Woot! Update on time! Didn't think it was possible, did you? Neither didI, but I had all Wednesday off, so I finished most of this chapter then. Anywho, on to the reviews!

Tiger Lily21: Actually, I was hoping that their dinners would be the one place of normalicy in their crazy hectic lives. So, perhaps later on, they will be interupted, but not this one.

awaiting impatient person: Well, we can't win all the time. And I'm sure if they were having a contest on moving targets, Fiona would have whooped his butt. They're getting closer! Oh, the walls are getting cracks in them. Ooo.

Areida Rivers: Thank you very much. I'm always glad when my 'filler' chapters come out as a little bit more. In sad news, I heard that the guy who did the Tony the Tiger voice died the other day. He was like 91 or something. Wow.

littlelambug: Thanks! I've done my fair share of archery, and it is super taxing on your arms. And it wasn't like Fiona was doing archery every day like Parkin was, so it made sense that he'd have a little bit more stamina than her. There are a lot of emotions in this chapter.

fell4adeadguy: ((shakes head)) They just don't get a break. Here's the dinner! They don't talk about everything, but I promise you will find out all of Jarrod's favourites at one point. :cD

panemonium: Oh, that killer is just waiting until the opportune moment. (Sorry. I sometimes slip into POTC quotage.) Yeah. Jarrod and Fiona usually takeeveryone's burdens on themselves, a habit that isn't always good, but they're pretty strong people.

Glaze: Ha! The sheep are way back at Castle Fer Havara. I'm not going to say who the assassin is until the very last moment, so nyah. They're having less and less problems, which is nice.

livingdead2010: :cD

Phillipa of the Phoenix: Well, at first, it was basically going to be like the TDP because they were going out in secret and doing stuff, and Jarrod was going to follow them and fall in love with Fiona that way, but (like most of my stories) Jarrod and Fiona took lives of their own and I couldn't just leave it at that. So, you're right, this part right now isn't strictly TDP, but I hope you'll like it all the same.

rootbeergirl19: Yay for fluff! It's gooey marshmellowy goodness, that's for sure.

Akwyn: Hmm... You know, I don't know. I have a sort of 'plot-optional' story here, don't I? I think, it's mostly about Jarrod and Fiona resolving their differences, and trying to find out who's trying to kill them. I often have several plot lines going through my story.

CalliopeMused: Thank you! I think there is a lot to be said for making a relationship work. I didn't really want this to be a complete cliché story, so I am trying to make their love come semi-naturally.

wishingIcouldthinkofsomething: Of course, she won't ask him what she really wants to know, but that's okay. She will eventually. She's just trying to find her place as Queen. Jarrod's a bit slow on the uptake, and isn't really used to having anyone to help him (besides his brother and cousin, that is) They'll probably find some sort of compromise.

fireworksinmybackpocket: Thank you! XcD I'm glad you like the story.

Glitterpoison: Yeah. And then she gets to teach stuff. She's a good person.

letylyf: Thank you for the awesome review. I like to think that this is one of the best stories I've written. It's less 'magical' than the other ones, but I still love it. I think that a character always has to have at least one flaw, else they become very boring, and hard to build a plot around. I try not to have them win all the time because I think a person's true character comes out when they lose and/or are in a difficult time. I'm so glad that you are enjoying my writing. I feel I've come a long way since my first story, and to have someone else confirm it makes me feel great inside. Thank you again!

Okay guys, one more character development chapter, then it's back to the plot! Promise! ((crosses fingers, just in case))

Lulai

Chapter Twenty-Two: Failure

"Let's get down to business," Fiona said after eating a couple bites of carrots.

Jarrod raised an eyebrow at her. "Business?"

"I told you, I was going to interrogate you," she said before pouring gravy over her roast beef and potatoes. It was just the two of them (Warren and Tyrell had already eaten) so they opted to have dinner in the breakfast room, which had a smaller table and more windows.

"Oh, right," Jarrod said, quirking his half-smile. "Alright then, shoot."

"What's your favourite food?"

"Hmm…" Jarrod used his time to think to eat some more roast beef. "I would have to say that lost toast would be my favourite."

"Lost toast?" Fiona inquired, giving him a quizzical glance.

"You've never eaten lost toast?" Jarrod replied, shocked. He flashed her a grin. "I'll have Cook make you some tomorrow." He speared some green beans into his mouth, then asked, "And you? What's your favourite food?"

