You Can't Always Get What You Want, PG-13 (#122)

[Rosie]

Title: You Can't Always Get What You Want
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: At the Whim of Another (#122)
Summary: Alanna finds herself having to cede control.
Notes: Part of my Rogue AU, hopefully works on its own! Warning of some mild violence. Sorry for the terrible accent.

--

"If'n I was needin' a shadow, I'd say so," Alanna grumbled.

Johnny smirked at her, eyes crinkling in the way she liked so much. "Annie, queen o' my heart, there ain't a soul alive who would believe that. I say so. I don't want nobody's hands on my precious goods."

"Keep talkin' that same way, yer hands won't be on these goods, neither," she snapped back at him, temper climbing as he laughed in response.

"Annie - Annie, quit shovin' me, Annie-"

Finally, she acquiesced and stilled, allowing him to pull her close to him. "Things're - well, there's summat stirring, Annie, an' I don't like it. Gary got followed t'other day, then his house gets broken into, his lady gets scared. He's jus' a merchant, Annie, it ain't right that someone is takin' a swing at him instead o' me. An' six times - six times someone gets me girl?" He chuckled as Alanna blinked at him, surprised, but it wasn't the amused rumble she was accustomed to. "I got eyes all over this city, Annie, and ye best not be forgettin' it."

Alanna swallowed tightly. He didn't mean - he couldn't mean that he'd found out about King George. It was just a couple of kisses, nothing really. Just a dalliance with another life. A sick feeling burned its way through her stomach as Johnny wrapped his arms around her. He couldn't know; he wouldn't hold her this way if he did.

His hand dropped to her necklace, and it took a second before she realised he was toying with her pregnancy charm. "Annie. I - it don't take a scholar to work out ye didn't grow up on th'streets. I - when this is over. Jus' remember I got things I gotta say. Promises to make."

She found, with a growing sense of horror, that her eyes were about to spill over. "Ye talk a fine tale t' get me t'agree t' being coddled," she grumbled, burying her face in his chest. He'd always been able to spin a yarn; that was part of his trade. He was known far and wide as Johnny the Storyteller, and it had taken Alanna a while to believe anything he said.

"Annie, love. Th' only way - an' I mean th' only way - ye will be seein' sunlight t'day is if I send someone along." Johnny reached for her wrists, and clutched them tightly. "Understand?" She nodded, but apparently it wasn't enough. "I don't want no tricks, neither. Don't think ye can jus' slip off when nobody is lookin'. I'll chain ye t'me bed if it comes t' it."

Alanna's heart gave a wild thump. She scoffed at him, trying to tug her hands free. "Johnny Conte, you filthy dog. Can't help yerself, can ye?"

He kissed her, an odd, suspended feeling with her hands still trapped against his chest. Usually, touch was such a part of his kisses that she felt the absence of it keenly now, usually he was tugging her ever closer as though he wanted to combine their bodies. "Be careful."

--

"Whatever Johnny's payin' ye, I'll pay ye double."

Raoul grinned at her, stretching his arms out. Alanna had to admit, he was a good choice for a minder, if she'd been in the mood for one. "Mayhap I'm lookin' t'spend me day bein' told off. Reminds me o' me ma."

She fixed him with a sour look, but it didn't alter his expression one iota. Finally, she sighed, knowing she was beaten. If she were inclined to admit things to herself, she might be relieved at this outcome. "Fine, ye big baby. But I got errands t' run, an' ye'd better keep yer trap shut, even t' th'King." Her accent thickened, as it always did when she was nervous.

"Oh, I won't be tellin' King George nothin'," Raoul vowed, placing his hand over his heart. "Annie, ye got me word."

"Idiot," she said affectionately, fixing her cloak over her shoulders. She hadn't been out in the Lower City since the last attack on her - which meant she hadn't encountered the Dowager Queen. Goddess be willing, Eleni would be up at the castle today; she wasn't quite sure how she could explain Annie the Rogue's Girl and Anna the King's Fancy to Raoul.

But the Trickster would have his fun.

As it turned out, Raoul made for a fine companion, though Alanna, who preferred to slip through crowds unnoticed, was perturbed as people parted easily for the pair. "People always get out o' yer way, do they?"

He flashed her a smile. "Move or be crushed, that's me motto. They don't call me The Bonecrusher for nothin'."

"They don't call ye it fer anythin', neither," Alanna replied tartly, swinging her bag of supplies into his side. "Reckon I'd need a few gold nobles if I was t' call ye summat as stupid as Bonecrusher."

Their bickering continued on, even as Alanna started to drop in on the few families she'd begun to take care of, during her time in Corus. One of them, the Pattens, gave her sly nudges about her 'man', and Raoul turned a deep scarlet and explained that he was just the hired help.

She relaxed through the day as there was no sign of Eleni having been around, not even the unobtrusive guards Alanna had noticed previously. Safe, then, to visit her favourite family.

"One more stop, then home," she announced, to Raoul's evident relief. "Hands off the daughter here, mind, she's a proper beauty an' no mistake."

Gwynnen was the one to meet her at the door, but she hardly gave Raoul a second look. "Father's not well enough for everyone in Corus to come traipsing through his door," she reproached, fixing her large blue eyes on Alanna.

