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Apr. 8th, 2006 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
knights_say_nihThe Epic-
A Speculative Fic that grew and grew and grew.
I'm not totally happy with this. For one thing, it's all Random's perspective so through his eyes the character of the lovely Vialle is completely distorted. Into something dark. And I don't really care for her very much.
But I'll keep picking at it and see.
Overall rating is soft R:
Wordcount: 7,262 words
For the first three months of his marriage, Random of Amber battered against the walls of his home- his prison- with a nearly hysterical fury. The Lady Vialle announced that she refused to live with such a man, and was told that she didn’t have a choice, that they were bound together in matrimony and after a few attempts at escape found herself locked in with him.
She thought, it must be said, that he was a madman, and perhaps with good reason, finding him for the fifth night in a row curled up with bloody fingers from tearing at the bars (they’d had bars since he’d broken the glass) and gasping for air.
They called him cruel, they called him lecherous, they called him wicked and she’d entered into the home bracing herself for a rough tumble into bed. The stories of him and Morganthe, of him and kidnapping the infant prince without a word to the princess, they had led her to expect an unkind lover, though it would certainly keep the Lady Moire happy. Moire had told her frankly she would be expected to bear children. That with the Prince Martin gone, they wanted more of the bloodline in the city. She was expecting a businesslike, unkind lover.
What she got was no lover at all. What she got was a bird hurling itself against glass in futility until its wings broke.
For the first three months of his marriage, Random of Amber never spared a word for his blind, unwanted, unwilling wife.
* * *
It was in the fourth month, in winter, when the cold tides came whistling through Rebma and left the man sick with chills, propped up in bed and staring at the window with blond hair, now slightly too long for him, floating in the water and rocking softly with every disturbance.
“You should stop breaking the glass, milord” advised Vialle from the foot of her husbands bed, and Random thought her voice was stupidly soft and gentle and he wished she wasn’t here.
“For then we would be able to keep the worst of the cold out and you would not shake so.”
The Amberite wondered vaguely how she knew, blind and all, but didn’t question. Just let her sigh to herself and move quietly about her business, lifting the tray of untouched food from the foot of the bed and moving towards the door.
“I’m not going to stop breaking the glass, Vialle.”
They’re both startled at how clear his voice is, from the disuse of the previous months, excepting the occasional cry of impotent fury. Vialle thought his voice was charmingly soft and clear and wished he’d use it more often.
“Not now, not ever.”
And the lady nodded and inclined her head and moved out of the room, smiling to herself. Random’s eyes never left the window.
* * *
The doctors predicted initially that the Amberite would, by virtue of blood, be quick to shake off his illness, but it lingered on for weeks. The small man became frailer still, and even Vialle who professed to all that she didn’t care began to worry at the wracking cough.
“He won’t get better unless he eats” insisted the old man, and Moire pursed her lips in annoyance as Vialle’s hands wrung in her skirts.
“I cannot force him to, milady!”
“I know you can’t, Vialle, no one expects you to.”
The old, grey man glanced between the two younger women, tutting chastizingly.
“Be that as it may, you need to convey to the man that unless he eats he’ll only get worse.”
Moire opened her mouth in anger, Vialle cringed, and a quiet voice cut them off before they could continue.
“Do you think I care?”
His voice hold enough poison to make even Moire wince, and Vialle rushes to his side, the picture of wifely concern, only to be brushed aside in annoyance.
“How long has it been?”
Awkward silence falls again, as each in turn hope they won’t have to be the ones to answer the brittle question, each feeling their own private guilt, in one way or another. It’s the doctor who answers with a hushed ‘five months’ and stops there, unable to elaborate, caught on the look of misery that’s quickly hidden by a thin hand coming up to cover his eyes in a weary gesture.
“A year and a quarter” Random mutters, seemingly to himself and Vialle thinks again that he must be mad and Moire who knows a little more wonders where he’s talking about and the doctor who really is quite old and rather deaf in that ear just doesn’t wonder at all.
Random wonders if Ramon hates him for being gone. And if he’ll ever get back. And if Martin’s alright or if Ramon’s angry with him too and the little boy has been abandoned by both his papa and his pai all over again and the thought that rushes through him like electricity and battery acid is I’ve failed you both.
Moire lifts the unconscious man easily from the floor of his room and walks him back to bed, his wife fluttering uselessly, trying to be of any sort of help, eventually sitting on the edge of his bed, hanging on to his hand and clutching worriedly.
When Random wakes it’s with a scream, and when he cries it’s into Vialle’s damp skirts.
* * *
“As my husband, it is your duty to bed me.”
The thin man whirled on his wife, throwing up his hands in fury.
“Fuck off Vialle! Buy a goddamned vibrator.”
The woman sighed, long suffering, unaware of the gesture.
“I am not sure what you mean but I believe I can correctly interpret.”
He folds his arms across his chest, glaring futilely at her shoes.
“Christ, I need a cigarette.”
The graceful woman stepped towards him again, laying a hand on his arm, reaching out to touch his face. A liberty he permitted her- she was blind, after all, and he… no. Wasn’t going to sympathize with her. Not his fucking job to understand her. Random yanks away from her touch. She continues to speak, unfazed.
“As your wife, it is my duty to bear your son.”
Wrong thing to say, wrong thing to say. Random’s breath is stolen and he tenses in absolute fury, anguish, shock, as the Lady continues in her smooth tones, reaching out to touch, pull close, seduce.
“You do want a son, don’t you?”
The crack of skin against skin doesn’t ring out under water as it does in the air, but the silence that falls after the slap, it may as well have. Vialle’s cheek is a stinging pink, matching the palm of Random’s hand, the blush on his face that she can’t see.
“I have a son. His name is Martin. He’ll be four years old in a few weeks and I don’t want another one. I don’t want you.”
Vialle is too shocked to leave the room, so Random does instead, slinking away.
* * *
It had taken until spring for Vialle to recover from her shock and begin to follow Moire’s orders and continue to try to seduce her prince. Random remained just as unwilling.
It was with a heavy heart that she made her slow way up the steps to the Queens rooms, bundle clutched in her hands. Moire glanced up from her work as the blind woman entered, smiling, though no doubt the lady in waiting wouldn’t be able to see.
“Milady Moire?”
“Vialle. Do be seated. What have you got with you?”
“Something of Lord Random’s, milady. He’s taken to painting, making use of the set you sent us.”
Moire, stood, calmly taking the package from Vialle’s unsteady hands, beginning to unwrap it.
“The servants described the image to me, lady…”
And the woman trails off, and as Moire opens the painting she knows why. A man and a child stare back at her, the man laughing and the child solemn. The boy (Martin) makes her quirk a frown because that bastard and her daughter shouldn’t have been…
But the man. That’s interesting. He looks appealing. Powerful.
Loved. He looks loved. And Moire’s eyes narrow because the thought that comes is, of course, like Morganthe wasn’t.
“Go back to him, Vialle, and leave him to his painting, but don’t let him out of your presence. I hope you’ll be with child by summer.”
“Milady…”
Moire glances up, eyes narrowed, and Vialle swallows and pushes on.
“I am not sure I want to… push him like this. I respect Random and do not think he wants to be…”
“Go Vialle.”
And it’s more of an order than a wish, so Vialle bows politely and leaves.
Moire goes back to her work.
* * *
Nine months have passed, three quarters of the time, when Random runs.
It’s difficult, through water, a movement he’s not suited for nor used to and he doesn’t get far, but far enough to break into the study of the palace.
He begins searching the room frenetically, tossing aside papers, searching drawers and safes and fumbling with keys to open locks even as the guards rush by the window outside.
The poor steward, a kind enough man, who’d always had a smile for him, gets knocked unconscious as he stumbles upon the searching Amberite, and the body gets dragged to a corner before Random goes back to searching.
And there. There. A glint of embossed gold.
Yes.
The cards are a blessedly familiar weight to hold in his hands and he drops them in his haste. His hands shake as he begins to shift through the mesh of images, faces: friends, family, place, lover…
Lover. The Devil, held tight between his fingers and then with a horrible bursting hope and tears already starting in his eyes he reaches out to touch.
The paper is dead, lifeless beneath his fingers. Without warmth. Without magic.
There are moments of incomprehension, and maybe the complete confusion is better than the dull, gnawing horror that comes next.
Ramon had destroyed his card. In anger, in fury, in abandonment Ramon had destroyed his card. Two years, it had been, and why was he so surprised? He’d left him with an infant and a house on some empty world and not a word of explanation.
So Ramon had destroyed his card.
When the guards finally find him, he hasn’t moved, and when the handle of the sword descends on the back of his head the oblivion is welcomed.
* * *
It’s four weeks before Random stirs from his room again. Pale, ghostlike, clad in a nightshirt only he drifts through his apartments to the room where he knows his wife is sleeping.
