Hemlock
DISCLAIMER: Dept. Heaven © Sting.
(the sleep of reason produces monsters – the dreameaters on the sand)
It had been raining hard that day. She remembers it—the heavy, dusty smell of the rain. The room had been dark and the only sound that rose above the steady beat of the water was the soft shear of the old silver scissors.
It was all jumbled up inside her, but Elena made herself still, closing her eyes and breathing softly as her long hair dropped away. Leon. Someone had to do something about him, because he became something wild and not completely human whenever the Emperor turned his back. It was questionable whether Gulcasa even knew; a lot of people were afraid to talk about it. The clumsy and awkward brother she'd adored was vanishing to she didn't know where. Once, being by his side had been able to help him, but she couldn't do anything anymore.
But that wasn't the only reason.
She'd been watching Zilva since she was old enough to realize, to want to watch, and she realized the meaning of the hollow in the older girl's life. Siskier belonged there. No one else could really take that place, not out of the old members of Gram Blaze. Zilva wasn't as lucky as the Emperor in that regard.
Elena was young enough, malleable enough.
And she was enough like her brother to calmly decide to let herself be molded if that was what it took to get what she wanted.
The sounds of metal against metal softly ceased. Zilva opened the back of Elena's dress to brush the stray pieces of hair off her skin.
She was fifteen and the motives were all twisted up inside her, choking the sprig of her young girl's heart. All she could heed was her own dented moral compass and the pound of red blood through her body.
She took a breath and shrugged the fabric off her shoulders, feeling it collapse and crumple around her waist, and turned around.
She could live with being Siskier's substitute.
She could live with making herself into a sentinel to monitor Leon.
She could live with killing her memories of the brother she adored in order to make her hands steady when the time came.
There were a lot of things she could live with, it turned out.
In the end, it was probably just that there was such a huge gap.
Zilva had been conditioned since birth to be able to separate herself from her emotions, to cast aside the part of her that was human so that she could take lives effortlessly and efficiently. That wasn't to say that she was unfeeling or inhuman—she was a kind person, a loyal one, a patriot. She was well-liked by her allies, and there were ways she'd understood Gulcasa that no one else had been able to come close to, not even Nessiah or Leon. She'd enjoyed cute things, sweet things, and loved peace.
It was just that her upbringing had developed a switch inside her so that she could turn all of those things off when she had to. And if there was one thing that being Bronquian, that being close to the Imperial Army, had ever taught Elena, it was that there were parts of your upbringing and your past that could never be shrugged away.
Elena had grown up as a pampered little girl, oversensitive, learning loss and fear and sympathy with the abruptness of virginity lost. And those were things that she could not escape from.
If Zilva had been in her place, then maybe her teacher and lover would have been able to cut herself off from the guilt and loneliness after a while.
Elena couldn't.
Maybe she wasn't meant to.
So she let them churn inside her until she was completely hollow under her skin, until she was too tired and run down to do much more than wonder why the sun kept rising and shining down on her each day.
It was more than someone who murdered her own family deserved, really.
The Royal Army had accepted her. Gradually. Eventually. But as capable as Elena was of becoming a replacement, of accepting replacements, they just weren't really hers to fit in with.
She skirted their edges during the war and after it and lived on, drably.
But it was hard on days when it rained.
She remembered being with Zilva then. The other memories, the ability to see her former family as anything but targets—those things she'd locked into a strongbox and pushed away to gather cobwebs in the dark corner of her mind. Still, the old familiar sounds and colors allowed the days she'd spent with Zilva to leak through the infinitesimally minuscule cracks.
And as used to hating herself as she'd grown, sometimes it was just too much for her to take. She'd been a soldier for what felt like longer than eternity, but by both her mother country's reckoning and Fantasinia's she wasn't even an adult yet.
The whole of the Royal Army was slowly beginning to splinter at the edges. Mistel returned to Lenessey to look after Bly, Gordon had very few chances to ride out to see everyone, Nietzsche had hard work ahead of her in Embellia, and Durant was sour and disapproving as an especially pompous parent over the way that Yggdra had started to look at Roswell. Cruz and Russell went back to Karona, and it was too close to Ishnad for Elena to bear staying there for very long.
As the lichen that had grown along the edges of the rock the Royal Army formed, Elena was left colorless and drifting when that rock began to break apart. Everyone else was far too busy trying to find a life to get on with now that everything was over, and finding some form of success through their struggles. There was no life left for her to find. Elena's soldier's checks were enough to support her. She lived frugally and spent very little, and so she spun aimlessly, dizzily through the capital city of Paltina at the whims of the wind.
