Thank you so much for all the kind support on this story and for sitting through all the er...artistic license. I am very pleased and still somewhat surprised that you all like it but I am by no means complaining. I guess I'm still getting used to the idea of people not being bothered by imagery and the like.
Thank you a million times over and please if you have time, review this chapter as well. It is always appreciated.
Dedicated to all reviewers/readers and so on.
Special acknowledgements/ dedications to:
The Writer you Fools...some weeks are harder than others, yes? And, on another note, just read through 'This Game We Play' again and your skill with humor is a particularly delightful thing, especially when I'm dragging my feet through an essay due in five hours.
Cherry Jade...can't wait til your projects are over—til you get new ones I guess, oy—and we get more of your wonderful 'Beauty Is Within Us'!
alena-chan...your reviews bring a smile to my face as do your stories! Especially 'Casablanca Lilies', which is my favorite so far I think.
and of course
castle in the air...hon, you finally updated 'Waste Not, Want Not'. I'm proud and giddy...you surprised me:D
Glass
Chapter Eight: Immortal
"You lied to her?" X barely kept his rising temper down by whispering hoarsely.
"I had no choice," Robin sighed, right hand massaging his temple. It was night and Raven had since retired to her rooms. Now he sat in a finely gilded chair, all molded with gold etching and upholstered with a finer than fine blue velvet reminiscent of the chairs in the dining hall. But this was clearly a larger one, one that a person would sooner sit in to contemplate life philosophies than have a cup of tea and it was thus that Robin sat now, other hand restlessly strewn over his knee. X, for his part, stood in front of one of the fireplace, arm leaning against it, face nearly leaning into the jumping flames as if to scorch his displeasure away. The red cast an unusually ambient glow across his skin and eyes, making him seem a very shadow of vermillion against the backdrop of the hot tendrils but then he turned again to glance at Robin and once more he was brought back to simply being a disgruntled young man with an agitated twitch to his brow.
"Master, excuse the boldness—" he began.
"I always have," Robin cut in lightly and X fought back the amusement he had grown to harbor in his tête-à-tête moments with the keeper. He didn't dislike the man. In fact he rather admired him for his endurance, for his calm, for his intellect, and so on...and this was in no short part because X himself found he had no patience for even the minutely unintelligent. But Robin was not at all unintelligent and now lounging as master of his ageless and eternal castle in that ridiculously elaborate chair of his, he was the picture of a Victorian lord, a little lofty and entirely charming.
"Yes, I've noticed," X said wryly and Robin laughed shortly. He found a similar companion in X that X found in him. Suffice to say they were like two sides of a coin for one reason or another, though one was master and the other servant, essentially. They had a certain unspoken understanding of who held the upper hand in here and it is possibly for that reason alone that they could treat each other as equals, never overstepping the invisible boundaries—invisible boundaries an oversensitive Roy preferred to call 'unwritten' whenever they came up in conversation between he and X.
"Go on," the master of the keep gestured with the hand on his knee, not imperiously but prompting. X turned all the way now and situated himself in a leaning position against the left side of the hearth, back pressed hard against the stone fixture. His arms were crossed, as usual, and Robin did his best to steel himself for what he had a general idea of was to come.
X could be downright impossible at times.
"By lying to her have you not jeopardized the likelihood that she will help u—you?" X fixed his question immediately but the beginning of 'us' hung between them like a burning bridge.
"We," Robin emphasized the word pointedly and X did not wince outwardly but his insides twisted uncomfortably. "We would have no chance at all had she thought I was the sole reason for her captivity here, X. You know this as well as I. Come, do not speak to me in couched leads," he all but demanded, a bit of his familiar and very quick fury edging into his tone.
"I am not sire, actually. I find the deceit to be most troublesome and I think you have been long without other company to believe she would not have helped otherwise," X said, bold to a fault.
"And yet you fail to consider that even if I told her it was I who bound her here, I could not tell her why. There is the sordidly fine print, my friend," Robin said bitterly and here X found he had to yield a bit. He was right in this.