The door closing behind him is the sound that wakes her.
The feeling of his lips against hers startles her into wrapping arms about her shoulders.
You may kiss the bride Random tells himself, bitterly, and does again, and again.
And then more.
Moire gets what she wanted.
Vialle begins to fall in love with a man who wishes it weren’t so.
Random staggers back to his room when it’s over, weeping silently.
* * *
When the year is over- and he isn’t allowed to go until then, Moire makes sure of it- Random makes his way to Amber, to Corwin, and launches himself furiously into politics with Vialle on his arm and a jaguar tooth that he hasn’t quite been able to throw away in his pocket.
She has been told, he overheard, to stay with him until she does fall pregnant. She tells him he loves her.
He says he does too, says it to everyone that asks. To Corwin, to Julian, to everyone, because it’s easier than explaining why he doesn’t, or that he doesn’t care in the slightest about her, Moire, or her fucking games. Fucking being the operative verb as well as adjective, one should note.
“Are you displeased with me, my lord?”
The interruption is again the soft, forcedly serene tones of his beloved wife.
“What now, Vialle?”
“With me, my lord?”
“What the fuck?”
She winced at the profanity, at the words, and sadness enters her face.”
“You have not had me in your bed for a month now.”
Oh, of course. Stud duty.
“I believe I gave you a vibrator for your last birthday, love?”
A pained expression crosses her face, because she has come to love him and doesn’t understand these fits of fury, spite, bitterness. Random knows it. He just can’t stop himself.
He’d fall in love with her too if he did.
“Make use of it.”
And Random of Amber extinguishes the cigarette had had come to smoke and strides off towards the lake, back down to the depths of his own peculiar hell, with or without his wife.
* * *
When the Unicorn turns its head towards Random, he sees the shock in Julian’s, in Vialle’s, in Moire’s eyes and has to smile for the first time in achingly long. It is almost painfully funny, to think that after all this it should be him to be given this.
And how little he wants it.
But it’s Amber. She needs a king, and if she’s chosen him then he won’t forsake her. The smooth stone of the castle is cool under the fingers he trails along the wall, walking the corridor, sheaf of papers in hand.
No matter how much it hurts, it’s good to be home, to be safe inside walls of stone and to be able to walk through the library and curl in a chair by the fire and for the first time in the four years it’s been, he doesn’t feel heart stoppingly lonely.
He still dreams about a thick accent and strong arms wrapped around him, but he doesn’t batter against the glass quite so fiercely any more.
Amber is something to live for. An end to the fights between siblings, the endless circles of trust and mistrust, of faked deaths and faked marriages and happiness and sadness.
He’d even smiled, even laughed at Fiona’s and Julian’s wedding. Told Julian teasingly that he should have worn a top hat and tailcoat. Told Fiona that she looked lovely in white. Born their looks of sympathy, as the only two who knew what he’d left behind in the bar where they’d gone and found each other.
After the wedding, Random had gotten very, very drunk on tequila, and fallen unconscious into bed, leaving Vialle to sigh with worry and take off his boots for him.
If it had been permissible for a lady of the courts to swear, then she would have.
* * *
Within a year of the wedding, Vialle had rushed to her husbands arm and informed him in joyful tones that they’re going to have a baby!
Random shrugs, and tells her he’s very happy, gives her a kiss on the cheek and tells her to go see Moire.
She doesn’t question his enthusiasm, just rushes off to inform her mistress with a blessed relief in her voice. Truthfully, Random’s glad it takes some time for her to get to Rebma and back, because her enthusiasm is too much for him and there are papers that need to be tended to.
The pregnancy isn’t an easy one, not for a slim hipped, frail girl who’s been blind since birth and never run nor fought nor used her body in any great way, and she announces that she’s staying in Rebma to take an air that always agrees with her.
The court- Benedict, Bleys, Caine, assume their king is suffering in the absence of his beloved wife, whom he makes such careful shows of loving. But whatever the reason, as the new child grows, grows, nearer birth every moment, Random stops eating, stops sleeping, and takes to pacing the castle and working late into the night.
Another Oberon are the words whispered in the halls.
Martin shakes his head furiously and tells them all they’re wrong and wonders to himself what happened to the father he knew and why Random hardly speaks to him.
Be that as it may thinks the King, this cannot be stopped.
* * *
Julian of Amber was probably the only person who knew Random’s love for his darling Vialle wasn’t quite what he kept everyone thinking it was.
Fiona would have too, of course, because Random had seen them together and the way her head would casually rest on her husbands shoulder and they’d pass whispered, solemn words to each other. This was a couple that didn’t keep secrets. Not from each other.
Nor Julian from his king, it seemed, as he strode without preamble into Random’s office. The shorter man glanced up, arms full of papers and smiles a greeting.
“Random, I have something to admit.”
Random, who had been about to smile a greeting, sets the papers back down on the table and sets his hands on his hips, with an ‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’ expression on his face.
“I’ve been to see the… Salazar.”
He cuts off the ‘human’ he’d about to snap out, in nature of what he’s about to tell him, and is immediately gratified that he did when Random turns abruptly and strides to the window. Too late, he’d already caught a glance of his face.
Seen that expression once too many times this week.
“In the bar. He was…”
“Get out, Julian.”
It’s not a king talking. It’s a tired little brother, who’s pressing his fingers to the glass of his window and staring into the courtyard below.
“…Random?”
“Get out, Julian, please.”
The silence hangs heavily in the air, as the elder brother shifts, uncertain.
“He was…”
“Oh for God’s sake!”
Random whirls on him, eyes pained, drawing himself up to his full, completely unimpressive height.
“You’ve got your fucking happily ever after. Get the hell out of here. Go back to Arden, go back to her. She’s waiting for you” and the anger begins slowly to drain out of him, living him slumped against the glass. “and you deserve each other.”
Julian hesitates, eyes narrowed, and Random sighs, running a hand through his hair and composing himself.
“It won’t be a problem. But… don’t tell anyone, yeah?”
Julian opens his mouth and before he can speak Random holds up a stalling hand.
“Fiona excluded.
Go on, Julian, go.”
So he does.
* * *
“A boy. Stillborn.”
The last word hangs in the air, and there’s a faint sound of a gasp from someone behind him, Deirdre, maybe, Random doesn’t know who.
“Stillborn” he echoes, trying to make sense of it, and the word echoes in the hall of the castle.
“Aye, your majesty.”
Random takes a deep, steadying breath, and falls back into his seat.
“And the mother?”
“Dead, your majesty.”
Dead. Dead.
The room is absolutely, utterly silent. The expressions of the princes and princesses range from saddened to sympathetic to strangely victorious but that’s only Fiona and one can never be sure what Fiona thinks, to purely stunned.
Dead.
A hoarse croak of a raven, taking flight off the window sill breaks the silence, causing the entire room to start. A glass falls to the floor and shatters, Deirdre gives a small shriek of fear, Julian knocks a goblet over with his elbow, Bleys’ hand leaps to his sword.
The king of Amber rises gracefully to his feet to walk to the window sill, and stand with his forehead pressed to the glass to watch the bird fly off into the distance.
He sheds one tear for the woman who loved him who trapped him.
It is over.
* * *
“Caine!”
“Here, Random.”
Random turns to glance over his shoulder, not breaking his stride, beckoning for the man to come closer, walk with him. His siblings are, despite the fact that he’s got shorter legs than most of them, having a good deal of trouble keeping up.
“Can you keep the papers straight for a while? I’m going to be gone for a while.”
The man’s eyes narrow, considering, but he nods.
“Good. Bleys?”
“Here.”
“Mount a perimeter guard as usual. I don’t want people knowing I’m gone.”
He turns, stopping abruptly, facing them and their range of similarly perplexed expressions.
“I am not dad. I just… need to do this. But I’ll take cards with me, reachable at any time, and I’ll expect reports at the end of every three days.”
Not a small amount of relief shows, and there are faint smiles when Random spins on his heel and starts walking again.
“Julian.”
“Random.”
“Get to Arden. We can’t risk anything going wrong, so look to your lady well while I’m away. And I don’t mean the blonde one. Fi?”
Julian falls back, with a bit of a smirk, and his wife steps forwards.
“Brother?”
“Can you bear to be apart from your husband a few months?”
A hush falls, and more than one man slows in surprise, including Fiona herself who comes to a stop. Random in turn pauses, glancing around levelly.
“Our father was a misogynist. I am not. Fiona has the castle. Obey her as you would me, or I will find out and you’ll have firecrackers under your beds for centuries.”
He turns again, waving them to stay back as he heads for the stairs, smiling to himself at the sound of Julian’s embarrassed laugh.
* * *
“Going so soon, your majesty?”
