[LOG] Up Yours, Mereavus

Roselyn Valenti laughed quietly at the mentioning of her husband. "Seems that you and I'll both be doing a lot of babysitting for one Drysllthen Valenti. You'll babysit him on all of his compaigns and political endeavors, and I'll sit in the background and assure him that he's always doing things flawlessly, that he's a good king, and that I'll always be there to comfort him when he comes home. Regardless of how many women I know he's having while he's away." She shook her head. Really, it was a delicate balance not to throw everything back in his face when he got the slightest bit intolerable. Which, lately, happened to be more and more. "No, I'm not feeling too well. I'm sure it'll pass, in time." Yes. Nine months, or thereabouts. "Not to touch intentionally on a sore subject - I'm not going to preach to you, William, I know Mother does more than enough of that. But I'm slightly amused at how many potential wives you seem to have." She grinned, and the tone of jest in her voice was obvious. "Nharati's most eligible bachelor, are you?"

William Alexston groaned at the mention of the 'w' word. Just when he thought everyone had forgotten about it. "I wouldn't know," he answered relatively shortly. He'd not seen the list, he didn't know who was on it apart from Ysdale, and neither did he have any intention of knowing until he really had to. "I'd really rather not talk about it." He filled the kettle and slotted it into the fire, having heard quite enough jokes about this impending doom of his. His little fling with Cordelia was now potentially much more, and it displeased him. He didn't have any desire to get latched onto by some woman who required half his money, a house and all of this attention business. He already had several women who lorded it over him - another was not his idea of a William Alexston party. Several women on his lap, yes. Telling him what to do, no.


Roselyn Valenti shrugged her shoulder lightly. "Then we won't talk about it. I have heard some news that you may be interested in, though, William." Her expression turned immediately from collected to regretful, the moment those words spilled from her lips. Speaking of it outloud for the first time brought into stark reality that she truly didn't want to talk about this either. But it had to be done. More than likely, he'd find out eventually anyway. And hearing it from someone he knew cared about him would surely be better than some ball-and-chain wife that had only been around for a few months, and happened to have a temper tantrum. "It's about Merripen..." The sheer drop in the volume of her voice practically screamed of the fact that this was not one of those high-and-mighty moments of smearing Merripen that Roselyn had had in the past.


William Alexston arched a brow in 'that Alexston way' and peered off to one side to see whether the water was boiling yet or not. When it wasn't, he plucked a teacup off the china that had been so precisely arranged by said Van Gatt girl. "Oh?" he answered - whatever the tone, he didn't seem to catch it. In fact, the name actually appeared to make him smile. "She has a new dress," he told her, like she'd actually give a flip about it. "In that sort of warlocky purple reddish colour, whatever you call it. She looks like a proper lady in it." And didn't he sound like the happy little camper announcing that. He found the tea leaves and the strainer, setting them overtop the cup as he went back to the fireplace to get the kettle to begin the process of properly making the drink. Yes. How little time that dress had stayed on.


Roselyn Valenti's heart sank. Damn it all, why couldn't anything be easy these days? And not just for her, either - but William as well. After all, Roselyn may have been having a difficult time with the words, but it was her brother that those words would inevitably impact the most. "That's wonderful, William." And for a moment, it was as though she forgot entirely who she was talking about. It was so seldom that they spoke about Merripen at all, that Roselyn found it relatively easy to forget the depth of William's feelings for her. "Will... She's..." She swallowed hard, and turned her eyes toward the fireplace. Whatever grace that their mother had instilled into her seemed lost. "There have been others while you've been away. I only just found out. I know I've never cared for Merripen, but I don't want to know this. I don't want it to be like this."


William Alexston actually let out a short bark of a laugh when she announced that piece of information - it sounded far too ridiculous to even be true. Entirely impossible, Merripen loved him. "And which gossip corner of the court did you hear that from?" he asked, placing the teacup down in front of her and going to sit in his chair, hands interlacing over his stomach as he got comfortable. Really, ladies would talk about anything these days, he was vaguely surprised something like this hadn't happened before. Apparently he was quite certain that it was just gossip, by the still-amused, good natured expression on his face. Not after everything she'd said not yesterday, it just wasn't feasible. Even if she hadn't loved him, she wouldn't dare. Would she?

