reignfall | 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔫.

𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔫.

In spite of all her terrible fears, it really does seem as though it was naught but the common fever, which had struck her young son. Joffrey Zarek had never known a day's suffering, however, not a lack of rest nor a hint of true hunger, and though he is but few turns away from his third nameday, encroaching upon them in the second month of the year, the disease passed by him quickly. It is the fourth day now, and his appetite was ferocious when she had broken her fast with him on honeyed bread and fruit, he was eagerly chasing a cat he had spotted right thereafter, and only during their walk in the open air did any sort of fatigue catch him. Awake he remained for the waterfalls and his spotting of a large bird of prey, though he was solidly asleep in her arms soon enough on their way back. Before she set him down in his bed, she felt his forehead for the umpteenth time, but it is as the healer had assured her: he is well once more, even the cough is gone.

Relieved, she leaves the boy to his afternoon nap, and goes again to find her husband. Gone had he been in the earliest hours of morning, as was his usual way, though it is strange that he not even been present to ignore her request to join her and their son for their morning meal, nor has she seen hide nor hair of him since.

She finds him in his study, in the end, and it does not take more than a look for her to know what has befallen him. There is a glaze to his otherwise so sharp eyes, a pallor to his skin, dark rings beneath his eyes. The lips dry and cracked, his breath the lightest rasp. "My emperor." She inclines her head, though she is trying fast to suppress a hint of mirth. "If you would excuse me for another moment?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The truth is that an assassination always feels likely to him - which is, of course, why it is as unlikely as it is. Why he supervises the trading of spices with an eagle eye, why he is so careful to keep his food and drink secure, and even why he chooses a drink which, being boiled, is that little bit harder to poison.

But it is hard, not impossible. Never impossible.

He nods again, grimly reluctant, and takes a moment more to steady himself, to resolve the smeared and unfocused room into a single image, before he moves to offer her his arm. "Honey will do him good, as well. It can help to fight infection." He himself will not take it. Honey is a good and healthful thing, but it is also far too easy to adulterate.

His unsteadiness will be noticeable when she takes his arm, as will the fever still baking from him. The dizziness has not passed as quickly as he had hoped; he still feels light-headed and out-of-sorts, and under his heavy furs, he can feel how the sweat runs more readily than ever.

Most, she reckons, would not notice how much the illness slows him down. It is only there in glimpses, momentary things, and the untrained eye (or a cheaper sellsword) might pass them by entirely. Even some who know him day in and out might not at once be struck. Good. Better than she is forced to fear.

Now he is too close for her to safely point out his unsteadiness, and the urge to comment on it subsides in the face of the heat that he radiates. The fever is high, this is no light brush with a raised temperature. Tonight, she resolves, she will sleep either in her son's room, or find a way to be almost comfortable in some chair he keeps in their bedroom here – fever dreams are naught to be laughed at in a man or woman not driven by reasonable concerns over their safety, but she does not wish to find out the knife-pointed way what his mind concocts for him to wake to.

She begins to walk in the meandering way expected of a lady, shutting the door firmly behind them and then guiding him down the dreaded stairwell. At least, he kept his furs on: he will sweat beneath them, and the sweat will drive out some of the sickness. "It helps him complain less of the sage, too. It is an awful taste, I hated it as a girl." And she is not much one for it today, either – but what is there to do but to taste even the most repulsive of medicines?

The focus, then, is on their way to the gardens, and there is no haste to be found in – she does not wish to rush him in his state, and like this, they look like they are taking any ordinary walk. The gardens, however, are another thing, and she regards him carefully out here, now that the cold might tempt him to unfurl his cloak and only grant more force to the illness. "I shall gather the sage."

She doubts he will permit her to do so without due supervision.

If he is a little unsteady on his feet, if he must put out his free hand once or twice to catch himself against the wall of the stairwell, then he trusts that his thunderous expression is hint enough to her not to mention it. He is aware. Damn him, but he is aware.

