Tears
Mary didn't like to cry.
She was a queen. She didn't like to show any weakness at all. Weakness was something others could prey on, and there were too many loking to her - whether it be for guidance, looking for something to exploit, for her favor. She just couldn't afford it.
But when Francis told her he was dying...
It was all too much.
She couldn't lose him. He was her guiding star. He was everything to her. She did not know who she was without him. Francis, whether he knew it or not, had taught her so much about politics and navigating court life. She had been a naïve young girl when she came here. He had been impossibly young as well, it seemed, barely more than a boy, but he was already well-versed in affairs of state and the military and everything he needed to be. How would she manage without him?
She had already almost lost him once, to her own selfishness and foolish mistakes, and she had tried so hard to fit the broken pieces of her life back together and hadn't been able to. Louis hadn't been able to fill his place. She had only just gotten him back. These last weeks had passed in a daze of happiness, of building and creating, nights spent in their bed together, days dancing in his arms, and even the strategizing and nobles were more bearable now that she was with him once again and they were as one.
He couldn't just leave her.
"No. They're wrong. We'll find other physicians, experts -" She was rambling and she knew it, grasping helplessly at straws. Couldn't he see? He had to understand that she could not be without him, he had to know how much she needed him and loved him.
"No! No, Mary, please listen." Francis took her face between his hands and forced her t look at him, his touch impossibly gentle. "Please, hear me." His own eyes, those beautiful cerulean eyes, were swimming with tears and she wanted to scream that no, he shouldn't be crying, they would save him, but she was on the brink of tears as well. "I am dying."
Queen Mary knew that there were matters of state to be handled, arrangements to be made. They needed to send for Charles. They would have to inform immediate family members. Bash, Claude, Lola.
But the woman within her, the wife, could not think of such things just then . Her husband was dying. He was leaving her here alone. He might not want to, but he was, and she could not bear it.
So she buried her face against his shoulder, tears already wetting the fabric of his coat as the first sob broke free.