Walking With You
I commissioned the art linked in the summary entirely separately from any intent to write about it - indeed, the concept more recalled a scene from the end of Chapter 5 of YDDHYUIS than anything more concrete and new, but then...then I got on a big Addam Origo (+ wife) kick and I'm still not done yet. I hope you enjoy! <3
Ever since that summer day in Auresco's shopping district when first they met, Addam and Flora have walked together. They seek each other out, sometimes without knowing that they do it, and they arrange their thoughts not as words on a page but as steps on a path. Natural progression, always plodding plodding plodding on. Quite often I invoke my overarching mantra: we are nothing if we do not go together. And they never think of doing anything different.
You know the old story, or maybe you don't: Addam is born in Leftheria, Flora is born in Heblin, and neither of them are assigned the gender that they want (and in fact, their parents don't want them the way they came, either, but don't like them any appreciably better once they've transitioned, or at least, not for any of the right reasons...oh, digression). It isn't until Addam is twelve or thirteen, teenage or tweenage or whichever, that he is even arrived to the mainstay of the royal lands, and Flora, one year younger, knows nothing of it. Of course, no one would ever speak about it. It's somewhat hush-hush, all round.
The year is 3556. At sixteen, Addam starts to become more of a royal accessory than just a standalone tchotchke, and Flora is still finishing secondary school, but she is boarding in Auresco when she does it, near to Aureus where he yet lives when not traveling. They meet when he is eighteen and she is seventeen, freshly finished her diploma a year early because of course she has, and she is at the perfume shop in the commercial district, fawning over the Winterwind scent and trying to count her coins as discreetly as she can.
"Hello," Addam says.
"Hello," Flora says back.
Do you come here often? What's a person like you doing in a place like this? You're very handsome. You're very pretty.
None of those things, do they think. None at all - believe you me!
He buys her the perfume, with his father's money; she never wears it, half because she makes the classic mistake of saving rather than savoring and half because he has confounded her so. It is only years later that they realize, the both of them, that it was probably, all in all, something of a quaint little awkward little odd little silly little first date. In some ways, it was the only one. It all depends how you count.
To be in the center of attention - anyone's, anyone's at all - was never something Addam expected, raised as he was out of the spotlight and ostensibly wholly unsuited for it. He wears the garbs and armors of Torna as proudly as anyone else, and develops private, personal theories about Blades and their system that he hopes come in and into concord with all Azurda's wisest and oldest own penchants, and trains at his own brash, blossoming swordplay because he secretly never would elect to take one, but Zettar still turns up his pointed nose at the slightest opportunity.
Pointed nose. It's not exactly one of the key features of Tornans (more a hook, or something bluntly bulbous, is typical), but it's not the first thing that gives Addam away. Of course it's not. He is paler than his uncle and his father, eyes golden instead of blue (and shouldn't that be so right, for their golden country?), and his gray hair, he'll readily admit, portends weakness. No longer, never again, is he anything like effeminate in appearance, but he may indeed be effete. Sometimes - quite rarely, all in all. And is that their problem - their issue, rather? The thing that they take, steal away into secret simpering?
No. They don't like that he shines how he does. They don't like that Addam Origo is beloved by all, regardless of heritage or ancestry, that somehow the most prominent player from Aureus's auspices is not even a resident of the coveted west wing, not even someone who knows the names of all the members of the parliamentary governors' senate. There is no reason for it to be. No one should know his name, with or without the proto-assimilatory surname that they gave him (Odette did not have one that anyone dares nor cares to mention).
But Flora? Flora loves it. (Loves him? That's for later, of course.) Though he is foolhardy, he is broad-minded, he is clumsy about his own goals, his arms are strong and always lent where they can help best. Sat on the rear stoop of the square little house in Heblin's schoolyard, she watches the recessers play, and watches him with them. They like to climb all over our fair Mr. Origo, you see (more in word than in deed, for they're all at least six years of age, of course), and he lets them. Yes, they like Miss Flora's "special friend" an awful lot.
No further vignette is needed there; I will instead invoke the trope of time-up. The sun reaches its next destination along the arc of the sky's own wheel, and Flora gives a sharp clap of her hands. "Alright, everybody, back inside. Remember to wipe your feet and sit with your discussion partners for history period."
Addam ruffles each tiny head of hair as they pass him by, and they don't even duck. To be sure, they like him well enough, and they don't even know who he is, really. (Or don't they? Maybe they, and Flora, are the only ones who know.) Would they...would they still cavort so happily if they knew he was the bastard prince, and his father had set him a gauntlet to bring a wife in to Aletta such that he couldn't even be their own dear special friend (cum jungle gym, perhaps) for much longer?
Regardless. Time to go. "I'll see you tomorrow, Flora?"
She wrinkles her nose and squints up at him, waits for him to walk closer and block the sun for her before she puts down her hand. "I'll be here."
Addam sighs. "One of these days I'll have to get you back to Auresco - there's plenty of new things at the perfumer's that I'm sure you'd love to see."
Standing with an unfortunate squelch up into the mud, Flora moves closer and waggles mischievous fingers near the pockets of his baggy pants. "And will a certain Tornan prince be taking me, with all his deepest stores to hand?"
He laughs aloud, and wraps his arms around her to pull her fully in; her footsteps follow more naturally than they have any right to. "Maybe! You never know..."
And that's that, and he's about to turn away, but Flora stops him.
"Wait."
"Huh?"
"You're very nice to hug." Ah. Fair enough. She clings for a good while longer, and Addam thinks.
Oh, yes. He thinks.
"Flora, would you," he falters, "would you marry me?"
Immediately, "I would."
Oh. It was just the question as he'd asked it, but...well. That's it, then, isn't it? So he scrambles to make up the difference, pass it off.
"Not a very proper way to propose, is it? I haven't even got a ring."
"It's a very Addam way to propose, I think. You weren't even meaning to do it, were you?"
"Well, I--" Wasn't that the point? That...that this is the happiest accident I've ever had. So many other ways I could have tripped over my foolish feet, but this is to be the biggest one. Minoth warned me about girl trouble. Surely he never knew it was going to be quite like this.
And what is this? It's Flora leaning back, out from under the cover of his not-quite-square jawline to sneak a peek at his dazed smile. "You sweet, sweet fellow. I'd never have said yes if I didn't think you meant it."
"Flora, I rather think you're taking me a little out of context, here." And so quickly, too.
"I don't think so," she says, rolling her words and her eyes and being overall a little too lackadaisical with her cadence. "Just...skipping the obvious steps."
That explanation, more an excuse, could be read either of two ways, and one is fairly good but the other is very, very bad.
"When you say obvious, you mean...?"
"Oh, it's all the same. You wouldn't have asked if you didn't really mean it, somewhere in there." She pokes at the most prominent part of his chest, on the right side above his heart (if that actually means anything, which in this case it doesn't), to serve her point.
And she's right. They're not both so cockeyed crazy together that they'd sit on a lazy afternoon on the outcropping above the moat just outside Auresco's walls and say, oh, wouldn't it be a lark if we got married, just for no reason, would you do it? I dare you, you're a coward if you don't, what else are we even doing with our lives? No, there's something more to it. There has to be.
Does there have to be? That's frightening, isn't it? Addam doesn't quite know where he is, of a sudden. But he doesn't say as much.
"So...shall we?"
"I think we shall. Do you think they'll approve?" And who are they, anyway? His father, his uncle, her father, her mother?
