Here it is! The one I've been toying with (or has it been toying with me?) for absolutely AGES (or, like, a month). I was fortunate to have, not one, but two prodigiously talented writers take a look at this story as I got it ready to post. Thank you very much, Little Obsessions and Marjorie Nescio, for taking the time to read, offering feedback and encouragement, and patiently allowing me to bounce ideas off you. I am happily in your debt.

While I'm on the subject of gratitude, thanks to all who stop by to read this. If you feel inclined to leave a review, I thank you for that as well.

Of course, these characters aren't mine. Some lines in the last chapter are right from PD2. There are quotes from PD1 peppered throughout the first two chapters, and one rather muddled version of a delightful quote from "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam.

All three chapters, ready and posted at once! This first chapter assumes the ill-fated conversation between Clarisse and Joe that ended so badly - when Clarisse was reviewing place settings and music selections for Mia's wedding reception - was followed by an even worse one later in the evening; and it picks up on the morning of the following day.

"Is that for Her Majesty?"

"It is," replied Mrs. Kowt.

Joseph took a quick glance around the kitchen. It was full of people, but they were all occupied with a multitude of tasks. The housekeeper took care of Clarisse's breakfast tray herself, and her body blocked it from general view as she fussed over the tray for the sake of presentation.

He waited until her busy hands ceased their activity and were ready to grip the sides of the tray, then he laid a single rose across the center. Mrs. Kowt frowned.

"Did that throw off your culinary feng shui?" he asked snidely.

"What have you done?" she shot back, choosing to ignore his remark.

His eyebrows arched defensively. "I haven't done anything," he protested. He was lying, of course, but he still resented the fact that she had jumped to that conclusion.

"Hmm." Her eyes narrowed. "She broke a wine glass in her suite last night."

What? When had she…? "Everyone has a clumsy moment now and then," he deflected vaguely.

"Against the wall?" Mrs. Kowt countered smugly.

Ah. He was even more nervous now, knowing he had left in her in a rare object-throwing state of mind. "So it was a very clumsy moment." He turned to leave the kitchen. Wherever this conversation was going, he didn't want to follow it.

"I don't suppose she was aiming at your head?"

"You know what I miss?" he asked, pausing in the doorway. "I miss the old days, when everyone around here knew their place and stayed in it. Good day, Mrs. Kowt."

"I would imagine you rather like your new place." If she saw soul-piercing doubt tighten the corners of his eyes, signifying that his words of rebuke were directed at himself as much as anyone else, she didn't let on. "Good day, Mr. Romero."

It was an unprecedented conversation. No one on the staff openly acknowledged the non-professional aspect of the relationship between the queen and her head of security. However, in these days leading up to Mia's hasty wedding, everyone was behaving out of character. Nerves were frayed, tempers were flaring, feelings were hurt, voices were snapping, and patience was worn thin all over the place. There wasn't a soul exempt from this phenomenon. Pre-wedding jitters, Mia called it - an ironically harmless-sounding name.

Joseph hurried along his path. He fought the urge to veer off toward Clarisse's suite, determined to give her some space. To let her absorb his gesture of apology over breakfast. In the meantime, he headed for the security hub to start the first meeting of the day. Over the past week, they had been occurring twice daily as the security plan was increasingly honed and tightened. This meeting, not two days before the wedding, should be relatively short. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the plan was pretty much locked in, and everyone was getting familiar with their part. Ten minutes, fifteen tops, and he would be on his way…

Thirty-seven minutes later, Joseph cursed unforeseen circumstances, and made a beeline for the royal suite to talk to Clarisse for the second time since he'd run out on her the previous afternoon.

He passed the footman standing guard at the outer entrance, then practically jogged down the private corridor leading to her apartment. He nearly collided with a maid backing out of the door with Clarisse's breakfast tray. He grumbled dismissively at her nervous and unwarranted apology (he was the one careening about, after all) as he glanced at the tray. Almost nothing had been touched, including the rose.