Milanor was the same way, she knew. He didn't have Kylier any longer; he didn't have his men any longer. Whenever she saw him, he seemed restless and angry, downcast like a thunderhead looming on the horizon.
They wound run into each other and speak every now and then—empty conversations, short and futile. How are you. I'm getting by. That's great. They could allow the little shoots of words to peter out; there was no need to pretend to someone in the same position as they. They could barely communicate but with glances, but it was something none of them had with anyone else.
Spring was a cruel season.
The returning sunlight came with the calls of birds and radiant flowers blooming all over the place—the chatter of the children, of Pamela and Nietzsche when they were at the palace; of the bright trills of ladies' voices as they debated politics and love and giggled behind their fans at Yggdra on Roswell's arm, leading him forcefully through the gardens—of the moonstruck wonder on his face as he looked at her. Durant's endless antics at trying to discourage them, and the happy couple's utter obliviousness to his disapproval.
Elena had no patience for the love comedy just begging for a selfsure young playwright to use it as inspiration; she had only tired resignation for the explosion of life all about her.
Even if she were to get away from the Royal Army and escape indoors, any place with an open window (and that was most of the capital) would expose her to the spring and the memories leaking from their confinement—of Emilia splurging on cute clothes for herself and for any hapless victims, of Baldus walking through wheat fields, of Luciana booby-trapping windows and doors for old times' sake whenever the mood struck, of Aegina and Zilva picking flowers, of Gulcasa and Nessiah collapsed tangled and curled up sleeping in odd corners of the castle like kittens, Eudy teasing Leon until he was red all the way to the tips of his ears—
And if it was not bright and beautiful, the world thawing as if to torment her, it was raining.
It was one of those rainy days. Even now, Elena remembers it very well.
Everyone had been inside, and so she had gone to sit out along one of the roofed terraces, bare feet dangling off the edge of the walkway, staring blankly out over the lake that surrounded the city and wondering idly what it would cost to simply leap into the water—whether she would be too badly injured to swim for the shore, whether she would be struck by lightning, whether the jump alone would kill her, or whether she could survive long enough to swim.
Then she felt it—the soft susurrus of steps communicated along her skin as they padded along the wooden floor, a soft rhythm quite distinct from the drumbeat of the rain.
She recognized the gait, but had to turn to make sure it was Milanor. There was something unreadable in his eyes when he looked at her, and as she stood to meet him, he reached out and pulled her to him with one arm as he veered them toward the wall.
He didn't move to kiss her lips, but rather nosed the high neck of her shirt down and grazed his teeth along the lines of her throat as he pressed his body to hers. Lazily, she arched off the wall, pressing against him as she stared blankly at the junction between roof and sky.
Everything was a muddy gray blur as Milanor drew her into a corner, as his hands traveled the length and breadth of her body, clamping hard over her clothes and then snaking under them, all blunt fingers and callused palms. There was a leak in the roof above them; patters of rain were cold pinpricks against her hair and shoulder, then over her breast as Milanor hiked her shirt up. He bowed over her, biting more than kissing; there were no real handholds on the wall, and so she gripped his shoulders instead. Detached as she was mentally, her heart was beating in her fingertips and toes, in her nipples and between her legs. He was hard against her. Men's bodies were a foreign country to her, but Elena knew enough to recognize that.
And because it was Milanor—the only one who'd ever really accepted her here—she let him pull her shorts down, and freely braced herself against the wall to raise both her legs and balance them against the inside of his elbows.
Elena was no stranger to sex, and so she could tell that Milanor was clumsy at it—he took her without preamble, not knowing or not bothering to use his fingers or his mouth on her in preparation, and thrust into her in an awkward syncopated rhythm that didn't match up with the thunder, the lightning, or the rain but felt almost as though it was trying. The feel of their interlocked bodies was more discomfort than anything else—the pain was faint and fluttering and bright, the heat of the blood on her thighs not quite invigorating; the pleasure much duller than the nights with Zilva reflected in her memories. Milanor pinned her close to the wall as his breath rushed in delirious little huffs; he groaned her name and something indistinct about how wet she was. He climaxed a few moments later with her locked around his body, embracing him every way she could. For a few moments, she felt almost alive.
It could not be called a relationship or even an affair. If they ever did anything together in public, it was that kind of blank sitting next to each other that dolls did on a collector's shelf. He couldn't even be counted upon to be around—Milanor tended to go on long rambling wanderings through the country, and disappeared to places where no one could find him. Yggdra and sometimes Durant would frown at his retreating back as he went off, but everyone always assumed this was a part of his grieving over Kylier and let him be.
