A/N: Yet again, a niggling wish for the romance to be far more pronounced than Lloyd ever intended has driven me to indulgences that I assume at least a few readers besides myself enjoy. This skirts the boundaries of AU but still remains in PG-13 territory; I'll never break canon that much! Whether that's a relief or a disappointment is up to individual readers, I suppose. ;)
I wrote a story many years ago exploring this same moment in time, in which Eilonwy ponders their fate on the eve of battle. Even then, I wanted to write this version, but was too anxious. Losing those inhibitions is one of the best things about getting old, honestly.
Alone in the east tower, the Princess of Llyr paced her chamber like a caged animal.
Below her, in the courtyard, torchlight splintered itself upon spear points, upon shields and bridles, helms and sword hilts, sprinkling a muted baptism upon the men who gathered there, preparing for an expected siege. She paused at the window, looking down upon the mass of warriors, moving like ants on a hill. The murmur of their voices, the sounds of iron-shod feet on cobblestones, the clink of metal, all rose to her ears in a foreboding music. Somewhere, down in that churning mass of men, were all those most dear to her. But she was barred from going to them.
Eilonwy turned from the sight, shutting the casement angrily. This was all such nonsense. Not that she had expected to be invited to fight in any battle, but the expectations placed upon her instead…this insistence of royal treatment, a bath and a private room—it was a wasteful charade, a nod to conventions with no place in a fortress that could be under attack by the next day.
Oh, she owed it to the House of Don, she supposed —a certain pretense at accepting the hospitality of Caer Dathyl. She had dutifully allowed herself the bath before dinner, and found it a guilty pleasure despite grumbling about washing her hair. Then the feast, and the shock of Pryderi's betrayal, the sudden acceleration to arms and battle plans. Amidst the confusion she had escaped quickly and quietly to her room, avoiding the sweep of Gwydion's authoritative eye. He would no doubt have ordered her to join the women and children on the last caravan being rushed to the eastern strongholds.
But now what? Did anyone even know where she was? And what was she to do, while the men milled about below? Sleep was impossible, though it would be wise to seek it while she had the chance. She had stripped down to shirt and leggings and tried to lie down, but was up within half an hour, wearing a path through the rug, propelled by restless agitation.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung in one corner: hollow-eyed, hair wildly streaming —oh, but at least it was clean; one wouldn't want to be caught in a siege with unwashed hair! —and frowned at her reflection. She had more than half a mind to pull her tunic and boots on, go and find a few odds and ends of armor, and quietly join the men outside, huddling in cloak and hood so that no one noticed her presence. But as she sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating the logistics of this impulse, there was a knock at her door.
She caught her breath in an anxious huff. Surely Gwydion had not found her out. Mystified, she crossed to the door and let it creak open a mere inch. The light of her bauble danced through the crack, falling upon familiar features.
"Taran?" she blurted out, in an incredulous whisper.
He stared back at her in dismay, mouth dropped open. "You are still here!" he exclaimed, accusatory and amazed. "Eilonwy, what are you doing, why didn't you—?"
In one swift movement she opened the door wide, grabbed his arm and yanked it, pulling him through and slamming the portal behind him. A cursory glance down the hallways had showed her no guard on duty to have witnessed it…not that it would have stopped her if there had been. Of what use was the stuffy propriety of nobility under such conditions? One did not check to see who was watching before running naked from a burning building.
Taran, stunned into silence by this impulsive interruption, stood against the doorway, looking as Gurgi might look if pulled into a larder he knew was forbidden. Eilonwy saw his eyes dart around the room, taking in the tapestried walls, the crackling fire in the hearth, the wide, curtained bed with its turned-down linens, rumpled from her vain attempt at sleep. He pulled his gaze back to her hastily. "I should…not be in here," he stammered, in a haze of embarrassment.
Eilonwy shrugged sullenly, angry at how he had avoided being alone with her for weeks, anywhere at all, let alone in her chamber. It was this, perhaps, that had made her so reckless. "Yet here you are, having knocked at my door of your own volition," she rejoined. "I didn't send for you."
He relaxed a little at her abrasiveness, possibly comforted by its familiarity, but with that relaxation came returned disapproval. "I came because someone told me you'd been seen running up the stairway of the east tower," he said sternly. "I thought you'd gone to the strongholds as Lord Gwydion ordered. I couldn't believe you would put yourself in such danger."
She bristled, staring him down. "If you really didn't believe it, you wouldn't have come to check, Taran of Caer Dallben."
His eyes flared, and the muscle in his jaw tightened in the way she knew so well. "I hoped, then," he said, gesturing to the air and turning to pace in front of the hearth. "I hoped you'd gained some wisdom over the last years! That you'd have learned to follow the advice of those who are our leaders for a reason! Instead of leaping straight to any harebrained thing that popped into your head."
"Is this really why you came up here?" she demanded acidly. "To dress me down for doing exactly what you knew I would do?"
