Intrigues of a Princess
V: A Man and a Woman
-
"You've been in love with me for years?"
Eries considered the best way to answer him. For some reason, a correction of his word usage was what came out of her mouth. "No, I was in love with you for years."
It was strangely liberating for Eries. Those years when she had been in love with him had been marked with anxiety and cowardice at the thought of uttering the words. Now she had said them twice. Both times, they had come out freely. The dark portents of doomed romance Eries had once been positive they would carry were nowhere in sight.
"But you're not anymore?" Some men might have been disappointed to learn that they had lost a love they never knew they had in the first place. The only reason Allen was currently not among those men was because he was too befuddled to feel anything but confusion. "When did this happen?"
"When did I fall in love with you or when did I fall out?" Eries asked – still calm and getting a nagging feeling that she was sounding like a teacher trying to get her student to speak more clearly.
She wouldn't have had much success if that had been the case. Allen stopped speaking entirely. He stared instead, as if his meaning had been perfectly clear or as if Eries couldn't be acting any odder if she'd been doing cartwheels while claiming to be from the Mystic Moon.
He was right on both counts, Eries knew. It would be easy to guess when her feelings turned and nonchalant requests for clarification weren't exactly appropriate. In all the times she had tried to steel herself for this event, Eries never guessed the main difficultly would be not finding it awkward enough. It wasn't that she was indifferent. She and Allen were still friends. This conversation could not be conveniently forgotten. Whatever the two of them said would color their relationship for as long as they had one. But after all the time and emotion she had vested in her love for Allen, if she didn't find her confession cheeringly cathartic, she'd have to find it sad, pitifully so. That was a regret she didn't want to have, that she knew she didn't have.
"I'm sorry, Allen. I didn't mean to come across as dismissive. When you have something bottled up inside you for so long, it's hard to control how it comes out. I never dreamed it would be this easy to tell you. I wish I had. I could have told you sooner and saved myself a lot of grief."
"I never knew, Eries. If I had-"
"Don't finish that thought." There was no need to. Eries knew exactly what he would say and it wasn't what she wanted to hear. "You're not responsible for my feelings or how I chose to deal with them. I didn't tell you to make you feel guilty about the past. I told you because…I don't know. Maybe because it's something that had to be said be to make way for the future."
Allen waited before asking the natural question. He didn't have an answer for it himself and wasn't sure Eries had one either. But he had to ask regardless, because even in the state of shock he was in, he knew how important the answer would be. "And what do you want that future to be?"
With that, some of the discomfort Eries had expected began to seep in. She could tell Allen anything he wanted to hear about her feelings in the past or in the present. Predicting the future wasn't so simple. She stopped thinking about it when they'd renewed their friendship. She was going to let the future be what it would be. That didn't mean she couldn't have preferences for what the future might be and that was what Allen wanted to know. Put on the spot, Eries was drawing a blank.
She never had put much stock in the stories about Hitomi Kanzaki and the bizarre cards she carried with her. What kind of insights could pictures on a card give? How could picking a card with a sun on it alter the life you would have had if you had only picked the card decorated with the picture of a tower? Skeptical as she was, Eries would have liked to receive one of those 'readings' that the girl had done right now. She wouldn't necessarily believe any of it, but at least it would put an idea in front of her that she could accept or reject. She could use some new ideas.
"I don't know, Allen," she said after not saying anything became worse than bringing back some of her old ideas. "I haven't thought about that for a long time."
"So you're happy with the way things are now?"
"Aren't you?"
"Of course," Allen said immediately, then backtracked almost as swiftly. "I mean, it's not as if I would be unhappy if things were different. I just didn't know things could be different."
"They can't be. You're still a knight. I'm still a princess. All the old arguments still apply."
"But those are arguments about why it shouldn't be, not if it is."