Aren Hentisane is the most warmly loving of the bunch: a blacksmith with a shop not far from their current locale whose wife Leila doesn't so much dog him as trip over her own feet when deciding what she wants out of the world, and how to adjust those expectations when the world adjusts to she herself in ways that could be considered her favor but aren't always immediately so, on the face of it.
King Khanoro...he had said he didn't care, in specific, but he never showed what he thought about anything, in specific, unless pressed by someone acting in bad faith. And, speaking of, Zettar would surely only be satisfied if Addam said he'd betrothed himself to an Aspid, and they'd be taking a honeymoon to the bottom of the Cloud Sea and all of Morytha's brightest haunts, and maybe we'll stay down there ad infinitum, and Aletta will run itself.
So Addam laughs, barks amusement in place of hands on hips, because Flora is still right there (right there! right there! right there!). "No, I don't. But do we care?"
He certainly does, after it all, but, sure enough, Flora presses her cheek to his chest once more and concludes, "Not in the least. I never have."
In due time, Addam must bring his decision before the makeshift court that is Aureus's throne room. Queen Altansarnai sits, watching him, despising him with every rise and fall of her generous bosom, and Chaghan and Ashigu flank her from behind, having no more suitable place to stand because they are painfully aware of just how low they rank behind Zettar despite being next and next next in line after him. Each partakes in different amounts of the same disdain, which Zettar also shares; he and Khanoro sit to the right of the queen, Addam across from his father at the center of the long, long conference table.
"Prince Addam." The king's opening address is blunt, but full of gravitas. Addam marks it as well as everything else his father has ever said to him, which is to say that he doesn't quite know what to do with it, but it's better than the nothing with which he very easily could have ended up, had circumstances been...the same, really. But we digress.
"A fortnight ago, our royal court held an informal audience with you regarding the conditions under which I might enfeoff you as Lord of Aletta. Remember you our terms?"
He couldn't but. "That I do, Lord." He's about to continue, and establish just how clearly he remembers the instructions he was given, but then bites his tongue, lest the stratagem come back to bite him directly.
"We allowed you much latitude," Khanoro continues. "You were to choose a woman from among the Tornan people to be your wife, and preside with you over the rural estate that sits upon the western wing of our great Titan. We set no conditions on her heritage, nor her status. Merely, we asked, that she be eligible in mind, in body, in spirit, to take up the duties that come with maintaining one of our most important provinces."
Zettar butts in, unasked (as ever): "I wish to make it known that it was none of my input that led to your being given such overly generous free rein in this matter, Addam. In truth, you have already implicitly indulged in much - too much - of my goodwill in being allowed to proceed as my brother wishes."
The atmosphere, of a sudden, becomes withering, and the High Prince concludes hastily, "I trust you will have taken that into account."
"Always," replies Addam, evenly and even effortlessly. No disrespect can be gleaned from it, and he isn't even sure he armed the single word with any. More's the anti-pity.
"So, Addam." Your choice. Your choice? Your choice.
Addam does not say that he chose Flora, that he picked her up like rubbish or like a party favor lain for the taking. It would be unconscionable even if he were (were not?) trying to pass off the idea that they were a little more entwined than not (that is to say, what is the difference between best friends married for tax benefits and complete strangers married for political upstart? it's hard to say).
Too, it is not often in this room that the bastard prince, fourth in line, makes proclamations, declares what his behavior will be instead of simply apologizing for it on a much larger scale than the action itself occupied and merited. How does he even open?
"I have made an agreement," Addam starts, and is more or less satisfied after the opener, "with Flora Evelyn Hentisane. She is twenty years old, of good health and constitution, and she is currently training as a teacher's assistant for a provincial schoolhouse."
And she is the loveliest girl you've ever seen, and she is freckled like you've never seen, and she keeps her hair so well, and her boots make the most pleasant sound I've ever heard on every surface upon which one can walk and probably all those upon which one can't, and I-- And I have made an agreement. No more.
Zettar responds to the idea first. "Hentisane? That little no-account...wench from Heblin? She's nothing!"
"She is everything. My Lord." It isn't necessarily victory that Addam feels as he says it, on reflexive instinct, because one should not aggregate overmuch glory to the simple truth, but the look his father casts him is the thing most like pride that he's ever seen in or on that ever-righteous stony face.
"Well said, Prince Addam." Oh, the title, the title. Always with the title. He'd rather not have had the compliment, at all or all in all, if that was to be the cost, the price he has to pay. But, he takes it. Grins, and bears it, and Altansarnai's grim glances of begrudging approval, along with a little bit of...something else, as well. Anything for Flora.
Oh, truly. The meeting is over, not more than one quarter of an hour in, but he would have borne a thousand more - the full, and not the fraction - defending his choice. Anything for Flora.
"This red is very smart on you," Flora comments, picking at wrinkles on his sleeves that have arrived there by no summarily obvious and feasible method. "I like green better," Addam returns, "but the gold is nice, I do like that."
It's a child's (an idealist's? which comes first?) way of taking a compliment, of receiving feedback and saying not what you think about it and its, the, reflection, but instead how things could be improved, immediamente, with no regard to the necessitations or the repercussions; the consequences. And, indeed, Addam feels very small, very young, very inconsequential, in an off room of Aureus's east wing, as they wait for the appointed time to strike.
A soft intermediary, a something something not quite determinate, in between what one had thought and what one will think, requires that you be not quite fully aware of its existence. In the back of his mind, beneath the ever-so-slightly-tamed tufts of gray, Addam thinks, something is a-changing - perhaps it's the times, perhaps it's the spaces. Maybe all the hoopla about weddings really is true. Maybe tomorrow, all life will be different.
The minister talks, of giving and taking and having and holding and things that Addam never really thought about, because he never really had to think about them. They were always natural. Of course you care for your partner. Of course you swear all of everything you have to them. Of course you marry your best friend.
He glances down at Flora out of the corner of his eye, fervently wishing that that is not what will change, that he will still love her just as much and more, if not in exactly the same way. And isn't that your choice, Addam? Can't you determine that? Or this all still such a serendipitous whirlwind?
A race, race, race, his mind runs, trying to think of all the things that could possibly go wrong and how he could stop them before they got started. They'd live alone, and the land would be far larger a plot than any of them had ever had to think of, to take care of, and there'd be nothing and everything to do, and...and what are you so worried about?
Flora notices, and returns his glance. She looks quite afraid; Addam hopes that is only the fault of the angle. Perspective is very important, they've always said, and not in the way that, say, Minoth would mean. Maybe that's what he's, she's, they're worried about, after all.
They say I do, and very nearly avoid further eye contact in their catastrophizing about what would cause them, would cause anyone, to say that they don't. Folded outside of implicit consequence, some piece comes missing. Does a new one come to take its place? One can only hope.
He hears of his father's divorce from his wife only in passing, as the wedding ceremony is concluded.
"Where is the queen?" He doesn't say "Mother", not because he would never consider, nor be expected to consider, the woman as such (he wouldn't) but because it is outside the bounds of familiarity that he has been allowed and has allowed himself.
Khanoro shakes his head, voice and visage low as ever. "There is no queen in Torna, Addam. Not anymore."
But Addam looks at Flora, wearing not white but flush pink with hand-embroidered rosettes all over (she had worked for weeks on them, and told him of how silly she felt for it all the while) and clutching his hand in hers, both of them bare, and knows that there is a new one, now.
"You will make us proud, my son." It's half a question, half a statement, half a command. Poetic as Khanoro's speech always is, it is not often that he uses the royal we. Addam knows surer than anything that he is only hiding behind it, here and now.