Random pauses, and then quickly finishes adjusting the pack onto the back of Jabberwock, before turning and glancing measuredly at the old man.
“Grandfather.”
Dworkin takes a few shuffling steps closer. The old man is madder than ever, and they all know it, but none of them have suggested he leaves the castle. He seems to belong to the place, in his own way.
“Don’t go, Random.”
His voice is piteous, really, and Random sighs, extending his arms to him long suffering, offering comfort. He never had the patience Fiona did.
“Not when I worked so hard to bring you here.”
Random stops cold, drops his arms again, and asks in a level voice;
“Explain yourself, please.”
It isn’t a request, and Dworkin doesn’t know better than to comply.
“Got you to Rebma. Severed the link of your silly little trumps. Stopped you going back there, think he didn’t love you. Got Amber a King. Amber needs a King. Amber needs You, more than some fucking little human does. Amber, Random, your home.”
Silence hangs heavily, and then the King of Amber raises his hand slowly and then…
…punches the Lord Dworkin hard in the jaw and sends the old man crashing backwards into the wall, before slinging his leg over the bike, gunning the motor and going.
Dworkin’s screams of fury, echo, raging pleas to stay for the Pattern! echo in Random’s ears.
But there are things that need setting right.
* * *
The door is a different colour than he remembered.
It shakes him up more than it should, but what he thought was brown is actually, as it turns out, dark blue and that discovery bring such a rush of exhausted, miserable anxiety that he freezes on the steps and stands there staring at the fucking thing for who knows how long.
On the inside of the door, through the faint, marbled glass he can see people- one person, the person moving about. And that scares him even more.
The sun begins to set and he can hear, as though from far away, a child laughing and then suddenly the door opens.
Ramon, who had been heading out for an evening walk and a cigarette, stops as though he’d seen a ghost, and the lighter falls from his hands.
“Lover.”
Random doesn’t realize he breathed the word like a prayer until it’s already fallen from his lips. It’s bliss to say it again.
Lover.
Ramon’s fist connects heavily with his jaw, knocking him backwards. The door shuts behind him and the Latino man stalks forwards, after the staggering Random, grabbing him by his arm and dragging him away from the house, down to the bank of the lake, past the disused airplane and out of earshot of the house.
It’s a wasted effort, as the first words he says to him are a furious, hissed;
“How fucking dare you come back here you piece of shit.”
Random can’t even protest, just stare at him blankly, mouth open.
“How dare you? It’s been fucking eighteen years since you left me sitting with your kid and now you’re back? You’ve got some nerve you little puta bastard.”
He looses Random’s arm with a shake that rocks his entire body, head rocking. He still can’t speak.
“You left. To fucking Amber. You have a nice time playing king? Julian told me all about it.”
The little, numb king holds up his hand in a gesture to please stop, please let me speak, please let me say what happened and Ramon’s eyes widen.
“You’re missing a finger.”
Random, quickly, forgets what he was going to say, tucking his hand behind his back.
“I know I am.” That much is obvious. So he adds “It got cut off” and curses himself because that isn’t really better.
“By what?”
“By me” says Random, closing his hands into fists behind his back, answering without thinking about it and adding quickly “I don't want to talk about it.”
Ramon runs an exasperated hand through his hair, then turns to face the lake.
“Can I come inside?” Random prompts gently, because the anxiety, fighting, nerves and the cold of a fall night on Haven already have him shaking, and he really hasn’t been well since the beginning of the pregnancy.
“I don’t know.” Ramon answers curtly, before leading him up to what used to be their home.
* * *
“You haven’t been eating” comes the accusation, as Random’s good hand curls around the coffee mug. A new one. He doesn’t recognize it either, and he’s not sure if that’s a blessing or not.
“I’ve been busy.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and Ramon slams his own mug down on the table with a little more force than is necessary.
“Too busy to---?”
“Of fuck no, babe.”
Not that, never that.
But Ramon’s eyes are still narrowed.
“Why didn’t you come?”
Random looks up at him, eyes unguarded, open as he knows how to be.
“Because the last time I tried I couldn’t. I… was… trapped. Locked up. I…” Here, he has to set the cup down, because his hands just won’t seem to stop shaking any more.
“I was being held. When I escaped it was only a few minutes and time enough to get to the trumps and I found yours and wanted to come to you but it wouldn’t. I thought you’d burned it, or torn it up, or anything to be rid of it.”
Ramon is staring at him now, with flat eyes and a scornful expression that makes him cringe.
“Dios Random, you sit there and lie to me now? I wish I had. I wish I had, and I tried to, but I’ve still got the fucking thing. Right under the paperclip you gave me when you told me you loved me.”
And it’s too much, too much, and even as he begins to explain the world start to spin around him.
“It was Dworkin. He wanted me in Amber and he cut the line I’d drawn so I’d think you didn’t want me back. It wasn’t…”
Ramon swears to himself as Random collapses off his seat, and then swears to himself again as his body reacts when he cradles the smaller man in his arms and lifts him onto a couch to lie until he wakes up from what looks like a much needed sleep.
Force of habit he tells himself sternly, then says it out loud to see if that makes it sound any more true.
* * *
“Papa!”
Random starts awake on the couch, and Ramon as well, in the armchair opposite, as the toddler throws his arms around his fathers shoulders.
“You missed my birthday papa! See, pai, I told you he would come back.”
Martin, Random decides, is impossibly young. And it’s true. The boy is four. Five at the most. And has his strong little arms wrapped tight around Random’s neck and the Amberite feels tears in his eyes already.
“Hey bug. I’m sorry I was gone. So sorry.”
He’s dreaming. Of course he is. But it doesn’t feel like it and he hopes to God he isn’t. He doesn’t want to be.
It’s decided, over the course of the next few minutes, that Martin should go into his room, get dressed, then have a morning bath while his parents (and Ramon uses the word and Random’s head spins all over again) discuss things.
He can’t keep his eyes off the door the boy closes behind him.
“You didn’t know, did you Random?”
It’s a bemused question, hollow, quiet, and he looks up at Ramon with a dazed expression on his face.
“You said eighteen years. Six for me. But he’s…”
“Dworkin came for him.”
Ramon’s voice is rough, low, and just as Random remembered it, but sadder.
“And took him from me too, a few months after you left. Returned him half a year ago. He said you’d needed him to.” It had, by the looks of things, hurt.
“I was set last night to tell you not to treat me like a babysitter. But you weren’t, were you?”
Random shakes his head, finding himself mute, and Ramon runs a tired hand through his hair.
“After he left, I knew you wouldn’t come for me.”
“But I did.”
“Maybe… why?”
That draws Random, who had been starting to sit upright on the couch, up short.
“Why did I come back?”
“Why all of a sudden. You weren’t locked up for six years. You’ve been king…”
“I was married.”
Martin rushes into the room as Ramon rushes out, and Random thinks it might have been better if he hadn’t seen the sudden tears that filled his lovers eyes before he went. But Martin, it seems, understands, and tells him very soon to go be with pai. They can have lunch together later, but he needs to be with pai now.
Go he does.
* * *
“Lover?”
Ramon scrubs at his eyes, turning away as Random enters their bedroom.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Lover. I will call you that, because even if you won’t call me that, that’s who you are to me.”
Ramon whirls on him, pulling up tall, furious, and hisses out.
“And what did you call her?”
Random cringes back, but closes the door after himself, because he isn’t leaving. Not yet. Not until Ramon understands.
“Vialle. Her name was Vialle. They imprisoned me in Rebma and wed me to her and kept me there and I cut off my ring finger because I awoke every morning with a band of gold and it was a game I couldn’t bear to play. Please, don’t look at me that way.”
Ramon, who doesn’t know what way he’s supposed to not be looking at him like, as Random has his eyes tight shut and can’t seem to open them.
“I didn’t want it. I didn’t. I didn’t…”
The choked mantra repeats, repeats, Random mumbling to himself as he sinks to his knees and hold out a hand, the scarred, mutilated one, to Ramon in one pleading gesture.
“Please. I love you.”
In their room their, Ramon Sanluin Salazar, Cartel Lord and Cath’dein, reaches out to take the hand of Random, King of Amber.
In a few minutes, composure is found and the little, worn out king rises to his feet and the two go downstairs to make pancakes for Martin, their son.
Their hands do not let go of each other for the rest of the day. Not for anything.
* * *
That night, Random asks Ramon quietly, in his ear over a chicken noodle soup dinner, if he’ll do him the honour of coming to bed with him, and the two share their first kiss in so, so long.
The sex isn’t spectacularly good. The both of them had been alone a little too long, a little too painfully. Touching each other… well, it almost burned the skin and stole Random’s breath a little too fast for him to do anything like last or perform any particular feats.