Eries tried to muster some of the bravado she had a few minutes ago to ask Allen what 'it' was supposed to mean only to find that the bravado had fled. It had taken her ability to pretend she didn't know exactly what 'it' meant along with it. She wanted both of them back. "It isn't. And the fact it shouldn't be is enough reason for it to not be so there's no reason to speculate if it could be."
For the second time tonight, Allen was reduced to saying, "What?"
"I meant-" Eries began but even she had a hard time deciphering what she had said. In simpler terms, she continued. "We're friends, good friends. This could be just one of many secrets we share between us, nothing more."
"And there's no part of you that wants it to be anything more?"
I want you to stop asking me questions! Out loud, she wasn't much gentler. "I told you I don't know. I really don't. Is there some reason why you keep asking me? I haven't asked you."
"No, you haven't. But I've been asking it of myself."
A large part of her fears in confessing to Allen had been what Allen's reaction would be. Her worst imaginings involved wrecked friendships and various degrees of embarrassment that favored the disgraced and ashamed end of the spectrum. In the few daydreams when she had let herself explore her wildest fancy – that he loved her in secret too – she had still been practical enough to come to the tame conclusion that nothing could come of it. And those were the daydreams. Reality was much harsher. But even as the familiar refrain of 'knight' and 'princess' played in her head, the question she hadn't asked Allen and the answer he hadn't quite given played alongside them, making tiny strides in volume.
She exhaled and took Allen's dare. "When you asked me if I had ever thought about being more than friends, was it just reminiscence for a night when you had contemplated it or is this something you've thought about recently?"
"When I asked, I was thinking about that night. But now…"
"But now? You are actually thinking about it?"
"I'm thinking what I thought that night."
"That night was four years ago! It is not four years ago!" She was getting angry again and didn't know how to stop it. She'd have to admit why she was angry first. Originally, it was the thought of the lost opportunity that had caused her to snap at Allen. That anger turned to contentment as her confession had brought the relief of a long burden finally put to rest. That, she had decided, was where her old feelings belonged – at rest. But then Allen had to go and rile them up with hints at possible feelings of his own and her decision was beginning to feel less and less decisive. From one extreme to the other and back again – she wasn't used to being pulled so emotionally. She had been once, but not any longer. She was reluctant to get re-acclimated.
Allen had reluctance of his own. "I hurt you without even knowing it, didn't I?"
"I told you, you're not responsible for I felt. You didn't know."
"I know now. And this is hurting you. Don't try to tell me it's not. Don't try to tell me it's not my fault."
"My entire world doesn't revolve around you, Allen. I'm quite capable of feeling what I feel without your input."
"I know you're capable. You're the most capable woman I've ever met. I also know that you only get so angry and defensive like you're being when someone cuts too close to your true feelings."
He was seeing right through her. Unfortunately for Eries, Allen was not being similarly transparent. He might be up to his old habit of trying to rescue every last damsel in distress he came across. He might not be up to anything at all. Eries wasn't that cynical to think it wasn't possible for him to have any romantic interest in her, however sudden. Her cynicism lied in the outcome of that interest.
There was a spark of curiosity within her that didn't care. Outcomes be damned, it wanted to know what Allen was getting at. But Eries knew better to give into the whims of curiosity. The outcomes might be unknown, but their consequences could be easily guessed. She was confident of that even if the rest of her confidence had evaporated.
Hoping to get some of it back, she resumed with the honestly that had given her peace earlier. "I do love you, Allen, as a friend. In the past, I wanted more than that. I would have given anything to have heard you say what you've said tonight. But that was in the past. I accept that; I'm even happy with that. I think one of the reasons why I'm happy with that is because we are still friends. If we couldn't be friends anymore-"
"What makes you think we would stop being friends?"
He flashed her one of those smiles of his, the kind that had charmed nearly every woman who had seen it. Eries hadn't been immune to its effect, still wasn't. But this was the first time she had ever thought she could see uncertainty behind it.
"We wouldn't be the same friends we are now. It's already different and look how well we've handled this discussion."