There is no license to be cocky here, even if none save Amalthus are watching, but Addam strays that way anyway. "I plan on it." Despite the tone, he bows his head somehow more sincerely than he's ever done, and receives the same in return.
"Come on, Flora. We've somewhere to be." Indeed, this is not my, our, place anymore. Yes, life is different. If not all, then just some, and this some in particular. There isn't anything else. Not anymore.
He doesn't carry her over the threshold; rather, they walk in together, hand in hand. And when you're inheriting an estate, of course that makes sense. It's not new, it's not even really yours. Is it?
"This is the beginning of everything," Flora says timidly.
Addam looks at her. He hopes he doesn't look as uncertain, off-balanced, as he feels. "It's not- I mean, it doesn't have to-- You're not bound to stay here forever, you know."
"Oh?" She looks up into his face in reciprocation and then maybe something a little bit more, brows furrowed but not tensed, and the pure shining emotion makes his heart skip several beats. "Where else did you want to go?"
"I..." Everywhere, with you. "Nowhere else. Here is plenty, I think."
Perhaps not the beginning of everything, but the beginning of this new one thing. "The beginning of our own special memories," she pronounces it gaily. "It's quite silly to have a house together, isn't it?"
"Silly? You don't mean it." A breath is taken, but the house and the air it contains has, have, not yet begun to breathe. They both use that word quite often, but she more than he, and perhaps she is conscious of the way she uses it to mask over things that other girls might call darling, or precious, or charming; other things princesses get and have and keep and cherish and treasure.
"Maybe I don't," Flora allows, voice careful, even suddenly shaky. "Do you?" Are you conscious of that, now, too? Do you mean it?
What does he mean? What does he think? He feels terribly...something, to have bound her up into this whole mess. Silly, indeed, would be the word. Not in quite the same way, but still somewhat so. But she had wanted to move out, and he had been getting a little too old for his former quasi-childhood chambers in the palace, and they both did love Torna, oh, so much. Living in Heblin would have only brought more of Zettar's pale wrath, and Leftheria is...well, it isn't Torna.
"I don't know. Shall we take a walk around, and find out?"
They don't count the number of steps between up in the courtyard and down in the farmyard, that first time, nor the exact number of paces that it takes to reach the glen abreast of the fields where they can tread freely, with no worry of disturbing either flora or fauna. They look up at the sky, the cliffs, and then down at their hands joined together, and talk of nothing much at all.
It doesn't take too terribly long for the two of them to break in the new digs, or thereabouts. A month, give or take? They're giggling softly, some hour past midnight when neither of them should be either awake or asleep.
"Aren't we supposed to have children?"
Addam laughs again, winces as his bad shoulder gets re-agitated. "I don't know." He really doesn't - he didn't know about the marriage thing itself until a couple years prior. "Do you really love me enough for that?"
Flora burrows tighter into his chest but doesn't exactly become uncharacteristically quiet at the awkward joke. "Of course I do."
Oh. And suddenly Addam is very, very scared.
She's quite small; a full foot shorter or thirty centimeters, depending on your persuasion. Addam has never necessarily been a clumsy person, but he does have a tendency to give too much, in mundane situations.
"What if I break you?" It's a neurotic question. He feels frenzied.
And Flora knows he doesn't mean during sex - just, or at all. She pulls back.
"You're only a person, Addam. I think we'll be okay." Despite the confidence, nervous fingers trace.
"But you're...gah. I love you." I love you, I love you, I love you. Somehow it feels like I've never loved anyone before.
"Do you remember when we thought this was all just a lark?" Because it isn't, not anymore. Isn't it?
"I-I suppose." He wants to. He needs to. He has to. He doesn't have to do a thing.
"I thought it would be so grand to be a princess. Wasn't very realistic of me."
The only thing he could give her, and she's already lost its grasp. Failure, Addam. "But you're still mine."
"Oh. Yes." Another giggle comes, this one slightly drunken. "I am, aren't I? And you're my silly prince."
Roles. Titles. Pinning, not pining, one to one and one to the other. Aren't we just friends? Aren't we just married? Aren't we just Addam and Flora, and not lord and lady? And what, just what, is so frightening about that?
"I don't want to go back to sleep, now," Addam says, even though for a moment there he had very much wanted to.
"Why? It can't be that you want to keep looking at me, it's too dark for that."
"Oh, well. There is that. But I meant that when next I wake I'll have to leave you."
Flora starts up, face alight. "Then let's go out now!"
"But it's dark out." Rather bemused by the sudden motion, Addam remains languid.
"So? Who's to stop us?"
And then she's turned full around, darting out of the bed and barely pausing to pull him with her. "W-wait! Flora!"
By the time they reach the threshold Addam has managed to pull socks back on, but Flora still hasn't stopped, and she's flung the door open, and she's just about to bound out--
"Addam-!" And he laughs, and laughs, and laughs, cradles her up in his arms, shuffles out onto the stoop and sits on the knee wall. The place is so big - why is it so big? It's only just the two of us.
Oh, just us two. "Can I kiss you?"
"You don't have to ask, you know."
"But I want to - may I?"
Adoration blooms from the corners of her lips to the apples of her cheeks. For a moment, their eyes dance together, just as saccharine-sweetened and nervy as the rest of their bodies, the rest of them. "If you like, yes."
So he kisses her, soft as can be, in both of those places and all those between, every freckle on her face and neck and shoulders. Counting them...oh, indeed, it would be like counting the stars.
"Is this alright?" he murmurs, once he's made a first pass and is reasonably sure he's covered them all.
"Not now that you've stopped." Oh, so you're coy, are you? And just then not even.
He laughs again, stands and ducks back into the house to wriggle his way into shoes (house slippers, at least), and then carries Flora all the way out to Lake Sarleigh, and kisses her all over, and over, and over, again and again and again.
The lake is under the rib of the Titan that leads up to Lett Bridge, so it's dark, all direct light that is itself only a reflection of the far-off sun in the close-by moon obscured. Still, Addam feels light, lightheaded, heady, like he's walking in a dream.
"I don't want to go to sleep now, either," he says, in between careful pecks at the inner and outer corners of her eyes.
"We can't," provides Flora sensibly, so sensibly. "We might drown."
Drown in liquid moonlight, yes, Addam thinks, but doesn't say it. She has never left his arms, and still she doesn't, all the way back to the house, where they lie still as ground cover on the bed, and he cuddles her close until sunlight comes.
Azurda takes him to Auresco, instead of out to the fields, early the next day (the same day, isn't it? or maybe it's later that week, even). Much as Addam would like to wear his plainest work clothes, the mission is too important for that, so on with his waistcloth in finest repair he goes.
He arrives at eight; the jeweler opens at nine. They peer interestedly at him, as he tries to describe what he wants, and repeat it back to him all the same, at which point Addam breaks it down wholesale. Don't you see - you must know, must have heard these stories a hundred times - it was two o'clock in the morning, and the moon was full, and I saw the world in her eyes? And the jeweler nods, and smiles less crookedly than endearedly, and makes up another sketch, is this more like what you were thinking? And yes, oh, goodness, yes, that's perfect, thank you so much.
"You seem to care for her quite a bit, Addam." So the old Titan is passing judgement without once revealing any of the same context about himself, as ever.
"You say that as if it's a bad thing. Aren't I supposed to?"
Azurda swings the crook of his chin gently to one side. "Perhaps. But is that the only reason? Because you're supposed to?"
Addam sighs. "Or because I'm not, more like."