"She must have faith," X scowled.
"She has nothing to have faith in," Robin defended abruptly, voice rising.
The fire crackled strangely in the awkward silence that ensued and both men looked at each other, the standing servant down at the sitting subjugator, each holding the other's willfulness against him as an annoyance, knowing full-well he too had that same affliction of lofty insistence. They did not often disagree though they did exchange barbs—one needed some sarcastic and yes, cynical relief in the span of five centuries and while Roy was the genial support and optimism and other less prominent beings in the castle like Hotspot were at least company, none provided for Robin the kind of companionably opposition that X did. It was much the same for X who, though he did like Roy much more than he let on, was grateful for the seriousness his master offered to him...especially in darker moments over the many years when he feared the lucidity of their plight, lest he lose himself to delusion and make-believe.
It was so very difficult to tell after all this time what was and was not real.
"Sire, you must tell her though," X insisted and Robin leaned forward on his knees, putting his head in his hands briefly and groaned.
"I know. But if I can only tell her half the truth where is the point in it when it may only serve to keep her from...from helping?" Robin argued still.
"If she finds out on her own of your trick she will not help anyone here at all," X said bluntly. Of course he was right. Robin knew as much. He just hated to admit it.
"Eventually," Robin allowed and X bit his tongue on the initial retort of: preferably before the next century, my liege. Non-verbalized, his expression read it well enough anyway as Robin eyed him caustically. But his master was kind behind all of the bluster and stubbornness and coldness that came with being cursed with something so inhuman as immortality. So he simply said, "Eventually I will. I promise."
X heard, and more importantly perhaps, the castle heard.
"Very well, master," X said after the pause, slipping back and forth from one courteous address to the next because variety kept the bland taste out of his mouth that surely would have festered there from being in constant servitude otherwise.
"Leave me," Robin both ordered and requested, a toneless expression of the simple wish to be alone and this X understood in him best of all, this X very nearly sympathized with for it was quite possibly how he felt more than ninety percent of the time.
There was something beautiful and fulfilling about having nothing but one's self to contend with...beautiful and dangerous, and there was nothing else like it to be sure.
X left the room as asked, intending to pick a shadow in which to hollow himself for a while, to clear his mind but something steered him in the direction of Raven's room and he found himself standing uncertainly outside her door. He granted the nametag with what for X was a rueful smile—to anyone else it seemed a bit of a sardonic smirk, but who was there to see? No one, of course.
The nametag still read 'Beauty' but it appeared that the lovely Raven had taken to it with either a piece of charcoal or ink from somewhere and messily scrawled RAVEN. Well, it looked like it. It was a little hard to tell because she seemed to have tried to simultaneously scribble out 'Beauty' making it little more than a mess of black squiggles. He shook his head.
X liked the girl, he admitted to himself, staring at the defaced nameplate. Certainly he did his utmost not to. What need had he of more than his master after all? He told himself none. But the girl had struck something in him, a chord to resonate with so unexpected, as though only one person in all the world—him—was supposed to know that chord, but somehow she'd managed to hit it too and call out in him something unnamed. And apparently she was the girl the prophecy spoke of, the maiden. The incantation had proved as much and the markings he'd rubbed salve over—now gone to the naked eye, but X knew they must still be there for they were an unnatural cut—were just the added inclination, not to mention her chakra.
But the prophecy weighed on him.
There was more to it than merely having a girl traipse in and rescue them all, cure them all. Idly he thought on how convenient it would be if it were simply a matter of waving a wand or a mystical hand here and there to make the shadows flee from the eaves of the manor, make the curse melt with the sun and the snow.
But no, it was not so.
There was the gray-shaded clause that concerned the absolutes of life and death and X found he could not look at the girl without thinking of her potential sacrifice.
It was perhaps for that reason that he was so testy with her always.