"We are still discussing it," Allen offered as proof that they were handling it just fine. "And if you were so afraid of things being different, you never would have told me how you felt."
"I didn't think you'd react the way you did! I thought you'd apologize for being a dense fool who couldn't see the obvious. Then, after you realized I was all right with that, you'd make a joke about your reputation and that would be that. You weren't supposed to start entertaining stupid notions!"
"It is foolish," Allen sighed. "I should know that by now. I knew it back then. After that night, I never let myself think about it again, except maybe that time you came to visit me at the Castello."
"We don't need to rehash that." More accurately, Eries didn't want to rehash it. That instance of deeply misguided drunken kissing that had almost led into something more misguided and completely irreversible was one of her thornier memories. Recalling the kissing was pleasant enough (even now, she had to admit) but all the accompanying feelings of embarrassment and regret for what hadn't been were not. "That was nothing but the result of too much wine," Eries added, repeating the explanation she and Allen had agreed on.
Allen was no longer so accepting of that excuse. "I know. We'd been drinking, your inhibitions were low and you thought you'd try something you'd never tried before because you were curious and I was your friend so it was safe to try it with me. I believed that too. I believed if I hadn't walked out of the room, you would have put a stop to it yourself."
"I would have," Eries said. "Eventually…So you can keep believing." That would make one of them that did.
"Hmm, maybe," Allen graciously agreed. "But you were right to call me a dense fool who couldn't see the obvious. How could I have ever thought that the ever reserved and logical Eries Aston would ever do something so risqué and irrational unless it was what she truly wanted?"
"What's the point of this, Allen? You don't need to add a phantom conquest to an already lengthy real list."
He brushed aside the slur. Eries wasn't yelling at him to insult him anyway. "You're being angry and defensive again. You don't need to be. I'm not trying to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you ever again. I'm just trying to understand what you felt, what you must have gone through."
"The point being that I did get through it. It's done-"
"And you don't ever want to go through it again," he concluded for her. "That's it, isn't it? For all your excuse of 'I'm a princess, you're a knight', that's what you're really afraid of?"
There it was, all out on the table along with a choice that was Eries' alone to make. She didn't want to be afraid. She didn't believe she was afraid. Neither was she thinking about titles or Marlene or any of the other complications that had always existed but had never stopped her before. It wasn't about what she had wanted then. It was about what she wanted now.
She still didn't know.
And she realized she wasn't afraid of an uncertain future. She had moved so far forward since the day she had left Allen alone in that storeroom to deal with the demons she couldn't fight for him. Allen, in turn, had taken steps of his own. Trying to rekindle an old one-sided love seemed as if it would push them back.
No, she didn't fear an uncertain future. She feared a future unable to build off the past because it had become mired in it instead.
"I'm sorry," Eries answered softly. She walked over to where Allen had discarded Celena's cape before they had started dancing. It was late, the night was growing chillier and she needed the excuse to hide her dampening eyes. "Please tell me you can accept that."
"I'll accept anything to keep you as my friend," he promised. "I just needed to know how you felt now. You're not the most open person with your emotions and I thought if I didn't press you-"
"And that's the reason why you were asking me all those leading questions? You were trying to press me into another confession?" Eries kept her back to him, wary of any answer he might give.
She was thankful when he didn't give one. "I just don't ever want you to think you have to hide how you feel from me. You've seen me at my most vulnerable. I want you to trust me the same way."
Eries almost laughed at that. She didn't think she could be more vulnerable then she had been tonight. "I do trust you, Allen," she sighed. "I never would have said a word about any this if I didn't."
"So this is…this is a good thing for us," he stammered. Eries always had been better at arguing a point than he.
Tonight was an off night for Eries. She could only offer general agreement. "Yes, I think so. We're not keeping any secrets from each other and we're still friends."
"And whatever happens, happens, right?"
Whatever happens, happens, she repeated to herself. That's what she'd been thinking earlier. Let the future be what it will be. Whatever happens, happens. They both meant the same thing. But Eries thought she heard an undercurrent in Allen's declaration – a more leading, a more hopeful undercurrent. Could she be shutting a door here tonight only to have Allen stick a foot in before it closed?