Roselyn Valenti's appearance only became further wilted. "That's just it, Will. I didn't want you to hear it via some hallway gossip. The words came from Merripen's mouth. Mother spoke with her." No smug grin touched her lips. There was no pride in what she was talking about, only the raw emotion of a sister spilling a dirty little secret to her brother that could very likely hurt him. "I don't know who they are, Will." She tried to phrase her words, and keep her tone as delicate as possible. And when she looked to him, her eyes harbored little uncertainty on the matter. Mother would never lie to her children. And if she ever did, it certainly wouldn't be about something so important, so paramount. "But it's not fair for you to go on thinking that things aren't what they seem." The more she thought about it, later on, the angrier she'd get. How dare that little brat, lead William on. How dare she hover around him like some faithful little lover, and turn on him when he left.

William Alexston's expression changed so slowly that it was entirely possible she could read every thought going through his head. 'What bullshit' soon turned to the amused expression pendulously dropping from his face to be replaced with something far more serious. Out of her own mouth? To his mother? Mother didn't lie. It was part of her cruelty. She didn't lie. And Roselyn didn't lie, either. Not to him. He stared at that expression of hers for a very long series of moments, hunting for something that might suggest she was about to laugh any moment, or smirk maliciously, or something that might suggest she was conjuring it out of some moment of twisted humour. When he found nothing, he didn't stop looking at her. "Ros..." he began. "If this is some sort of wedge you and mother have put together to get rid of her, you had better say so right this minute."


Roselyn Valenti watched that painful transformation and swallowed hard. The instant he began speaking, she shook her head. "No, Will," she said quietly, brows furrowing. She stood to approach him, and placed a gentle hand on his forearm. Nothing too invasive, in the event that he would snatch away from her. She was there. She was always there. "We wouldn't do that to you. Neither of us think highly of her, I understand that you're aware of that. But we wouldn't lie over it. I wouldn't lie." Thanks to emotions that seemed to be running rampant through the unknowingly-pregnant woman that stood before him, her own eyes grew just slightly misty at all of it. It was all of the emotion that managed to escape past her tightened grasp on composure, and other such things.

William Alexston's jaw set itself. It was a peculiar thing. The lower half of his face seemed to be furious - repeatedly moving muscles at the side of 'the jaw', and tight lips. But there was one thing Will had never learned so well as his sister, and that was making his eyes lie. As the realisation that it was truth sunk in, something flickered in them. A very brief moment that was essentially the condensed form of Hiroshima. That moment of undeniable anguish remained present for only five seconds or so, and then vanished. Along with every other expression that had ever touched them previously. They didn't move when she touched his forearm. In fact, they remained frozen in a moment of comprehension that seemed to have blasted a sizeable chunk out of his person. Eventually, he simply said in a very dead sounding voice, "I think I'd like to be alone now."

Roselyn Valenti's fingers briefly squeezed his arm. "Yes, Will. Of course," she murmured softly, her own voice full of a rather peculiar mixture of dread and understanding. Short, well-placed steps carried her toward the door that, when she reached it, acted as the curtain for the stage she was about to step out onto. She touched the corners of her eyes to ensure that there were no hints of tears, she drew a deep breath, leveled her shoulders, and turned toward him one last time. She looked like the Roselyn Valenti everyone expected to see. "You know you can always send for me." It was a statement of understanding. She'd not come to him about this again. If Will needed her, she'd be there. But until then, she'd speak no further of it. In a moment's time, she was through that door and down the hall to seek out that wonderful husband of hers. More babysitting, no doubt.

Merripen was wearing that gown, the heavy fabric swishing about her ankles as she walked, soft, doe skin slippers whispering against the floor. Yes, off to William's chambers. She had a bounce in her step as she approached the door, arms full of clean sheets. For sure, they'd need new again tommoro as well. She toed the door open with a crooked, crooked, grin which only widend when she saw the outline of his figure in the firelight. "Oi, Will, I've got clean sheets and some of thoes hard candies their making for the-...." Her voice trailed off. Why was he so....still? "Is everything alright?"