Elena didn't miss him or wait for him in any conventional sense that she could quantify. It was just a thing that happened that on rainy days he would appear, sometimes wet and dripping, and pull her into a private room for sex.
He always took her bare, heedless of whether or not she wore charms against pregnancy or even whether or not the crescent moon was drawing each month's quota of blood from her—he liked the sensation of coming inside her, he mentioned once. He remained clumsy. Elena bled often, but never protested. He would learn as the days passed. It was enough of a distraction from the greater pain of her memories that she cared very little.
One day—a day when the weather was easing from the moodiness of early spring to the more cloying heat that spoke of the coming summer—Elena was lying on the roof on her back when the voices in the courtyard started buzzing much louder, up until there was a single unified gasp so loud that it almost made her head ring.
She sat up and squinted through the brightness, leaning and scooting down along the tiles to peek past the edge of the tall cylindrical watch tower. In a wide circle of startled courtiers, Roswell's kneeling figure was visible. Yggdra stood before him. They were too distant for Elena to be able to see her expressions, but there was something ancient and holy in their pose that there was no way to mistake the proposal for anything other than itself.
Yggdra reached out to firmly grasp Roswell's hands and pulled him to his feet, and the two embraced; for a moment there was silence, and then a great cheer rose from the people assembled.
Elena watched them for a while, but something uncomfortable was rising in coils inside her and eventually she was unable to do anything but retreat into the castle, seeking someplace cool to hide in.
There was great excited talk about the wedding amongst the nobles while the politicians massaged their foreheads in preparation for the great headache of dissolving the border between Fantasinia and Verlaine. Nietzsche brought strange undersea flowers, floating in great porcelain bowls of water; a courier arrived bearing pompous congratulations from Gordon. Durant bemoaned the lack of propriety and made a great nuisance of himself, most likely the way the late king would have done. No one paid him very much mind.
Spring moved into summer, a thick cloying heat that made Elena feel slightly ill. The queen's eighteenth birthday came and then went.
The rainy days were much scanter now that the season for them had passed by; when the storm clouds did visit, they came with a great heavy humidity that made Elena feel much worse than she already did. Milanor's attentions didn't help.
The length of their relation and her lack of complaint had apparently emboldened him, and while his technique had seen very little improvement, he became much harsher. Milanor discovered one night that he liked to pin her down; Elena discovered that apparently the pained sounds she made were indistinguishable from cries of pleasure, because he didn't let her up.
It was never her name he called anymore, either.
In the mornings, she often found her skin bruised heavily over her shoulders and back where his hands had been, and she grew to dread the rain.
She had been feeling out of sorts for so long.
That night as summer was fading into autumn, Elena slipped through the castle halls on the vague hope that motion might ease the aching and swelling in her joints, ease the vague discomfort all through her body.
As she turned the corner towards the royal halls, silent on her bare feet, a sudden slice of light through the tiny gap in a doorway blinded her for a few moments.
Passing by, she glanced, then paused.
It was Yggdra's room, and from her vantage point Elena could see the young queen lying naked on her back across the mattress of her vast canopy bed. Roswell knelt at the bedside almost as if in worship, framed between her knees. Yggdra's body was bent in an arc the likes of which Elena had seen before in statues of saints in rapture, from the smile suggested by the contortion of her cheek to the curl of her toes. What sound she made was faint, but her sighs had a grateful contentment to them that Elena hadn't heard in so long that she had almost forgotten what it took to provoke that kind of noise in a person.
She felt nothing. Looking at that, she didn't feel envy or regret; so why—she wondered as she lightly grasped the handle of the door and pushed it shut soundlessly—did the tear coating of her eyes threaten to spill over like this?
"Not tonight."
Milanor stepped closer to her as if he hadn't even heard her, winding a possessive arm around her waist as he leaned in so that his lips brushed against her ear.
"I need you to get through this," he mumbled, his voice a low buzzing growl. He might have said more, but a great crash of thunder swallowed up any words they might have said.
In the dark room, lightning illuminated still frame after still frame.
His hand at the nape of her neck. Her body, bent and pressed face, hands, chest to the mattress. The feel of him inside her was less the connection of two naked forms and more like being stabbed in the groin with a shortsword fresh from the forge, still partly molten.
The name that rode his breath between grunts of exertion was, as always, Kylier's.