Was she really ending the night by reverting to the nervous girl who had examined every word out of Allen's mouth in search of a meaning she had wanted to hear?
The night ended with some degree of normalcy. Allen helped Eries with the cloak she hadn't managed to put back on yet and offered to walk her back to her room. At her door, he performed the standard bow and chaste clasping of her hand that he had performed many times before. Some nights, he would add a kiss to the back of her hand to the routine. Tonight was not one of those nights, though the clasping went on longer than usual.
Eries watched him disappear down the stairwell, still wondering exactly what 'whatever happens, happens' meant.
o-o-o-o-o
Eries did not have a good night. She had gone to bed expecting a full night's sleep. This long day had worn her out both physically and emotionally. She wound up hardly sleeping at all. Every time she was about to nod off, her thoughts would drift to her conversation with Allen. In her drowsy mind, their words changed. Most of Allen's turned into 'whatever happens, happens'. The remaining words took on a deeper significance or lost meaning entirely. There was a hidden message underneath all of it, skittering beyond her reach, and if she could just seize upon it, everything would be clear. Once awake, there were several moments when she had trouble separating the semi-dream conversation from the one that had actually taken place. These seconds of pure confusion made it difficult to put head to pillow and try to go to sleep again.
She gave up trying when dusk broke. The summit would be starting in a few hours. She'd be better off spending that time getting herself fully awake and sufficiently made-up so it wouldn't look as if she'd spent the night fretting about a non-existent love life that she didn't want anyway.
With the amount of powder she groggily put under her eyes to hide the dark circles (which were caused more by a trick of the lack of light than lack of sleep), she felt as ridiculous as she looked. She and Allen had settled things on a good note. They were still friends. He knew the truth and it had been shuffled into the past where it belonged. Silly little dreams couldn't change that.
She washed off the powder. The water in the basin had grown cold overnight but Eries welcomed the chill. It chased away the rest of her sleepiness and let her sharpen her mind. Today was going to full of political business; she couldn't afford distractions. Maybe another talk with Allen was in order – just to make absolutely, positively sure they understood each other – but it was nothing to lose sleep over.
Except I did lose sleep over it, she thought. She wondered if Allen had gone through the same thing. It had been his first night at Micha Revius' guest house. He'd once told Eries that he had trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places. If he hadn't been able to sleep, what had he done instead? Had it been more than strange surroundings that had kept him awake?
He probably slept like a baby, Eries snorted at herself. She didn't have the excuse of being half-asleep anymore and was getting a little annoyed with her preoccupation with Allen. Settling your past was supposed to make you think about it less.
She cut herself some slack. It wasn't as if she had started yesterday with the intention of telling Allen she'd been in love with him. The confession had been building for years. Just because it had come out suddenly didn't mean the fallout from it could be dealt with just as suddenly. Maybe two more talks with Allen were called for.
On her way to breakfast, a page caught up with her and gave her a message from Meiden. He wanted her to come to his office as soon as possible. Eries assumed he wanted to do some last minute strategizing before the summit convened. If he was hoping to bring her on board with his scheme, he should have given himself more time. He could have started in on Eries when she was an impressionable five-year-old and still would have been cutting it close.
Eries went to see him anyway. It would be a good idea to reach some kind of agreement on how they were going to address the other delegates. She knew Lord Poniard had written and would be giving the opening speech. The man was golden with a pen and had a deep booming voice that would bring everyone's attention to Asturia. It would be nice if she had something coherent to say when all eyes turned upon her to give the follow-up speech. It would be nicer if Meiden weren't rolling his eyes while she spoke.
She was rehearsing a possible introduction when she entered Meiden's office. One look at the person sitting opposite of Meiden made her forget every last word she'd come up with. Allen looked surprised to see her there too.
