always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
Her memories had come like light breaking through the dark of a shell. Unknowing had shattered like glass and oh what a time for it to do so.
She stands, gold and bright, upon the sweep of hill, ascending up to its crowning citadel. Florentine drinks in the court and remembers everything, but wishes to remember nothing at all once more.
There is no tip of her lips, no smile that laughs and hides upon her lips. There is no gleam of her eyes that glitters with mirth and mischief. It is because Florentine is none of those things. Her memories have stolen them all, and her brother lead her down the path to remember each one more clearly.
Her petals stumble and trip, snagging and clinging to rocks and leaves as the pacifist wind pushes them toward the stone of the Night Court. There was a queen now, but Florentine cannot make her nerves rest easy, she cannot summon a smile when her good humour is buried so terribly deep.
Her ache is deep and horrid, it echoes in the throb of her wing (still so slightly twisted and not whole). Ah to fly again, she thinks but tugs her wings tighter still to her slim sides. Her beauty was an easy thing to lose, her memories a worse thing to gain, when her brother has brought her here.
And yet… and yet. There is the smallest warmth, a miniature candle to ward off the looming black. It melts the cold upon her heart and makes her warmer, warmer. For not all returning memories are bad there are those of love and joy that refuse to be snuffed out, that burn indefinitely, sometimes a solitary tea light, sometimes a wild fire that laughs and sends the darkness fleeing.
He has worried for all of them - oh, Asterion never guessed before how much dread his heart could hold, a dark river ever-threatening to spill the banks of his soul - but of course it is Florentine that he thinks of most of all.
Is it better, that her memories are a hazy field, a splintered mirror? Wouldn’t it be worse to bring her here when she remembers everything fresh as a new bruise?
He does not want to cause any more hurt. (Not when the memory of Talia still seeps golden into his dreaming hours, like light bleeding under a door. All he’d ever wanted to do was help her, love her, carry her).
But Asterion knows Florentine now as well as himself, and though she is different than Marisol in a hundred ways - a thousand, he thinks wryly - he knows that neither of them are the kind to break. How many times has his sister remade herself, reknitted her life? This would likely not even be the last.
None of this knowledge keeps his heart from stumbling when he sees her in a rare moment where they are both alone. The sun shines on the broken cobblestones and the winter-brown grass and all their shaggy backs, but it does not shine as it ought to on Florentine. This is enough to bring him forward when his steps might have carried him way, afraid of her disappointment as both queen and sister.
He closes with her easily, matching her pace, noting how similar their lean ribs look, like rolling dunes in miniature. What a pare they made, both faded; and yet he smiles at his sister, and touches his nose to a strand of curls that still lays like a beam of sunlight across her shoulder.
“You’re the only thing still blooming,” he says softly, when he’d meant to only ask her how she was.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
“Am I?”
And she smiles, though her joy is a sun, long ago set. All of Florentine is fading gold. She has turned blood red and feels as delicate as the petals clinging to the flowers of her mane.
Oh where was her happiness? She did not know just how it completed her, until she was so full of empty places. Anger seeps in to fill her up like cancer. She longs to rage against it; fire upon fire.
Florentine has still not looked upon her brother, for her eyes do not leave a castle window. As her brother touches a thread of golden mane (soft as yarn), she wonders if the room is still the same as she recalls it (and feels the needle’s prick). Is it grace, that has Florentine turning from the window and finally gazing upon the weary form of her brother? The smile on her lips is no longer a purple sunset, but a glimmering dawn. There is a sliver of joy that sparks to life within her and reminds her of family, of love in the darkest of places.
For who was Florentine, if she was not bound together by love?
But for all she smiles warmly at her brother, her smile is as fleeting as a ghost. “After everything, you bring us here.” Weary disappointment is a stranger upon her tongue and in her heart. Ah, it makes her foreign within her own skin. With eyes that looked so impassively up at a vacant window, she gazes at her brother. The amethyst is warms with every passing moment, for to be angry is to be exhausted. Florentine is already too tired.
Her eyes close with want and her mind has wings. It carries her to wooded places with flower-strewn floors and fallen gods limned in gold. “What if I left?” She asks her brother, and leans in to him; her blood a magnet for his. Flora does not need to open her eyes to drink in Asterion’s stars, his darkness, his sadness and his light. Her eyes, though closed, are wide enough to swallow the sky, for the words are a surprise to her – and she wonders if they are for him also.