He sees Minoth in the interim, once in Indol and once in Auresco itself. The first time, he relates his plan to the playwright, who regards him with an amused smile and the closest thing someone like him would ever give to a pat on the back, but nothing more elucidating as to his opinion. The second time, Addam is picking up the crucial payload, and shows his available friend in due course.
"It's perfect - just what I had wanted, you know. I feel so lucky."
Minoth watches him repeatedly flip the charm on the necklace from one side to the other, plying at symmetry and matching it up with that from the bracelet and clinking them together like a boy playing with intriguingly shaped blocks. One boot on the ground, the other jacked up on a pallet of crates, he's got his chin thrust into the palm of his glove and his eyes rove over Addam's animated glee ever-so-patiently.
"You know," he begins at last, "you love her so much it makes you look stupid."
Addam stops his appraisal of the merchandise with immediacy and looks up, doe-eyed (or perhaps kicked puppy better approximates). "You don't think she'll like it?"
Mentally, he's recounting how much the cost of the jewelry and the transportation, in addition to the lost work, will have set the manor's books back, and how much of a fool he'll have been if Minoth is right - and Minoth is surely right, he's always right - and Flora doesn't approve of the purchase, and Zettar pins his padded ass to punishment because he's failed at managing one of their nation's prime territories.
But his worries are frivolous; of course they are. Minoth laughs, retrieves his wayward leg and stands back up straight again (as straight as he ever stands). "You're a rare one, Prince. She'll love it."
Addam relaxes, dips his chin in awkward thanks. "You've got it made, you know that?" continues Minoth, straightening his poncho and perking his ears for any approaching Indoline liasion back around the cargo docks.
"Any kind of snobbery around the way you were born is bullcrap to me, but still, the fact that you were able to find such a great little woman among all the other people who might have been pining after your status, whatever it really nets you in the end...that's the kind of story I'd throw together, and think it a farce."
"But it is real, isn't it?"
"Would I lie to you?"
"I rather think you might."
"You're a clown. And I-" he peers around the gate's iron wall, then starts moving backwards to duck towards another, even more remote and invisible corner of the shipyard "-am outta here. Let me know how it goes, huh?"
"But Minoth, I--" True to his word, he's gone. "I don't know where to write you," Addam finishes, clutching the parcel into a rough semblance of security and stuffing it into his pocket. He raps his gloved knuckles twice on the crate where Minoth's boot had rested, his and Flora's traditional "knock goodbye", and starts walking back to the front gate, where Nuncle is set to meet him.
I never know where to write you, anymore, and even though you've always known basically where to find me, and now it's to be even easier...oh, it's not the same.
Are we truly to be so alone? And is that so bad? What else do we need but each other?
When next the moon is full, they've exchanged their usual good night salutations and divisions of the duvet, but Addam has not fallen asleep, nor even kept under the blanket at all. There's a grandfather clock, somewhere in the house (it wouldn't have belonged to Addam's own grandfather, but Granddad would have certainly explained to the young chap everything about its workings that he would never quite have been able to remember, even when Hugo parroted all the same), and it tolls much more quietly on the count of two than it does the all-important midnight, but it's easy enough to listen. If you are in fact listening, that is.
"Flora?"
No answer.
"Flora?" He shakes her gently, by the place on her upper arm where it turns into her shoulder (the place where he always kisses her, in the earliest of mornings before he slips away, but never quite this early), and she makes an irritated noise.
"Darling, do you hear me?" She smiles, melts a bit, and reluctantly nods. "Can you come outside with me?" The nodding stops, and she freezes up again.
Addam sighs. He should have known this wouldn't be quite easy - and no good things are, but then again, aren't they? Shuffling the box nervously in his pocket, he cups the ball of her shoulder again. It's hardly even a conscious choice to stroke over the stray freckles with his thumb. "I'll carry you," he offers gently.
The way she pulls the covers up tighter about her neck is naught but a tell, a cue for Addam to reach in and run his fingers through the places where her braids were the day before until she emerges from her cocoon and lets herself be held aloft.
"Mmmh...where're we going?"
"Outside," Addam replies simply. "That's all I said, isn't it?"
"Wasn't listening." Maybe she's lying, maybe she's not. Groggy, half-lidded eyes flicker bright blue as they pass into the foyer before the front door, and then...then the moonlight hits. Addam gasps despite himself.
"What is it?"
"You're beautiful."
"Silly. I thought you knew that." But she's blushing anyway.
"Well, yes, but I never- oh, right. Once, before."
"Hmm? When?"
"About a month ago." As if he could ever have forgotten. As if he could ever forget.
"What, in the middle of the night?"
No other time, ever - and yet, all, all, all. "Under the moon and stars."
"And does that have anything to do with why we're out here now?"
"Yes, only I can't show you, because then I'd have to let go."
"Oh? I can hold on myself, you know. I'm pretty sure my arms work, when you let me use them."
Does he really dote that much? "Yes, but..."
"Go on. I think I'll manage."
Right. He gingerly slides the box along the side of his thigh, out into the moonlight itself. It's matte black, a couple of inches wide by high by deep, clasped shut with a smart little magnet threaded through the lip. It doesn't shine, and that could be a moral lesson about beauty being on the inside, but Flora has it inside and out.
He shouldn't idolize. He shouldn't pedestalize. He shouldn't do any more than work his hardest and love his fullest, but it's so easy to do more. It's so easy to love her. Yes, good things, all. Given in utmost earnest.
Flora watches him mull over these thoughts, arms wrapped around the back of his neck with his right arcing loosely around her waist. "Something important in there?"
Addam looks up, again starstruck. "N-no, just..." Weakly, he clamps his jaw shut and offers the box to her, left hand moving to lock over right forearm, before burying his face in her shoulder.
She laughs; he cries. "You're not going to stay in there, are you?" Silly, silly, silly darling. You won't leave me alone out here, will you? And oh, I never could.
"I'm embarrassed," he mumbles.
"Why?" The effectiveness of her grasp has been nullified by the bowing of his head, so she cups a hand over his cheek instead. It's very, very hard not to shiver, and the night is definitely not all so cold as that.
He thinks of what Azurda and Minoth had said, of what the glances and glares of the royal court had meant. "I'm not supposed to love you this much, am I?"
Flora pauses, likely taken at least a little bit aback. "Not unless it's too much, I suppose." And who could ever say? Well...it's quite a bit. So much he looks stupid. Apparently. Addam emerges to face his fate, anyway.
The magnet mechanism is masterfully made, by only the best of engineers that can be spared from government affairs to work at anything more like handicrafts. It glides apart smoothly, not once distracting from the cooing look on Flora's face as she takes in the contents: two bronzy rose gold pendant chains, one short enough to hug her delicate wrist and the other long enough to hang just over her collarbones around her neck. Attached to the former is a piece of gold molded into a four-pointed star, and to the latter the same in the crescent shape of a moon.
Your cue, Addam? "You are my moon and stars."
She doesn't say anything, just waits for him to reach underneath her curtain of hair set loose to do up the necklace clasp, then buries her own face in the general region of his deltoids.
"You won't cry, will you?" That is, you aren't crying, are you? You can...you can do whatever you like, later. But now?
"I'll cry if I like," comes the sheepish answer. "And I think I like you an awful lot."
He rocks her (the both of them, really) to sleep under that same moon, pale and beloving of her gentle tears, and this is the ring that he never got around to getting, but of course it doesn't mean quite the same thing. And that's good, isn't it? All for good.