"Good, you're both here," Meiden said pleasantly. "I thought it would save some time to explain the situation to the two of you together."
Because 'what the hell are you up to now, you little weasel?' was an impolite question, Eries only asked, "And what situation would that be?"
"I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but the guard that had been assigned to you, Timothy Sedgewick, is a candidate for the Caeli. I'm afraid with his participation in the tournament he won't be able to provide sufficient security for you anymore. Given your prominence in the summit, I don't think now is a good time for you to be without a guard."
Eries could see where this was going and how little of a chance she had at derailing it. It never hurt to try though. "I'm not that concerned. I'd been thinking about giving up on a private guard anyway. The standard palace guard will be enough."
"Ah, but it's better to be safe than sorry, isn't it?" Meiden countered. "And with today's political climate, one can never be too safe."
Only because it's weasels like you that are creating today's political climate. She didn't appreciate the lesson on the importance of safe over sorry either. Yesterday morning at this time, she was convincing herself not to be so paranoid about Meiden. Better safe than sorry indeed.
Meiden unfurled the rest of his sorry-in-the-pathetic-sense plan. "It's unfortunate that your leave of absence had to be cancelled, Sir Schezar, but I'm familiar with both your sense of duty and skill with a sword. Even if the other Caeli weren't already assigned to other duties, you are the perfect candidate for this job."
He was the perfect candidate for Meiden's purposes. He also looked like a good candidate to the objective outsider. A princess should have the most skilled swordsman in the country as her guard. But Eries was not Meiden, thank Jichia, and she also wasn't objective. She recalled with perfect clarity the disgust Meiden had shown towards her for forsaking her chance at the throne for Allen. It was amazing how easily he had gotten over that disgust once he found out a way to exploit its source.
Allen, wary of the merchant but blissfully unaware of the vicious war of words he had had with Eries, responded in proper knightly fashion. "I'm honored by the faith you've placed in me. On my life, I will keep the princess safe."
"I expected to hear no less," Meiden said, his wide grin showing off a number of teeth Eries would have liked to punch in. "Your service to Princess Marlene was so exemplary, it gave me every reason to put my faith in you."
Even Allen caught the undertones in that statement. A knight, however, was in no position to question the head of the council and the king's right-hand man. He settled on giving Eries a puzzled glance. A princess had the right to question anyone she wanted short of the king. Despite his difficulties with Aston, Allen knew Meiden Fassa fell well short of the king.
Eries already knew what was going on though but was reluctant to spell it out for Allen while Meiden was still there. She ignored the glance and Allen in general. With a long day of dealing with Meiden ahead of her, it was best not to react to this stunt at all. "Good, now that everything is settled," she said evenly, "Meiden, I believe it would be beneficial for a quick review of our strategy for the opening of the summit. If you could excuse us, Allen?"
Since his first glance hadn't gotten him anything, Allen didn't bother with a second. He rose immediately to leave. "If you need me, I'll be waiting outside."
"I hope I haven't given you too many surprises over the past few days, Princess," Meiden said once Allen was gone. "But I guess it's good practice for you to be kept on your toes for the summit."
"I've certainly gotten my fair share of dealing with duplicitous fools lately."
"How harsh, Princess. I'll give you duplicitous, but I'm no fool."
"The last few minutes have convinced me otherwise. Oh, how ever will I be able to concentrate at the summit when my good friend is serving as my bodyguard?" Eries said mockingly. "Really, Meiden, this feeble attempt at distracting me so you may do as you please is a good year past feasible."
"Then why didn't you tell your 'good friend' what you suspected I was up to? Not that I'm acknowledging your base accusations, of course."
"It would have been an embarrassment for all three of us, not to mention a waste time. Can we please move on the summit? Unless part of your plan was to annoy other nations into compliance with our petty bickering."
Allen wasn't the only person to know what an angry and defensive Eries meant. Meiden readily agreed to her request, sure that he had gotten what he wanted.