But at the same time, it was perfect. It was a coming home. An end to an interminable separation and by the end of it they were both sobbing for not-the-first-time except this time it was into each others skin.
“Never again” Random mumbles, wiping his eyes on the corner of the pillow and hauling Ramon closer.
“Si. Si. Oh Christ baby.”
The words sound foreign to both of them and Random bursts into another fit of sobs and hangs on for all he’s worth.
When that fit of tears has calmed, when Random’s back to simply letting himself be held for the first time in years, with his head on Ramon’s chest and fingers twined through his hair, then he speaks again.
“Come back to Amber with me.”
Ramon’s hand strokes through his hair, contemplatively.
“I can’t, Random.”
The bottom drops out from Random’s world, and he stares up at him with a misery and horror that he thought had been chased away. Which is now kissed away, while Ramon explains, reasonably, with a soothing hush to his voice.
“We’ve our little filho to look after, remember? I’m still working with Arithon. Life went on.”
Bittersweet reminders, all of them, and Random sets his head back on Ramon’s chest with a low, soft sigh.
“But” Ramon continues, tilting his face up for a kiss, because there won’t ever be too many of those “we still have Haven. And you still have your trumps, and you have a dozen siblings ready to help you and we’ll be able to do it.”
Random smiles, weakly, into Ramon’s skin.
“You’re wiser than I am, now.”
And as Ramon sighs, he feels it, reverberating in a chest just as broad and comfortable as ever.
“I’m a little older.”
They both are, maybe, and the silence is, for half a second, awkward.
Then Random asks, very much himself, “Do I need to invest in Viagra, then?”
And Ramon snorts, and rolls him over, and pins his wrists above his head and proceeds to show him the physical equivalent of an enthusiastic ‘Like HELL you do…’
All, Random thinks, may not be entirely well in the world, but it’s getting there. It’s going to be.
They’re together again.
That night, Random falls asleep with his head resting on Ramon’s chest so for the first time in six, eighteen, infinity years neither of them have any nightmares.
* * *
“Ramon?”
Gentle hands push at his shoulders, waking him up and pushing something cloth into his hands.
“…mmmmph”
Random laughs, wrapping the bathrobe around himself, and pushes Ramon’s hair out of his face.
“Put the pajamas on, lover, we’re getting a visitor.”
“…kay.”
It’s Random’s second morning back, and things aren’t perfect, and Ramon doesn’t know why the hell he wants him to put pajamas on but is too tired to really question it. The next minute the question is answered.
With the speed of some sort of ballistic missile, Martin bounds into the room and onto the bed, pouncing on Ramon who makes an ‘oof’ sound and wraps his arms around the boy.
“What’s this?”
Martin giggles, and squirms out of Ramon’s arms, hyper as anything because his papa is back and that’s worth celebrating.
“Papa made waffles and has strawberries and coffee and he said I could have some!”
Which is, to a five year old who loves his parents, very cool.
“Stop squirming, filho.”
Ramon pulls him down, making him sit still as Random loads waffles onto a plate and hands them to his son, and then coffee to his lover, who smiles gratefully.
“This is a treat.”
Random, at Martin’s stern orders, pours half a teaspoon of coffee into a cup and then adds a teaspoon of sugar and fills the rest up with milk. Martin, needless to say, likes the drink and says so loudly, ignoring the fact that it’s rather a different colour than the stuff Ramon’s drinking.
“It’s going to be a Thursday morning tradition. We need something to brighten up Thursdays.”
Random reaches out to casually ruffle Martin’s hair, before pouring syrup over his waffles, and then setting up a plate to offer to Ramon.
“Now squish over and let me into bed.”
They do, of course, and it’s so nice, Random thinks, to feel a familiar foot brushing his and a familiar hand reaching for his, over the squirming five year old between them.
“Random, you need to eat something too.”
Ramon’s voice is as stern as it can be, when fuzzy with sleep and so overwhelmingly happy. He hesitates, for a moment, but takes a waffle with a smile. Didn’t realize how much he’d missed having someone to remind him.
* * *
Ramon sleeping is a beautiful thing.
No matter what pride, vanity, attitudes the might adopt during the day, he was unquestionably beautiful. Or so Random thought to himself, trailing his fingers down gently shifting skin.
“You can’t hear me” Random whispers softly, leaning down so that his lips may press against the soft skin of his throat.
After a moment, he pulls back, and turns back to his quiet examination of Ramon’s body. It’s a little different than he remembers, a little leaner, a little more scarred. A suitable mirror for the inside, he supposes.
“But that doesn’t matter, lover. Got some things to tell you;”
He leans in, tucking himself next to him and tentatively sliding one arm around his waist. Trim waist, muscled waist, and the proximity sends a flash of arousal through Random, making the next words more of a sound whispered.
“I’ve been a little scared, living here with you. A little scared, a little hurt, because you’re you and you have this stupid habit of picking at scabs, you know?”
Ramon’s legs shift on the sheets, kicking a foot tangled in them, trying to shake them loose. An unhappy, rude line slices along the upper part of his thigh, and Random’s fingers unconsciously drift to it, letting his fingers trail along the line.
“But mostly just afraid that you wouldn’t take me back. You did, at first, you know, not really let me in. I don’t blame you.”
He doesn’t, either, not in the slightest. His fingers circle up, trailing over Ramon’s hip and then resting his palm on the sensitive skin of his abdomen.
“Because I was thinking about it, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who is hurt as badly as you are. Of all of this, I wish the most that I hadn’t added to that pain.”
That, he thought, was the worse of it. Every part brought pain or humiliation of one sort or another, but Random’s suffering had been small in comparison to the pain that was Ramon’s.
“I was scared you were too twisted up by me to ever hold me again.”
That had hurt the most. The thought that he had destroyed this most beautiful thing. His hand traces up his ribs as though thank God, Ramon’s still here and he does hold him. Every night.
“You know what I found out, though?”
Arms wrap around him, and a soft voice with an accent that is still fucking sexy.
“What did you find out, amarente? Tell me.”
Random smiles, and answers quietly;
“You’re stronger than I am.”
There are tears in his eyes, but that’s alright, because Ramon’s there to kiss them away and hold him tight against his chest.
The both of them, Ramon tells him, are only as strong as each other.
Random smiles.
It’s true.
* * *
The King of Amber rode into the courtyard.
Except it’s Random. So it is riding, but it’s on a motorbike and he laughs as he drives pulls to a screeching halt and climbs off, before shouting at the top of his lung “I’m BACK!”
The reaction isn’t quite immediate, but it’s gratifying enough. No one else could make the Lord Bleys break into something quite so close to an undignified run, after all. But run he does, and with Caine hard on his heels.
“Random, thank God, the situation with the…”
Ramon Salazar’s first actions in finding himself face to face with the impressive countenance of the second tallest Prince of Amber are not precisely sensible, but certainly impressive.
Instead of bowing, he grins and offers up a hand to shake.
Bleys is just startled enough to take it, before turning to his brother with an expression that reads rather nicely as ‘urk?’ while Caine, who is rather more composed, as a rule moves to take the bags off the back of the motorcycle. Astonishing how little attention one pays to a man with something to do.
“Random, you’ve brought a guest?”
This new voice is female. Flora’s. Fluting and sweet, and cut off by Gerard’s deep tones.
“Do introduce us?”
So, the king of Amber slides an affectionate arm around his lovers waist, in a demonstration of open care that they’d all forgotten the man was prone to, along with one of his brighter, younger smiles.
“May I present to you all Ramon Salazar. Recently of Earth come Athera, and now an immortal. Probably outlive not a few of us, so don’t get smart. My partner in all things and semi-permanent resident of Amber.”
Reactions range from disbelief to amusement to annoyance to pleasure. Random, still smiling, lets the silence sit, waiting to see who’ll be first to speak, first to question. Not Julian, his eyes are still reserved when he looks at the human. Not Fiona, she enjoys watching too much. Bleys, perhaps Gerard…
It comes in a form and from a quarter no one expected. Pounding footsteps on the cobblestones sound out sharply and someone elbows their way through the little crowd with imperious demands of ‘let me through’ and not a little swearing and then the Crown Prince of Amber is there.
“Dad, you’re…. Pai!”
When Martin of Amber, notoriously reserved when it comes to such things, flings his arms about the shoulders of a visitor and clutches him close with a happy laugh, his aunts and uncles decide to take it as a sign to give the human the benefit of the doubt.
Ramon and Martin exchange happy words in Spanish, and with a quick glance at his father Martin leads him off to show him around the castle and all things they’ll consider interesting, leaving Random standing with his family.
“Now you know. Get used to him, he’s not going anywhere any time soon.”
That’s all Random says, before wiping his hands on his jeans and turning to Bleys.
“Now. What did you say about the situation?”
A Speculative Fic that grew and grew and grew.
