A Time to Heal
Part 2: Gold
Disclaimer: All characters and locations herein are the property of Tamora Pierce. Plot and actual written words owned by me. Written for the Dancing Dove's First SFF Challenge.
"You don't really like Corus, do you?"
George shook his head. "No," he said. "I stopped lovin' my city a long, long time ago."
The man came and sat by his side, on a bench in a rose garden tempered by twilight. "Time has changed you."
"Good evenin' to you, too, m'liege," replied George, shrugging off the comment.
"A very good evening to the king's spymaster," said Jonathan with a familiar smile. "How go things down south by the seashore?"
"I wouldn' be here if I was worried," answered George, "not even to visit my lov'ly wife."
"How go things with your lovely wife?"
He sighed. "Not as well as she'd have people believe. Not as well as she believes herself."
Jon raised an eyebrow. "I know it's hard on you two, with her living in the city and you down at the Swoop, but…"
"But what?" asked George quietly. "But my beloved wife would be bored outta her mind if she stayed at the Swoop for longer than two months? But she's gotten so used to wanderin', she can't remember how to stay still? But she stays in Corus to nag her children an' pester them to be more like her?"
"It's not all that bad, is it?" asked Jon, horrified.
"Aly an' Thom both 'fess they get grief from her," said George. "So do I."
Jonathan just looked shocked.
"But I prefer my little cove o' home on the beach," he continued. "Let her keep her palace and her nobles and her healers. I've seen enough of this city, and grown weary of it."
"Why are you here?"
"Must see children," said George. "Must see parents. And wife, too. And especially old friends."
Jon smiled again.
"How is Thayet?" asked George patiently.
"Ill," said the king. "And bitter."
"Got no time for you?" An old friend, with sympathy always ready.
"She has all the time in the world," said Jonathan. "She just doesn't want to see me."
"Two deposed kings with queens who don't need 'em," remarked George cheerfully.
"Speak for yourself," growled Jon. "I'm far from deposed."
"Let Roald take over your affairs," George retorted. "set yerself free."
"I can't," said the other simply. "I've been a prisoner of this realm for far too long to let my love be. How long has it been since I've known freedom? Would I dare try it again, when I've no clue if I could survive without my chains?"
"I did."
"And?" His voice was almost stern. "George, look where it got you! Look at the people around us! Every one of them complains of having no free time, of being a slave to duty, of living on the rim of death. Yet Raoul refuses to rescind his command, Daine and Numair both labor as tirelessly as ever, and even your Alanna would have gone on fighting, if her body had allowed her. Even in this so-called retirement, she imitates her life as a knight. She wears a sword, still, George!"
"I know," said George softly. "Our bonds are our heritage. We hold this slavery close to our heart to keep it warm, and clutch it ever tighter the older we grow. I don' fear death, Jonathan, nor tiredness."
"Then you're far braver than most those I know," said Jon.
George shook his head.
"What?"
"They cling to the past, our friends, even when it's still the present. Numair will cast you spells from his deathbed, y'know. And your son will have to pry that crown from your cold, dead fingers."
Jon shuddered, not liking how truly that image struck him.
"Me, I don' fear these changes. I fear loneliness."
"When have you ever been lonely?" asked Jon, disbelieving.
"Never!" said George sharply. "I let go of my loves when I find me new ones. My past passes when I find me a present I can live in."
"Your past is Alanna," said Jonathan. "Both our pasts, really."
George said nothing, but shifted away on the bench they shared. The last of the sunset was winking out over the cityscape horizon, leaving the garden a maze of trickling shadows. He felt the chill grow in the air as he watched the flowers close for the night, always knowing that they would open again, but only after the long and dark ordeal of night.
Behind him was a house, and in the house were rooms. Each room was potential itself: the furniture and people in it, candles and fire. Some were locked and dusty expanses, where everything was veiled in a white sheet, protected from time. Most not even he knew enough to tell what he would find if he opened their doors. Some, though, he knew. Some rooms lay down corridors he'd sworn he'd never walk again.
"What are you thinking of?"
"My present. Do ye ever think of yours?"
"Every day."
"Yet ye never change it. Do you, m'liege?"
"Don't call me that. You were a king, once, too."
"I changed my life, Jonathan. That king is dead."
"How did you do it?"
George sighed and moved closer to him. "It's easy," he said. "Ye go and decide what ye want, and then ye go out and get it."
"That's not easy!" protested Jon.
"Why not?" demanded George, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. "Ye used to do it all the time. Prince Jon did it all the time. He saw what he wanted and then took it, no needless word said." A ghost lay between them, an invisible barrier that neither evoked by name.
"Kings don't always get what they want, George, you know that. You were a king, once, too."
George leveled his eyes at him, clear and simple. "It's never too late to change your life, Jonathan," he said.
He just turned away to look at the gloom before him.
The garden was dark and bare of joy, holding only the memory of what it looked like when the sun was still shining. Only hours ago it was full of beauty and life, but now, the very things he'd thought were so lovely held out their thorny arms, ready to trip and uproot him. How quickly time changes all, he thought.
And behind him was a house full of old whispers and new emptiness. In it every hearth must be cold stone and ash, every candle long-since flickered out. Not a soul stirred in that house. No one laughed and cried and loved in there. How long had it been since it had seen the passionate heartbreak of youth and liveliness? Tonight it saw the broken heartlessness of a man who woke each morning and saw nothing in the day before him, did nothing but sit and wait to die.
"Always given to the same notions of finality," remarked George softly.
"And what are those, then?" asked Jon, more than a little irritated.
"That ye have no future." George was silent for a time. "If ye really believe it, Jon, why'd ye come here tonight?"
He had no answer.
George got up, and taking the other man by the hand pulled him, too, to his feet. They stood there on the balcony, between the dark garden and the dark house, close together in the gloom.
"Choose, Jon," George murmured in his ear. "Choose now: to walk out my garden gate and stay in the past, or to come into the house and make yerself a future."
"Choose?" asked Jon. He was too afraid to choose, too afraid to lose.
George saw the indecision in his face and, not waiting for an answer, pulled away and began walking to the house. He trailed his arm away slowly, and their hands brushed and parted. And as Jon felt that last touch flit away he bit his lip, turned full circle and ran to catch up with George. "I choose you," he said.