Lord Poniard had already given Meiden a copy of the speech he was to give. Eries read trough it, marking small additions here and editing out a few things there. Overall, Eries was quite pleased with the speech. The closing paragraph waxing poetic on the future of Gaea as a whole was a good lead in for bringing up summit agenda. She and Meiden were able to churn out in no time a good outline for what they wanted to say when it was Asturia's turn to speak.
Eries was positive Meiden would do some editing of his own when she left, but she'd take care of that later. She'd kept Allen waiting long enough.
Allen didn't ask her straight off about what Meiden had meant by his reference to Marlene. He gave her a few seconds to speak up of her own accord. Eries wasn't particularly chatty.
Finally Allen blurted it out. "The way he was talking…he knows about Marlene, doesn't he?"
Eries nodded. It looked like that was the case.
"How did he find out?"
Eries paused as she tried to come up with a way to break the news to Allen that her father had figured out some time ago what had gone on between his daughter and her bodyguard that wouldn't cause him to panic. Concluding there wasn't one, she muttered something about her father probably telling him.
Allen didn't immediately panic. His long training as a knight allowed him to hold out for a few seconds before saying "King Aston knows…" in the scratchy voice of the damned.
"He's known for a while, Allen, and he hasn't done anything terrible to you yet. It's unlikely he'll do anything in the future."
"Nothing terrible? He threw me in jail and sent a letter to Freid accusing me of treason!"
"Well, yes…but all that was about placating Zaibach, not punishing you. I'm not saying he didn't enjoy making you a scapegoat, but he didn't set out to make you one. It just happened that way."
"How fortunate for him," Allen sighed, but he accepted Eries' explanation. Aston could have done worse to him. For one thing, he could have filed legitimate treason charges for the affair with Marlene – and done it at a time when Allen didn't have the luxury of going to another country and thus be able to avoid a quick walk to the gallows. He didn't like it that Aston had seen fit to share that kind of information about his daughter to a man like Meiden Fassa, but beggars could hardly be choosers, especially when the person who was doing the choosing was a king. "Just tell me he didn't find out about it from gossip. Marlene's reputation-"
"You don't have to worry about that. Outside of my family and Meiden, no one else knows." Eries wasn't certain that was entirely true (and suspected that it wasn't), but she didn't have any concrete proof that anyone else knew. Nuri en Freid could have had another reason to call Chid 'too Asturian'. Kaja could have had another reason to desperately steer the conversation away from Chid's hero worship of Allen. Meiden could have kept his fat mouth shut for a change. It might not be probable that she was right but it could be considered possible.
"Then how did he find out?"
Eries added 'people could be blind enough not to notice the strong resemblance between Allen and Chid' to her list of possibilities. Her father just had a very keen eye and knew Allen had been Marlene's guard – that was it. Except it wasn't and she knew Allen wouldn't swallow that excuse. "He noticed some similarities between you and Chid," she mumbled. "And…"
"So he knows that I'm Chid's father as well." Allen had to lean against the wall to absorb this new fact. "Do you think he told Meiden?"
One reason why Eries so rarely used cheerful optimism was because she wasn't very good at it. "I don't think Meiden's told anyone," she said.
Allen winced. On top of finding out that two of the people he would most like to not know his secret were two that did, there was still something that bothered him. He had a feeling once Eries answered his question that sense of unease wasn't going to go away but get stronger. He asked regardless. "Why would Meiden speak about Marlene in relation to me becoming your guard?"
This was precisely what Eries had been trying to avoid when she shooed Allen out of Meiden's office. Telling Allen about her father's knowledge of the affair with Marlene was looking easy in comparison. What was she supposed to say? You know that thing we talked about last night? The whole 'I used to be in love with you' thing? Father knew about that too. Naturally, he told Meiden about it and now the weasel thinks he can distract me from the summit by waving you in front of my face. Oh, and I know that Meiden told Dryden because Dryden and I talked about it. I thought you'd want to know that in case you weren't horrified enough.
