title: Shatter on Brimstone
summary: Human AU: Alfred thought he settled for less, but when he loses his 'consolation prize,' he realizes what he had for years refused to believe. / Natalya believed her beloved wanted only her. She is devastated to learn otherwise.
pairings: AmeBel / past!onesided!USUK (kind of?), implied FrUk
genre: angst, romance, hurt / comfort
notes: wahhh i can't stop writing angst. it hurts so much TT^TT . oh, can you spot the cameo? lol it's reaaally vague. enjoy!
Natalya's silver, straight hair, akin to a shower of moonlight, Alfred had once heard her sister say, completely contrasted Arthur's bountiful curls of majestic honey. Natalya's poised affect, elegant gestures, soft empathy, took the place where Arthur's crass language, rough movements, and brazen speech once filled his mind.
That's why he married her; Natalya did nothing to remind him of his remorseful past.
Some days he thinks back to their (sad, sad, beautifully tragic) wedding with an old eye and wishes he had not fraudulently proclaimed his love, once, twice, and basked in those impossibly wide lunar grey-amethyst eyes and a genuine smile, (love making her blush that much more endearing), enjoyed the innocence and anticipated the erosion of it, one sparkle (in her gaze, lost) at a time.
It was a sham, at least on Alfred's part, with candied smiles and smoky eyes, their vows passed between them with a certain weight that Alfred secretly scoffed at because, really?, faerie tales are for children and as much as he dwells in the past, he was no child.
He pledged himself to her, promising to cherish her and gazed into her adoring eyes, thinking (what a sad little girl grasping at happily ever after when the story has already ended with her spinning in the ashes of a broken heart).
(Sometimes he's a poet.)
And it's a lie. Even as he bound his faith to Natalya, his mind's eye worked to replace porcelain flesh with tanned hide, and blazing super moon irises with verdant lenses.
•••
The moment he laid his eyes on her, after coming to New York from his visit to Arthur and his new French lover, he thought (I found a new one) and smiled like the world would suffer for tearing him from his love.
When Arthur's iridescent eyes had graced Alfred with their beauty, he had felt his brain plummet into the dirt beneath his feet, the arteries in his neck converge together into one massive vein, and the gravity tying him to the Earth snap, centering his universe around him. With Natalya, the rebinding of his world was a slow burn, a love that blossomed over nights spent late discussing dreams and nightmares, the philosophy and judicial theory, really carving her place in his heart.
He came to savor the little moments when Natalya fell asleep before him; he'd lay for hours, unable to quell the wild thoughts whirling in his mind, basking in her image that was utterly relaxed for once. It seemed she was always worried for some reason or another (he disregarded the fact that it was most often due to his idiotic actions) in her waking hours, so to see her at peace was a rare sight, and he loved watching her sleep simply because it made him immeasurably happy to know she existed alongside him. Very soon after any of these thoughts crossed his mind, he always managed to compare her to Arthur. Curiously, every time he compared the two, he found one was lacking where the other was abundant, (he was able to substantially convince himself that Arthur was the better of the two).
It isn't until now, right in this very moment, Alfred stands while his lungs filling with cement, staring at the miniscule, ribbon adorned envelope lying on the staircase, a marvelous marble spectacle with its twin carved into the other end of the foyer, that he realizes something.
It's never occurred to him before: His entire life was spent pining for a lost cause, a boy so in touch with the Earth that she ignored the light coming from the stars, and missed the woman who looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky.
That fateful moment when their gazes came to meet, Natalya fell in love, embracing white rapid emotions, bittersweet as they were. Weaving thoughts that she knew would never be forgiven (for some reason, she knew that she would hate herself for meeting his azure eyes and falling down the rabbit hole), she let herself drift into his arms.
She should've known, known, known that she'd be left in the dust, just like always, with tears staining her lashes and the taste of Coke on her tongue from his one last kiss.