The rooms they use most are the kitchen and the study; they don't need to eat in the dining room, nor work there, for the accounts are simple enough to keep when there's only the two of them ever getting in to mucking them up, and Addam gets enough of a workout in the fields that he has no use for the training rooms in the basement (he is, however, eyeing up the workshop/studio/maintenance room - for later, of course). If they read, the books leave the library in all haste, because it's not so much their place, down there.
So they're in the study. Addam has just come in, hair matted and arms sore, and Flora is sitting at the desk alternating between scribbling and thinking and scribbling some more and thinking some most.
She looks up at the sound of footsteps, smiles, and her eyes crinkle up, and her cheeks flush when she sees him; his heart skips, slips, trips over itself. Is this always how it'll be? He hopes so. It would be wonderful. Wouldn't it?
"Did I ever tell you what she said, the last time I saw her?"
"No, I don't think you did."
"Oh, well she said 'tell me how you like it', you know, in that voice of hers, and I said Mother, you don't mean it, and she sort of looked me over, and then she said it again, but...but she really meant it, the second time, I think."
Flora looks somewhere, far away, to the east and to Heblin. When they'd first moved in (moved out? here, there, everywhere?), of course she'd had no remorse about leaving her parents, and her mother in particular (her father she didn't mind, so much, and he the same for her). Maybe now...not so. "And so that's what I'm doing."
"And?" Addam asks, intones.
"And?" Flora repeats, queries.
"And how do you like it? Won't you tell me?"
She grins, wrinkles her nose up at him. "I think it's lovely. Now shoo, I've not finished yet." The pen dips back into the ink, and the prince dips back out of the room, and he wishes he had someone of his own to tell about how lovely he thinks it is just the same.
Of his own? Besides her? Oh, no. No, that's not right. No, that is right. He can tell her all about it later. And the next night, and the next, and the next, and the next. Oh, love. Oh, joy. Oh, Flora.
Flora used to be of the mind that it was stupid to go to bed if you weren't tired, and you woke up when you woke up and as long as the day got done and you enjoyed yourself, then that was alright. But now, day by day, they both stumble into the bedroom earlier and earlier, independent of any impending responsbilities from the coming tomorrow's day.
"What did you do today?" they ask. "I don't know, thought about you," they answer. And they look at each other not as the action of the precedent moment to bursting out laughing at how utterly ridiculous such a thing is, but just to look, to look, to look.
Sometimes they sit crosslegged with old recipe books from the library, and from the old lord's passed-down safe, and talk about what to make and what to plant and what to buy. The serving sizes and numbers are always far larger than are sensible, for just the two, so Flora's finger hurries over those lines, tries not to linger, to loiter, to dwell.
And, probably, Addam says something inane about the princess having to be the steward of her own castle, and the funny little bird who roosts in their kitchen, and the precious pretty flower who sits so perfectly in the bay window, and Flora snaps her head up to ascertain just what it is he means.
He looks at her, eyebrows lifted and lips drawn, caught in the act, and she looks at him, and she melts. Away goes the dusty binder; instead she pulls his hands into her lap and traces patterns over the calluses and creases in his palm.
"You have so many silly names you could call me, but all I have is Addam." All I have is Addam. Careful there, Flora. Don't slip, and, Elysium forbid, don't fall, don't die, don't drown.
Her husband, however, is still well afloat. Or so he thinks. "Oh? I should think that's plenty. Right? It's all I am." Origo or not, Addam is all I am.
"No, I mean...well. If I'm the moon and stars, then what are you?"
"I never said I was anything." I see the entire galaxy, dozens of them, in your eyes, and I suppose my reflection is there in them too, but that's not much. Not much at all.
"Hmm...oh." Soon enough, Flora's concentration breaks, and she purses her lips inward. Caught halfway between a sigh and a smile, she blinks rapidly a few times, even shakes her head a minute amount.
"Oh?" Addam feels himself, or something else if it's not just him, slipping, slipping, slipping. Falling, one might call it. Falling, all over again, in love.
"Ohhh..." she indulges in the awed hush, turning her face upwards and laying her fingertips along the side of his, "you're my silly sun."
Her eyes sparkle for a few minutes further, and then they begin to shine. The other hand goes to the other cheek, and she almost shakes him in her quasi-frustration. "I don't understand! I don't understand."
"Understand what?"
"How we ended up like this." Oh? That's not good. "Just you and me," Flora continues, "and we're so happy, and there isn't hardly anything that could ever change that. Just us." Huh. It still doesn't sound very good.
"I love it." Oh. It's wonderful. Failing to find words to respond to Flora's wayward philosophe, Addam kisses her forehead and pulls the whole of her into his lap. Like that dainty bird, she pecks over his collarbones, his jaw, the dips between shoulder and chest, everywhere she can reach.
How far can she reach? Has he stopped her? Is he caging her?
"Remember what I told you - you don't have to stay."
"Remember what I told you." Maybe she'd forgotten to say it. "I always want to."
Milton arrives, an orphan and a strapping young lad with boundless ingenuity all in one, and they get up to, oh, all sorts of adventures while Addam is out in the fields. They eat together, and they play at cards, and the Gormotti boy teaches them how to talk to the Tirkins in their own parlance. This isn't the child, the children, that they spoke of, but then again...isn't it?
One year passes with him under their roof, then another with Malos in the skies above it, and then...then it is time. Time for Addam to leave, and he'd not really cared about the farm in and of itself, he thought; it's her he's leaving, and that's what he hates most. He brings her flowers when he tells her, lilies and dahlias and daisies and roses, and says I didn't know which would suit you best so I got them all, but none of them are as pretty as you anyway. She holds them away from her, but only because if she didn't they'd be crushed between their chests.
Now he is all gold, gold, gold, and she is still the same pink lady, but she fiddles with the straps on his armor and adjusts the draping of the cape about his waist (he asks her, would you like something to match, yellow with red trim or gray with white accents, anything new, can I get you anything, can I give you anything at all, I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I'm leaving, and she says no, I'm just fine, the gold is for you, silly; of course the sun shines, shines, shines, and of course it withers the flowers away as it does it).
Neither is Mythra such a child, but she fits the role not at all where Milton does manage to do so at least a little bit. They take one last walk before her awakening, and then the passing through to retrieve the other taken-in ward is all too brief for that, but it's not war when you've hardly got an army, right? A week, tops, Addam confidently gives it, and Flora agrees. Even Mythra does, privately.
And that's good too, isn't it? It's always best to have confidence, and pride in what you do. Oh, yes. It's all for good.
It takes three months for them to circle back to Aletta for the first time, busy as they are traveling between Coeia and Spessia and Uraya and Temperantia following Malos's trail. To get bearings, to take stock, to do all of it...oh, the garrison is a marvelous sight. There aren't any militia members walking in it, of course, because it's far too early for that, but Mythra raises one eyebrow at the idea of Milton giving her the grand tour and sallies directly off to the moor to squat and watch Galgand from up on one of the Titan's ribs. He follows her anyway, though slightly quieter, at Addam's solemn direction.
And Addam himself? Oh, he had hardly been able to contain himself from bounding up the steps two, three, four at a time, to stride to the door and not even knock because he was home, he was home, he was home. It's Vez who answers, and nearly shouts out himself before Addam gives him the signal to hush, I want to let her know I'm here myself, and--
"Addam!!"
Up she runs into the front parlor, and he steps forward, scoops her up, and spins her full around, laughing, laughing, laughing all the while. She is so small. Oh, he needs her so close.
"Oh, Flora, how I've missed you. Are you-" (he remembers to set her down at last, and grasps her mirth-shaking hands instead) "-are you well?"