Impatiently, he waved on the maid before entering the sitting room. He pushed the door shut behind him, eager for privacy in order to begin again the conversation that had gone so horrendously wrong the evening before. The conversation that was supposed to have fixed how he handled the previous afternoon's conversation.

Now all the conversations needed fixing.

She knew he was there, he had no doubt. But she leaned against the doorway to the balcony, not giving any indication that she planned to turn around.

He had a bad feeling about this. She had had an entire night to dwell on their argument, to consider the comments he had flung at her in anger. He had watched them hit their mark, watched as heartbreak registered in her eyes; then he had tried to take them back.

He had been hurt, and had wanted the satisfaction of letting her know.

There had been no satisfaction. Only a sinking, nauseating feeling as he watched the uncalculated effect of his malicious efforts - the shattering of something fragile, without which their bond could not survive.

Please, God, let her let me take it all back now. Please. Don't let it be too late.

"Clarisse," he uttered fervently, as if her name were the Amen to his prayer.

She finally turned around. "I see you've been vandalizing my rosebushes again," she said lightly. She was trying to tease him, but though her lips tipped up in a small smile, her eyes harbored the sadness from the night before. And something else he couldn't name...

"Just trying to bring some of their beauty indoors. And to let you know I've been thinking of you. Are you going to let me apologize today?"

She closed her eyes wearily. "Please, Joseph, let's not talk about this now."

He walked over to her, disregarding her obvious attempt to keep space between them. "If not now, when?"

"Later. After the wedding. I have neither the time nor the energy -"

"We can't wait until then. We both have to be well-rested for the ceremony and the reception, and I don't know about you, but I've already lost a night of sleep over this. Please, can't I tell you I'm sorry, and I love you, and let's start putting this whole unfortunate episode behind us?"

Anger flashed in her eyes, momentarily replacing the despair. "You think it's that easy?"

He shook his head. "No, certainly not easy. But simple. The simple truths are that I am sorry and I love you. Let me give you this simple apology to get us through the next few days. After which time," he reached out to her, daring to caress her, to run his hand down along her arm to her hand, to grasp it tenderly and pull her toward him, "I fully intend to issue the apology you deserve. To show you, in any way I can, just how much I love you with everything I am. We'll escape from here, even if for a few hours, I promise, and -"

"Where exactly do you think we would go?" she asked skeptically.

Despite himself, he felt a small smile tug at his lips. "I don't know. Anywhere. Somewhere secluded. We don't need much as long as we have some space. And maybe some wine." His smile widened into the one he knew she couldn't resist. "And a loaf of bread. 'And thou beside me singing in the wilderness.'…"

He had no idea of the Homeric effort it took for her to keep from succumbing to him. She turned her head as he tried to kiss her, and twisted her hand out of his. "I can't, Joseph. I can't do this to you anymore."

"Clarisse -"

"It isn't fair to you."

"I told you I didn't mean it. You know I didn't mean it."

"But you said it."

"Of course, I said it. I was angry, and I say stupid things when I'm angry. You know this about me. I've always done it, and I'm ashamed to say, despite my best efforts, I probably always will."

"All these years," she said, refusing to meet his eyes. "All these years, I've been saying the same thing, and you've always told me no, you won't leave, this is where you want to be."

"This is where I want to be." The strange tone in her voice and the distance between them, no longer just physical, were scaring him.

"Not last night. Half your life spent on a masochistic, dead-end relationship. And with a woman content to keep you hidden in shadows." He flinched at her recollection of his words, and she moved her gaze toward him in time to see it. "Well, you did say it. And you were right." Her voice faltered and her eyes glistened. "But only about the first part."

"I was angry and hurt. I was not right."

"I've always tried to tell you that you deserve more, but I never bothered to truly convince you."