She made no sound as the blood ran down her thigh, only gritted her teeth and closed her eyes.
He was gone in the morning—apparently he'd departed to wander aimlessly again.
Elena dragged herself to the privy out of some dull instinct, and spent the morning throwing up.
The next day, she felt eyes on her over and over, but no one was really looking whenever she turned around to face them. It would be almost irritating if it weren't so sad. Elena wondered a little if she really did look quite so miserable.
She still hurt. For a while she wondered how long it would take for the wounds he'd put on her to heal, then realized that the pain was a different, deeper kind of inside. Perhaps she was sick. She was usually well enough at keeping her food down unless she ate something very strange.
"We need to talk," Yggdra said that night, and lightly laid her fingertips on Elena's shoulder, but then the faint pounding in her body amplified and doubled in on itself. There was a vague sound of dripping, and Elena ducked her head to see a bloodstain spreading on the floor before the exponential curve of agony stole away what little strength was left in her joins and sent her down, down.
She had strange dreams for a long time about trying and trying to get out of a castle, but every time she opened a door and crested a strange corner of the floor she would simply be inside another room with a crazily-arched ceiling. When she woke, the discomfort all over her told her that she was feverish. No wonder, she thought faintly, and lay back in the dark room, shivering in her sweat.
Yggdra was there. "Can you understand me?" she asked.
Not can you hear me. Elena might have opened her eyes once or twice in her delirium before. "Yes."
"You had a miscarriage. Your body is very weak, and the healers say that you'll be sickly for a while."
"A—what?" Her ears surely must be lying to her; a product of the fever perhaps.
Yggdra just looked at her, those blue eyes hard and piercing in a cold kind of way. "A miscarriage, Elena. The doctors said from the way your body has changed that you were about four and a half months pregnant."
"Oh." Was that even a thing that could happen without someone realizing it, she couldn't help but wonder—whether it was skepticism or just not wanting to believe.
"Also that you've been damaged rather badly inside, and that you oughtn't to have sex for a few months at the very least. Not all of that damage was from the miscarriage, either."
She didn't like that knowing, concerned look that Yggdra was giving her, so Elena turned away.
"You were covered in bruises for a long time. Elena, I—" Behind her back, Yggdra took a deep breath and sighed. She sounded like a girl of eighteen for the first time instead of a stern adult. "I don't know what this means to you—whether you're looking at it as repentance or helping Milanor cope—but it can't go on. Losing Kylier like that, it's… changed him. He's not the same person anymore."
This felt like a bitter parody of something Elena had experienced once before, one of those experiences she'd locked away deeply. The sun and rain couldn't reach her here in the depths of the castle, so there was nothing to draw those memories out. She was safe.
"And if anyone can help either of you… it's not each other. I don't really care what you think or what you say—you don't deserve this. This isn't a place that you should be in."
Yggdra's fingertips were resting along her upper arm. They seemed almost icy.
"I believe you may have the wrong idea," she said a little dully.
"Do I? Then, is this something you like?"
Yggdra's voice wasn't accusatory—it was overly patient, and something about that was actually a little bit irritating.
"It's just that this is—this is all I know how to do," Elena offered in the end. "All I can do is, is fill in the empty spaces people leave for me."
Yggdra was silent for a while, and then:
"I can't judge for you, but—if that's the case, then shouldn't you at least get to choose which empty spaces you want to fill?"
Certainly, that's something that might not be beyond her.
Elena's a product of her own choices. She was bound to wind up like this, somehow, ever since she first made the choice to form shadow pictures of Siskier with her body for Zilva's sake.
Still—it doesn't mean that she's just a doll for others to force their favorite forms of play upon.
Did she choose this? Consciously choose this, or allow it to happen?
This isn't a way of living that she likes—that at least is a given. It's also something that doesn't matter much to her anymore.
But is this a way of living that won't shame the dead she left behind her?
She has had a long time to think.
Elena knows that if she waits for Milanor to return, she'll likely slide right back into what they had; that is what would be easiest. She is not sure if that is what she wants, and so she takes her uncertainty and the doctors' and healers' orders and goes to meet with Yggdra and Roswell.
"I think I want to work," she says, and "what is it like to be a courier?"
The queen and her fiancé turn to each other, then back to Elena. Roswell is nodding, and Yggdra is starting to smile.
"Why don't I tell you, and then you can decide for yourself if it fits you?"
Not if she fits it, Elena notes, even though they did already talk about everything. But then, Yggdra is not one to lower her vision of others to match others' vision of themselves.
"I would like that very much."