She reminded him of what he and the others needed from her and equally of what she might have to give. And he did not like the idea of being a hand in an execution, however indirect or even necessary it might have been.
That Robin felt the same he was certain. If possible, the master probably felt even darker about this subject matter. His ability to brood and punish himself was legendary—or it would have been if he had been able to leave the castle in the past 500 years so suffice to say his ability to brood and punish himself was inestimable.
And surely he did that very thing now, while X stood outside the girl's door, similarly brooding though none so bleak as Robin tended to.
Yet the clause was so cryptic that X found even he had hope enough to believe Raven would not end a lifeless body at the threshold of a disenchanted castle in the final lines of the prophecy. He dared to believe that there was something he and the others—even Robin—were missing.
It was so very nearly the only saving grace his conscience had.
He rubbed his eyes and as if on cue the clock tolled like thunder throughout the halls.
"That time then," he mumbled to himself and turned to walk away when the creak of the door stopped him.
"X?" She didn't sound like she'd been asleep at all, he thought.
"Lady," he said not turning but glancing at her, a three-quarter's perspective keeping him from being rude...barely.
"Is he alright?" she asked and he faced her fully now, taking in her wide, violet eyes like a person taking on direct sunlight.
"He will be," X said and Raven sighed.
"Everything here is about what 'will be' when what I am really interested in is what is," she complained, annoyed and blew a few stray strands of hair out of her face.
"We are all interested in what is, as you say," X reproved.
"You at least seem used to the vagueness," she countered quickly and X shrugged.
"One never really gets used to what is not meant to be," he said and Raven, put out at having her initial irritation—the mere result of inane restlessness—deflate, looked away from X with obvious intent. "Thank you for saving him."
"You're welcome," was her automatic response even as she registered the very oddity of X being grateful and met his gaze again. "Do you know why I see so strangely now?" She wasn't certain why she asked—not certain, but an inkling of something told her or reminded her that X always seemed to have an air about him of someone who was trying to know less than he really did so as to answer less questions.
"I have some thought on the matter," he said carefully but not slowly. She arched a brow.
"Well, I would feel most obliged to you if you'd be so kind as to share said thought," Raven half-smirked. X sighed and it was not a comfortable thing for him; sighing said too much about a person for his liking and he stifled the one that came on its heels.
"It is possible that something of the castle's...enchantment has laid itself upon you, for what you describe is much like how our keeper and master once described his own sight to me," X explained without explaining. Raven could barely repress a growl in the back of her throat, her temper returning as she felt him still keeping too many things from her...just like the rest of them...even Robin, much as her heart despised admitting it.
"I do not need to be sheltered, X," she spat and his eyes widened a bit at the venom in her tone. He forgot too quickly she was not like other maidens, easily dissuaded by a fancy turn of vague phrasing or scared off by it and more crucially perhaps forgot even more quickly what a maiden was like in the first place anymore, it having been so very long since he had interacted with one before her.
But just because he had forgotten did not mean he was wrong in his choice of action, some part of himself claimed defensively and he would be the absolutely last soul or fragment of a soul to admit he was wrong ...even if he was.
I am not wrong, he thought; angry suddenly at Raven for what he told himself was unadulterated brazenness on her part for things she could not possibly understand. Had he just been defending her earlier? Surely not, he scoffed to himself. If the master lies to her she has only brought it on herself, he insisted now, convincing his own mind of what he'd been reluctant to believe before. Anger was some of the very best motivation, especially impatient anger and X found the small empathetic part of him dimmed markedly as Raven conjured spades of the disquieting feeling in him.
He considered her proclamation only an instant longer before speaking.
"The curse rests on you too now, lady. I suggest you live up to the prophecy or you will have to continue to deal with me indefinitely and I doubt that is something that either one of us finds attractive in the least," X said coldly and now he did leave, his pace the brisk stride of someone profoundly miffed. Equally bothered, Raven glared after him.
And the lamp on the wall next to her fairly exploded.