"Well, you know Meiden," she ventured, "He's such a grubby little toad he thinks everyone else is as common as he is. He probably assumed with what happened with Marlene and then Millerna and your reputation in general…"
"He couldn't think that I would–" he began to protest. He stopped for two reasons. The first one was because it was obvious Meiden did think Allen would. The second one was because the facts of the situation were basically as Eries presented them. Over the years his reputation had been exaggerated, but he couldn't consider it without merit without indulging in a lot of self-delusion. Dr. Atrineu frowned on that sort of thing. He couldn't deny his affair with Marlene either and as much as he would like to, he couldn't say that he had handled Millerna's crush on him with grace and aplomb.
He had a third reason too, but last night's talk with Eries was too raw to think about now. It sort of fell into the same category as the second reason anyway and the last thing he needed was more proof that Meiden was right – about him at least; Eries' honor was still in tact.
He felt as if something needed to be defended, so he picked up her cause. "Regardless of what Meiden thinks of me, he can't believe that you would be so easily swayed. It's not as if he knows about….what we discussed last night."
"Actually…" Eries said hesitantly. There was no way out of it now.
Leaning against the wall was no longer sufficient for Allen. He had to walk over to a bench set into the alcove at the end of the hall. Eries followed. It was more private there, especially when Eries pulled the cord on the heavy drapes that hung from the arch that framed the entrance of the alcove. As long as she and Allen could keep their voices down, it would do.
"Why is it that you can go for years without hearing about something, but from the moment you do hear about it, you start hearing about it constantly? And you discover that everyone else had already heard about it long before you ever did?" he mumbled.
"Allen…" Eries understood that Allen had received his fair share of surprises recently. She understood why he was upset about them. She'd just like a little more understanding on his part. Her secret was in this too after all. "I've heard enough about it for the two of us. Consider yourself lucky that you weren't privy to the lectures I've received from both my father and Meiden Fassa."
That stirred Allen from his self-centric reflections but it also had the effect of getting him to repeat his apology from last night.
Eries still wasn't in the mood to hear it. "I told you not to apologize!" she insisted. "You are not responsible for my feelings."
"Aren't I though? I didn't force you to feel the way you felt, but I did overlook it. You are my closest friend and I completely missed something that was important to you."
"Because I hid it from you! How many times do I have to say that?"
"And you didn't hide it from your father? Do you expect me to believe that you told him yourself? He figured it out, didn't he? He figured it out and I didn't."
He was right. Aston had put the pieces together even before Eries. She couldn't use the excuse that a father would naturally know his daughter better than a stranger would. She and Aston hadn't been close enough to claim such a bond. It wasn't until years later when he fell ill that he and Eries had started talking openly to each other about things other than council business. Yet he had known…and Allen hadn't.
Allen was still wrong in a way Eries couldn't quite place. There was more to it than Allen's refusal to not feel guilty but that's what she latched on to. "Is that what you did after you left – spent all night thinking up ways this was your fault? It's no one's fault. It doesn't even matter if it had been someone's fault. It's over and we agreed that everything was fine between us. Don't you remember saying it was a good thing that I told you?"
"I know what we said, but I couldn't help thinking about it. You've dealt with this for years. I've only known about it for one night. It's a lot to come to terms with in one night."
"I understand that," Eries relented. She should know since Allen's explanation bore a remarkable resemblance to the excuse she had made for herself for hardly sleeping last night. It was some consolation to know Allen hadn't slept like a baby and had been as fretful as she had been. Conversely, her decision that only two more talks would be needed to wrap everything up was increasingly looking to be an extremely low estimate. At the rate things were going, she and Allen would need their own summit.
"I understand," she said again, "and I do appreciate your concern for my feelings, but it's too much, too late. You're almost making me wish I hadn't said anything."
"Almost?"
"Yes, almost. I still believe it needed to said regardless of how we've handled it so far. As you said though, it's only been one night. A week from now we might be laughing about it."