Alanna shrugged at Raoul. "Look, I'll be fine. I come here all th' time, don't I? I'll be in an' out 'fore ye can say 'Bonecrusher's a stupid name'." She winked at him, and stepped through the door.

"Anna, I'm so terribly sorry," Gwynnen said miserably.

Alanna still didn't get it, but as she was seized roughly and pulled into the dark front room, she started to have an inkling.

--

"Mighty hard for a healer to get any healin' done with two big brutes like you holding me like this," Alanna said mildly. She was, in all honesty, afraid, but if Johnny had taught her anything, it was to keep enemies talking until she could figure a way out. "Is this some new regulations you got going on up at the palace? Can't let a girl heal a sick person unless she's been roughed up first?"

The tall, thin man who seemed to be their leader examined her coolly. "I have to say, I was intrigued when the king mentioned a girl who seemed to twine him around her fingers only to vanish into thin air. I thought to myself, what kind of girl does that? Then, I turned to my good old friend, Ercole."

Alanna's stomach plummeted somewhere below her knees as the thin, wiry frame of the Lord Provost stepped into view.

"Ercole, here, is much better acquainted with you, Anna. Can you think why that may be?"

"Just got one of those faces, I guess," Alanna muttered, lowering her eyes to the ground. If she were lucky, and Goddess knew she must have precious little luck left, they wouldn't have tied her to Johnny specifically.

The first man, who appeared to command the deference of the Lord Provost himself and didn't that worry her, called for a servant to bring some more light into the room. There was silence until he did so, during which Alanna contemplated spitting at their feet, but figured she was probably in enough trouble. "That's better. So difficult to appreciate a pretty face in the dark, wouldn't you say?"

She'd say his wife didn't get enough action judging by that, but fear was trapping her tongue. She wriggled one of her wrists in an attempt to draw down the blade there, but found the hand which held her immovable.

"Now I can see you properly, you call to mind a face I do know. I could have sworn you were siblings - but then how is it that you are cavorting with a criminal, and he is up at the palace, training to be a knight of the realm?"

Thom. Sweet Goddess, she was going to be the death of everybody she cared about.

"Let me know when you fancy talkin' some sense," she said sweetly. "Haven't a hope in the Black God's Realm of figuring out what you're nattering on about at the moment."

"I would have expected you to be a better liar than that."

Alanna could feel her heart hammering away in her chest - her one small hope was that Raoul got in here soon, but she didn't want Raoul to fall into the Provost's lap either. If they were going to kill her, surely they would have done so already. Leverage, then. "Look, I just came in here to fix the old man up, same as I do regular, like. I don't ask them for nothing, I just help them folks who can't pay fer a healer."

"Out of the goodness of your heart," he said, clearly sceptical.

"What of it?" The embers of her temper were snapping back into life. "What business do you have enterin' someone's home and grabbin' me like this?"

He raised his eyebrows at her, coming to stand directly in front of her. This meant that he forced her to tilt her head right back to look at him, but also meant she could spit in his face, if she wanted to. She shelved the thought. "My apologies, Anna. I forget that I know so much about you, and yet we have not been introduced. I am Sir Marek of Knife's Edge."

The Prime Minister - George's Prime Minister. She'd really done it this time.

In response to her silence, Marek smiled thinly. "Wonderful. I see my reputation precedes me, as much as yours does you. Now, tell me, how does a girl like you get mixed up with not one, but two kings?"

She bit down on her tongue, conscious that talking would do more harm than good in this instance.

"Mithros, you can't get Johnny the Gabber to shut up. I guess his lady would need to be the silent type, perhaps she's just not used to getting a word in edgeways."

"Leave us," Marek commanded suddenly, ignoring the Lord Provost. "Wait - take her weapons first."

They weren't gentle about stripping her of her knives. Alanna's face burned as her wrists and ankles were held and everything down to her loincloth was searched. She pulled her dress back over her head as the men departed, leaving her corset loose.

"Queen Eleni wouldn't have liked that," she said quietly, hands shaking as she fumbled with the ties.

Marek set his jaw. "I won't be troubling her with this. There are - regrettably - certain things that have to be done in service of the Crown."

That left Alanna feeling slightly hysterical. "Of course, why would you trouble the person wearin' the thing?"

"He entrusts me with certain things." Marek's eyes were hard. She wasn't sure, even if she still had her blades, whether anything would penetrate his skin. It'd probably just blunt her weapons. "Like finding you, when you disappear for a month. Do I tell him where I found you?"

She rubbed the back of her head, almost reflexively. "I guess that's rhetorical."

"I have a proposition for you, Anna. You don't visit the palace, you don't even put a toe across Palace Way, and I'll leave your brother alone."

"If I had a brother, he wouldn't have done anything wrong."

Marek's answering shrug suggested it didn't matter.

"I won't visit the palace," she agreed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Not a toe across Palace Way," Marek pressed.

That cut half the city off.

"I've not had the pleasure of meeting your Johnny the Gabber yet, you know. I could make it a priority of mine."

"Not a toe across Palace Way," Alanna ground out obediently.

"There. Was that so difficult?"

[devilinthedetails]

I enjoyed this story a lot. I love the Lower City atmosphere and politics, and I think you've captured the accent very well. It's cool to see this version of the Court of the Rogue.