She jumped and then glanced at it anxiously, remembering all too well the nature of many things in this castle—such as the fireplace, now become Hotspot, and the like.
"Oh dear," she breathed and began to try and pick up the pieces, babbling and feeling more and more like an unruly child by the second. "Now look you, I did not mean it. I am not sure even how I did not mean it. This simply does not happen where I come from," she said unhappily, scooping a few smaller pieces over to her growing pile. And she rushed on, "There's little reason for it you know, my power or Magic as they like to call it. I've no roots in sorcery to speak of but this place seems riddled with it so maybe it is becoming a part of me anyway—" she was now putting all the fragments onto a hollowed space in the skirt of the dress she'd deigned to wear that day, an undecorated blue one, "—and maybe it will all make sense some day but really until then I can only tell you I am very, very sorry. Though in my defense things just don't explode when one is angry where I come from! I mean, unless one plans it out and that's a rather messy task in itself that no one I know has ever cared to waste the effort on anyway!" And she stood, holding her skirts up so that her feet up to her knees showed, the front she held serving as a kind of carrier for the broken lamp.
"What happened?" Roy asked as he materialized in front of her and she gave a startled gasp that coincided with the sound of something else shattering in the distance. At that, she groaned.
"Hell's teeth if I know!" she raged and pushed right through Roy's astral form, something she would normally have the care and politeness not to do but that at the moment had no patience for. Roy followed, unbothered by her sordid mood.
"Why are you carrying the lamp?" he asked.
"I broke it, didn't I?" she retorted, still stalking in the direction of the other breakage.
"Well, sort of I guess...suppose you did in that other sound too. Probably a footstool," Roy commented and she whirled on him, broken pieces jangling in the ladle of her skirt.
"Look Roy, I like you, I do, but I've not got the patience for this right now so if you're not going to be helpful to me I would most appreciate some solitude while I try and fix these things before I go and bring down the whole castle around our very ears!" she exclaimed, flustered beyond belief. Roy, bless him, did not seem offended by her tone or suggestion.
It had been too long with the curse for him to fault Raven for her combined reaction of confusion and fury. So he simply offered her a softer, more authentic smile a brother might and gave a sigh that was not so much unkind as it was sympathetic to her plight.
"I will leave you then to your own devices, lady. If you should need anything, you need only think hard of me, of anyone. You know that now, I'm sure," he said and disappeared back into invisibility. Immediately the sorceress-to-be felt regretful at her overly harsh words and scowled at her feet.
"You witch. He was only trying to help you," she admonished herself and then to the air where she thought she still felt Roy's presence, "Forgive my insolence, friend. You have been very kind."
"Worry not Raven." And perhaps guessing something of what Raven was thinking now, he also said, "We are not all quite as short tempered as my friend X," Roy's voice floated around her, ever accommodating and a little bit amused and Raven smiled at his incorrigible cheerfulness. It wasn't quite a dandy's demeanor; he had a serious side for all his light-hearted encouragement. But he provided the much needed break she felt she might lose her mind without, a break of basic human kindness with less mystery than some. There was something of a wavering pause before Roy added a little helplessly, "And he does not mean to be so...the way he always is."
"Thank you. I shall try to remember," she said and waited until she felt his absence to continue to walk to find whatever else it was she'd caused to explode so far, only then having X's words sink in: the curse rests on you too...
Immortal, she mused.
"Well, I shall have a lot of time to read," she told herself uneasily. "Of course reading is what got me into some of this mess to begin with," she went on blandly. "So maybe I'd best stick to unraveling the curse, eh?"
No one answered her.
"Fine, be that way," she said to the castle and she could swear she heard it huff in response as she hurried to some place she might mend the broken lamp.
I wonder what'll happen when she fixes that lamp.
(hint, hint)
I realize there was um...no interaction between the Robin and the Raven here...next time there will be...but there is some set-up necessary in between and all that and I'm rather fond of all the other characters too frankly.
So um, hope you don't mind too much.
(nervous laughter)
-Rei