Disclaimer: I don't own this, Will Shakespeare does, and probably some bits of Trevor Nunn too, for the kick-ass movie version.
A/N: Illyria is north of modern-day Greece and is basically now known as Croatia, and the territory extended down a ways along the coast that runs parallel to Western Italy, on the other side of the Adriatic Sea.
This picks up where play left off, a year later.
This is partially based in the story presented by the movie, but mostly the spirit of the play. Plus I will not be having the characters speaking all Shakespearean. It'd be nice, but I can't write that convincingly and still get my point across and you wouldn't be able to understand a lot of it and wouldn't waste your time with my poor little story. So they will be speaking old-fashioned I suppose, but very understandable. No modern slang. Viola's not going to walk in and go "Yo shizzle my nizzle, what up G dawg in da hood? What's happenin' in your crib? Fo' shiz!" If you catch me using words you think are too modern, let me know in the reviews section and I'll do my best to correct it. All part in italics are either Shakespeare's words or flashbacks. Please R & R!
"Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before." – Orsino (from the real 12th Night) Lines 7-8, Scene 1, Act 1
Viola, the Duchess of Illyria, wandered idly about the palace she now lived in with her husband of just under a year, Orsino. A small volume of poetic verses dangled from her fingertips, ignored, as she strolled along the outer passages, her eyes reflecting the same colour as the dark gray waves that caressed the sea-shore in the distance. Pulling her thick woolen shawl tighter around her slim shoulders, Viola placed the book on a small table and placed a hand against a thick wooden door, pushing on it with all her strength. It groaned and creaked but slowly gave way under her steady pressure. As the door swung wide, she caught up her thick skirts in one hand and drew the other along the sloping wall that ran along both sides of the staircase that led up to the flat roof terrace. The winds blew strongly off the ocean, and the stiff breeze had her leaning into it, her hair streaming out behind her and tangling before her eyes as the wind played with the ends of the dark brown waves. Bracing herself against the gusts, she began to pace.
This was where she came to think, no matter the time of day or night, paying no heed to the weather. In fact, she preferred to sort out her thoughts amidst the howling gales. The wildness of the tempests and the courses of the winds seemed to smooth out the chaos of her thoughts and gentle them into something manageable. Chewing on her thumbnail, she sat on the low stone wall that encircled the rooftop and leaned her elbow on her knees. She sighed and rubbed her closed eyes, trying to think back to when it had all started.
"Your master quits you; and for your service done him, so much against the mettle of your sex, so far beneath your soft and tender breeding, and since you called me master for so long, here is my hand: you shall from this time be your master's mistress."
Orsino's words had been spoken lowly, and Viola felt she couldn't believe her ears. The man with whom she had spent the last three months with and had fallen in love with, was uttering the sweetest words she had ever heard. He loved her. He loved her, Viola; in spite of her deception and disguise, in spite of her brother having wed Olivia, and in spite of the threat he had made against her life only moments earlier as he thought her to have betrayed him by marrying Olivia. Apparently, being female changed everything. She had been willing to die at the hands of the man she loved as his rage against his unrequited love he felt turned him to contemplate dark acts of violence to revenge himself upon Olivia. But as he'd spoken to her, gently, warmly, she had known that the love he'd felt for Olivia had been superficial and fleeting, and the love they had built on friendship and mutual respect had deepened into an abiding passion and longing that could now be satisfied. In the grand scheme of things, Olivia had meant next to nothing to Orsino.
Or so she'd thought.
She couldn't place the nagging feeling of dread and doubt that tugged incessantly at her heart, even as she tried to lock away the unpleasant thoughts into the darkest corner of her mind in order to maintain her sanity. A shared smile, a look, a touch of hands during the dance…each incident did not go unnoticed in Viola's eyes. Even as Orsino and Olivia occupied the same space, across a crowded room, it seemed to Viola that the air was electrified by their communal presence. Though she was even now his wife, Viola felt that she could never wholly possess Orsino's heart as Olivia had. Orsino often talked to her about many things. It pleased her that he viewed her as an intellectual match. Given that she'd parried his questions and debated his ideas with ease when she had donned her male attire and gone by the name of Cesario, it would have been ludicrous if he'd expected her to turn into a meek and subservient female. Viola sighed and shook her head. It really was too bad that she'd already do anything out of love for the man. So their companionship was still strong, and he knew just how to make her laugh—but Viola just couldn't ignore what she saw anymore.