Fiona's brow lowered in thought. "That's difficult. I love so many foods. I don't like fish, however."

Jarrod nodded. "I'm not overly fond of fish either."

They smiled at each other, happy to have found something they had in common.

"What's your favourite colour?" Fiona asked.

"Why, I believe it's the exact colour of your eyes," he said in a teasing manner.

"Flatterer," she laughed. "But really…"

"Navy blue," Jarrod replied. "And I already know your favourite colour."

"Oh?"

Jarrod nodded. "Lilac. Not purple, lilac."

Fiona had suspected as much, but just the fact that he knew such a trivial thing about her warmed her right down to her toes. She smiled her lopsided smile at him broadly.

Things fell into a sort of routine after that. Fiona would either sew or teach archery while Jarrod took care of the affairs of state. Then they would have dinner together, usually alone, in the breakfast room. Tyrell and Warren would join them occasionally, but they tended to leave the couple in peace.

Things became so calm that Fiona, in truth, was getting rather bored. She wanted to do something besides sew and shoot and eat dinner. She had always though herself content to do the same things day in and day out, but the truth was ever since Jarrod came into her life, she had been anything but bored. Now that she was going back to her simple repetitive day, it seemed completely dull. It seemed even the attempts on her life had stopped.

"Who ever came up with the bandit idea?" Jarrod asked her one night over their apple crumble dessert.

"I guess, in a way, I did," Fiona responded. Jarrod's gaze met hers in surprise.

"Oh?"

She smiled a little nostalgically. "I was so angry at Uncle Edward because he had just taken almost a years worth of grain away from Alexis and Jamie. I mean, Allie was just a little baby! He should have been giving them food! I take it back; I wasn't angry, I was furious! So that night, I stole what the grain was worth in gold and the next day, gave it back to them in the pretence of giving Allie a knitted jumper."

He almost felt a sense of pride for what she had done. It was like Fiona to stand up to her uncle. He just wished she hadn't have done it in such an underhanded way.

"How did everyone else get involved?"

"Genevieve caught me sneaking out one night. After I explain that I had been behind the thefts, and why, they started helping me."

She smiled softly, remembering. "After my father realised that he didn't have any sons, he made sure that we could defend ourselves. He started us learning on a variety of weapons, and we got to choose which one suited us the best. Luckily, although we never had to defend our home from invaders, it proved useful in overcoming the guards sent by the… er," She looked at Jarrod guiltily.

Jarrod raised an eyebrow.

"We never killed anyone," she rushed to defend herself. "Merely, incapacitated them. And it was for a good cause." As she said this, a wave of longing swept over her.

She missed being a bandit. She missed helping people. She was feeling rather useless as a queen, and wished that Jarrod would give her something to do.

A revelation hit her. Why the heck couldn't she help people? She wouldn't be able to steal for them, but there was no reason why she couldn't go out and talk to the people in the city like she did in her town.

Fiona beamed, having a new hope for the next day.

…

She should have known that it wouldn't work.

Fiona sat under a tree, staring blindly out into the horizon, trying desperately not to remember what had happened that day.

Oh, it had started off well enough, for sure. She had dressed up semi-regally in one of her best dresses, a lilac concoction that she had made one year out of one of Bernadette's old dresses (it was one of those dresses that made her feel powerful), and she took Elsie and Parkin. She didn't tell Jarrod where she was going; she wanted him to be proud of her initiative, and, yes, she wanted to impress him with her people skills. She knew that he wouldn't be impressed if she didn't take any protection, and she figured anyone who could best her at archery was more than adequate.

She decided to start at the houses farthest down from the castle. From her observations of the city, they would be the poorest, and thus in need of the most help. It took them a little while to walk all the way down to the last house, but Fiona was determined.

She knocked on the door. It swung open on crooked hinges and a heavyset woman stood in the doorway. She might have been pretty, but there was a pinch to her face and her eyes glowered with unveiled animosity.

"Aye? Whatta ye want?" she asked.

Fiona swept a curtsy. "I merely wished to introduce myself. I am Queen Fiona Par Drewery, and would like you to know that I am available to help with your problems."

"Problems?" The woman laughed cruelly. "Listen, yer majesty-" the words dripped with sarcasm- "I have more problems than I can shake a stick at. An' I donna think ye comin' down here an' pesterin' me about it will help at all. Shove off." With this, she slammed the door right in Fiona's shocked face.

