This fic is basically angst for my own pleasure, so I decided to jump right in with the drama, and then catch up with some of the explaining later... For those who asked, yes, George will appear later on, and this chapter is basically entirely from Thayet's view. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I had fun writing this angst-fest.
Chapter One: And the Walls Came A-Tumbling Down
Thayet closed the book and leaned back in her chair. Today had been a good day. It had been fifteen years since she had opened the first ever general elementary school in Corus, and now she was educating nearly all of the children in the city under ten. It had been good. The only thing missing.... well, there were two things really.
Most of all she missed Buri. Her best friend and companion since long before coming to Tortall had finally found a man who could give as good as he got. He had been one of the teachers in the school they had established in the market quarter and Buri had fallen for him head over heels. Thayet couldn't do anything other than say 'yes' when Buri asked if she approved the match. Since their marriage a few months ago, life had been much quieter, too quiet. Buri and her husband were off in the south now, trying to establish schools in other cities. Buri wrote, but it wasn't the same. It left Thayet very lonely.
That was the other thing she had missed. Companionship. Yes, she felt it most acutely in Buri;'s absence, but it had always been there. So much had happened in the first few months of coming to Corus that she hadn't really been able to think much about men and marriage. She had thought for a while that the King himself had been interested in her, but any interest in her he might have had was clearly overwhelmed and swept away by the force of pure passion which existed between Jonathan and Alanna. Thayet had been happy to see them married, but then she had assumed that there would have been a man for her too by now.
The sound of the doorbell interrupted her reverie, making Thayet jump. Rapidly, she glanced at the parchment pinned to the wall which detailed all the appointments she had this week, but there was nothing she had forgotten. This caller was not a scheduled one.
Thayet eased herself out of her chair, reaching up to pull her hair down and pin it up again. The doorbell rang again. Clearly the caller was impatient. Muttering under her breath, Thayet hurried down the stairs to answer the door.
"Jonathan!" Thayet blinked, startled to see the man she had once had hopes of marrying standing outside in the drizzle which was clearly already permeating his clothes.
He smiled. "I'm sure you're supposed to address me as 'your majesty', these days."
Thayet blushed. "I'm sorry, your majesty. I quite forgot myself since your visit was so unexpected."
The King smiled. "You're forgiven. This is hardly a formal visit." He paused, and his smile faded. "I wasn't expecting to come and see you myself when I set out."
"Oh." Thayet wasn't sure what to say. Though Jon had made the effort to keep up their friendship over the years, he had never before turned up alone and unannounced. As King, it was usually difficult for Jon to go anywhere without a parade of bodyguards at the very least.
The silence stretched out for a long, awkward moment.
"Um, Thayet, do you mind if I come in? Only, I'm getting pretty wet out here," Jon said eventually, glancing up at the sky where the drizzle was beginning to turn more heavy.
Flustered, Thayet reached up to push invisible hairs away from her face and then nodded. "Of course, of course." She backed away from the doorway, holding the door open so that Jon could enter.
Without really thinking, she led the way upstairs to her rooms, passing by the door to the office and opening the door to the private sitting room she kept as part of her personal quarters. The room was dark, and she fumbled around on the table for the box of matches.
"Allow me," came Jon's deep tones, followed by a flash of blue light which caused the candles in the room to burst into flames.
"Thank you," Thayet said as she stopped searching and sank into a chair. "I really ought to get some of those never-ending-light globes, but they're so expensive I can't really justify them for my personal rooms when we don't have them in the school yet."
Jon sat down on the sofa moments after Thayet. "I'll have some sent down from the palace for you. After all, we should really be funding you more from the crown's purse given how important the work you're doing is." He spoke with rather flat tones, not looking at Thayet, but instead staring out of the window into the darkness of the night.
Thayet smiled uncertainly. "Well, thank you. That would be wonderful." Unconsciously, she pushed her shoes off with her feet and curled her legs up under her as she sat.
Jon didn't speak again. He just continued to look out of the window into the night. Thayet watched him. She knew he would speak when he was ready. There was, after all, a reason he had come to see her tonight, and it seemed that it was something that he couldn't talk to his wife about, or any of his friends at the palace. That was unusual for Jon. He was so close to many of his advisers, as they were close to him and Alanna after the years they had spent training as knights at the palace.
It must have been almost ten minutes that they sat there in silence. Then Jon spoke.
"I think I made a terrible mistake, Thayet. I... I should have never married Alanna." He turned away from the window and looked, for the first time, directly into Thayet's eyes. "I should have married you."
Thayet tensed, unable to look away. Why had he come here to tell her this? Why now, after all this time? What was the point? She made herself take a slow breath before she spoke. "What do you mean?" It was a lame response, but it was the only one she had.
"Our marriage... it's been over for years, Thayet. I can't remember the last time we... well... made love." He looked down, embarrassed by his honesty. "I mean, there's sex, but it's not love anymore. Not like it used to be."
Thayet blushed, equally as embarrassed. "But Jon, why are you coming to me? Surely Raoul... or Gary... they'd be better able to advise you?"
Jon shook his head. "They're too close to Alanna. She's as much friends with them as I am. I darn't tell them the truth."
"So you decided to tell me?" Thayet breathed, her body still stiff with nervous tension. "You thought the way to deal with this was to come to a teacher you hardly see, and confess to her that you should have married her fifteen years ago, and made her your Queen?"
Jon looked up. "I... I thought I'd come to a friend."
Thayet softened a little as his eyes met her. Suddenly she could see the profundity of his brokenness. What he had come to confess to her, it wasn't new. "How long?" she whispered, her tone automatically more gentle.