Idly she wonders, as she leans against her brother, if she means just the Night Court… or this whole world.
It is wrong on her face, as wrong as the two of them walking this path to this castle beneath this foreboding sky. It is a smile thin and wane, a pale haunting of the wicked grin she’d given him when they’d first met in the secret-shadows of a treeline, when she was all soaked from a summer storm.
How strange it is, that a memory can hurt as sharply and surely as a wound.
He follows her gaze instead to a window - one that he does not know, one that he guesses at nonetheless. It is no open window he is thinking of; it is a lake lit with fireflies, it is an infirmary that smells sharp with medicine and bitter with blood, it is a haunting of words. I love you.
He was so young, then. He didn’t know anything at all.
At last she looks at him, but he does not turn his own gaze back until she speaks. Each word settles on his back, a stoning - from her they are weightier than anyone else’s could be. What would be a pebble from anyone else, a stone, could crush him coming from her golden lips.
Yet Asterion lifts his chin, and the dark of his gaze is like the parts of the sea where the sunlight cannot reach when it meets hers, like the parts of the night between the stars. “It wasn’t safe to stay,” he says. There is no hesitation in his voice, no uncertainty; for the first time, perhaps, he speaks as a king would.
What if I left?
Though she leans into him then, though she is warm and soft and smells like a bower, Asterion goes cold as suddenly as though he has plunged from the cliffside into the thrashing sea. The question does not come as a surprise to him, and he does not consider for a moment that she might only mean Denocte.
He remembers when he believed in fate, when he thought that the stars told a story just for him, mapping his path in their glitter and shine. He remembers how sure he had been, when he first came to Ravos, when he first stumbled upon his twin of gold, whose heartbeat his own had developed beside. They had shared a thing no one else could hope to, they had dreamed and reached together in the dark, and yet, and yet -
(Do not follow me. If you do I will kill you. Do you understand?)
Oh, Talia, he never understood. He still does not understand - but maybe he begins to.
He can feel her breathing against him, each slow expansion of her ribs. But Florentine, you cannot fly, he thinks, but he knows (of course he knows) that she has never needed wings to go. That she could travel from Novus as neatly and easily as flipping a page in a book, and leave him behind.
Alone, he would have thought once, but he knows now that, at least, is not true. And somehow it keeps him moored, keeps him from sinking, keeps him from squeezing his eyes tight enough to hurt and begging like a boy for her to stay.
Asterion is not a boy, not any longer, and this time he does not need Cirrus to tell him so.
“I would not stop you,” he says, and his voice is level and even but there is a sadness beneath it as terrible and secret as a shipwreck forgotten. “But I would miss you, like a death, even as I wondered what adventures you were having.”
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
She looks at her brother, oh she looks at him close.
Asterion’s eyes are indeed the dark between stars, the hidden places in the sea that not even light can reach.
“But Night?,” Florentine asks with the hurt of a girl that knows no allies here. “Would Dawn not have sufficed?” And now her ache is a burn, old wounds cry out in the farthest places of her and she takes a steely breath.
Florentine does not take her gaze from her brother’s. She drink in all of him, sad for herself, sad for him and sad for their kingdom. “You remind me of Daddy when you look at me like that.” She says with fondness, with sadness, with a tone of chastisement.
“You aren’t in love with Isra, are you? There is something about Dusk and Night, I swear…” Ah, such a flippant question Florentine throws to ease the tension between them and she continues on, ”This is not a good rebound idea if so…” Even whilst the flower girl jests, her lips are serious, her eyes wary. A sliver of fear knifes deep within her, but what if he was….
Florentine could say more, she knows her mother would, but Flora was not made to be a warrior. She was not made to deliver her anger with the lick of flames; she was not her mother and her brother was not their father. But all the same she sighs softly, “The men of this family... It’s a good job I love you all.”
It is no surprise when Asterion speaks of letting her go. His words fall like autumn leaves about them, beautiful, even in their finality. She nods, her eyes upon the ground, watching the ghosts of the leaves at his feet. “I am going to give my dagger to Lysander. When he goes, I go.” Florentine pauses feeling just the sparks of her mother’s fire. “But I will not leave you. I am tired of our family being pulled apart.” Florentine steps close, pressing her cheek to the curve of his shoulder. “I would miss you like a death too, so don’t make me.”