But the risk should have paid off, the danger and intrigue should have given way for a romance not unlike the ones told to her by her sister, late when her brother took his naps on the parlor sofa and the maids tittered about, often pitying her small, petite three year old self, and doting on her with little snacks.
It should have been more obvious to Natalya, way before one of the budding artists she had taken under her wing exclaimed to her that she was famous. The split second Natalya's sponsored young artist saw the perplexed expression on her face, he recanted his statement with ferocity, attempting to convince her that he was mistaken, but her curiosity was piqued. While pressing the boy for information, he reluctantly handed her a book bound in a crisp paper cover with a grievous expression.
The nights spent lying in bed, waiting for Alfred, only to fall asleep and discover him the next morning, passed out on his desk, his broad shoulders obscuring his work from her, having worked himself to the bone for hours on end. All Natalya did was smile fondly, tenderly stroking Alfred' hair from his face, placing a kiss on his brow, before covering him with her shawl that she had thrown on in a blind panic, preparing herself to search for him.
All the secrets and the trips over eastward, crossing the Atlantic, how could she be so blind? For all her love, for all the worry, for all the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months she waited for him, while Alfred, oh so holy Saint Alfred, was spending his nights with a posh, English scholar, loving him a thousand ways better than he could have ever managed to caress Natalya.
And it burnt. The way he wrote about Arthur, each word describing him as if they were worth their weight in gold, the love he put behind his every word, hell, the sheer amount written about this boy, these were what turned her eyelids to lead, the muscles in her abdomen becoming bands of steel, constricting her breathing as her lungs fought to keep from drowning in the tears that her eyes refused to let go of.
The addendum at the beginning from his brother didn't make things better. This was what Mattie really thought of her? After hours discussing Alfred' adolescence, after Natalya had so graciously offered Matthew shelter from the homophobic plague that seemed to trail after him wheresoever he went, Mattie decided that she was as stuck up, rude, and frigid as they come? That was just shallow of him. Juvenile, more like.
•••
Natalya decides that Alfred, her (mendacious, fraudulent, possessive, passive, cowardly, shy, handsome, powerful, utterly lovable) husband, her husband, deserves to be happy. If this Arthur is as moving as Alfred describes, as trustworthy, and ultimately makes Alfred happy, then Natalya will sacrifice her love, her marriage, shatter her entire soul to make sure his stayed whole.
Regardless of the crystalline teardrops (streaming down her face, staining her letter and smudging her ink), the unpredictable quakes in her right hand, and the shudders that are violently assaulting her frame every few seconds, her letter writing persists, down to the final stroke of her name on the bottom of the sheet. Natalya pauses a moment, lifting her fountain pen from the page, before letting out a small, defeated excuse for a laugh.
She'd written Natalya Jones, while her tears had taken the place of common sense. The self-mocking smile that had forced its way on to her lips is twisted into a trembling line, trying (failing) to keep from parting and releasing a vocal representation of the remains of her heart, left in tatters and bleeding as it was.
So she crosses out Jones, choosing instead to print, not sign, Arlovskaya, to let Alfred know that he's free of the burden that her love was to him, and that he was free to love whomever he wanted. She swallows thickly, the lump in her throat fighting her to stay afloat, along with those sharp, prickling voices in the recesses of her consciousness, refusing to be silenced, all the while folding up the paper and delicately placing it in its silver envelope, spraying a dash of perfume on the parcel before placing a solitary, lingering kiss on the seal.
Natalya removes her engagement ring and wedding band, using a piece of red ribbon to thread them together and ties them around the envelope.
A quivering hand sets the package on the great marble stairs, and before Natalya can think twice about her departure, she spins all the way around to face the enormous oak doors that sat across the stairwell and sprinted out of her home, the tears from her celestial irises trailing a path of agony behind her.
It now occurs to Natalya that she left her dreams behind; she doesn't need them, not anymore, like each and every single wish they ever made together.