The cold air outside hits him like a hammer-blow, and it is at once refreshing and dizzying; he can feel his head spinning, his vision swimming anew as the cool mountain breeze sweeps against his sweat-sheened face. He does not cling to her arm, and there is no more of his weight on her than is proper, and if she thinks otherwise, then that must be her mistake. He pulls his coat closer about himself, grimacing.

"Good," he allows, after a moment. Yes. She will gather the sage, and he will watch her like a hawk, and there is no weakness in that; what is the point of having a wife, if she does not sometimes do the smaller tasks? And he must confess, if only in the privacy of his own mind, that if he bends down to pick herbs, he may not be able to get back up without losing his balance entirely.

A task most easily done with a knife, she knows, and she does carry a small one at all times these days, as he well knows. Yet he had leaned on her like he had never done before, not even that time she had caught him in the depth of sleep (for just a twist of a moment, before he has once again awakened, and she had pretended as though she had noticed nothing different). He is ill, and illness can make a man more paranoid than ever before, and she will not be the one to draw a knife now, no matter how innocent its purpose.

How helpful, even. This is a servant's task; she need not perform it. Yet if she sent a servant to do the same, he might not trust the green-white leaves, and by all the gods, this is the sole bit of relief to his sickness he has agreed to take. And so she kneels, as she has done plenty of times before him – only now she does so by the sage plants, careful to choose a spot that permits him his most careful watch. The sprigs can be twisted off, and she gathers them amply – she means for him to have several cups over the day, and for her son to have another one, and she will likely be forced to suffer one in turn.

At the very least, he is taking the mountain air while she works. At last, she seems satisfied, and stands. To entrust him to carry a thing safely home now seems mad, and so she produces a pocket of cloth of her own – empty it is, he can see it well, until she fills it with sage. "I will gather fresh leaves once more in the morrow." Her arms slips into his again, though she does not rush to move – he may be unsteady, after all, and he may need the moment's warning. "This is rare for you." It isn't quite a question, is it?

Despite himself, and despite his annoyance at the fact, he appreciates the care she takes to prove her innocence. He resents, of course, that she feels the need to - that she continues to patronise him this way, to act such a mummery of care - and there is an element of suspicion in just how careful she is to be unthreatening, as though she might be building her own alibi. But at the same time, she is wiser than that, he thinks. She knows, still, that her safety is contingent on his. He does not trust her, by any means - but, at the very least, she is obliged to be careful if she should try to sicken him. (It has occurred to him, of course, that for him to be sick is ideal for her; to watch him suffer, and yet not lose his protection by killing him. But she is more ambitious than that, and he wins them nothing when he is ailing.)

He does not protest, then, when she takes his arm again. He will drink her tea, and he will keep a very, very close eye on what becomes of his health after that - but he does not think, as yet, that she means to poison him.

"It is rare, and it will be brief." It must be brief. If his hands are absent from the reins more than a moment...

It is not the things that will fly out of control that he fears. It is the ones that will not. It is that the empire will continue, and after a week or two, people will begin to question whether such an empire could not be run by any other man.

He shakes his head, gritting his teeth. "It is rare," he repeats, again. "I see to it."

Vultures would descent, if the Stranger were closing in on him. First and foremost, her own lord father – the aid she would need and the man who would try to wretch the empire from her hands, from her son's hands. Now, those birds of prey are still in line, every last lord under his command, knowing what even a rebellious thought could earn them. None, she is certain, could replace his iron hold, none could squash an uprising with the same force, none could make all the rest follow, adoring and grudging as they are.

This is an easy way that she can call this need a valid one, that twisted longing for him that she cannot quite seem to shake. They share goals, ambitions, this is a contract of mutual benefit – though perhaps her own benefits outweigh his, or did, before she gave him a son and heir.

She is in no greater rush on their way back, for there is still the same unsteadiness looming about him, and his eyes are still fever-bright, and he is still warmer than he ought to be, especially in the cold. "And yet you are reluctant to let me show you any care, even in the privacy of our chambers. We are allied, are we not?"

Wed. Wed, with a son between them, and more on the way if her wishes are met, and they have been married for years now, and she should not call it an alliance anymore, now, should she?