He ceased pacing and turned to her, taking a swift breath, then seemed to think better of whatever it heralded. His mouth shut in a flat line, and she could see the fear under his anger, like the embers that glimmer dull beneath the sharpness of flames. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated; his hands were twisted into anxious fistfuls of his own tunic, but she knew he was out of harsh words.
She sighed, a little softened, if for no better reason than the satisfaction and comfort of knowing him so well. "You know very well I'm not going to be sent away anywhere else," she said flatly. "I'm not leaving you, or our friends."
He took a step toward her, desperately grave. "Eilonwy, we'll be leaving you. Tomorrow at dawn, we're to ride out."
A frisson of shock crinkled her scalp. "An offensive?" she exclaimed. "Gwydion ordered it?"
Taran nodded. "He thinks it will be to our advantage to take Pryderi by surprise."
"Rather than wait for him to keep gathering reinforcements," she mused, thoughtful. "It's a bold move, and a sound idea. Are you still to lead the Commot ranks?"
He nodded again, shortly, and dread churned in her stomach, edging pride out of the way. She had no doubt of his ability. But this was no march through the countryside, gathering eager farmers and craftsmen with their makeshift weapons. This was war, real war, a game in which lives would be ransom for a kingdom. Taran, at the front of his war band, could be gone tomorrow…in one instant, one arrow, one deadly swing of a battle axe.
And she hadn't told him anything.
They stood, immobile as stones standing amidst a dense and swirling fog of silence. Finally he took a breath. "Eilonwy, if we fail...there will be no safety for you within these walls."
"No," she whispered, though whether in agreement, or a desperate denial of the very possibility, she could not have said.
He took another step toward her, close enough to touch, to feel like she was falling into him. "Do you have somewhere to go?" he asked hoarsely. "In case the worst happens?"
Eilonwy shivered. The worst. The worst would be to stay here, walled up in a gilded prison that could become a stone tomb, depending how fate played them all. She shook her head, and reached out for his hand, gripping it fiercely in front of her chin and bending her head over it. "I will go wherever you are," she murmured against his knuckles. "No matter what happens."
She did not need to look at his face to feel how he struggled to speak. "That is not a comforting answer."
"It's a true one. You didn't ask for comfort," she said. "What comfort is there to be had, at such a time? At least you aren't alone, down there among the warriors. I can hear you all laughing, sometimes, from 'way up here, and singing while you pass around the ale. A company lets no man bear his burden of fear by himself. Meanwhile…" She waved around her opulent chamber in disgust.
"You chose to stay," he reminded her, catching her indignant arm in his free hand.
Eilonwy huffed softly, disarmed at the contact. "That's because the only thing worse than being alone here was being herded off, to still be alone, even in the midst of a crowd."
He pulled her gently toward him. "You're not alone, now."
She sank gratefully into the invitation. Her head fit into the space between his neck and shoulder like a key in a lock and she sighed, a wavering breath, and rested there. No, she was not alone, but they were…for the first time in weeks, and possibly the last.
"Is this why you came up?" she whispered, as his hands slid beneath the fragrant tangle of her still-damp hair. She felt his chest rise and fall heavily, but he made no answer. His fingers wound into the long strands at the base of her neck, and the tense tremor in them, the thick rush of his breath, told her more than words would have.
It was all new, still, this allowance of touch, this mutual acknowledgment of desire. It was unpracticed and tentative, stolen in moments so far apart that each one felt like starting over, and the long span of time between them made her wonder what they even meant to him. He wasn't indifferent—she knew that well enough, uninitiated as she was. So why did he work so blasted hard to maintain the appearance of it?
"Taran," she sighed against his shoulder. "You didn't need an excuse to come. I would have let you in any time, and here you've waited until the last possible moment. Why do you keep away?"
She felt him go as still as sleep, his arms suddenly heavy. One hand splayed against her back, the broad heat of it burning like a brand through her shirt. She shivered again. "Do you think I don't notice?"
"I don't…" he said, strained, and cut himself off. His breath stuttered like the breath of one trying not to weep, and his hand tightened in her hair, pulling her head back, tilting her to a dizzying angle to kiss her.
She had anticipated him and still it was disorienting, an uncontrolled tumbling into intoxication. Will melted away like wax before molten silver, poured from a crucible; its liquid burn ran through her veins in an instant, kindling every nerve, prickling across her skin. Her arms tightened, anchoring her against him. He was solid and strong and gods, she wanted him to kiss her until she couldn't stand up, to touch her until every inch of her knew the shape of his hands, to not stop until she had become the air he breathed.
He broke the seal at their lips to speak raggedly against her mouth. "This is why."
She had forgotten the question, and mumbled in confusion.
"Why I keep my distance." Words broke hot against her cheek, her jawline, under her ear; down the curve of her neck. "Because when I am close to you, I cannot think of anything else."
"And what is so wrong with that?" It was a gasping demand, too urgent to acknowledge the satisfaction of such a confession.