Flora laughs for a fair while longer after his question, nose scrunched full up into silliness, and then she quiets down and answers, "Yes, yes, I'm fine. But what about you?" She squeezes his hands, lifts them even closer towards her face (towards her, towards her, towards her). "Have you done with it, finally?"
It. Malos, she means. Her inflection plainly states that she feels he must have, to merit making such a ridiculous show like that. But, not so. Addam sighs. As ever, he sighs.
"I'm afraid not. We haven't been able to get him in close combat, out of his Artifice, and I'm not sure Mythra's ready to take him on anyway."
"Well, have you been practicing?" Of course, the teacher would know to preach that practice makes perfect, but it isn't only preaching.
"Oh, yes, all the time," Addam lies. "She gets more sure of herself every day - er, well, at least I think she does, and then by the end of the week we always seem to land right back where we started."
"Back here, do you mean?" Flora returns slyly. The corners of Addam's lips quirk, jump with infatuation. "How I wish it were only true. If I could see you every night...why, I'd fight a thousand times stronger."
She shoves at his shoulder and wanders past him to dance fruitless bootsteps over the ceramic tile floor, muffled by the rug laid over top. "Do it anyway, won't you? It's not like you've got a choice."
For duty and humanity, for nothing anything like glory. Not...not for love. Not only, anyway. "Of course, Flora. It's what everyone's expecting of me, anyway." And that...that is quite a lot of people, isn't it?
"I don't expect any such silly thing," Flora teases, whipping around and letting her plaits swing wildly back and forth. "It'll be over when it's over - unless you think you'll get it done so much sooner?"
He could agree. It would be so easy, so actualizing, to agree. "I think so," is all he says. "I don't suppose you have any particular reason for asking?"
"Not particularly, no." But her left eyelid twitches, almost imperceptibly, and even with all that has faded out of short-term procedural memory, Addam still knows exactly what that means.
"Are you sure?" he prods in vague response to the tell, rather than just saying full-out that "I know you're lying." His gloves are still too stiff (how is that?) and her hand too much smaller than his for him to hold her hand any more than just as loosely. But hold it he does. What a strange sort of lifeline - only it's not at all, is it?
They walk down the steps of the compound, Flora leaning into his arm beneath the jigsawed pauldrons as much to hide as to cling, and it's not until they're rounding the skirt of the Flamii-studded grotto that she admits it.
"Just...thinking. And planning. About things." Almost does, that is.
"Things?" The imprecise, scattered wording is, of course, very plainly unlike her.
She fiddles with the moon pendant, nervously jangles the four-pointed star hanging from her wrist. "Things."
"Ah," says Addam. Reaching forward with the toe of his shoe, he nudges a rock in Flora's path aside. "My favorite."
They pace another few yards in relative silence, ducking under the Moramoras' lazy circles, before Flora speaks up again. It's a straightforward enough thing, so she doesn't skirt it: "I would like to have a baby." Emphasis on the "would"; it's not a proclamation, more an admission and a recollection of something teased, talked, discussed once before.
Addam could say many things to this. He could say "Now?" He could say "Really?" He could say "And how long have you been thinking about that - the whole time?"
But he doesn't. Addam Origo is a simple man with many too many complicated things on his mind already. So, all he says is "Okay."
Flora's nose whips sharply into view. "You're alright with it?"
"Well, it was never completely out of the question, right? We knew it'd come along eventually." Didn't we?
She nods her way back to normal focus on their promenade. "That's right. We did."
We did. Of course we did. Pause on that for a moment (catch them a break, will you?) and let's look back at the scenery. The flowers scattered along their path flow and flop, flop and flow gracefully in pinks and blues, and the sight recalls a baby's nursery as much as it does a certain relevantly representative flag. Dreadfully on-the-nose, isn't it? But it's only what's there.
And, too, Addam peers up at the cliff and the sky beyond and notices that he is lit, they together are cast, in a wash of bathing light from Flora's side. Even if he is, was, the sun in their axial non-intergalactic universe, oh, it's her, it's her, it's her. He couldn't but support her absolutely in anything she asks.
Nevertheless, his doubt begins to creep in. "Still, let's think about this, Flora. Even supposing I come home within a matter of months, I wouldn't feel right leaving you alone with...with that." That. Is a nascent child so menacing?
Flora intercepts the caveat with perfect ease. "That's true enough, but Vez and Mungo are here, and they love us, and I'm sure it'd work out okay. After all, it's not like I'd be anything special to be around, for a few months at least."
She's wheedling, and oh, that's not a good sign, but Addam is not exactly in the right state of mind to refuse - to refuse anything of her at all, but certainly not something that represents sincere lifelong commitment in such a grand way.
"Flora..." He runs his thumb over the back of her hand a few times, collecting his composure. "You are always everything to me. If I've ever given you the impression that you could be anything less than perfect, in my eyes or in anyone else's, I-"
But they are distracted, just then, by Milton scrambling over to crush Flora in a hug about her waist, and Mythra watching coolly, if a little standoffishly, from a few paces back, and it's not until later that night that they resume this crucial conversation.
Dinner passes, and they sit boy-girl-boy-girl, or thereabouts, and so Addam is necessarily saved from the debatable pitfall of staring at Flora's face for the entire meal, but he does compensate by nudging her knee with his own (careful to maneuver the silver flanking attachments to his greaves), ever so slightly. She pretends to ignore him, and by that I mean that her lips bite themselves up as she tries to keep from giggling full out.
Mythra's eyes dart between them, ever-impatient and ever-perceptive. "You two...need a moment?" she ventures at last. Addam clears his throat; Flora springs up to get dessert, and Milton follows after her, likely to sneak an extra piece before Mythra hogs the whole platter. "Uh-huh," says Mythra. "Ahem," says Addam. The rest of the meal is silent.
After they've washed up, all four, one of the adults ("adults") says something vague and hogwashed about early rest to early rise, customary upon the estate, which Milton knows how to debate but also knows not to, and away the children ("children") go.
"This could be stupid," Flora says, scratching at an irregularity in the weave of the tablecloth with a single short fingernail. "You've never done anything stupid before," Addam answers her (except marry me, he thinks, maybe maybe maybe), and that's the stupidest thing of all. But they do it anyway.
You're not supposed to have sex in the dark, even Addam knows that much, but they both agree that they'd be too embarrassed to do it with the lights on. Flora remembers to get a towel, and that's just about the only precaution taken; of course, they can't invoke the other. So then, they sit there, clothes off, knelt on their calves, and peer across at each other.
"We don't need to do this," Addam starts, after many too many nervous minutes have gone by without a single touch passed between them.
"No, we don't," Flora agrees. She waffles between crossing her arms over her knees drawn up to her chest and awkwardly arranging her hair over her breasts; in the end, she does nothing at all, and ignores her wayward appendages or lacks thereof wholesale.
"Shall we just table it?" Yet, after it all, Addam doesn't really want to, he finds. Not the sex, that is; neither of them particularly care about that, or they might have tried once or twice or thrice before - they'd certainly had enough time.
Flora puts out a feeler for what exactly he means by that: "What, and go play Dealing Kingdoms in our underwear?"
"Well, no. I more meant we could stay here and...and cuddle, you know."
Ah. Simple. Normal. And completely consequenceless. (As if the card-playing wouldn't be.) "That sounds fine to me."
Fine! Fine. Flora doesn't move, so Addam doesn't move either.
"You are going to put your pants back on, aren't you?"
"Oh, I, er...no, I wasn't...going to."
"Well, I don't want to look at that!"
"You used to have one!"
"Yes, and I didn't like looking at mine either - why do you think I got rid of it?"