"Alliances are fickle." It is not, perhaps, the best thing to say. It shows his hand too much, is too close to the truth of what he fears. She is right: he should not write letters now. Sky and stone only know what he might let slip, in this careless state.

Still, it is true. Alliances are only as strong as the power that holds them in place. He will not trust her, not now, not ever. And there is another fear, too: that if he lets her show him care, then she may grow too used to that vulnerability; that she may enjoy his weakness, and seek to extend it, for how it makes him depend upon her. She is an emotional creature, after all, and a jealous one: it is something she has never hidden. To give her an access to him that no others have ever enjoyed - beyond the simple fact of marriage, already something that at times makes her too bold - is a dangerous encouragement.

He sighs, and does his best to lean on her a little less, although his vision still swims and his body feels oddly distant. "I am reluctant," he says, a little more carefully, "to allow a cold to have any power over how I carry myself. I have survived worse things, and will do so again." And I will not be an invalid. I will not languish in my chambers while the empire is carved out from under me. "You may have this afternoon, if it will stop you nagging. No more than that."

She should pray that he falls sick and sicker, so that she can seize power from a frail hand. Perhaps she does relish a tad in the weakness in his step, for how many times has he left her bruised and raw and aching with each movement? Yet for however much he declares their alliance fickle, she knows of few who have lasted this long, in spite of the bouts of ill-intent they have found for one another. It is not, she would say, love. Not the way she has known it (and knows it to this day) with another.

It cannot be declared dust in the winds, either.

He offers something of a compromise, one that will not have him spill gibberish upon his parchments or declare nonsensical things in the throes of a fever, and one that will grant him a touch of rest so that his sickness will not turn into one of the heart, or win the chance to climb into his mind. He will not turn into the Mad King before her eyes. He will not risk her crown, nor her son's safety, for his pride. "Good. I have need of you." Yet. Yet? Would she still so readily claim that it is but a temporary thing?

Soon enough, they have made it to the chamber which they share, and it is into Joffrey's nursery that she slips first, to see if all is yet well with him. Fast asleep he is, tired from the walk and the remnants of illness, but his forehead feels no warmer than it should, and he is not sweating nor coughing. She has servants boil water for the tea, and she knows her husband's habits well enough to know he prefers to oversee, even prepare, his own. Who would think it strange, then, that she makes no special declaration of what should be prepared? Once back in their chambers, now it is her who prepares the tea, ignoring his preferred sorts and rather adding the sage she has gathered.

Upon the tray are things she most commonly thinks to ask for, though she neglected it today: honey, for instance, as their son prefers to take his with a spoonful (and she is just as keen on the sweetness). A little fruit on the side, an afternoon snack if she wishes to take it, and she doubts it will do him harm to eat some of it now. Colds kill an appetite, but only food and drink restore a man's strength. "I should have a cup as well. With both of you sick, it is but a matter of time for me."

He follows her to Joffrey's nursery, despite the light-headedness that cries out for good sense to take him direct to bed; he will not give it mastery over him. Instead, he lingers in the nursery doorway, leaning against the dark wood of the doorframe in a way that might be mistaken for casual at a passing glance, if one ignores the grey-white pallor and the visible slick of sweat on his brow. He watches her check on the boy, but his eyes keep drifting upwards, to the painting that hangs on the wall; to his parents, immortalised in hale good health, as though such things were ever guaranteed. It is the fever, no doubt, that makes him imagine that his father's lips curl into a smirk beneath the red of his painted moustache; that makes him think that the old king's eyes gleam with malign amusement. You are no stronger than I was, boy. You will die in your bed, too.

He blinks sharply, and shakes his head, letting out a low hiss of irritation as he pulls away from the doorframe and turns back towards his own chambers, to settle himself among the furs of his bedding and watch with fever-bright eyes as Cersei returns and begins on the tea. He is not mad. He is not dying, he is not ailing, he has a cold. Only a cold.

Sky and stone, let it be only a cold.