Florentine stays, tucked close to her brother, gilded gold entwined within the stars of the night. Contemplation keeps her quiet, content, for a moment, until she breathes lightly. “Give me a few more days to be angry at you though yeah?”
“I never heard from Delumine,” he says. And their people had been so hungry, and the Night Court so close, and Isra’s letter like a balm to a searing, fretful wound -
Oh, he had never known Somnus and the Dawn Court the way that Florentine had. Asterion counted few enough friends, and so many of them lived in Denocte, regardless of wounds whose causes were now gone. Regardless, too, of history and the way it wound around and around again (and had Florentine been able to counsel him then, she might have told him so - she knows it better than anyone).
At her words of their father he closes his mouth; his eyes are deep things then, and the resemble a red stallion whom he has never met. And because of that never-meeting Asterion can say nothing. No matter how many sweet things she says of him, no matter the proud timber of her voice when she speaks of Gabriel, the king cannot claim him. Not this man, this shadow.
So it is a good thing when she changes the subject, swift as a bird in flight. It surprises a laugh from him, silver on the air. “No, I am not in love with Isra.” He presses his lips together at the rest of her comment, but they retain the shape of a smile - and he tries not to think of Aislinn then, though she still haunts him like a ghost. (And yet he thinks of Moira too, and even of Calliope, and-)
“Or if I am, it’s only a little,” he says then, and if the joke isn’t clear the way he lips at one of her slim ears is. But there is truth along with the jest; like all dreamers, he thinks he might fall a little in love with everyone he meets. Perhaps that is why he is so heavy, of late; there are so many that he carries with him.
When she talks of love, though - oh, that feels different. The bay king keeps his expression smooth as a windless sea when she names Lysander, despite the way his thoughts turn to darkness, to vines, to rich black earth. Asterion has never spoken with the man, but he is loyal, in his way.
But Flora without her dagger -
“How many times has that dagger saved your life?” he asks, though he refuses to turn his gaze upon it; he wonders (not for the first time) how much of the magic is in her and how much the knife. Whether she could save herself, if she must, or if —
Ah, he cannot finish the thought. It is well, then, that she steps closer, presses the plane of her cheek to his twilight-flecked shoulder, says she will not leave him.
His sigh then feels a little like mourning, a little like release.
“I could never make you do anything,” he says, and smiles even as his eyes wander the windows and angles of Denocte’s castle. “You were barely convinced to come here, and the hospital was half-flooded.”
How could he ever think she was like Talia? Their shared father, their shared color, the space they took up in his heart - all of these things are the same, but his sisters are nothing alike and oh, he is grateful for it. At her last words, the tickle of her breath against his neck, he laughs again, and steps away with a flick of his tail.
“Two more days,” he says, turning his voice deep and stony, trying to shape his face into something grave and haughty. It feels like nothing more than playing pretend as a boy, naming himself a knight as he raced the foam and gulls up the shore. “Then you must forgive me, by decree of the King.” It is difficult not to laugh then, but he manages, despite the betraying crook at the corner of his mouth.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
The girl watches her brother as she mentioned their father. It was almost as if she knew (and maybe she did) just how Asterion would react. He does not disappoint and Florentine is rewarded.
But what a bitter joy it is to behold that tightening of his lips, the darkening of fathomless eyes. She knows and would continue know those eyes forever. Florentine has so much to say, but she says nothing. The words pile up upon her tongue, but her gilded lips are tight, until they break forth like water through a chink in a dam. “Do you remember when we first met?” She asks, though she does not know all the ways he remembers that moment so well; in scent, in feeling, in light, in touch.
She pauses and waits for him to remember her, and idly wonders how she might look in his memories and all the ways she has changed. “I told you I would make you two meet. I will honour that.” To this girl of Dusk there is nothing more important than family.
Florentine leans against her brother, much as she always had (since they first met, for before that, it was only the rub of their dreams, that never truly met). “You make for a much happier king, you know.” Florentine continues, as she always has, as she always will. “Daddy is always so anxious.” Pointedly, Florentine gazes at her brother, her eyes pointedly studying his. “Don’t be like him. I will cause a coup if you do.” And oh how pointed her gaze is, oh how her smile is as sharp as the angle of her wing.
