Full Summary: Set after 2x07. Disturbed by the rifts that are building in her marriage, Mary seeks a way to absolve she and Francis' emotional distance. In turn, she finds herself seeking solace in the arms of another.

THE ENEMY
Chapter Two

"Your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine."

"You were awake early this morning," Francis comments on her absence from their marital bed as if it were something as unconcerning as the weather. Stonily, Mary sweeps past him, refusing to sit near him but at the opposite end of the lengthy table as she had done the previous day. As she slides wordlessly into her seat, she notices a look of pale disappointment cross his countenance. It is there for only a split-second before he coughs, busying himself with reading through the sheafs of parchment that have built up before him.

Good, Mary thinks savagely as she begins to sort through her own messages. Let him be hurt.

But hostility is not an emotion that Mary is accustomed to feeling, and it leaves her innards churning wretchedly. She wants nothing more than to abandon her position at the opposite end of the table and fly to his side, to fall into Francis' arms and pretend that there was nothing left in the wolrd but each other and the love they once so readily shared.

Quickly, she shakes it off. Childish thoughts and dreaming are becoming strangely addictive to her; she cannot lose herself to the desires that occupy both her heart and her head.

"Please leave us." It is Francis that breaks the leaden silence. His command is carried out instantly, the guardsman filing from the room in a smooth and orderly manner. They look deadly, Mary thinks as she analyses the speed with which they move, the armour that shines on their backs and the sword that occupies the hilts at their hips. But they are shamefully predictable.

The King and Queen of France are left quite alone. Mary tilts her chin upwards, dark eyes setttling on Francis' face. She is challenging him silently, wondering if today will be the day that he surprises her. Of course, he is as predictable as his guards. It is he who breaks the eye contact first, a pale flush creeping up his neck. Guilt colours him pink. It tells Mary all she needs to know.

Noisily, she scrapes her chair back across the ancient flagstones, the sound shrill and harsh. Her gown swishes as she makes a precise turn, the fabric causing a flutter that stirs the parchment on the table. Eyeing the doorway, she begins to make her way across the room with a purposeful stride.

"Mary!" Sharply, he calls her name. She can hear the undertone of panic mingling with command in his voice. Whilst Mary does come to a halt, she does not grant him the respect he wants: she refuses to turn and face him. "Mary..." Francis' tone is gentler now, even apologetic. Mary can feel her heart twisting. Her icy exterior almost cracks... Almost.

"Please sit down." Grudgingly, Mary complies to his request by returning to the table and perching lightly on the edge of her seat. Francis' eyes are flickering uncertainly over her features as he struggles to decipher her facial expression. It is one that Mary has found herself inadvertently perfecting - she is taking Catherine's advice. Mary is protecting her heart.

And her face? Her face is utterly unfathomable.

"If you do choose to return Scotland, I'll not blame you. But I could not ever forgive myself if you departed with us still on bad terms," Francis hesitates, inhaling shakily. "Can we fix this?"

"I don't know, Francis," Mary says bluntly. "Are you going to alter your response to the edict?"

Any trace of sincerity melts from Francis' expression as if somebody has just poured acid over is head. A muscle jumps in his jaw and a stiffness that both frightens and repulses Mary takes hold of his body. Shoulders set so still that someone could have mistaken him for a corpse, Mary knows that he will not say what she wants to hear. Hot liquid anger bubbles through the pit of her stomach. Frostily, she shakes her head slowly at him. "Then no, Francis. We cannot fix it at all."

"Mary, I cannot afford to lose my Catholic nobles or paint myself as an indecisive king!" Francis hisses, his body angling forward. Aggression for his cause makes his fingers clench into tight fists. "It would make me seem weak to my adversaries-"

Disgusted, Mary slams her palms into the table. "So you would condemn our friends, your own cousin for fear of appearing weak?" She is shouting at him now, pent up frustration intertwining with fury that rears through her body like the head of a snake. When she strikes, her voice is not loud and charged, but cold and biting. "Well then, if you can afford to lose the Protestant nobles, you can afford to lose your wife along with them."