He props himself against the bedstead, mindful as always of appearances - it will not be obvious, even to her, how he needs to lean against the wood to resist the urge to lie down - and toes off his boots, kicking them aside. "You need not think I will fuss over you this way, if it should be so," he grumbles, and pulls a heavy sheepskin cover up around his shoulders. In truth, he is surprised to find that he does not wish her to fall ill, not even in vengeance for the satisfaction she may be taking in his weakness. There is too much sickness already.

Half of her had expected him to wish his own illness on her with a vengeance, if only to make up for being seen in this state, which she knows he must struggle to bear. It is not for him to be weakened by anything, not injury and certainly nothing so mundane as a common cold. Instead, he chooses to state something so laughably obvious that her brows dart up, and she offers him a look that is part incredulous, part struggling to contain her temper at being so obviously patronised in her expectations. "I have recovered from childbirth in your absence." Granted, there had been the diligent presence of her twin. Still, her tone is condescending. "I shall live."

She leaves the tea to steep, and steps over to the fireplace. Rarely does she bother to stoke it herself, yet if his gathering of the sheepskin is any hint at all, he must still feel cold - besides, and illness is best sweated out, and she finds Valirion to be a freezing place at the best of time, anyway. "Joff mislikes the painting, did I tell you?" She likely didn't. Much as she has her own ruling tasks to attend to, his outnumber her own, and he is dedicated to his realm from morning to night. "Not of your lady mother, but of your father. He felt watched by it while he was feverish."

There is something glassy in the look he fixes her with, something behind it that burns with more than fever. He narrows his eyes, and considers that gleam in the painting's eyes. Feverish paranoia. Nothing more. And yet...

"I will take it down." It is not a considered decision, which is unusual for him; and yet, as soon as he says it, he is aware that it is just as obvious as the last thing he said, just as sensible as anything he does. Paranoia should be listened to, when there is no cost.

And perhaps there is a part - a small part, unworthy of consideration - that dislikes the idea of his son being pinned by that painted gaze. Perhaps there is still, in his hardened heart, the smallest kernel of superstition which wonders whether, in Joffrey's dreams, there is a glint of silver in rotted flesh, and the bleeding lips drawn back from teeth blackened by mercury. Perhaps, unthinkable as is it, there may be some mercy in him after all, because the idea that his child should face that is curiously apalling.

(No. That, at least, is the fever.)

"I will take it down," he repeats, more certainly still. "Thirty years have passed, and he was a bad king. And Queen Mirella has been dead almost forty. There is no reason it should hang there."

It is not the answer she expected, though she knows it will be for the best not to make a show of her surprise. Joffrey is not the most imaginative of children of yet, though he still has most of his childhood ahead of him, and she did not think he would indulge so ridiculous a fear, not to the point of sparing him entirely. Though to listen to him now, however childish his concerns may be, could lead to him voicing doubts and requests for better protection when he is in far greater need of it – so she will hardly bring this up now. Why talk, when the argument has already been resolved in her favour?

And perhaps this means he loves him. That there is some fatherly attachment she does not doubt, yet the deeper it goes, the more pleased she is. Perhaps most of all because the birth of her son had forced her to feel a fresh depth to love, something that she could not fight nor suppress, and if he suffers a modicum of the same affliction, it only feels just.

"He is not unfond of the queen, at least. As for him... He has a living man to model himself after." She pours but a sip of the still-steeping tea into her cup, blows it cool and drinks, to see how much longer the process might take. The face she makes must no doubt speak of the brew's medical prowess.

Casimir grunts - which may be an acceptance of what she says, or even an appreciation of it - and settles himself back against the pillows, watching her closely as she drinks. Her expression of distaste is reassuring. The fact that she drinks it at all, more so. He does not suspect her, not truly - but he should.

Which is rather the point.

"If he is modelling himself after me, then it is as well to teach him early to listen to that nagging sense, when it comes." He wants, very much, to close his eyes. Perhaps it is because he is in his bed that his ever-present weariness abruptly feels so crushing, that it becomes an effort to hold himself up. "Better to act when there is no danger than fail to act when there is, after all."