A little discouraged, Fiona nevertheless put her smile back on and went to the next house. A withered old man whose eyes were nearly hidden by white eyebrows answered. Fiona didn't even get through her initial speech before his door cut her off.

"-to help… Bugger it all!" she exclaimed. Her hands flew to her mouth, but Elsie and Parkin laughed long and hard. She glared at them.

"Oh, donna mind them," a middle-aged woman said, as she was entering her own house. "They're always that crotchety. I, fer one, am lookin' forward to yer play."

"Play?" Fiona asked, bewilderedly.

"Aye, tha play yer puttin' on."

"I'm not putting on any play," Fiona persisted.

"Ye're wearing pretty fancy clothes fer a jaunt down ta tha market."

"That's because I'm the queen."

The woman looked confused. "Tha queen wouldna step foot down here. She'd at least take a carriage."

Fiona sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I didn't think of taking a carriage. But I'm here anyway, and I want to let people know that I'm open to hear their problems."

The woman looked to Elsie. "Ye'd better get yer sister home. She seems a li'l touched in tha head."

"I'm not crazy!"

"Aye," Elsie said, stepping forward, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "I'm sorry ta bother ye, but sometimes it's best ta let this kinda thing run it's course, else we'd never get her down for bed."

The woman nodded, and gave her a loaf of bread out of the basket she was carrying. "HERE," she said loudly and slowly, as if she were talking to a deaf person. "YE EAT THIS AN' BE A GOOD GAL."

Fiona gritted her teeth so hard she was afraid her jaw might snap, but took the bread.

"Take this," she hissed through clenched teeth, shoving the loaf into Elsie's arms, ignoring the laughter. She had a mind to sack her then and there. It's what came from having long-term servants; they felt as though they had a right to laugh at their mistresses. She could never be that cruel, though.

"What was that for?" she snapped at Elsie instead.

"What?"

"You could have stood up for me," Fiona said angrily. "Confirmed the fact that I really am Queen."

"She wouldna believed me any more than ye," Elsie explained. "I figured this way, we can stop tha conversation an' get to seein' more people."

She wanted to protest, but she realised the fruitlessness of it. "Fine," she announced. "I guess if they don't want me here, we shall go to the top and work our way down."

Elsie and Parkin nodded, and they set off back towards the castle. By the time they reached the first house, Fiona was sweaty and tired and more than a little irritated. She took a deep breath, straightened her hair, and knocked on the door.

"Announcing Queen Fiona Par Drewery," the butler announced to two ladies sitting, enjoying refreshments in their salon. They stood at her entrance.

"Your majesty," the younger one said as they curtsied. "You honour us with your presence."

"Thank you," Fiona said as the three ladies sat down. The elder, the Dowager Duchess of Grenalda, sat with an extremely similar expression to the first woman that Fiona had visited. Her daughter, Rachel, was a younger replica of the elder woman, right down to the peevish expression on her face. Fiona was no expert on fashion, but even she could see that the colour of Rachel's dress (which reminded her of nothing so much as pea soup) clashed with her complexion horribly.

The two women were pleasant enough. They made small talk, and Fiona tried, and failed, to recall whom Rachel's husband was. After several minutes, Fiona asked if she might take a second to freshen up. She was still feeling a little sticky from her walk in the sun.

Rachel obliged graciously and rang for a butler. Fiona ended up in a lavish bathroom, with more gold and turquoise than she thought was tasteful. She wiped her brow and tucked the two errant locks of hair behind her ears, having lost her clips somewhere along the road, and smoothed the front of her dress.

Feeling better, she made her way back to the rooms unannounced.

"But she's so… so… rural!" the younger girl's voice rang out.

"Be that as it may, we must accept her. She is the queen."

"How did she ever get that position anyway? The king barely looked at anyone this season."

"I don't think it was her looks that caught his notice. Anyone with half an eye can see that her gowns are of the poorest quality." The mother and daughter shared conspiratorial giggles.

"She's no beauty, that's for sure." More sniggers followed this pronouncement.

"Is she some sort of high royalty?" the daughter wondered.

There was a sound of a teacup hitting a saucer. "No. She's the seventh daughter of some Earl off in the country. Without the king, she'd be no one special."

Fiona's eyes filled with tears.

"Your majesty?" the butler asked, catching up to her.

"Find my servants, please," she responded. "I would like to return home."

The butler nodded, and Fiona waited in the front hall until Elsie and Parkin arrived. She left without a word, and they followed her quietly.

"Thank you both for coming with me today," she said as soon as they entered the main hall. "You are dismissed for now."