I'm not totally happy with this. For one thing, it's all Random's perspective so through his eyes the character of the lovely Vialle is completely distorted. Into something dark. And I don't really care for her very much.
But I'll keep picking at it and see.
Overall rating is soft R:
Wordcount: 7,262 words
For the first three months of his marriage, Random of Amber battered against the walls of his home- his prison- with a nearly hysterical fury. The Lady Vialle announced that she refused to live with such a man, and was told that she didn’t have a choice, that they were bound together in matrimony and after a few attempts at escape found herself locked in with him.
She thought, it must be said, that he was a madman, and perhaps with good reason, finding him for the fifth night in a row curled up with bloody fingers from tearing at the bars (they’d had bars since he’d broken the glass) and gasping for air.
They called him cruel, they called him lecherous, they called him wicked and she’d entered into the home bracing herself for a rough tumble into bed. The stories of him and Morganthe, of him and kidnapping the infant prince without a word to the princess, they had led her to expect an unkind lover, though it would certainly keep the Lady Moire happy. Moire had told her frankly she would be expected to bear children. That with the Prince Martin gone, they wanted more of the bloodline in the city. She was expecting a businesslike, unkind lover.
What she got was no lover at all. What she got was a bird hurling itself against glass in futility until its wings broke.
For the first three months of his marriage, Random of Amber never spared a word for his blind, unwanted, unwilling wife.
* * *
It was in the fourth month, in winter, when the cold tides came whistling through Rebma and left the man sick with chills, propped up in bed and staring at the window with blond hair, now slightly too long for him, floating in the water and rocking softly with every disturbance.
“You should stop breaking the glass, milord” advised Vialle from the foot of her husbands bed, and Random thought her voice was stupidly soft and gentle and he wished she wasn’t here.
“For then we would be able to keep the worst of the cold out and you would not shake so.”
The Amberite wondered vaguely how she knew, blind and all, but didn’t question. Just let her sigh to herself and move quietly about her business, lifting the tray of untouched food from the foot of the bed and moving towards the door.
“I’m not going to stop breaking the glass, Vialle.”
They’re both startled at how clear his voice is, from the disuse of the previous months, excepting the occasional cry of impotent fury. Vialle thought his voice was charmingly soft and clear and wished he’d use it more often.
“Not now, not ever.”
And the lady nodded and inclined her head and moved out of the room, smiling to herself. Random’s eyes never left the window.
* * *
The doctors predicted initially that the Amberite would, by virtue of blood, be quick to shake off his illness, but it lingered on for weeks. The small man became frailer still, and even Vialle who professed to all that she didn’t care began to worry at the wracking cough.
“He won’t get better unless he eats” insisted the old man, and Moire pursed her lips in annoyance as Vialle’s hands wrung in her skirts.
“I cannot force him to, milady!”
“I know you can’t, Vialle, no one expects you to.”
The old, grey man glanced between the two younger women, tutting chastizingly.
“Be that as it may, you need to convey to the man that unless he eats he’ll only get worse.”
Moire opened her mouth in anger, Vialle cringed, and a quiet voice cut them off before they could continue.
“Do you think I care?”
His voice hold enough poison to make even Moire wince, and Vialle rushes to his side, the picture of wifely concern, only to be brushed aside in annoyance.
“How long has it been?”
Awkward silence falls again, as each in turn hope they won’t have to be the ones to answer the brittle question, each feeling their own private guilt, in one way or another. It’s the doctor who answers with a hushed ‘five months’ and stops there, unable to elaborate, caught on the look of misery that’s quickly hidden by a thin hand coming up to cover his eyes in a weary gesture.
“A year and a quarter” Random mutters, seemingly to himself and Vialle thinks again that he must be mad and Moire who knows a little more wonders where he’s talking about and the doctor who really is quite old and rather deaf in that ear just doesn’t wonder at all.
Random wonders if Ramon hates him for being gone. And if he’ll ever get back. And if Martin’s alright or if Ramon’s angry with him too and the little boy has been abandoned by both his papa and his pai all over again and the thought that rushes through him like electricity and battery acid is I’ve failed you both.
Moire lifts the unconscious man easily from the floor of his room and walks him back to bed, his wife fluttering uselessly, trying to be of any sort of help, eventually sitting on the edge of his bed, hanging on to his hand and clutching worriedly.
When Random wakes it’s with a scream, and when he cries it’s into Vialle’s damp skirts.
* * *
“As my husband, it is your duty to bed me.”
The thin man whirled on his wife, throwing up his hands in fury.
“Fuck off Vialle! Buy a goddamned vibrator.”
The woman sighed, long suffering, unaware of the gesture.
“I am not sure what you mean but I believe I can correctly interpret.”
He folds his arms across his chest, glaring futilely at her shoes.
“Christ, I need a cigarette.”
The graceful woman stepped towards him again, laying a hand on his arm, reaching out to touch his face. A liberty he permitted her- she was blind, after all, and he… no. Wasn’t going to sympathize with her. Not his fucking job to understand her. Random yanks away from her touch. She continues to speak, unfazed.
“As your wife, it is my duty to bear your son.”
Wrong thing to say, wrong thing to say. Random’s breath is stolen and he tenses in absolute fury, anguish, shock, as the Lady continues in her smooth tones, reaching out to touch, pull close, seduce.
“You do want a son, don’t you?”
The crack of skin against skin doesn’t ring out under water as it does in the air, but the silence that falls after the slap, it may as well have. Vialle’s cheek is a stinging pink, matching the palm of Random’s hand, the blush on his face that she can’t see.
“I have a son. His name is Martin. He’ll be four years old in a few weeks and I don’t want another one. I don’t want you.”
Vialle is too shocked to leave the room, so Random does instead, slinking away.
* * *
It had taken until spring for Vialle to recover from her shock and begin to follow Moire’s orders and continue to try to seduce her prince. Random remained just as unwilling.
It was with a heavy heart that she made her slow way up the steps to the Queens rooms, bundle clutched in her hands. Moire glanced up from her work as the blind woman entered, smiling, though no doubt the lady in waiting wouldn’t be able to see.
“Milady Moire?”
“Vialle. Do be seated. What have you got with you?”
“Something of Lord Random’s, milady. He’s taken to painting, making use of the set you sent us.”
Moire, stood, calmly taking the package from Vialle’s unsteady hands, beginning to unwrap it.
“The servants described the image to me, lady…”
And the woman trails off, and as Moire opens the painting she knows why. A man and a child stare back at her, the man laughing and the child solemn. The boy (Martin) makes her quirk a frown because that bastard and her daughter shouldn’t have been…
But the man. That’s interesting. He looks appealing. Powerful.
Loved. He looks loved. And Moire’s eyes narrow because the thought that comes is, of course, like Morganthe wasn’t.
“Go back to him, Vialle, and leave him to his painting, but don’t let him out of your presence. I hope you’ll be with child by summer.”
“Milady…”
Moire glances up, eyes narrowed, and Vialle swallows and pushes on.
“I am not sure I want to… push him like this. I respect Random and do not think he wants to be…”
“Go Vialle.”
And it’s more of an order than a wish, so Vialle bows politely and leaves.
Moire goes back to her work.
* * *
Nine months have passed, three quarters of the time, when Random runs.
It’s difficult, through water, a movement he’s not suited for nor used to and he doesn’t get far, but far enough to break into the study of the palace.
He begins searching the room frenetically, tossing aside papers, searching drawers and safes and fumbling with keys to open locks even as the guards rush by the window outside.
The poor steward, a kind enough man, who’d always had a smile for him, gets knocked unconscious as he stumbles upon the searching Amberite, and the body gets dragged to a corner before Random goes back to searching.
And there. There. A glint of embossed gold.
Yes.
The cards are a blessedly familiar weight to hold in his hands and he drops them in his haste. His hands shake as he begins to shift through the mesh of images, faces: friends, family, place, lover…
Lover. The Devil, held tight between his fingers and then with a horrible bursting hope and tears already starting in his eyes he reaches out to touch.
The paper is dead, lifeless beneath his fingers. Without warmth. Without magic.
There are moments of incomprehension, and maybe the complete confusion is better than the dull, gnawing horror that comes next.
Ramon had destroyed his card. In anger, in fury, in abandonment Ramon had destroyed his card. Two years, it had been, and why was he so surprised? He’d left him with an infant and a house on some empty world and not a word of explanation.
So Ramon had destroyed his card.
When the guards finally find him, he hasn’t moved, and when the handle of the sword descends on the back of his head the oblivion is welcomed.
* * *
It’s four weeks before Random stirs from his room again. Pale, ghostlike, clad in a nightshirt only he drifts through his apartments to the room where he knows his wife is sleeping.
The door closing behind him is the sound that wakes her.
