Beloved Shadows, a rose of versailles fanfic

NOTE: For some reason, this place keeps messing with my layout. If you want a prettier looking fic, head over to my Livejournal, the URL is in my profile ('cause I can't get it to be properly displayed here).

Title: Beloved Shadows (1/1)

Author: Antigone a.k.a. Anty

Rating: PG-13

Keywords: AU, Short, Character Death.

Summary: The source of all madness lies within that you treasure most.

Notes & Disclaimer: This is a short AU that came to me during my latest Oscar-revival. I won't be telling you more though, it might spoil the… fun. Also, not mine – playing in Ikeda-sama's sandbox. Many thanks to my patient beta mcvarmazi!

Beloved Shadows
© Antigone, September 13th, 2006

They are a shame to the greater cause, a disappointment to their parents, the talk of a tiny secluded village. They are in no position to care. They bought the mansion not far out and for a long time provided for the villagers by letting them turn it into a two-faced ghost.

They spend the odd days stealing themselves out through the backdoor at dawn, riding off to sun-dipped clearings and banks, enjoying the time with racing and fencing and good-natured fist fights, lying on the soft ground and chewing apples and blades of grass. When they get home, all laughing and rumpled and dirty, they are served dinner by a woman who happily pampers one while enthusiastically scolding the other, and looks remarkably like someone who has long since died.

The even days of the year they can hardly openly touch, but walking through the luxuriant gardens next to the other is truly a pleasure. Sometimes there's tea and music and people who sing but would never dare speak. Always, it's sighs and vows under the trees at night, and clothing that's terribly hard to get out of.

When they make love it's alternately playful and full of laughter, forbidden and exciting and easing an aching loneliness, or empty and full of tears, when somehow they both are nothing but themselves.

Always, after the latter, she goes to stand on the balcony overlooking the gardens and stables, fragile body wrapped tightly in the fluttering sheets and looking just as pale in the moonlight. Always, as he follows her, it strikes him how fundamentally wrong that particular picture is. Always, when he has hugged her from behind, she realizes she cannot expect him to totally catch her.

Always, after the latter, they have the precise same conversation.

"I no longer love you."

"I have never loved you."

"But we know what we have lost."

"Yes." A smile then plays at the corner of his mouth, his real one, not the one he has learned to imitate so well. "And I can finally see you're a woman."

She leans against him, not looking for support like she would have, but in quiet mutual consolation. "André," she whispers.

"Antoinette," comes the tormented response.

"After Marie Antoinette's death, von Fersen returned to Sweden. As he had vowed, he never married, and merely lived for Antoinette's beloved shadow."

"Ah! Rip out my heart! Turn me to stone… Or… let me go mad!"

–The Rose of Versailles, Chapter 9 & 8.

(Fin.)