She does not say that this way, her son is set up for a life of about as little sleep as her lord husband. It is, in general, something she avoids any mention of, like many of those little observations that have come through those ordinary parts of marriage they surely share with a thousand other couples wed. He is extraordinary, as is she, and neither of them likes to be reminded of what makes them akin to some of the rest –– still, even he cannot escape the notices and glimpses granted by casual, habitual intimacy. He rarely shows pain, exhaustion, or injury, and it is only because she has not seen him openly tired on any significant number of occasions can she pick up on it now that he sinks into the pillows for support.

She knows to ignore it.

His share of the tea, at last, is poured into a mug, and she pours another sip or two for herself – solidarity, rather than need, though she would rather claim a sore throat of her own than admit to so willing a moment of support. She brings the tray to bed, and seats herself on the edge of her own side, as if she needs rest of her own. It is not so far from the truth: her mother's death has rendered her sceptical of all health concerns, and she has been awake for more than her usual share of these nights, just to ensure that Joff was still fighting the illness, still winning his first tiny war. "I have honey as well, if your throat is aching." She puts it into the room like an afterthought.

There is a resentment in him, still, at even this small show of care - at the suggestion, the fact, that he might need it. Even so, he reaches for the cup, and even so, there is a certain comfort in the heat of it; it shows in the way that he wraps both his shaking hands around the mug, as though to draw the warmth into himself, although it scalds his fingers. His jaw is tight, aching as though he must fight to keep his teeth from chattering. He knows, if he is honest with himself, that he is not cold - but it is easiest to think of it as being cold, and not to acknowledge the sweat on his brow or the heat that must still bake from him. It is easier, still, to say to himself that he is not sick.

His eyes follow her mistrustfully as she sits. How many times has she sat there, or lain closer? And yet, weakened as he is (a little, only a little!), he cannot help but tense at her returned closeness.

"I will take honey." He makes it offhand, as she does, as though it is of no import. Honey is, he has been told since childhood, another cure-all; he has seen it used for wounds and infections both, and for strength and fitness. There is surely no harm in drinking it now - and not for sweetness, or because his throat is aching, but simply because it is a healthful thing to consume.

If she allows herself to let her eyes linger, then he would know at once that she had noted that ripple on the surface of his tea. He is shaking in a room that even she finds warm, there is sweat at his brow, and no amount of resentment he radiates can delude her into thinking him healthy – rather, it is like he is an overlarge cat who has made the mistake of trotting outside in the snow, and now will not offer her the satisfaction of admitting defeat and stepping back into the warm hall. Only he is not cat, and there will be no defeat. He is more like to leave his mug untouched and return to his study, and leave his ailment entirely untreated.

And so she must swallow any commentary, though she reckons she has, for once, thought of some excellent teasing jests.

The honey awaits them in its jar, a honey dipper and a spoon at its side. Joffrey preferred his honey to be stirred in quickly with a wooden spoon, because she would let him lick the rest of the sweet treat from it, something that reminds her more of Jaime than Casimir. He'd prefer the dignity of the correct tool, and absolutely no licking of any utensils, and so she drips the honey first into her own mug (where what little tea she had taken for her show of solidarity really did not require this amount of sweetener), and then she dips it into the tea once more, to properly add some to his mug as well. "More?"

He eyes her mistrustfully - and that, too, is more than a little catlike in its barely-veiled sidelong air - as she dribbles honey into his cup. It is not poison he fears, in this moment: he is beyond fearing that, since if she wanted to poison him, it would be altogether too late now to stop her. No, what he fears (resents, not fears, he fears nothing, not even now) is the implication that lies behind her serving him this way, unasked and without coercion, as though she thinks he needs it. As though he is an invalid, a weak and frail thing who cannot pour his own honey.

The fact that it is, in fact, true - that he would probably spill his tea if he shifted it to only one hand in order to manage the honey - does not help matters. Again, he cannot help but think of his father, shaking and palsied. Will you cut up my meat for me, too, as they did for him? Wipe the spilled wine and clean up the shit? It is the first time that it has occurred to him that she might, if only for a little while before she saw her chance to drive in the knife. This is, unaccountably, more frightening than the thought that she would leave him to fester alone.