William Alexston had been sat there for an hour. He'd only moved to pick up Roselyn's teacup, and crush it between his hands. As a result, he presently had pieces of china stuck in his palms, and the tea had burned him. He didn't appear to have noticed. "I've been sat here for an hour wanting to vomit," he answered, his voice particularly monochrome and lifeless. "Thinking about another man's hands on you. And then it went further, and I pictured not just his hands, but his lips. And that look you get on your face right before you finish. And then it turned into more than one man, and I was pretty sure that my guts were just going to come right up out of my throat." He stopped there, and turned those particularly dead, unfeeling eyes onto her. "And it would never have concerned me. Only now, it does. Because it has existed, hasn't it?"


Merripen froze, in the snare of thoes lifeless, black eyes. Like a shark. Unfeeling as the teacup made an innocent popping sound in his hands, tea, blood. the sheets slipped from her arms, her face draining of all color. She'd told him. She'd told him and Meravus never lied. She tasted the bitter bile rising, green eyes bleeding a near yellow. Like an animal, a cornerd, animal. Her knees felt weak, her mouth dry. She'd told him and now, he knew and now....Now she'd lost him forever. She would have screamed, if not for the cold feeling spreading through her belly, gripping her spine like thoes frozen roots of the forest dream. Nightmare. She just sort of stared, frozen, ashen. "Will...." Was all that came out, a bare whisper, anguish. Utter, anguish.


William Alexston's eyes turned to his hands, and he very coolly began to pick each piece of the broken teacup out of his hands. He left it a moment, until each reddened white piece was on the table, turning the parchment and numbers he'd been working on into a map of pale yellow and crimson. "Answer me," he told her, his tone still entirely lacking in absolutely anything whatsoever. If he heard the anguish in her voice, he didn't react to it. Usually, her lower lip so much as threatened to tremble and he'd quite gladly be on his knees doing whatever he had to do to make it better. But not today. Today, she would get on her knees and do whatever she had to do to make it better. He tugged a kerchief out of his sleeve and began wiping his hands in an unnerving representation of precisely what his mother had looked like when she'd cleaned her claws of Violet's blood.


Merripen wanted to go to him. She hated his pain. She hated the emptyness....and most of all, she hated Mereavus. Right now, she hated Mereavus. No tears came, not yet. Just a strange sort of agony which squeezed her insides like a hangman's noose. Eventually, the words came, strangled. "There....were others...." Peice by peice, fine china gleaming pink, red. "It was....it was a long time ago...." Not long enough, and they bolth knew it. "I...I never tol-told anyone but Ma....Not untill Au-Mereavus."


William Alexston nodded slowly, placing down the piece of flimsy cloth on the table. There transpired another moment of silence, and then something that was absolutely not silence, as the table broke into fragments after flying across the room and breaking itself all to pieces on the wall. Angry, yes, he was angry. She'd wasted years. Led him on for years. He stood in front of the chair, resisting the urge to destroy that along with the table, her, each of those men and the rest of Nharati. If rage was a literal fire, the entire continent would be charred into ash by now. As it stood, his immolation was internal. The ashes were internal. "How many?" he demanded, apparently unable to look at her. No, if he looked at her, he'd kill her, he was quite sure of it.

Merripen jumped as the table all but tore itself appart. Yes, such was the way of William's strength, his....rage. She'd never seen him like this. Not in their shared, twenty some odd years. For once, her chin fell and the usual, graceful, pride which she held herself, deteriorated like paper flowers in water. "...Four," She whisperd. It felt like the glass he'd pulled from his hand, so carelessly, was being pulled out of her chest. "One....when I was...sixteen....the other three when...when I was ninteen and....twenty," She was only twenty four. She'd never felt guilt, she'd never thought for a minute that it matterd with the dozens of women William bedded and left. "....I...I wanted to know Will....what it was like," And it didn't make it, for an instant, right. "I...I wanted to know why you did it," The words, felt like metal slag in her mouth.