"Eilonwy," he groaned softly, into the hollow of her throat. "I have a responsibility to my men. It isn't fair to them."
"Fair?" She pushed him away a little to glare him in the face. "It wasn't fair that I was sent away for years and had to fight to come back to you. It wasn't fair that the moment I got back, the world came all undone. It isn't fair that I can't stay with you on what could be our last night alive."
Her hands fisted into his cloak, as though she could twist the sense out of him by force. "And you worry so much about being fair to a lot of farmers and crofters, you'll barely be seen in my company. Shall I always come second to your sense of duty?"
"I..." He looked upset and bewildered, as though somehow it had never occurred to him that she would want anything else. "I didn't..."
"Next time you decide to be so bloody self-denying," she plowed on ruthlessly, "you might stop and consider how it's affecting others. And by others," she added, "I mean me. Because you're quite good at thinking of everyone else."
She sensed him tighten all over, stoked by an invisible spark, like the crackling jolt that sometimes jumped between metal and wool. He took her by the shoulders almost roughly, steered her backwards until she was pinned against her own bed, leaning against its high support, melting into the space between it and his body. "I never stop thinking of you," he said hoarsely. "Never. It is all I can do, when you are in my sight, to concentrate on the tasks set before me. You cannot know what it is, to be so..."
"Oh, yes, I can," she interrupted, and pulled him to her mouth again to prove it.
Perhaps it was the moment itself that gave her the courage –the fire in the hearth roaring in sympathy with the fire in her blood, the urgency of impending battle, the forbidden implications of being alone together in her bedchamber, all combining into something brazen and reckless. She might not have been so bold, under other circumstances. But she knew for certain that he would not. Not he, not staid, serious Taran, always overcompensating with noble intentions for his supposed unworthy station—a trait she had always found alternately irritating and endearing.
But not now. She knew in an instant she had pushed him past the limit of his stoicism. He met her as though to make up for every opportunity he'd allowed to slip by. He kissed her with the abandon of a starving man finally set before a feast. His hands filled with her as a potter's hands pressed against the supple curves of clay on the wheel. She thought, in a brief and distracted flash, of that wine bowl tucked into her satchel back at Caer Dallben, and realized that the tiny flicker of ambivalence she had felt toward it was jealousy. Jealous of a wine bowl! She would have laughed at herself, if there had been any space for amusement within the full, rich sensation blooming within her.
And still she had told him nothing. Nothing that mattered, nothing that showed him what she had dreamed for them both, that explained why she would welcome him into her chamber and arms, a thing that happened between men and women for far less vital, profound reasons than those she cherished. Perhaps she should…
His hands slid beneath the hem of her shirt. Their heat sculpted the contours of her waist, each of his fingertips trapping her breath in the spaces between her ribs; she forsook the idea of speaking altogether. Why on earth should she use words to tell him what could be so eloquently communicated otherwise?
A horn sounded from somewhere below. Short, ringing blasts, loud, but somehow struggling to break through the communion between them, the notes tore through her consciousness with unwelcome insistence. Taran swore softly, and Eilonwy caught at his jacket as he pulled away.
"I've got to answer it," he pleaded at her mouth. "That's Gwydion's horn, calling for all the leaders to meet."
Eilonwy was succinct and pointed in expressing her opinion of Gwydion's horn at that moment, and Taran sputtered out a laugh that tumbled over a groan. One last kiss, one last full press of his body, and he was untangling himself and backing away, eyes flaming. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I promise…"
But there was nothing he could promise, and they both knew it. "Stay alive," she growled. "Just…I'll find you, just stay alive, tomorrow."
He nodded, and backed to the door, opened it and stumbled through like a drunken man, and was gone.
Eilonwy stood panting in the middle of the room. In the hearth the logs were crumbling to embers; she felt their dying heat in her core, that elemental connection that synchronized her pulse with the fire. With a gesture and a sharp word she flung her frustration at the shimmering remnants and felt some relief as the flames roared up again. Somewhere beneath the tension of deferred desire she felt a certain elation. Not satisfied, no, far from it, but…oh, what was the use, trying to analyze it? One did not describe a thunderstorm by its individual flashes of lightning; it just was, a glorious, violent, exultant mystery that would have its way in time, one way or another.
But one thing she knew. I will not stand passive and wait for the clouds to break. In a moment she was yanking on stockings and boots, shaking out her tunic and cloak and pulling them on, plaiting her hair and hiding it beneath her hood. She tucked her bauble into her pocket and buckled on her sword belt, and caught another glimpse of herself in the mirror as she moved to the door: by all appearances a slim young man, except for the softness of her face, still flushed and glowing-eyed in the firelight.
"And this is what is so distracting he can't think with me around," she said aloud to her reflection, and shook her head. "I hope we live long enough for him to find out what he's really missing."
What a thing to think, on the eve of battle. She laughed grimly at herself, saluted her reflection, and passed into the hallway, slamming the door on her way out.