Florentine jests as she always does, but there is a promise there too. “One mopey boy is bad enough.”
Then, like the passing of the sun, their conversation moves on; twilight giving way to the thick of night. “Mmm” Florentine hums along with him, a song within her voice. “I am pleased, I would definitely have caused a coup if that was the case. I shall stand down my band of merry rebels.” The girl laughs, light like bells and echoing like infinity.
Then it is her brother’s turn to turn the conversation upon her. But bold and fearless Florentine smiles broad and proud and utterly shameless. How proud she is to cause her brother trouble, how pleased she is he valued her safety too. She turns into their embrace then, content to be the younger sister, protected by her elder brother (yet content even more to be the thorn within his paw).
Even as Asterion turns his gaze stony, even as he molds his voice to deeper, unimpressed timbres, Florentine smiles winningly. “Be pleased I don’t make it a week.” She threatens, though her brother knows as well as she, that to be angry for more than a day is to not ever truly be Florentine.
The girl does not need to see the crook at the corner of his lips to know he jests. It is maybe a tragedy that she never took his thread seriously in the first place. As if he ever thought she might, Florentine shrugs a slender gold shoulder and sings dismissively, “King-shming.” Her amethyst eyes glitter mischievously, “What a scandal it will be when the king’s own sister rebels against his decrees.” She shakes her head, pulling away, scowling like any baby sister belittled by her brother’s affection. She flicks the ear he lipped and casts him a mock- disapproving look. “Sleep with one eye open,” Flora threatens, “You will be plaited and glittered to within an inch of your life for that.”
Yet, for all her threats (however much she smiles, however much she cannot ever hide her playfulness) her stomach twists and her heart beats harder for the love of her brother, for this they share: a love so simple and so utterly unconditional.
“I do.” His gaze lingers on her, curious, waiting for her to continue and trailing his eyes idly down each golden line of her face. That day, that driving rain, that laughing girl with her trailing flowers - they have all been etched onto his heart (Sometimes he thinks his heart - or maybe his soul - soul is nothing but wet sand, and it is covered in footprints that will never be washed away).
Continue she does, but not entirely the direction he expects. At last he only smiles at her, and looks away.
“I have no doubt you will,” he says, and nothing more - for how can he tell her that oh, he hopes she does - and oh, he is afraid of that hope? Asterion is not sure which would be worse - to find himself face to face before his father and not be found enough, or to find himself disappointed in the red man he has heard so many stories of.
Still he is glad when she leans against him, and absently he lips at her hair, inhales the sweet scent of a petal (she has always carried spring with her, always lived in summer, no matter the rains or the sorrows or the hurts). It is enough to make him laugh when she levels her gaze at him, accusing, though he does try to smooth away the furrowed brow that seems always present when she talks of Gabriel. “Perhaps it is a family trait, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
In truth, he might not mind a coup; in truth he might welcome somebody - Florentine especially - lifting this burden again from his shoulders.
But there is little point in turning talk to that, not when there are so few of them to rebel, and so few left to lead.
Easier, then, to laugh at her threats, for they are nothing more than words on the wind. “I see now why you chose me in your stead, and not someone like Marisol,” he jests, nudging her hindquarters as she steps away. “I should like to see you try and plait and glitter her.” As he says it, he thinks of his Commander - the last time he’d seen her had been when he’d announced the move to Denocte. The disappointment had been clear in her slate eyes then, hard and deep as a diamond mine.
No; he cannot play pretend for long. Not even with Florentine, who’s dreaming so closely rivals his own (though hers are a little brighter, a little wilder, a little stranger). There is too much before them, too much to be decided and done.
Like this castle before them, with its dark windows and wide doorways, so foreign and so familiar.
“I should go into the city.” His voice is softer than it had been, his smile gone. But after he presses his forehead against her neck he still nips at her cheek as he pulls away, and there is a shine in his eye that hadn’t been there when first he approached her. “Stay out of trouble - gods know we can afford no more healers.”
They are true enough, his words, but the wink he tips her is another thing - and when he pushes into a lope ahead of her, he does not look back.
If he did he might ask her to run with him, that they might only be a brother and sister fled into the forest, with nothing to look after but each other.