William Alexston did look at her, at that particular moment, and his face was very much akin to the last look an animal would give a hunter before it bled out onto the forest floor. Four. And not grouped together. Spread out. Not a few mistakes. He turned and sat back down in the chair. "And you liked it," he realised, with a huffing sort of exhale that suggested the rage was subsiding into his own anguish. That was perhaps the worst part. "You've never asked me to stop," he said, brow furrowed in a vaguely perplexed frown that seemed to be some sort of internal hunt for logic. "You've always said that provided I came back to you, it didn't matter. And I always have. It hasn't mattered if you hated me or you made my life Hell or whether other people slandered you from here to Pith, I still came back to you. I did as you asked. I have never hidden anything from you. I have never covered it up, I have never led you on, I have never lied to you. You have always had the opportunity to leave me. You have always known what, exactly, you were letting yourself in for. You have always had the facts at your hands to use as you would, I have never made things prettier with untruths and hiding things for the sake of keeping you. I have always loved you enough to not deceive you. I've sat and looked at the expression on your face when you tell me that war is taking me away from you, that little pieces of me are vanishing, that it hurts you. I have struggled with myself for you. I have tried so, so hard just to keep pieces of myself that make me utterly miserable just to ensure that look doesn't come onto your face. I pushed you so deep into my soul that the little pieces and the pain and the loss of what I was didn't matter. It didn't matter if it hurt because I thought you loved me anyway. It didn't matter if I suffered for the rest of my life, provided that look didn't have to appear on your face again. And now I find out how untrue it all is. How you've lied, and led me on, and kept the facts from me, and not let me have my own, clear cut decision to stay with you. You have duped me into staying with you. You have buried yourself within me and you have disproven everything you've ever said about hating to see these little pieces vanishing by blowing out the biggest part of me imaginable. And I'm sat here telling myself that I can't possibly love you anymore, that this giant piece of me you had is dead. But it just won't go. Your claws were into me ten years ago and now regardless of what they do to me, I can't dislodge them."


Merripen felt the tears, hot against her cold cheeks. She felt the shivvering rise up inside her on a wave of frozen agony which prickled the hairs at her neck. She was disolving. He was pulling her appart with every syllable, every, cold, dead, noise from his lips falling like cold water in a cold pan in a still, cold room. Mingeling, twisting into a horriable storm in her head. No words came. Not for a very long, long time, and when they did, they were a soft, choked sound. "I...never meant to hurt you..." But she had. She hadn't even realized it would, but it had. It was the first and only time, she ever felt like dieing. It was the first time she'd felt like he'd been toren away from her. It was the first time she'd ever, truly, hurt him. Her knees went, landing hard on the marble floor, the scatterd sheets. "I never meant to lie to you....I...I thought you knew....I...." It was the wrong words and she knew it, dully, somewhere. "....I love you...Will....I love you....I've loved you since I can rember.....I've never loved anybody but you.....When you left.....I wanted to know....I shouldn't have done it....I never thought.....thought it'd hurt you.." It was all coming up now, the word vomit. The great, heaving, half sobbed, waves of word vomit. He was gone. The last peice of William Alexton, was gone and she'd been the one to kill it. "I never wanted to hurt you....I never....I never meant to lie," Because lies hurt, though, she'd never thought, the truth, was a much sharper dagger and Mereavus, had skillfully, plunged it through he back, and into her own son's chest.

William Alexston was silent for a long time himself. He wasn't sure where he went in those very quiet minutes. He could vaguely hear her sobbing. The occasional word echoed through his mind. A period of disbelief, really, since yesterday he seemed to have everything and today, absolutely nothing. The only thing that withstood it all was the part of him that refused, utterly, to surrender. William Alexston did not simply give in. He fought, that was what he did, that was what he was best at. It was what came innately now. He released a very long, quivering breath and leaned his face into his torn up hands. "I can't leave you," he stated, in a voice that sounded half broken, and half sure. William Alexston did not lose, he did not falter, he did not capitulate. William Alexston did not simply give in.