It is only honey. It is the fever, that is all, that makes him drown so quickly in bleak and childish thoughts. In the end, it is only honey, and she is playing the part of the dutiful wife, because she knows that he will recover. If she knew he would not, she would not be so cloyingly attentive. And it is only honey in his tea.

"No more." His voice is razor-edged. He cannot help that. "Be careful. If I must spend an afternoon in bed, I do not intend to do it under furs sticky with honey."

As though she is the one likely to spill anything.

Is it mere fear of poison? He does not demand for her to taste it first, perhaps in part because he deems her cunning enough to have long-slipped the antidote beneath her tongue. Or perhaps this fear of his goes deeper, or perhaps none of this is deep at all, and she is trotting down the paths of overthinking when really, all he is would be ill, uncomfortable, and out of sorts for it.

She never makes it closer than within an inch of the truth. Deep down, she has ever presumed that if he were to fall ill, if some rot took hold of his limbs or a poisoning of the blood threatened to boil his brains in his head, then he would do as any feral animal would, and gnaw off all that is afflicted, to come out mutilated, but strong and alive – or dead.

Somehow, the fantasy of his dying fails to arouse her when he is visibly ailing.

"If I complained each time you left me sticky beneath the furs, you would have long since cut my tongue out." Yet she does not want to sleep in a patch of honey, either, and she does take care with her honey dripper, returning it most gently to its jar. For Joff, she had blown at the tea to help it cool a tad, and had shown him how to do the same, but she values her body hale and whole. Instead, she takes a sip from her own mug, where the honey near makes up for the taste of sage. "You act as though you have never suffered a cold before."

"If I meant to cut your tongue out for saying ill-advised and annoying things, you would have lost it years ago." He sounds almost like himself, in that sharp-edged mockery - except that there is an undertone to it that is more audibly raw than usual, a genuine tension that is usually absent or at least disguised. The trouble is that, in the list of ill-advised things for her to say, that last ranks fairly high. The bigger trouble is that he feels so thoroughly drained and unsteady, and it aggravates him. "I am not prone to sicknesses, and I am not prone to allowing nagging women to fuss over them. As I told you, it will pass."

Which is not to say that the tea is not welcome, nor that the honey in it fails to soothe a throat which feels tight and itchy. He takes a long drink, and does not flinch at how it burns his tongue; he is, he realises, very thirsty, and the heat of it seems to almost touch that shivering fever inside him. It does not taste good, but on the other hand, with his nose as stuffed up as it is, he can hardly taste it anyway.

"So it will. And I have not nagged you, nor have I fussed. I made you drink a cup of tea." She stands, exasperated, and stalks toward the window. Nothing, in her mind, comparable to the fretting she had done around Joffrey, which embarrasses her now that the boy is so obviously well again – and which she nonetheless might not be able to take back. It was a terrible thing to see her son unwell, and neither is it pleasant to see her husband struggle, and she tries to twist the thought until the underlying emotion is clearly, grossly different.

It should be she who makes him suffer. Yes, that is all that motivates and all that drives her here. She would not miss him, does not long for him, and does not prefer to see him at full strength.

Of course, it is now too late pretend that she cared not for a moment, for if she had not, she would have called upon the servants to do the dirty work, from the gathering of the herbs to the preparing of the tea. From the window's sill, she lifts the carafe of water that she likes to have brought for her own pleasure, the servants having been instructed to add a touch of lemon to it when available. It is sat down again rather crudely on his nightstand, the instruction now silent. The sick must drink, for any fool knows that so long as men drink and piss, they are a ways away from succumbing to the fever. "Were I concerned, I would have called upon a healer."

He lets out a sharp, scornful huff at that, his distaste curling his lip. "As well call the vultures to pick at my bones," he mutters, and takes another long drink of tea. It would seem strange to some, no doubt, that he finds her tea safer than a healer's - but he has more faith that she understands the dangers in poisoning him, and a wife cannot simply shrug and move on if her patient dies.

Besides, he has committed to this course of action now, and indecision is almost as fatal as trust.