The feeling of his lips against hers startles her into wrapping arms about her shoulders.
You may kiss the bride Random tells himself, bitterly, and does again, and again.
And then more.
Moire gets what she wanted.
Vialle begins to fall in love with a man who wishes it weren’t so.
Random staggers back to his room when it’s over, weeping silently.
* * *
When the year is over- and he isn’t allowed to go until then, Moire makes sure of it- Random makes his way to Amber, to Corwin, and launches himself furiously into politics with Vialle on his arm and a jaguar tooth that he hasn’t quite been able to throw away in his pocket.
She has been told, he overheard, to stay with him until she does fall pregnant. She tells him he loves her.
He says he does too, says it to everyone that asks. To Corwin, to Julian, to everyone, because it’s easier than explaining why he doesn’t, or that he doesn’t care in the slightest about her, Moire, or her fucking games. Fucking being the operative verb as well as adjective, one should note.
“Are you displeased with me, my lord?”
The interruption is again the soft, forcedly serene tones of his beloved wife.
“What now, Vialle?”
“With me, my lord?”
“What the fuck?”
She winced at the profanity, at the words, and sadness enters her face.”
“You have not had me in your bed for a month now.”
Oh, of course. Stud duty.
“I believe I gave you a vibrator for your last birthday, love?”
A pained expression crosses her face, because she has come to love him and doesn’t understand these fits of fury, spite, bitterness. Random knows it. He just can’t stop himself.
He’d fall in love with her too if he did.
“Make use of it.”
And Random of Amber extinguishes the cigarette had had come to smoke and strides off towards the lake, back down to the depths of his own peculiar hell, with or without his wife.
* * *
When the Unicorn turns its head towards Random, he sees the shock in Julian’s, in Vialle’s, in Moire’s eyes and has to smile for the first time in achingly long. It is almost painfully funny, to think that after all this it should be him to be given this.
And how little he wants it.
But it’s Amber. She needs a king, and if she’s chosen him then he won’t forsake her. The smooth stone of the castle is cool under the fingers he trails along the wall, walking the corridor, sheaf of papers in hand.
No matter how much it hurts, it’s good to be home, to be safe inside walls of stone and to be able to walk through the library and curl in a chair by the fire and for the first time in the four years it’s been, he doesn’t feel heart stoppingly lonely.
He still dreams about a thick accent and strong arms wrapped around him, but he doesn’t batter against the glass quite so fiercely any more.
Amber is something to live for. An end to the fights between siblings, the endless circles of trust and mistrust, of faked deaths and faked marriages and happiness and sadness.
He’d even smiled, even laughed at Fiona’s and Julian’s wedding. Told Julian teasingly that he should have worn a top hat and tailcoat. Told Fiona that she looked lovely in white. Born their looks of sympathy, as the only two who knew what he’d left behind in the bar where they’d gone and found each other.
After the wedding, Random had gotten very, very drunk on tequila, and fallen unconscious into bed, leaving Vialle to sigh with worry and take off his boots for him.
If it had been permissible for a lady of the courts to swear, then she would have.
* * *
Within a year of the wedding, Vialle had rushed to her husbands arm and informed him in joyful tones that they’re going to have a baby!
Random shrugs, and tells her he’s very happy, gives her a kiss on the cheek and tells her to go see Moire.
She doesn’t question his enthusiasm, just rushes off to inform her mistress with a blessed relief in her voice. Truthfully, Random’s glad it takes some time for her to get to Rebma and back, because her enthusiasm is too much for him and there are papers that need to be tended to.
The pregnancy isn’t an easy one, not for a slim hipped, frail girl who’s been blind since birth and never run nor fought nor used her body in any great way, and she announces that she’s staying in Rebma to take an air that always agrees with her.
The court- Benedict, Bleys, Caine, assume their king is suffering in the absence of his beloved wife, whom he makes such careful shows of loving. But whatever the reason, as the new child grows, grows, nearer birth every moment, Random stops eating, stops sleeping, and takes to pacing the castle and working late into the night.
Another Oberon are the words whispered in the halls.
Martin shakes his head furiously and tells them all they’re wrong and wonders to himself what happened to the father he knew and why Random hardly speaks to him.
Be that as it may thinks the King, this cannot be stopped.
* * *
Julian of Amber was probably the only person who knew Random’s love for his darling Vialle wasn’t quite what he kept everyone thinking it was.
Fiona would have too, of course, because Random had seen them together and the way her head would casually rest on her husbands shoulder and they’d pass whispered, solemn words to each other. This was a couple that didn’t keep secrets. Not from each other.
Nor Julian from his king, it seemed, as he strode without preamble into Random’s office. The shorter man glanced up, arms full of papers and smiles a greeting.
“Random, I have something to admit.”
Random, who had been about to smile a greeting, sets the papers back down on the table and sets his hands on his hips, with an ‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’ expression on his face.
“I’ve been to see the… Salazar.”
He cuts off the ‘human’ he’d about to snap out, in nature of what he’s about to tell him, and is immediately gratified that he did when Random turns abruptly and strides to the window. Too late, he’d already caught a glance of his face.
Seen that expression once too many times this week.
“In the bar. He was…”
“Get out, Julian.”
It’s not a king talking. It’s a tired little brother, who’s pressing his fingers to the glass of his window and staring into the courtyard below.
“…Random?”
“Get out, Julian, please.”
The silence hangs heavily in the air, as the elder brother shifts, uncertain.
“He was…”
“Oh for God’s sake!”
Random whirls on him, eyes pained, drawing himself up to his full, completely unimpressive height.
“You’ve got your fucking happily ever after. Get the hell out of here. Go back to Arden, go back to her. She’s waiting for you” and the anger begins slowly to drain out of him, living him slumped against the glass. “and you deserve each other.”
Julian hesitates, eyes narrowed, and Random sighs, running a hand through his hair and composing himself.
“It won’t be a problem. But… don’t tell anyone, yeah?”
Julian opens his mouth and before he can speak Random holds up a stalling hand.
“Fiona excluded.
Go on, Julian, go.”
So he does.
* * *
“A boy. Stillborn.”
The last word hangs in the air, and there’s a faint sound of a gasp from someone behind him, Deirdre, maybe, Random doesn’t know who.
“Stillborn” he echoes, trying to make sense of it, and the word echoes in the hall of the castle.
“Aye, your majesty.”
Random takes a deep, steadying breath, and falls back into his seat.
“And the mother?”
“Dead, your majesty.”
Dead. Dead.
The room is absolutely, utterly silent. The expressions of the princes and princesses range from saddened to sympathetic to strangely victorious but that’s only Fiona and one can never be sure what Fiona thinks, to purely stunned.
Dead.
A hoarse croak of a raven, taking flight off the window sill breaks the silence, causing the entire room to start. A glass falls to the floor and shatters, Deirdre gives a small shriek of fear, Julian knocks a goblet over with his elbow, Bleys’ hand leaps to his sword.
The king of Amber rises gracefully to his feet to walk to the window sill, and stand with his forehead pressed to the glass to watch the bird fly off into the distance.
He sheds one tear for the woman who loved him who trapped him.
It is over.
* * *
“Caine!”
“Here, Random.”
Random turns to glance over his shoulder, not breaking his stride, beckoning for the man to come closer, walk with him. His siblings are, despite the fact that he’s got shorter legs than most of them, having a good deal of trouble keeping up.
“Can you keep the papers straight for a while? I’m going to be gone for a while.”
The man’s eyes narrow, considering, but he nods.
“Good. Bleys?”
“Here.”
“Mount a perimeter guard as usual. I don’t want people knowing I’m gone.”
He turns, stopping abruptly, facing them and their range of similarly perplexed expressions.
“I am not dad. I just… need to do this. But I’ll take cards with me, reachable at any time, and I’ll expect reports at the end of every three days.”
Not a small amount of relief shows, and there are faint smiles when Random spins on his heel and starts walking again.
“Julian.”
“Random.”
“Get to Arden. We can’t risk anything going wrong, so look to your lady well while I’m away. And I don’t mean the blonde one. Fi?”
Julian falls back, with a bit of a smirk, and his wife steps forwards.
“Brother?”
“Can you bear to be apart from your husband a few months?”
A hush falls, and more than one man slows in surprise, including Fiona herself who comes to a stop. Random in turn pauses, glancing around levelly.
“Our father was a misogynist. I am not. Fiona has the castle. Obey her as you would me, or I will find out and you’ll have firecrackers under your beds for centuries.”
He turns again, waving them to stay back as he heads for the stairs, smiling to himself at the sound of Julian’s embarrassed laugh.
* * *
“Going so soon, your majesty?”
Random pauses, and then quickly finishes adjusting the pack onto the back of Jabberwock, before turning and glancing measuredly at the old man.