One week never looked to be both so far away and too close at the same time. Allen tried smiling as if in favor of a quick passage of days. He was only partially successful. His attempt at positivism wandered more into pessimism. "You're right. I'm focusing on the past again when I should be looking forward."
"Old habits, I suppose," Eries sighed.
"…Very old habits. I guess that's why it's so easy to slip back into them even though I know I shouldn't. First with Chid and then you…"
"Don't fall too far back into them," she cautioned gently. "Maybe it would be best if we gave ourselves more time to think before we speak. Then we'd both be surer of where we stand."
"Does that mean you're not as sure as you said you were?"
Eries again wondered if Allen meant more than he was saying. Unsure, she decided that at least she could be clear. "I meant you'd be surer," she amended. "Once you've gotten it in your head that you're making something out of nothing, we both can get back to normal."
"Of course that's what you meant."
"I said it was."
"And I agreed."
"It doesn't sound as if you agreed."
"It sounds as if you're making something out of nothing."
"I…" Eries finally caught on and smiled. "You're getting very good at this."
"Celena's given me a lot of practice. Usually I'm on the other side of the argument but I thought I should try it – to make you feel better about all this…about us."
It did make her feel better. A thought came to her that made her feel better still. "Hmm, Celena. I would love to see her go up against some of these diplomats, if, that is, the entire future of Gaea weren't at stake. I might be worth it to introduce her to Meiden though."
"I thought you cared about my sister."
Eries appreciated pretty much any joke that took a shot at Meiden Fassa, but what made her really happy was the sense that she and Allen were already getting back to how they had been before her confession. Far be it from her to break the momentum. "I'd keep her exposure to Meiden very limited, just enough to distract him while he's addressing the delegates. That would only be fair considering the stunt he tried to pull."
"But I'm not going to distract you as he planned. If anything, I'm going to remind you that the summit will be starting shortly and you need to get ready."
Lost in the conversation, Eries had managed to forget. She had things to do before the summit opened. The foremost among them was to get something to eat. It would make for a wonderful moment if her introduction was accompanied by the rumblings of her stomach.
She hurried Allen out of the alcove with demands of 'let's go, let's go."
"We still have a good hour," he protested.
Eries wasn't listening. She was charging down the hallway, muttering to herself. "I should have taken that copy of Lord Poniard's speech Meiden and I worked on. He's probably crossed out all the corrections I suggested. He's probably completely rewritten the outline we did."
"Whatever happens, I'm sure you'll deal with it."
Eries stopped dead in her tracks. "What did you just say?"
"I said, 'Whatever happens, I'm sure you'll deal with it'."
"Right…that's what you said." For a split second, Eries had been convinced he'd said something else – the very phrase from last night that had wormed its way into her subconscious and kept her awake. She thought she would have been relieved to know she had been wrong. Instead, she felt a small twinge of disappointment.
Author's Note: Because the last chapter was a cliffhanger, I posted sooner than a month. I just didn't post the version of the chapter most of you probably wanted to read. Don't kill me! I thought I was going to write a nice scene in which they finally got together when I started this chapter myself. Blame Eries and Allen. They were the ones going against my outline (which is now in need of serious re-working). It just didn't feel right for a romance to start at that point. Since the romance would have been triggered by the revelation of Eries' old feelings, it was if they'd be building off their old dysfunctional relationship instead of starting off fresh with the shiny, new and much more functional relationship they have now. Don't worry, they'll get there. The seed's been planted – and come on, isn't it kind of fun that Allen seems to be one more interested in making it grow?
On to better news. Sakura has drawn some pictures of last chapter's action including Eries in her spiffy dress. They're up at the Eries shrine and linked in my LJ. You can find both links in my profile. Be sure to drop a line to Sakura at her e-mail: quezroc(at)yahoo(dot) com.
Next up – Love and Peace or Else. The council opening all of you were so excited about. :P Expect it sooner than a month as it's short (cut off from the end of this chapter actually).