Merripen shook, down, on the floor. She hadn't cried like this since...ever really. The words became sobs, great, messy, heaving sobs which racked her entire body. The noise tore out of her, broke her. In the midst of chaos, she realized, for the first time, that there couldn't be a tommoro. She couldn't keep him. She couldn't even begin to have any peice of him at all. She'd held on to this, she'd not told him, she'd not told anyone, save for the two people she trusted more than anyone else besides William. She'd done it for her own, selfish, purpous and she'd destroied him. It just waited, like a poisoned needle at the bottom of a box. Lieing patiently to be plucked. She hated Mereavus, but most of all, she hated herself. He couldn't leave, because she couldn't let him leave. She crawled to him, hands and knees across the carpet like a dog. Choking, heaving, ghasping, sobbing. Tears, snot, spit, she crawled to him, and buried her face in his knee. "No," She choked, "No, no, no, no," Each, horriable, wet, breath it came out.

William Alexston pushed the chair back when she crawled to him, hands moving to take her shoulders - not in anger, not in aggression, and not with any intention of hurting her. Those were the same hands that had picked her up off the floor when she'd fallen from her vision of Sorynn's death. He joined her on the floor, as he always would. If she fell, he fell. "Look at me," he murmured. "And listen to me." He moved one hand temporarily, to hunt in his pocket for the one thing he kept on his person at all times purely because he knew she'd eventually go through every last bit of this room and find it if he didn't. And he hadn't wanted her to find it. A large velvet box, as it happened, perfectly square. He looked around and picked up the kerchief from the floor, and set to carefully wiping her face. "I haven't come through Hell with you to fall at some early finish line. It has never been my intention. It isn't my intention now. Do you not see, Penny, that it doesn't matter what I do and don't have. I love you. I love you so much that I actually don't think I'd live all that long without you, as cliche as that is. Next week is supposed to be our tenth anniversary, and I intended to give this to you then." He opened the box, and produced two rings out of it - not engagement rings, not wedding rings, but something else entirely. They fit together. One for him, and one for her, nothing more than a simple gold band with an engraved 'M' or 'W', it could be misconstrued as either. "And I intended to say to you what I'm about to say to you now. I know laws and the church and every little thing are against us. We can't get married in the old fashioned sense. But I'm nothing if I don't have you. Because none of it means anything to me. So, I had these made. I had these made in the hope that you would wear one of them, and I would wear one of them, and that transcending the law, transcending the rules, transcending God, that we'd be married in a far more proper, far less shallow, eternal way that didn't need approval, or a piece of paper, or the permission of every reprobate fool out there. And I know it's not the grand gesture of what people conceive as real. But it means far more to me, you mean far more to me, than the rotten world we're in and the rotten people in it and the rotten things that have happened to us. So, I want to know, Penny - will you stay with me, will you see this out to the end, will you hang on to me for dear life the same way I do you, will you marry me not in the eyes of God, but in our eyes, the eyes that really matter?"


Merripen still, found comfort in thoes hands. She always had, no matter what. He was part of her. He always had been, something she treasured beond all else. She couldn't let him go. She fell against him, there on the floor in the copper smell of his blood. She did, look at him, her face wet, swolen and blochy, her breath still catching, ragged, beaten, in her throat. Her hands grasped slow, sweaty, handfulls of his shirt front, as if she could somehow, bury herself entirely inside him and never emmerge again. The box. Why a box? Her mind refused to process it. The words came again, breaking the near animal noises in the room. Had it truly been twelve years? More than twelve she loved him. Twelve she'd been in his bed, attatched to his hip. Twelve years she'd been punching chamber maids and dancing trollops. The rings. She bit her knuckle and fought the hystatical sort of smile which took over. Puzzle rings. Like her father's. She was still crying, but it had a different eadge as she wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him for all she was worth. To be married to Will, perhaps not in some stuffy church by some wizend old priest who thought he knew everything...It wasn't what he mother wanted, it wasn't what her brothers or her father wanted. It was what Will wanted, what she wanted. "Yes," She breathed, "I'll marry you," Yes, she was smiling now, black hair rumpled in her swolen face, new dress bloodied and wrinkled. It wasn't flowers or ribbons or lace, but it didn't matter. Nothing matterd except for the fact that he, had some how, forgiven her enough to offer her his hand. Not as a lover, or as simply a friend or a lord, but as a partner. Someone to walk the rest of this godforsaken path with untill they died. "Right goddamn here and now," She choked, "I will never let you go."