"I don't know... since Lianne was born at least... For so long after that, she couldn't bear to touch me. She couldn't even bring herself to hold Lianne. She was so distant..." Jon collapsed back against the back of the sofa, closing his eyes. "She never nursed her, you know. We had a wet nurse." His voice was so fragile now that it was barely audible.
"So she had the 'baby blues'? Lianne's nearly three, surely that would be better by now?" Thayet's attention was locked on the man in front of her, watching his every breath.
Jon shrugged, his eyes still closed. "It wasn't really like that before then. Jonathan and Thomas... we... made them in love. But Lianne... the more children we have the stronger the line, and the stronger the line the stronger the kingdom."
Thayet's eyes widened a little as she took in what he meant. Jon and Alanna had conceived a child for the good of the kingdom alone... It seemed to be so wrong somehow that any child should be born out of anything other than love. Was what Jon and Alanna had done any better than creating a child through an act of rape? As soon as she thought it, Thayet dismissed that. Of course it was not as bad as rape – Alanna had consented.
Jon was still talking. "Now... now there's pressure. That speculation is building up again as to whether or not we will have another child. One old duke at court dared to ask me if Alanna was still fertile since we had yet to produce a fourth child." He opened his eyes and looked back at Thayet again. "I don't know if I can go through it all again."
Thayet nodded, swallowing back her own thoughts and emotions. "Of course. But there's no need for you to have another child if you don't want to."
Jon shook his head. "It's not that simple. Alanna... she gave up so much for me. It was so difficult for her when she gave up her knighthood to be a Queen. There was so much talk. Any hint at her being... inadequate as the Queen and I don't know what she'll do..."
There was a glisten to his eyes now that told Thayet more than any of Jon's words. Silently, she got to her feet and moved over to sit beside him on the sofa, turning a little in her seat to face him. Jon smiled weakly and absently rested his hand on her thigh. "It would have been simpler if I had married you. You... you should have been a queen, and Alanna a knight."
Thayet found her body tensing again when Jon touched her, but she forced herself to focus on his words and ignore the response of her body, which was wholly unhelpful. "You can't know that Jon. We might have made each other just as miserable as it seems you and Alanna have ended up." She forced herself to speak with conviction, denying the many nights she had spent in the early years speculating about the possibility that she might have made Jon happier than Alanna.
Jon looked at her. "You don't believe that. You can't believe that." He turned away and sighed. "I don't suppose it matters now. 'What's done is done and cannot be undone', as a famous man once said."
Gingerly, Thayet laid her own hand over his. "It will be alright, Jon. There will be a way." Not that she could see it right now, but there had to be, didn't there? Absently, she stroked his fingers with hers in a feeble gesture of reassurance.
Jon managed a smile. "I'm sure you're right. The gods haven't abandoned me yet. Or at least, the fact that Tortall is such a peaceful and prosperous kingdom seems to me to be a good sign that I'm not offending them." He reached up to brush away a black curl that had fallen out of the tight bun Thayet had pinned her hair into.
Thayet flinched. "Jon..." She shook her head slightly and then shrugged. "I'm sure the gods have their reasons for allowing all this."
Jon nodded. "Yes." He let out a heavy sigh. "Still, I suppose they are still limited by the mistakes I made all those years ago."
"Who says they were mistakes, Jon?" Thayet repeated, suddenly anxious for no reason she could pinpoint.
Jon met her eyes again. "Because somewhere, somehow, I stopped loving Alanna. But when I found myself on the doorstep tonight, I realised that I've never stopped loving you."
Thayet blinked. Then she swallowed. She forced herself to collect her thoughts enough to answer. "You never loved me, Jon. We've never been anything other than friends."
"But we could have been. There was a something... a spark, maybe, the first day we met, and it never went away. Why do you think I kept coming back here over the years? I can't keep away from you, Thayet. Even if Alanna forbade me from seeing you, I don't think I could keep away." Jon's hand slid a little further up Thayet's thigh as he spoke, and she shivered.
"Jon, that's not love. It's just the 'what if'. You're in love with the 'what if', not me..." She tried to subtly pull his hand back down her thigh, but he wasn't having it.
"I think about you." He said, his voice low and deep now. "Not just about the 'what if', but about you. Where you are, what you're doing..." His eyes darted away. "What you're like, underneath"
Thayet blushed furiously, trying to ignore the shiver that his words sent pulsing through her body. "You're married, Jon." It was a feeble response, but she had to try. No matter how much she might think about the same things Jon did, that didn't mean she was going to find out if reality matched up to the fantasy.
"My marriage is a sham, Thayet. It's not real any more." He was leaning closer now, his hand reaching for her waist.
Thayet pulled away. "No, Jon. No. This isn't going to help. We can't. I mean. What if... what if..." she trailed off.
Jon shrugged. "Isn't tonight all about the 'what if's?"
Thayet looked at him, and in some strange kind of pre-death moment, memories replayed through her mind in rapid succession. Meeting Jon. Flirting with Jon. Jon telling her he loved Alanna. Jon marrying Alanna. Jon visiting with Alanna. Jon visiting without Alanna. Through all of these memories, there was one sensation that she could not avoid. Attraction. After fifteen years, she had still not been able to look at another man. There had been plenty of them, but no one, not one of them had compared to the first real man she had ever met in Tortall.
Suddenly, she was aware of the room again and Jon was kissing her. As her thoughts caught up with her body, she realised that it wasn't just Jon kissing her. She was kissing Jon. The years of walls she had built up to hide away her feelings were tumbling away, and she knew what she had always denied. She was in love with him, and she had been since the day they met.
I'm working on the next chapter already, so review me to keep me inspired! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far!