The chasm of silence that she leaves behind her as she stalks from the room is deafening.

o - - - - o

As a child, Mary Stewart had sworn to herself that fresh air and the freedom of the great outdoors could cure any internal ailment or absolve any troubles that plagued her heart. As a woman, she found herself hopelessly wishing that it were true. Bitterly, she realises that there is no magical cure for an anxious and pained heart - in the early hours of the morning, she would have been able to think otherwise. As she had pressed her horse into a gallop through the woods, the speed and wind that whipped her cheeks had swatted away the tendrils of misery that had knotted around her chest.

Now, barely hours after she had felt at peace, they were back... but this time they were not merely tendrils of misery, they were thickets of thorns.

Francis had a habit that was unfortunate for a royal, and that was wearing his heart on his sleeve. Acting did not come easily to him; he had not inherited the ability of concealment that had saved his parents hides a great many times. Commonly, the way in which Francis always had his emotions so simply analysed by all surrounding him would have been a horrendous disadvantage... but he and Mary, they had been a , they had been able to discover creative solutions to the problems they were faced with, but now, Francis had opted to isolate himself from her. Kicked aside by Francis' new found (and considerably poor) powers of evasion, Mary was hurting all over.

As a queen, she was offended. As a wife, she felt crippled.

Exhausted by her husband's emotional distance, Mary falls heavily onto a bench. A birdsong surrounds her, sweet and beautiful in a high and clear soprano. It fills the empty sky. It should have been uplifting, but to Mary's ears, it sounded like a mournful lament. Though there are no clouds in the rolling empty skies above her, there is no warmth either. Shivering, Mary draws her arms around herself, muttering cruel obscenities about her own stupidity under her breath. She should have thought to bring a cloak.

"You'll catch your death if your not careful." Startled, Mary's head snaps upwards. She finds herself staring into the bright blue eyes of Bash. He is stood before her, his face carefully devoid of emotion as he approaches the bench and drapes a heavy travelling cloak over her shoulders.

Dwarfed by the enormous outer garment, Mary realises how frail and vulnerable she must look. Embarrassed by the way she had already began to huddle into the cosiness of the cloak's confines, still warm from the lingering traces of Bash's body, Mary straightens her shoulders.

"You don't have to do that." Though he says it softly, there is something else in his voice. A few long seconds tick by before it occurs to her what he said. Blinking at Francis' bastard brother, Mary realises he had just scolded her.

"Do what?" She snaps indignantly, aware her voice is too loud, too defensive.

Bash roll's his eyes before he sighs at Mary, shaking his head at her. "You don't have to pretend that you're made of stone. I know that you are a human, Mary. You don't need to put a facade on around me."

His sincerity renders her speechless. Instead of trying to think of something eloquent to say, Mary busies herself with examining a loose thread on the hem of his cloak.

"When we rode out together this morning, you said something about Fran-" Bask breaks off when he notices that Mary has visibly stiffened.

Suddenly, she transforms. She is not a weak and frail girl. She is Mary, Queen of Scots. "Bash, I am not discussing this with you." Mary shrugs the heavy cloak of her shoulders, thrusting it back into his arms with unnecessary force. "I am your Queen. You'll do well to treat me as such instead of coddling me like you would a child, or Kenna."

"Yes, my Queen." Face empty of anything but cordial respect, Bash bows low. Mary does not wait to see him straighten up, but turns her back on him, marching back to the castle.

She's become talented at making exits.


A/N: I'm not sure on how much I like this chapter but I wanted to get it up, I have a lot planned for this :)

Thanks to anybody who reviews, favourites, follows or even just has the good will to give this a fleeting skim read, it's massively appreciated! If you've got any questions, you can of course ask me in reviews and I'll get back to you, or you can ask me here too.

Apologies if this chapter has any formatting issues or silly mistakes, I'm working on my tablet to do this and my tablet is the most uncoperative gadget the world has ever encountered so it doesn't allow me to actually see when things are in itallics or not - hooray for making my life easy. -_-

-typedamon x