They both bowed and left her.

Fiona was torn between wanting to keep her shame to herself, and wanting to spill it all out and cry on someone. She ended up walking down a path in a small neat wood until she didn't want to walk anymore.

And that's where Jarrod found her, sitting on a root, with her knees drawn up, and her chin resting on her arms that were folded on top.

He sat down beside her, not saying anything, just being there. He drew one knee up and rested his arm on it, his fingers dangling. They watched the sun start to make its way into the horizon, turning the clouds a brilliant fuchsia.

"I missed you at dinner today," Jarrod said quietly.

"I'm sorry," she replied. "I didn't really feel up to company."

"It's okay," he said. He didn't mention how worried he had been when she hadn't shown up. How, if he hadn't run into Elsie who told him approximately where she was, he was about to get his men and turn the castle upside down to look for her. He felt sure his assailant had her. It took him several minutes after finding her to slow his heart back into its normal pace.

He glanced over at her and was shocked to see how empty her eyes were. They were dull and lifeless, as if all her energy had been used up, and she was simply a shell in the shape of his wife.

"Fiona?" he asked, touching her shoulder. Her eyebrows drew together, and she bit her lower lip, obviously trying not to cry. "Darling, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing. Just a stupid… nothing," she said, but a tear slipped down her cheek, belying her words.

He swore softly and drew her into his embrace. "Obviously not a stupid nothing," he said kindly, wiping a tear the tear from her face with the pad of his thumb. "Tell me what happened, Fiona."

So she did. Between great heaving sobs, she told him how she went down into the city and tried to befriend some people, but they wouldn't listen to her, and how she had visit the women and they had mocked her, and how she just felt so useless and so lonely.

"I was too rich for the poor and too poor for the rich," she said bitterly through her tears.

Jarrod berated himself fiercely inside his head. How could he have been so utterly pig-headed? He had been so sure that she was fine, that she would be able to save him, that he didn't think to take care of her at all. Was he so wrapped up in himself, that he couldn't see how unhappy his wife was?

He could now, he thought to himself with an ironic self-mocking tone. He could feel her tears soaking through his shirt, feel her sobs shaking her whole frame in his arms. Her unhappiness was like a knife in the gut, twisting at his innards.

"I'm sorry," he said, softly. She looked up at him, her eyes big and shiny, tears gluing her eyelashes together in small clumps. He moved her onto his lap so she was looking down at him.

"For what?" she asked, sniffing.

"For not being the husband you deserve," he said morosely, touching his forehead to hers. A tear splashed onto his nose, another onto his chin. "For letting you face this alone, for making you feel useless."

She shook her head, a small movement, breaking her eye contact with him. "This is my fault. I'm just not good enough for you. You are the king, I'm nothing. A nobody from the country, who you only married to save from ruin. I can't believe why you would ever want someone like me." Her voice cracked on the last word.

How could she not see how much he needed her, how much his very existence depended on it? She was the light to his dark. If his people refused to see what he did, then his people were idiotic beyond belief.

His hands came up to grasp her face, his fingers locked into her hair to make her look into his eyes. A hairpin dug into his palm, but he ignored it. "You are not nothing," he said savagely. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Oh, Fiona. You just want to help people. People that don't deserve you. It's me that's useless, that's nothing. I don't deserve this… this… you…" his voice caught in his throat.

Her hands came up to cover his. "Jarrod… no… You're everything anyone could want. It's me. I'm the one who's lacking." Another tear slid off her face onto his.

God. The look in her eyes broke his heart. She looked so… lost. She wanted to believe in him, that he could want her, just as much as he wanted to believe that she could fix him.

"God, Fiona, if only you knew. We said that I would marry you to save you from ruin, but in truth, you are saving me." He brushed a thumb around her ear as her eyes widened. Should he tell her? Could he tell her? "I was so lost before I met you. You are my salvation. You want to help everyone. Help me." The plea came from the depth of his soul. "Please."

"Oh, Jarrod," she whispered, more tears rolling down her face onto his.

She pulled her hands away, but kept her forehead touching his. She grasped his lapels and clutched tightly, her knuckles almost white. He moved his hands to her waist, pulling her closer, needing her with him.

She held onto him as if he were the last thing on the planet, and he held onto her just as tightly, terrified at how deeply she had touched him. And as another tear slid down his cheek, as it's salty coolness hit his lips, he didn't know whether the tear was hers.

Or his.