There was a leaden veil over their happiness, it seemed. The magic, the sheen of silver that seemed to tinge the air whenever she and Orsino were together, had simply…faded. Viola saw little to no effort on Orsino's part to rejuvenate the stagnant state of their marriage, and wondered if the glitter and romance of her situation had been a figment of her imagination all along. Think realistically, she reasoned with herself. Unless Orsino had shallowly fooled himself into believing himself madly in love with Olivia, with some part of him knowing all along that he was doomed to falter or fail, he never could have shifted his affections towards her, Viola, in an instant, as he had seemed to. Viola was left with two considerations, one, that Orsino's love for Olivia had been insipid and false; or two, that his love for Viola now was as stale and unpalatable to him as last week's bread. Or perhaps he had never really loved her at all. This led Viola to question Orsino's motives or intelligence, seeing as he had acted so strongly in apparent contradiction of his own feelings. If he loved Olivia truly, why had he married Viola when Olivia was no longer available to him? If he truly loved Viola all along, why had he put so much time and effort into wooing Olivia? The questions inevitably linked to one another into a circle, forming a curious mass of orbiting doubts in Viola's mind, which threatened her sanity in making her want to scream or sleep or die.
Viola groaned, and the sound was swept away with the wind as she sat. Difficult enough as it was, that her husband would sooner pat her on the back and offer her a brandy as though she were a fellow man than give her a kiss as a woman. The whistling winds did nothing to soothe her tormented soul this time, and red half-circles appeared on her hands from where her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms. She would have to stand in the middle of the market square, naked as the day she was born, with a rose between her teeth before he'd even notice she was female. Not that there was anything wrong with his basic perception of the fact, she thought, colouring a little. He certainly was what she assumed was enthusiastic in their marital relations, but seldom did he even attempt to romance her, even a little. None of the songs, sighs, tears, groans, vows of love, everlasting devotion and poetic envoys he had sent to Olivia, oh no! Viola blinked violently, fighting back the tears that would spring forth, unwanted. She could bear the superficial camaraderie and lack of flirtation and romantic intrigue, but it was the harassing doubts that plagued her every waking thought these days that tore her apart inside.
Every week or so, Orsino would be called away on what he deemed 'matters of the state,' and although Viola often offered to accompany him on these trips, he gently refused her companionship, insisting that the affairs he had to attend to were hideously dull and not worth her interest. Viola had accepted these excuses to begin with, but as the trips had become more frequent in recent weeks, she had grown tired of the vague answers and unsatisfactory replies. One of her husband's pages had then let it slip that Orsino had been seen frequently at the Lady Olivia's estate. Among other things, there were several orders of flowers and fine wine and other trinkets to be sent to Olivia's house. The flowers were set to arrive in the next fortnight, Viola had surmised, after perusing some documents Orsino had left carelessly upon his desk, obviously thinking that his ledgers would be of no interest to his wife as she passed by, searching for a certain book in his library. Viola hadn't meant to snoop, but the items listed were so strange that they had caught her eye.
Viola bit her lower lip and reminded herself that these things probably meant nothing. Yet, try as she might to think of an alternative explanation, the culmination of events built in her mind and blotted out every other possibility until she was left holding the tattered shreds of her hopes for her marriage.
Above her, clouds tumbled across the sky, and a gray mist crept over the sun, shrouding her in further darkness as the afternoon turned abruptly colder. Viola shivered and quickly wiped away the few tears that had scattered down her cheeks with the edge of her shawl, letting the wind scour any remaining dampness from her skin. Her shawl billowed and snapped in the gust, and as Viola turned to head back down into the house, a sudden cacophony of sound drew her attention to the courtyard. Above the wind, she heard the clash of the gates and the clatter of hooves on the cobbled entrance, and the horse's clear whinny rose to her ears as she saw her husband ride his chocolate-brown stallion into the enclosure.
In an instinctive reaction to seeing him, she raised an arm to greet him, a smile already spreading across her tear-stained cheeks. By God, she loved the man. Whether he did her great wrong or no, she would love him until the day she died, and the thought cut to her heart like a knife.