Addam concedes; the pants go back on. Satisfied, Flora wriggles in next to him, and he holds her head to his heart. All is quiet, all is well.
For some time, the stray howls of Feris and Volff meeting on the moor is the only ambient noise. It's much less than Addam has been hearing for quite a few weeks, and he nearly thinks Flora's fallen to sleep, the room is so still.
Then, of a sudden, she flinches. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Without thinking, he begins to stroke her hair. It's very soft, but not quite fluffy or full of air, and he realizes in an instant how much more fully he'd missed it than he'd ever thought, and ever thought he could.
"It was..." she listens, listens, listens, "oh, there. Your heart skipped a beat - again, it did it."
"Oh." His soft laughter, in the dusky place so immobile, shakes them both. "Yes, that happens sometimes."
"I'd never known." Her thumb wears its way into the hollow place at the crest of his sternum between the swells of his chest. If anything, anyone, belongs there, she does. "And yet it's still so calming."
"Did you still want to?" Apropos of nothing and everything all at once, it tumbles out of Addam's mouth, off of his tongue, around and over and under and between his teeth. It didn't have to fight. Should it have?
There is silence - true, real silence. Then: "I did. Is that alright?"
"If you're sure you're ready."
I won't describe what they do next; you can imagine it, or you can not imagine it, but it's all the same in the end: a little bit of forgetting to foreplay until it's almost too late, a little bit of forgetting that they have to do more than just kiss and touch, a minor (a major) portion of hesitation and the corresponding amount of frenetic abandon.
He does not break her, and nor does she break him. Say maybe it's overwhelming, maybe it's underwhelming, but soon enough it's over. As all things always are, eventually.
"Do you-" He can't help but laugh, but it's a pained thing, laughter to cope with something a little bit frightening even if it's not quite a fear response. "Do you think we did that right?"
"I don't quite see how else we could have done it. I think it worked."
"Maybe we would have been better off if...well, you know. If our jobs hadn't been swapped." Not quite roles reversed, but you understand - you must, by now. I certainly ply it enough.
Flora makes a strange tittering noise, with much of the same breathy half-humiliated inflection. "Oh, I don't know. I think I like it this way."
"Are you sure about that?" As Addam asks it, he pulls her in, again to his chest but this time with her back to it, hollow of sternum meeting crest of spine.
"I suppose we'll just have to find out."
She worries idly at an old bruise on the top of his thigh. When did that get there? She doesn't ask. He, in turn, fits his palm into the indentations in her abdomen that gravity has helped make, but only helped (she can't do more push-ups than him, no, and certainly not with him on her back like he can do with her, but she holds her own; of course she does).
"I love you."
"I love you too."
"Well, I love you more." Maybe it's even true.
"Hmm...okay."
"Okay?! You won't try to one-up me again?"
"Mmm, no. I do that every day without trying."
And oh, she does, she does, she does.
He thinks about her all the time, and Mythra and Milton can so easily tell, but they don't press. There's something uneasy about it. He tries to set his mind to the task, and the task alone, but it doesn't help. Maybe he will regret this later. Maybe he won't. Who's to say?
"Master Addam?"
"What is it, Milton?"
"Don't you miss Mistress Flora?"
If Addam were Mythra, he'd snap back that the poor boy is projecting, and trying to garner sympathy through undue means, or something else wholly cruel (even just merely misdirected, but it's all the same, in the end, really, right), but Addam is not Mythra, Addam will never be Mythra, and Addam is still such a fool.
"Of course I do. But we're almost through, aren't we? Oh, we'll have such a grand surprise for her when we get back."
"And her for us, right?" Milton adds excitedly. And the math on that is...a little odd, if you stop to think about it. What does Milton expect? What does Mythra? What does Addam? If his layman's-accountant's mind has done the faulty, fallible flash through, it doesn't show it. Only...
"Right!" Right as rain. Right as rain right before the thunder comes. Mythra purses her lips and has to look away. It's almost like she can see the disaster happening before it's arrived. Foresight, they call that. But Addam already has hindsight to inform him, doesn't he? They've got time. Flora is a lady, his lady, their lady, even her own. It'll be alright.
Now it's been nine months after the first three, and back they come to Aletta once more, but this time it's with the entire militia in tow (or rather, they're in tow of the militia) and an extra corps of warriors besides. Lora is not Flora, but Addam tastes the syllables anew every time. Is that strange? Yes, it is, a little bit, and he thinks it to himself every time in step and stride, but it's better than mumbling her name to himself at night, thinking about all the things he wants to tell her and all the things she must want to tell him.
In the garrison, Mythra studies Addam lethargically, calculating his distress, but no one else seems to pay it any mind. Of course; no one else knows. Somehow Addam doesn't feel like telling them, on either crucial count. When it was just us two...she has never been anything but mine. But that may not be so, anymore.
She's at the desk in the study off of the master bedroom when he comes in, sword in sheath so painfully clanking.
"Flora?"
She looks up, and her shock is disguised immediately under some polite schooling of appproach. Why? "You're back," she says. So now we've left skipping the obvious steps and instead are stating the obvious full out. Charming. He tries not to dwell on what that could mean.
"It's not over yet," starts Addam, anticipating her question. Flora nods, swallows, gets up and comes around from behind the desk to where they can see each other in the light.
He takes her in, and she him. It's quiet. Too quiet. Addam would gulp himself, if he didn't think it would shatter the air like a sonic boom.
"Are you...angry?"
"What? Why would I be angry?"
"Well..." He gestures limply at her stomach. "It's been quite some time."
Flora nods, reaches for the outstretched hand. Apparently, Addam doesn't expect it, and he almost flinches, at first. She pretends not to notice.
"So it has. But it's not as if I was hobbling around here for nine months thinking, if I don't hug Addam Origo right this instant I'll die. Much as I love you, I can still stand on my own."
That means many things. Many too many too many, and can he even say the same? A thousand times stronger, he had said, and would it even have made any difference, truly? He can't tell if it's better or worse to try to attribute his failures to that, so he ignores it, for the most part. "It wouldn't do if you couldn't."
"Not at all." She almost smiles, but doesn't. "Shall we?"
Flora steps towards the door, and Addam follows, more or less completely on instinct. Then, he stops himself, lets the apprehension set. "Oh, you want to?"
"Of course - and I know you do too. Here, you can show me around to all your new companions."
"Ah. I would," Addam begins apologetically, scratching the back of his head with his free hand, "but Hugo's taken off to Spessia, and Lora and the rest are on a bit of a Tirkin expedition."
Flora laughs, a bright, pretty thing. "All the better - that means I have you all to myself."
Of course. She well knows how engrossing the little snarky waddling creatures can be, and she revels in it. Nine months is not even all of a year, and whatever has changed in her physical appearance has nowhere near fully eclipsed the perfect shape of her mind. She is still Flora - oh! she is still my Flora.
They round the western border of the moor, as always, passing by every familiar crag on the cliff below Hyber, a slow exercise in normality for the both of them.
"What do you do, all day, alone?" Why don't I know?
"I play solitaire, or I read from the library, or I bake bread, or I check the accounts another five times over." I don't answer your letters, nor even read them. You don't write them. And that's alright. I think.
They finish their circuit, still not saying much of anything, just as before, and Addam lingers in the doorway with Flora's hand dangling in his. His gloves are still on, so he could not feel her calluses even if she had any. Well, maybe she has them, maybe she doesn't. For one sick second, Addam thinks he doesn't ever want to know. Thinks it's not his place to know. Thinks he'd know if he'd been there, and all circumstance otherwise is simultaneously completely immaterial and the damned only extant thing.