"I don't need convincing. Look at me." She had turned from him again, staring at something he could not see. "I was wrong to push you yesterday afternoon. I was wrong to accuse you last night. I know you're not ashamed of me. And I realize my timing was bad. After all these years, I got excited." He gave her a smile he hoped was light-hearted and self-deprecating. "Can you blame me for that last bit?"

"No. I don't blame you. I blame only myself." Her eyes closed again and her next words came out in a whisper. "I have been so selfish."

He felt his insides grow cold. He knew where she was going with this, and he knew what she could do when she put her mind to it. Years of trying to prove his love and her worthiness - dashed in a weak moment of angry recrimination. "Don't." He grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward him. "You chose me, remember? You told me last night. After a lifetime of never being able to choose, you chose me. You chose us! And I want to be chosen," he finished desperately.

"I had no right to choose. Choice is an option for people who have their own identities, who control their own destinies. Genovia is my identity. Genovia is my destiny. That is all I know." She shook her head. "I chose us, yes, and at what cost? I gave us both hope that I had no right to bestow."

"I don't care. You want me, and I want you. We will figure out what that means."

"It means nothing! Haven't you heard anything I've been saying?"

"Last night, you weren't saying this!"

"I've been thinking since last night."

"And this is the decision you've come to?"

"For the love of God, Joseph, it's not my decision!"

"Yes, it is!" He turned away from her, rubbing his face with his trembling hands. His breath was ragged as he tried to inhale deeply. He spun back around, knowing he was on borrowed time, her not-decision having already been made. "Mia will be queen -"

"And I will be what? They pluck the crown off my head and drop it onto hers, and you think it's over and done with? You think I will suddenly be the person you have deserved all these years? You think we can go forward with my inability to change and your resentment -"

"I'm not asking you to change, and I don't resent it, dammit!" He bit back his tongue. His temper was part of why they were even in this place. He searched for other words, other arguments, but nothing came to help him plead his case.

Pleading. Yes, that's all he had left.

"Please, Clarisse."

But she was gone, retreating behind her icy façade and shutting him out with the queen's mask he had observed for years. He thought of all the times he had been thankful to not be on the receiving end of that look, and every fear, every doubt, every bit of dread came to fruition in this moment. "I cannot do this anymore," she said quietly. "I will not."

"Oh, God. Clarisse, don't do this. Don't do this to us." He choked on the words as he searched her expression for some chink in her armor. There was none.

"I am sorry."

"I don't accept this." He took her face between his hands and pressed his lips to hers. "Please," he said, speaking the words into her mouth, "kiss me back. Just once."

He felt her hands slide up his arms, over his shoulders, and around to his chest. There they stayed, and just as he began to hope, he felt them press against him as she pushed him away. She walked past him back to the balcony. "Please," she said, her back to him once more, "go."

No! This could not be happening. "How can you -"

"Please! Just go."

He knew there was nothing more he could say. "Do you mean 'go from this room,' or 'go from my life entirely'?" The question had been rhetorical sarcasm, but the moment it was out of his mouth, he knew the answer. He knew from the way his stomach twisted into knots, from the chill that crept through him.

She shook her head. She was trying, but didn't have the strength to deliver the final blow.

"I see," he said. Suddenly, everything felt surreal as he stared fully into his bleak future. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded tinny and faraway to his own ears. "It will take some time. I will wait until after the coronation."

"Take whatever time you need."

"So kind of you. Thank you, Your Majesty."

He watched her from behind, watched her react to his undisguised pain and bitterness, watched her arm move as she pressed her hand to her stomach - that thing she did when she was hurting profoundly. It was how he knew she didn't want this. She was falling apart as quickly and completely as he was. Yet her mind was made up.

On some level, it always had been.

In a sudden moment of perfect, chilling clarity, he realized there had never been another answer for her to give.

On some level, he had always known.

He did the only thing he knew she would let him do, the only thing that made sense.

He left.

Note:

I believe what Joe was trying to say was:

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread - and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness -

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"