Yet even as she waved, she lost her grip on the shawl, which slithered around her slim form, snake-like, then eluded her frantic grasp as it floated out above the courtyard, hung suspended for a moment, then was tossed and plummeted towards the man on the horse. As the fabric rustled and fluttered, the horse's eyes rolled back, showing the whites, and he whinnied again, and reared up onto his hind legs, snorting in fear at the strange piece of flapping cloth.
Viola's shriek echoed dully off the stone walls for a moment before she stood mute, her hands pressed over her mouth. Her eyes widened in shock and horror, watching her husband's figure swaying back and forth as the horse reared repeatedly. Servants rushed to and fro, some trying to catch the shawl, others attempting to calm the stallion or grab the reins or catch the master if he should fall. Orsino, being an excellent horseman, maintained his seat and gripped the reins easily, not too tightly, but with a firm enough grip to ease the horse from his violent motions, one hand leaving the leather straps to stroke the horse's neck while he whispered calming words in low, soothing tones. The horse, recognizing his master's voice, and with the bizarre shawl gone from view, gradually quieted, until Orsino was able to leap safely from his back, to where he circled in front of the horse, still holding the reins.
"Eh, Alexi, my fine boy, you must learn to have a stronger constitution than that!" he said, any fear he might have felt dissolved by his lighthearted comments and hidden behind a mask of easygoing charm and bravado. "Here," he said, handing the reins to a boy nearby, who had emerged from the kitchens to watch the action. "Take him to his stall, rub him down and give him his feed for the night. I think he's worn himself out…after he had finished with me, that is!" The assembled servants laughed nervously and began to disperse, relieved to see their master in no apparent shock or ill-health. Orsino bent to retrieve a while fringed lady's shawl from where it lay, twisted and soiled on the cobblestones. Tilting his head backwards, he gazed up to the edge of the roof, where the top of a golden head and two concerned gray eyes peered down at him from a white face. Viola crouched, half-hidden, as she had sunk to her knees, unable to watch Orsino battle the stallion and risk a broken neck at her folly.
"M'lady, you seem to have dropped you shawl," called Orsino, hiding his bemused smile by smoothing his short mustache with one hand. "'Tis no weather for you to be out and about without your shawl." Relieved, Viola stood a little taller and grinned hesitantly down at her husband.
"I'm afraid you arrival caused me to lose my grip on it, sir!" she replied.
"Then you'd best come retrieve it," he laughed. "Seeing you have the advantage from your lofty perch, my goddess on high, I shall have to ask—nay, beg—you to descend to your most humble servant, for after my journey I find myself much to fatigued to dash to the rooftop in a gallant manner simply to hand you your scarf."
When Viola hesitated, he sensed that she did not know if he fully forgave her for her misstep and he continued thus: "And how, pray tell, may you kiss me welcome home if you remain aloft?"
All of Viola's misgivings disappeared for that moment, and she hurried down the outer stairs to rush out into the courtyard and into Orsino's arms. Her wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and drew her to him, tilting her head back and kissing her, long and sweet. Viola forgot the chill of the gray, windswept afternoon in the warmth of his embrace, and it was not until later, as she lay awake, listening to Orsino's steady breathing beside her and gazing out at the starlit sky, now clear of clouds, that the same, unanswered doubts crept back into her mind. She sighed as she recalled Orsino's reluctance to speak of his trip, and even though she tried to refute her own inner arguments, she wondered. Had he not taken her into his arms and kissed her near senseless upon his arrival? Had he not spoken sweetly, called her 'goddess,' and spoken in similar poetic terms? Had he not taken her tenderly into his arms and eagerly made love to her just an hour before? Was this not love? Or was it, she reasoned, compensation, disguise for his dalliances at the Lady Olivia's house? Was his eagerness simply the enthusiasm of a lusty man, returned home from a long journey, even if the journey was to see his supposed mistress? Those who wish not to be caught in a crime make every appearance to be virtuous and perfect, she thought with dread. And do not those who take lovers feel the need to take even more? His sensual appetite, she feared, once given excess and variety, would crave more of the same. I'll take what I have, she thought grimly, turning to face the sleeping Orsino with a sigh. Nestling her head against his chest, she closed her eyes, and though she silently wept herself to sleep, Orsino's arm curled around her, and she took small comfort in his warmth and nearness, at last succumbing to the exhaustion of her mind and body.