She steps closer, braces herself up on both of his hands in front of his waist to kiss his cheek, then steps back. The ghost of something unsaid parts her lips, but only for the briefest moment. Away she turns.
"Oh, Flora--" Never mind. What good would it be? Isn't it too late? "Never mind."
She turns back faster than he would have thought possible, even for the incarnation of nine months prior. "No, what is it?"
"Aren't you going to hug me?"
"Oh, Addam..."
She still fits next to him, into him, just the same. Her shoulder is still soft, visible through the keyhole, and her hair still smells just the same pleasant way it always has. Had? No, has. Her hands rest on the side of his torso, on the leather straps, and for a moment they are very, very close. And then, just as he moves to let her go, she clings tighter.
"Not yet."
"But Flora, I have to go eventually." Oh, so now you're so blithely out and on with it?
"Not..." her eyes close steadily, steadily, steadily, she is all concentration, "yet." She smiles. Oh. Hasn't it only been the first time? Rather, has it?
"What happened?"
"I was waiting for the missing beat. It's alright, I've found it now."
Addam kisses the back of her hand, the top of her head, and the top of her stomach before finally walking (backwards, backwards, backwards) away, out that fatal, fateful manor door. He feels a little bit of the dreaminess, again. It will all be over soon, he thinks. It will all come aright. I know it.
They find Minoth (rather, Minoth finds them, but you can spin it either way you like, or neither if that's not your thing); Addam is so ecstatic he feels he could kiss the other man (Blade? Flesh Eater? of course he's a man), but he doesn't. Somehow he knows Flora wouldn't mind, but he doesn't do it anyway. When they rendezvous with Mungo, the urge is quite strong to rush in and tell her of their good luck, how hopeful he really is that they're almost there...but he doesn't.
Oh, Addam, Addam, Addam, but you didn't, but you don't, but you won't and you can't and you shouldn't and you couldn't and you wouldn't and there's Mythra blasting up Auresco because of all those damned misplaced undone afterthought conjugations.
Marena hands him Energy Pickles, says they've been dumped upon her by the crateful because everyone thought that they'd cure Freya, and Flora does indeed have a taste for sour things and vegetables and probably the salty-sweet gherkinous things in particular, if only for the stereotype's own sake, but after Addam's explained his way through Lora and associates' bafflement and tucked the jar into a deep pocket in his cloak, he almost forgets about the whole affair. Almost, almost on purpose. Later, he thinks, later. It'll all be done with soon.
Oh, yes. Afterthoughts. Even in the end, Addam very nearly forgets that he has a particular survivor to check for on the evacuation ships, in his haste to get Hugo laid up with all due respect and Mythra named and numbered for marching orders to the bottom of the Cloud Sea.
She sits in the corner, hugging her knees as close to her chest as possible, which is to say not very close at all, and when he finally shuffles into view, she begins to put together the pieces that...that whether it had been her or not, whether or not she was pregnant and nearly due at this present moment, Torna still would have sunk.
Inevitable? The passage of fate? Does she even know, has she ever known, or cared about such things? She's always thankful for the rising of the sun, but she doesn't pray by it, nor swear by it. Tomorrow's another day, she'll say, and means it even if it has to come cloaked, fly-by-night, in the dark.
Put another way, there's no thanks to be invested in the fact that she has such strong arms to fall into that are indeed those of the hero (not hero, no no no), but she marks singularity by her position all the same. It's...do you understand it? I'm not even sure I do. Quite possibly, it doesn't make a single lick or lack of sense. So, ah...silly. Right? That's all. For our sage mistress of the estate, that's all it is and was and has been and will ever be.
"I'm glad to see you again." Her smile is weak, and she blinks repeatedly to keep the dust out of her eyes. Seems like lying, but it isn't. Those aren't her tells.
"Even like this?" Covered in dirt and tears and sweat and blood, he digs his nails into his palms, even through his gloves. He's not even paying attention.
"Addam. It's you I'm looking at. It's never been anything else." And somehow, precious somehow, that was still true.
The next week is a rush, from the acrid airspace above Torna to Gormott to Leftheria, into the house and out of it rounding up Mungo and Vez and Hedwyn (somehow none of the civilians are young women, and neither Martha nor Mireille nor even Teo are much help anyway - how is that?) for the delivery. The next time they're alone and quiet together, it's with a baby girl they've named Evelyn Lora, after her mother and her as-yet-unseen honorary auntie - yes, unseen to both Evelyns in turn and in kind - held in tired, freckled arms.
"I'm still glad it's you," she reassures him.
"I never doubted you," he returns, and it's true (yes, it's true); he only ever doubted himself, and perhaps a little bit of the two of them paired together, but only again because of he himself. Because of him. Take responsibility. Or don't. It doesn't much matter, anymore.
"She looks just like you." The sentiment is vague, distracted. Yes, she has dark hair and blue eyes and a ruddier complexion than he has ever had, but all babies have the latter two, and the former is nothing much to write home about. But there's no one there anyway, anymore.
Aren and Leila did not survive. Neither did the schoolhouse. Flora had never gone back home, but never before had she wanted to. Before, he and she might have simply marked home as the precious, precarious, precocious orbital space about the other. Not so, anymore. No, not so.
So they've survived. At whatever cost, they've survived. But Hugo, Brighid and Aegaeon, so many nameless (not nameless, never nameless) Tornans who weren't afforded the opportunities and consideration that the not-so-royal Origos had been, are all lost. Forever, lost. And land is land, but Torna was a Titan. A living, breathing Titan. Torna was our mother, our waypoint, our home.
Addam's father is dead, and likely Zettar too; they will mourn the horrid man regardless of any past insults he has slung, for in the end that is all he has done. He would be family, if he were around. In the fall, after the last harvests, they would give thanks for his life and his presence, if that were even possible. But now, when their fields and their folds are gone, and the soil of Leftheria is nowhere near the same forin to gauge crops...no. Not now.
The desolation is palpable, for all that it shouldn't be when they cannot even see all that they have lost, all that is dead and gone. It rings a symphony of heartbreak, each instrument more congruous than their dangling sorrow. Something in Flora's own chest stops, clams up, freezes her in an icier prison than the truth of her own life had or has ever done. She picks her words delicately, like plucks of harpstring heartstrings, like precious high notes on a piano. It's been so long since she's played.
"Do you want to go for a walk?"
Addam broods, for a moment. If a moment is thirty, forty, fifty years. If a moment is eternity, and then you die.
"No."
"Can I ask why?" She clutches Evie tighter, can't bear the thought of her waking to this.
"I...I don't feel like it."
"But--" But you always...but he's already turning away. To go stare at the sea, at the place where Torna was and where Pyra and Mythra still are. It isn't so much that he wants to be alone as that he just doesn't want to be, anymore. Probably. The Architect only knows if they will ever have that same simple, easy communication again. That same understanding.
Why did it have to become so complicated? I thought you were just that silly boy from the marketplace. I thought it would always be that simple.
We used to be so happy. That's all it was.
Thanks so much for reading! I just...like them a lot, as you can tell by the way I treated them at the end. Kudos and comments are very much welcome and appreciated, or you can take a gander at the blurb on my Twitter and let me know what you think there, if you're so inclined. Thanks again - and a big thank you to Aurora for working with me on this piece!! (If I were more prone to fiddling with Ao3's gift mechanism this would be marked as a gift for her; she is the eponymous "friend" in the (now-obsolete) series tag this time around. <3) ^-^