“Grandfather.”
Dworkin takes a few shuffling steps closer. The old man is madder than ever, and they all know it, but none of them have suggested he leaves the castle. He seems to belong to the place, in his own way.
“Don’t go, Random.”
His voice is piteous, really, and Random sighs, extending his arms to him long suffering, offering comfort. He never had the patience Fiona did.
“Not when I worked so hard to bring you here.”
Random stops cold, drops his arms again, and asks in a level voice;
“Explain yourself, please.”
It isn’t a request, and Dworkin doesn’t know better than to comply.
“Got you to Rebma. Severed the link of your silly little trumps. Stopped you going back there, think he didn’t love you. Got Amber a King. Amber needs a King. Amber needs You, more than some fucking little human does. Amber, Random, your home.”
Silence hangs heavily, and then the King of Amber raises his hand slowly and then…
…punches the Lord Dworkin hard in the jaw and sends the old man crashing backwards into the wall, before slinging his leg over the bike, gunning the motor and going.
Dworkin’s screams of fury, echo, raging pleas to stay for the Pattern! echo in Random’s ears.
But there are things that need setting right.
* * *
The door is a different colour than he remembered.
It shakes him up more than it should, but what he thought was brown is actually, as it turns out, dark blue and that discovery bring such a rush of exhausted, miserable anxiety that he freezes on the steps and stands there staring at the fucking thing for who knows how long.
On the inside of the door, through the faint, marbled glass he can see people- one person, the person moving about. And that scares him even more.
The sun begins to set and he can hear, as though from far away, a child laughing and then suddenly the door opens.
Ramon, who had been heading out for an evening walk and a cigarette, stops as though he’d seen a ghost, and the lighter falls from his hands.
“Lover.”
Random doesn’t realize he breathed the word like a prayer until it’s already fallen from his lips. It’s bliss to say it again.
Lover.
Ramon’s fist connects heavily with his jaw, knocking him backwards. The door shuts behind him and the Latino man stalks forwards, after the staggering Random, grabbing him by his arm and dragging him away from the house, down to the bank of the lake, past the disused airplane and out of earshot of the house.
It’s a wasted effort, as the first words he says to him are a furious, hissed;
“How fucking dare you come back here you piece of shit.”
Random can’t even protest, just stare at him blankly, mouth open.
“How dare you? It’s been fucking eighteen years since you left me sitting with your kid and now you’re back? You’ve got some nerve you little puta bastard.”
He looses Random’s arm with a shake that rocks his entire body, head rocking. He still can’t speak.
“You left. To fucking Amber. You have a nice time playing king? Julian told me all about it.”
The little, numb king holds up his hand in a gesture to please stop, please let me speak, please let me say what happened and Ramon’s eyes widen.
“You’re missing a finger.”
Random, quickly, forgets what he was going to say, tucking his hand behind his back.
“I know I am.” That much is obvious. So he adds “It got cut off” and curses himself because that isn’t really better.
“By what?”
“By me” says Random, closing his hands into fists behind his back, answering without thinking about it and adding quickly “I don't want to talk about it.”
Ramon runs an exasperated hand through his hair, then turns to face the lake.
“Can I come inside?” Random prompts gently, because the anxiety, fighting, nerves and the cold of a fall night on Haven already have him shaking, and he really hasn’t been well since the beginning of the pregnancy.
“I don’t know.” Ramon answers curtly, before leading him up to what used to be their home.
* * *
“You haven’t been eating” comes the accusation, as Random’s good hand curls around the coffee mug. A new one. He doesn’t recognize it either, and he’s not sure if that’s a blessing or not.
“I’ve been busy.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and Ramon slams his own mug down on the table with a little more force than is necessary.
“Too busy to---?”
“Of fuck no, babe.”
Not that, never that.
But Ramon’s eyes are still narrowed.
“Why didn’t you come?”
Random looks up at him, eyes unguarded, open as he knows how to be.
“Because the last time I tried I couldn’t. I… was… trapped. Locked up. I…” Here, he has to set the cup down, because his hands just won’t seem to stop shaking any more.
“I was being held. When I escaped it was only a few minutes and time enough to get to the trumps and I found yours and wanted to come to you but it wouldn’t. I thought you’d burned it, or torn it up, or anything to be rid of it.”
Ramon is staring at him now, with flat eyes and a scornful expression that makes him cringe.
“Dios Random, you sit there and lie to me now? I wish I had. I wish I had, and I tried to, but I’ve still got the fucking thing. Right under the paperclip you gave me when you told me you loved me.”
And it’s too much, too much, and even as he begins to explain the world start to spin around him.
“It was Dworkin. He wanted me in Amber and he cut the line I’d drawn so I’d think you didn’t want me back. It wasn’t…”
Ramon swears to himself as Random collapses off his seat, and then swears to himself again as his body reacts when he cradles the smaller man in his arms and lifts him onto a couch to lie until he wakes up from what looks like a much needed sleep.
Force of habit he tells himself sternly, then says it out loud to see if that makes it sound any more true.
* * *
“Papa!”
Random starts awake on the couch, and Ramon as well, in the armchair opposite, as the toddler throws his arms around his fathers shoulders.
“You missed my birthday papa! See, pai, I told you he would come back.”
Martin, Random decides, is impossibly young. And it’s true. The boy is four. Five at the most. And has his strong little arms wrapped tight around Random’s neck and the Amberite feels tears in his eyes already.
“Hey bug. I’m sorry I was gone. So sorry.”
He’s dreaming. Of course he is. But it doesn’t feel like it and he hopes to God he isn’t. He doesn’t want to be.
It’s decided, over the course of the next few minutes, that Martin should go into his room, get dressed, then have a morning bath while his parents (and Ramon uses the word and Random’s head spins all over again) discuss things.
He can’t keep his eyes off the door the boy closes behind him.
“You didn’t know, did you Random?”
It’s a bemused question, hollow, quiet, and he looks up at Ramon with a dazed expression on his face.
“You said eighteen years. Six for me. But he’s…”
“Dworkin came for him.”
Ramon’s voice is rough, low, and just as Random remembered it, but sadder.
“And took him from me too, a few months after you left. Returned him half a year ago. He said you’d needed him to.” It had, by the looks of things, hurt.
“I was set last night to tell you not to treat me like a babysitter. But you weren’t, were you?”
Random shakes his head, finding himself mute, and Ramon runs a tired hand through his hair.
“After he left, I knew you wouldn’t come for me.”
“But I did.”
“Maybe… why?”
That draws Random, who had been starting to sit upright on the couch, up short.
“Why did I come back?”
“Why all of a sudden. You weren’t locked up for six years. You’ve been king…”
“I was married.”
Martin rushes into the room as Ramon rushes out, and Random thinks it might have been better if he hadn’t seen the sudden tears that filled his lovers eyes before he went. But Martin, it seems, understands, and tells him very soon to go be with pai. They can have lunch together later, but he needs to be with pai now.
Go he does.
* * *
“Lover?”
Ramon scrubs at his eyes, turning away as Random enters their bedroom.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Lover. I will call you that, because even if you won’t call me that, that’s who you are to me.”
Ramon whirls on him, pulling up tall, furious, and hisses out.
“And what did you call her?”
Random cringes back, but closes the door after himself, because he isn’t leaving. Not yet. Not until Ramon understands.
“Vialle. Her name was Vialle. They imprisoned me in Rebma and wed me to her and kept me there and I cut off my ring finger because I awoke every morning with a band of gold and it was a game I couldn’t bear to play. Please, don’t look at me that way.”
Ramon, who doesn’t know what way he’s supposed to not be looking at him like, as Random has his eyes tight shut and can’t seem to open them.
“I didn’t want it. I didn’t. I didn’t…”
The choked mantra repeats, repeats, Random mumbling to himself as he sinks to his knees and hold out a hand, the scarred, mutilated one, to Ramon in one pleading gesture.
“Please. I love you.”
In their room their, Ramon Sanluin Salazar, Cartel Lord and Cath’dein, reaches out to take the hand of Random, King of Amber.
In a few minutes, composure is found and the little, worn out king rises to his feet and the two go downstairs to make pancakes for Martin, their son.
Their hands do not let go of each other for the rest of the day. Not for anything.
* * *
That night, Random asks Ramon quietly, in his ear over a chicken noodle soup dinner, if he’ll do him the honour of coming to bed with him, and the two share their first kiss in so, so long.
The sex isn’t spectacularly good. The both of them had been alone a little too long, a little too painfully. Touching each other… well, it almost burned the skin and stole Random’s breath a little too fast for him to do anything like last or perform any particular feats.
But at the same time, it was perfect. It was a coming home. An end to an interminable separation and by the end of it they were both sobbing for not-the-first-time except this time it was into each others skin.
