick ship with orange sails. He pretends he's looking at the tower that houses the Book of Peace, as he so often does, but even that tower is tainted with memories now. He hears his wife stirring in the bed behind him, hears the sheets shift as she gets to her feet, but he doesn't turn.
(He wanted to love her. He really did. But two pieces of his heart sailed away years ago and haven't come back. She was beautiful, breathtaking really, and smart and sometimes a steel spine showed up, her eyes glinting as she dug her heels in in an argument and those are the moments when he really thought he could learn to love this woman)
"Proteus," she murmurs, drawing a dressing gown around herself. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Yes, of course." It's a lie, but not a big one. He doesn't know if he could explain the truth to her anyway. The truth is that there's something tugging at his gut, something that wants him to follow it out beyond the palace walls and into the winding city streets and out to the little alcove near the docks where, once, two boys had spent their days.
(But he wasn't that boy anymore. He had duties now that needed to get done and he didn't have time to go down there)
His wife wraps an arm around his waist, leaning into him, and he lets one arm come up and curl around her small shoulders. "How did you sleep?"
She smiles a little. "Uncomfortably. I don't like sleeping on my back."
Her smile is infectious, he can give her that. He kisses her cheek and lets his free hand come around to rest on her swollen stomach. (The kingdom must have an heir…) "Well, in a month, you won't have to worry about things like that anymore."
(He and Sinbad had dreamed, once, of growing up together and naming their children after each other. He wondered if he could convince his wife to agree)
The sun peers over the horizon, its first rays streaking across the ocean, stretching to light the city he loves so much. That's his cue to stop becoming Proteus and start becoming the Crown Prince (After today, King).
He's been itchy, Kale's noticed. For a few days now. The sea isn't always enough for Sinbad, despite what he tries to get people to believe. He gets restless, wants to truly run through the streets he's known since he was a child and Kale gets that. Syracuse is a tall city, built on the waves of the ocean and meant for being climbed and clambered through.
They're to be there soon and Sinbad's eyes haven't left the horizon. Not even for Marina.
(Different kinds of love demanded different kinds of attention and Marina had never been his only love because he loved Proteus too, in a different way.)
The crowning is to take place at noon, a time of good luck in Syracuse. But, bare minutes before the ceremony starts, Proteus finds himself standing before a mirror in the nearest washroom, his stomach still feeling that tugging sensation. He runs a hand through his hair, hardly brushing the back of his neck now, no longer the long tail that he'd been able to put it into in his youth. (…a haircut…King someday…)
Dymus walks in, standing by the door. He looks old now, truly old. His father had always been taller than him, but age is beginning to shrink Dymus and it feels alien to Proteus. "How do you feel?" Dymus asks.
"Seasick." That's an alien feeling too. Proteus has never gotten seasick, but he knows the feeling from other sailors' descriptions.
Dymus chuckles. "Yes, I felt that way too. Only twice in my life, you know."
"Twice?" He blinks in confusion.
"Once before my coronation and once before my wedding day."
Proteus can't relate to the latter. He'd glanced to the back on his wedding day, hoping to see familiar, laughing eyes in a confident stride marching up the aisle and apologizing for being late or a graceful quirk of the lips and a quiet, ladylike taking of a seat in the back.
It had never happened.
"Any way to get rid of it?"
"To go through with it and get it over with as soon as possible." Dymus doesn't pretend not to know what's been bothering his son. He knows Proteus and he knows that Proteus isn't the same, hasn't been the same, since Sinbad left and Marina left with him. But he can't fix that, so he doesn't try. It isn't his place and, in truth, he had never understood that relationship in the first place.
Proteus takes a slow breath, drawing himself together before standing upright. "Then let's go."
The coronation takes place outside, on the outer courtyard of the throne room for the people of Syracuse believe that all things of importance should take place before the sea. The ceremony is dragged on, not on purpose and perhaps not at all, but it certainly feels that way. Proteus has his back to the ocean and he has to stomp down on the urge to look back for a flash of orange on the horizon. There is a whisper of…something…at one point during the ceremony, but he cannot turn to look and he repeats the words he's bid to say.
He is asked to step up to the sacred circle—one blessed by the gods, ringed with their symbols and in the center, there is a crown circling the Tower of Peace—and turn towards the ocean to finish saying his kingly vows.
Proteus' eyes are drawn to them immediately. The crew scattered among the crowd. Most aren't really paying attention, not that he can blame them. Kale sits at the end of the fourth to last row on his right, Marina right beside him. Proteus searches for their captain and finds him without a seat—and how very like him, to let his crew take the available seats and be left standing—leaning against a column.
Sinbad smiles when their eyes meet, proud and touched with mischief, still so familiar after so many years.
"You actually showed up," Proteus says at the feast afterwards. They're secluded away from the crowds in the halls, sitting outside on a balcony. "I'm shocked."
"Well, I heard this rumor that there was free food and wine and, well, I just couldn't resist." Sinbad is different than Proteus remembers and, at the same time, still very much the same. There are new lines on his face, faint, but there in his sun-brown skin. There are undertones of pale brown in his hair from many hours spent beneath the sun and a few stray streaks of gray. But he is still broad-shouldered and strong, still grinning and laughing and joking. Still Sinbad.
"You were late."
"Would you believe me if I said I got mixed up and actually ended up at another king's coronation instead?"
"I wouldn't be surprised. But I think you'd have been arrested if you really did."
"Such little faith, Proteus? That wounds me, real deep. Right here." Sinbad taps his chest, right over his heart.
"Oh, I'm sure." Proteus says dryly. He shifts on the balcony he's sitting on, making himself more comfortable where he's leaning on one of the columns. The column is still sun-warm, as is most of Syracuse. "Somehow, I think you'll live."
Sinbad laughs, as warm as the column and deep and rolling like the waves. He swings the leg he's dangling over the outside of the balcony. "…It's good to be home."
(Sometimes, Sinbad questioned if he could still call Syracuse home. After all, he rarely returned there, hadn't stayed for more than a night since he'd left at nineteen years old. But perhaps that was what made a place home—knowing you could always go back)
"I thought you got land-crazy if you stayed too long in port."
"Sanity's overrated."
"Ah." Proteus thinks about asking after Marina and how things were between them, but he'd spoken with Marina at the feast. The sea agrees with her; she's been polished and roughened and come out shining, different, yet the same. And he doesn't want to spoil this between them, not now. "How was Fiji, after so long?"
"The best umbrella drinks ever." Proteus startles himself with his laughter at that, free and loud like it hasn't been in a long time. "I'm serious, I don't know what the natives do to it, but…"
Their evening trails into sharing stories and news, interposed with long periods of comfortable silence. It's a strange thing, Sinbad-and-Proteus, but they work.
"…I'm leaving in the morning." Sinbad says. Proteus isn't surprised. Sinbad belongs at sea the way that Proteus wishes he can.
"Where to?"
"Dunno. Haven't figured it out yet."
"Wherever the wind takes you?"
"Yup. Hasn't led me wrong yet."
Proteus hums in agreement. He knows, with all the certainty an –and-someone can have, that the wind will always eventually lead him back here.
"If a single tear fell from your eyes into the ocean
And then washed up on some far and distant shore
I would still recognize that teardrop
For in the end that tear would still be yours."
-Trans-Siberian Orchestra