By Clorinda
Rated: PG
Category: General/Angst
Summary: Captain Gordon and young Miss Kent. He asks forgiveness of her only. One-shot. Set after "Mangal Pandey: The Rising."
Author's Note: Personally I think it's a little degrading that there should be a whole separate "sub-category" for Bollywood movies, instead of listing them with English ones, and leaving the lesser known ones for "Miscellaneous." After all, the broad-term category does say "Movies." Not "Hollywood."
But anyway. Who cares, I guess, seen the deed is done. This fic is the product of watching "Mangal Pandey" 'til past twelve-thirty midnight.
In case no one remembers Emily Kent, she was the girl in the belly dancer's dress at the night of the officers' party, the one who asked about the poppies and opium, and the one Gordon was a little more than infatuated with before he rescued the widow sacrifice (who's name I don't know.)
Disclaimer: The title is also not mine; it's from the third in Hannah Davenport's DracoxGinny trilogy. I read it at harrypotterrealm (dot) (com) and on a personal note, it's not a waste of time. A little cliché in terms of abuse and Lucius Malfoy, but the pros overweigh the cons by a little more than a hair's breadth.
Emily is young and unmarried, and they don't respect her wishes to be a spinster. They say she is in the throes of heartbreak, and it is natural for her to be in mourning of her life. Emily doesn't know how to make them understand.
But does she need to?
Julian doesn't try to make them understand. He now lives with his own reasons; reasons with which he turns on his own people. He doesn't care to see if they understand what he does.
Then again, she thinks softly, he doesn't care anymore. He doesn't think twice to explain to her his actions. His thoughts. His betrayal.
Emily doesn't show it. She lets the hurt flow, hidden, beneath the pale, rouge-kissed face that blushes and you wouldn't know around Julian. There was a time when he could tell, take apart and read at leisure, every emotion, every thought she felt.
She used to think he was a marvel, that he had a gift of being able to read people. Then she realised, that she was just childishly transparent.
Julian has drifted away now. He has two homes now: Barrackpore and the widow. Calcutta doesn't figure into his life. Even less does she.
Gossip and rumours fly fast and fly high, and Emily comes to know that Julian even played with the sepoys that day with powdered colours and painted water. That he came home laughing and tottering with that widow-who-should-have-died, drenched to the skin and bone with pink, yellow, green, blue and red.
She supposes he would have looked funny, but there is nothing funny about the grim pressed lips of her mouth as she wonders if she should tell her brother. Eventually she doesn't, but it isn't from love. It's from her missing courage.
Julian used to give her courage. She came to the officers' ball in the dancer's gauze veils and dress only because she wanted to see how they would all react. Emily loves her gowns and skirts; it was Julian, veteran of death and battles, who embedded that shard of recklessness.
Besides, she reflects now, look how that venture turned out.
The officers frown upon Julian now; no one has forgotten, or forgiven, him at that sepoy's trial. Rumours have been flying again that he responded to the colonel's threat of dismission by saying he'd resign ages before they could throw him out.
Affairs hang by a tearing thread with Julian now. Her brother never says anything, but she knows better than to let Julian into her company.
But he never took back that courage he once gave her.
He looks like the same man as he did five years ago. Even the curl of honey-blond hair looks as smooth, rich as she remembers; his expression, sad and mellow, conflicts with the deeply passionate, mostly shy man.
The sob chokes her throat, and she tears her eyes away.
"Why did you come here?"
Julian doesn't reply. He stands loosely to the side of the parlour, staring into the empty fireplace. Timidly, Emily approaches him, her hand falling gently on his shoulder.
She whispers his name. His eyes close, and he turns his head slowly to look at her. The cuts on his cheek have healed with a thin white scar, and no longer does she see the flicker of pain when he walks as straight as a man without a mangled thigh. His eyes look like they are seeing her for the first time.
Emily has no courage anymore when Julian looks at her.
When his eyes pierce her without meaning to be brutal, meaning to be kind, she forgets her brother, the officers, and the sepoy who hanged. She remembers Julian, warm and of love, his uncertain breath tracing her skin before he drew away with mumbled apology.
The tears fall without Emily's consent, without her courage. "Why?" she stutters. "Why are you going against us?"
His eyes soften. They bear a burden that she will never know, but he will not make her understand, so she cannot even expect to know.
"You just won't understand."
"Make me."
Her voice pleads, begs. "I don't want you to die, Julian. You understand that, don't you?"
"Death doesn't matter, Emily. I'm a soldier."
It snaps inside her with an audible crack.
"And me? What about me, Julian? Death matters to me, even if you couldn't give a damn."
"I'm sorry," he says tonelessly.
She knows that he is not; she sees it in the blankness of his eyes. "I ... I love you, Julian. Even if you don't. And even if it does not matter ... A-and even if you don't care."
He looks at her. He stands where he is, his head half-turned, half-ducked in shame. He looks at her still like she is a stranger, like they never met. Perhaps it is true. They are strangers. Because never was he an empty shell. Never was she like this.
Inside her, her heart hammers. She doesn't want him like this, so broken and blank. She wants the old Julian back; the tears tugging at her eyes, creeping down her cheeks betray that.
"I'm sorry, Emily."
"No, dammit, you aren't." She nearly screams the words. "You don't care. You pretend to. You fool yourself that you want to. But you don't. ... I care if you live or die. That widow cares. They are people who love you, who care."
"Emily,"
Her fists clench at her sides, the tears running freely past the bridge of her nose. "You can't go to war against the Company. They will kill you, Julian. The lives of a few thousand soldiers who can do very well without you are not worth your own. Why can you not see that?"
"You just don't understand, Emily."
She closes her eyes, clenching them down. Her knees buckle under her skirts, her body trembles, her skin cold and her cheeks damp.
This is not Julian. This man makes her hate. This man is nothing like Julian.
"Go," she whispers, her eyes still closed. "Just leave. You shouldn't have come."
The air stirs beside her. She feels his presence, tall, warm, alive, beside her, his hand touching hers; the moment is passes. So does he.
Emily's eyes flicker open, her lashes damp like her heart. On the mantelpiece lies something. A small bouquet of hyacinth flowers, dark and beautiful. Her breath catches. She knows what these flowers say.
What Julian wants to say.
Please forgive me, white lady.
—- End -—