“Never again” Random mumbles, wiping his eyes on the corner of the pillow and hauling Ramon closer.
“Si. Si. Oh Christ baby.”
The words sound foreign to both of them and Random bursts into another fit of sobs and hangs on for all he’s worth.
When that fit of tears has calmed, when Random’s back to simply letting himself be held for the first time in years, with his head on Ramon’s chest and fingers twined through his hair, then he speaks again.
“Come back to Amber with me.”
Ramon’s hand strokes through his hair, contemplatively.
“I can’t, Random.”
The bottom drops out from Random’s world, and he stares up at him with a misery and horror that he thought had been chased away. Which is now kissed away, while Ramon explains, reasonably, with a soothing hush to his voice.
“We’ve our little filho to look after, remember? I’m still working with Arithon. Life went on.”
Bittersweet reminders, all of them, and Random sets his head back on Ramon’s chest with a low, soft sigh.
“But” Ramon continues, tilting his face up for a kiss, because there won’t ever be too many of those “we still have Haven. And you still have your trumps, and you have a dozen siblings ready to help you and we’ll be able to do it.”
Random smiles, weakly, into Ramon’s skin.
“You’re wiser than I am, now.”
And as Ramon sighs, he feels it, reverberating in a chest just as broad and comfortable as ever.
“I’m a little older.”
They both are, maybe, and the silence is, for half a second, awkward.
Then Random asks, very much himself, “Do I need to invest in Viagra, then?”
And Ramon snorts, and rolls him over, and pins his wrists above his head and proceeds to show him the physical equivalent of an enthusiastic ‘Like HELL you do…’
All, Random thinks, may not be entirely well in the world, but it’s getting there. It’s going to be.
They’re together again.
That night, Random falls asleep with his head resting on Ramon’s chest so for the first time in six, eighteen, infinity years neither of them have any nightmares.
* * *
“Ramon?”
Gentle hands push at his shoulders, waking him up and pushing something cloth into his hands.
“…mmmmph”
Random laughs, wrapping the bathrobe around himself, and pushes Ramon’s hair out of his face.
“Put the pajamas on, lover, we’re getting a visitor.”
“…kay.”
It’s Random’s second morning back, and things aren’t perfect, and Ramon doesn’t know why the hell he wants him to put pajamas on but is too tired to really question it. The next minute the question is answered.
With the speed of some sort of ballistic missile, Martin bounds into the room and onto the bed, pouncing on Ramon who makes an ‘oof’ sound and wraps his arms around the boy.
“What’s this?”
Martin giggles, and squirms out of Ramon’s arms, hyper as anything because his papa is back and that’s worth celebrating.
“Papa made waffles and has strawberries and coffee and he said I could have some!”
Which is, to a five year old who loves his parents, very cool.
“Stop squirming, filho.”
Ramon pulls him down, making him sit still as Random loads waffles onto a plate and hands them to his son, and then coffee to his lover, who smiles gratefully.
“This is a treat.”
Random, at Martin’s stern orders, pours half a teaspoon of coffee into a cup and then adds a teaspoon of sugar and fills the rest up with milk. Martin, needless to say, likes the drink and says so loudly, ignoring the fact that it’s rather a different colour than the stuff Ramon’s drinking.
“It’s going to be a Thursday morning tradition. We need something to brighten up Thursdays.”
Random reaches out to casually ruffle Martin’s hair, before pouring syrup over his waffles, and then setting up a plate to offer to Ramon.
“Now squish over and let me into bed.”
They do, of course, and it’s so nice, Random thinks, to feel a familiar foot brushing his and a familiar hand reaching for his, over the squirming five year old between them.
“Random, you need to eat something too.”
Ramon’s voice is as stern as it can be, when fuzzy with sleep and so overwhelmingly happy. He hesitates, for a moment, but takes a waffle with a smile. Didn’t realize how much he’d missed having someone to remind him.
* * *
Ramon sleeping is a beautiful thing.
No matter what pride, vanity, attitudes the might adopt during the day, he was unquestionably beautiful. Or so Random thought to himself, trailing his fingers down gently shifting skin.
“You can’t hear me” Random whispers softly, leaning down so that his lips may press against the soft skin of his throat.
After a moment, he pulls back, and turns back to his quiet examination of Ramon’s body. It’s a little different than he remembers, a little leaner, a little more scarred. A suitable mirror for the inside, he supposes.
“But that doesn’t matter, lover. Got some things to tell you;”
He leans in, tucking himself next to him and tentatively sliding one arm around his waist. Trim waist, muscled waist, and the proximity sends a flash of arousal through Random, making the next words more of a sound whispered.
“I’ve been a little scared, living here with you. A little scared, a little hurt, because you’re you and you have this stupid habit of picking at scabs, you know?”
Ramon’s legs shift on the sheets, kicking a foot tangled in them, trying to shake them loose. An unhappy, rude line slices along the upper part of his thigh, and Random’s fingers unconsciously drift to it, letting his fingers trail along the line.
“But mostly just afraid that you wouldn’t take me back. You did, at first, you know, not really let me in. I don’t blame you.”
He doesn’t, either, not in the slightest. His fingers circle up, trailing over Ramon’s hip and then resting his palm on the sensitive skin of his abdomen.
“Because I was thinking about it, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who is hurt as badly as you are. Of all of this, I wish the most that I hadn’t added to that pain.”
That, he thought, was the worse of it. Every part brought pain or humiliation of one sort or another, but Random’s suffering had been small in comparison to the pain that was Ramon’s.
“I was scared you were too twisted up by me to ever hold me again.”
That had hurt the most. The thought that he had destroyed this most beautiful thing. His hand traces up his ribs as though thank God, Ramon’s still here and he does hold him. Every night.
“You know what I found out, though?”
Arms wrap around him, and a soft voice with an accent that is still fucking sexy.
“What did you find out, amarente? Tell me.”
Random smiles, and answers quietly;
“You’re stronger than I am.”
There are tears in his eyes, but that’s alright, because Ramon’s there to kiss them away and hold him tight against his chest.
The both of them, Ramon tells him, are only as strong as each other.
Random smiles.
It’s true.
* * *
The King of Amber rode into the courtyard.
Except it’s Random. So it is riding, but it’s on a motorbike and he laughs as he drives pulls to a screeching halt and climbs off, before shouting at the top of his lung “I’m BACK!”
The reaction isn’t quite immediate, but it’s gratifying enough. No one else could make the Lord Bleys break into something quite so close to an undignified run, after all. But run he does, and with Caine hard on his heels.
“Random, thank God, the situation with the…”
Ramon Salazar’s first actions in finding himself face to face with the impressive countenance of the second tallest Prince of Amber are not precisely sensible, but certainly impressive.
Instead of bowing, he grins and offers up a hand to shake.
Bleys is just startled enough to take it, before turning to his brother with an expression that reads rather nicely as ‘urk?’ while Caine, who is rather more composed, as a rule moves to take the bags off the back of the motorcycle. Astonishing how little attention one pays to a man with something to do.
“Random, you’ve brought a guest?”
This new voice is female. Flora’s. Fluting and sweet, and cut off by Gerard’s deep tones.
“Do introduce us?”
So, the king of Amber slides an affectionate arm around his lovers waist, in a demonstration of open care that they’d all forgotten the man was prone to, along with one of his brighter, younger smiles.
“May I present to you all Ramon Salazar. Recently of Earth come Athera, and now an immortal. Probably outlive not a few of us, so don’t get smart. My partner in all things and semi-permanent resident of Amber.”
Reactions range from disbelief to amusement to annoyance to pleasure. Random, still smiling, lets the silence sit, waiting to see who’ll be first to speak, first to question. Not Julian, his eyes are still reserved when he looks at the human. Not Fiona, she enjoys watching too much. Bleys, perhaps Gerard…
It comes in a form and from a quarter no one expected. Pounding footsteps on the cobblestones sound out sharply and someone elbows their way through the little crowd with imperious demands of ‘let me through’ and not a little swearing and then the Crown Prince of Amber is there.
“Dad, you’re…. Pai!”
When Martin of Amber, notoriously reserved when it comes to such things, flings his arms about the shoulders of a visitor and clutches him close with a happy laugh, his aunts and uncles decide to take it as a sign to give the human the benefit of the doubt.
Ramon and Martin exchange happy words in Spanish, and with a quick glance at his father Martin leads him off to show him around the castle and all things they’ll consider interesting, leaving Random standing with his family.
“Now you know. Get used to him, he’s not going anywhere any time soon.”
That’s all Random says, before wiping his hands on his jeans and turning to Bleys.
“Now. What did you say about the situation?”
StillWater
Date: 2006-07-04 02:13 am (UTC)http://www.lipink.com/lipstick_wax_s/6510.htm&Click=33586