His eyes follow her as she sets down the carafe, and he marks its position, even if he does not drink yet. He will. He is not stubborn enough to let so small an obedience dissuade him from slaking a thirst that is undeniably uncomfortable, and he knows as well as she does, in truth, that it is the best thing he can do for himself now. Still, he will finish his tea first. One fuss at a time.

She makes herself at home on her side of the bed, stretching out like a comfortable cat in a patch of sunlight, unbothered by his sick form looming beside her. That he can muster to be so displeased while more ill than she has ever seen him before is almost a fascination unto its own. Heat and frustration are radiating off of him in equal measure, though at least – at least – he is complying. He drinks his tea, that is.

With little other way to ensure that he will not get in his head to rise as soon as the tea is done and his head feels midway cleared, she supposes she must look upon an afternoon spent together, something that might be ordinary for other couples wed. Yet neither him nor her are creatures of inaction, least of all when clashing together in the way she has grown so intoxicated with, and perhaps this is what makes it so unusual. He had been abroad during the latter months of her pregnancy, when she required more rest and more comforts, and it had fallen to her brother to keep her supplied with both. In some ways, this is a first, one of them ailing and the other... present.

"If I wanted to call the vultures, I would have called upon servants. For a man who oft speaks of the challenges he conquers, you are very tempted to see me take an easy road."

"I have never yet seen you take an easy road." It is an admission, even if it is delivered in the tone of a scathing insult - a grudging acknowledgement that she has a point. That is more than he usually gives, but he will not think too much about that. Instead, he just settles back against the bedstead, raising the cup to his lips again. "And it is not my temptations that would concern me. Historically, you are the one who seems to struggle with resisting them."

It occurs to him, too, how unusual this is. It chafes already, to be lying here when there is work to be done, when the wheels of the world turn on without him. There are never enough hours in the day, even in a full and lively day; to waste them in bed is nigh-unbearable.

And yet he has (just about) sense enough to remember the ash of letters in his study fireplace, and the rising frustration of unsteady calligraphy, and he knows, no matter how he rebels against it, that he has no choice. It is a strange thing, still, to see her lying there as though she also has nothing better to do, as though she intends to watch him suffer. It sets him on edge.

He finishes off his tea in a long swig that burns the roof of his mouth in a not wholly unpleasant way, and reaches for the water carafe.

Often, her own displeasure keeps her awake and raging, perceived slights seeing her take to quill and paper, or her twisted imagination, to sow the seeds of some plot or other. Other duties she attends to during the day as she should, if not distracted by her son, or husband – or lover. Yet when her body calls her to rest, she tends to listen, knowing she will wake sharper and keener after a half hour's catnap than she would otherwise be. Mistakes happen to the over-tired and weary, and she will not be either one.

Even if he cannot imagine, she knows, the use of casual sleep during the daylight hours. The gods know he barely keeps to it at night.

"You are calling me easily tempted?" She is on the verge of reminding him that he has strayed from their marital bed and assorted – if not more frequently, that may yet be a cake she wins, but absolutely certainly with a wider variety of partners. Yet that is not what he is meant to know; he is meant to think her array of lovers as wide and varied as his own. It is for the better. She glares at him, whether for his remark alone or the tone he chose after she has so self-sacrificingly placed herself in the position of caring for him. "I believe we might have to have a few things in common."

There is a twisted kind of comfort in that glare, which is more as things should be. This is solid ground: he needles her, she rises to the bait, and all is well. He meets her look with one that is almost, if not quite, the steadily unimpressed regard he so often gives her, and raises one eyebrow.

"Is that what you believe?" he echoes her mildly, and if there is a trace of irritability still beneath the light tone, he does not think she is quite stupid enough to remark upon it. Then again, she can be bold, at times. It is one of the things he both enjoys and hates about her. "Interesting."

Temptation is, of course, a relative matter. Is it a temptation to take what is beneficial? To claim advantage when it is offered? He does not consider himself prone to temptations which are not to his advantage. He does not, for example, let himself be tempted into sentimentality.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject