Post by jazzyjess on Mar 14, 2010 19:35:26 GMT 10
Title: Despondency
Rating: PG
Length: 651
Competitor: Owen
Round/Fight: 2/B
Summary: In which Owen loves Kel who loves Dom and Owen who loves Margarry, but then there is Wyldon.
Note: Can be read as a sequel to Melancholy, but isn’t necessary. Also, this does not make me an Owen-supporter this round! I’m just balancing out the Dom fic I posted.
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Dom doesn’t come back for her.
It has been eight long months and she has received nothing but a single letter, sent from his new post only three weeks after he’d left Mastiff. The writing had been hurried and messy but still beautifully his, and Kel had kept it in her pocket for many days. It certainly had done the trick, quelling the loneliness she still sometimes feels in the night. Now the end of the year is approaching and she keeps his letter folded neatly in her chamber drawer, no longer in her pocket.
It isn’t that she is lonely by the strictest sense – she is, after all, living in a fort packed shoulder-to-shoulder with men in barracks and men in tents – but she is lonely in that the one person she would have preferred to be with most is simply not there.
And so she works through the free time that should have been spent in a carefree manner. Lord Wyldon continues to find work for her to do, and Kel continues to do it, and the more time she spends with her commander, the less she misses Dom. She doesn’t kiss him again, but sometimes he looks up at her to find her staring at him, and it is awkward but at the same time it isn’t, and then someone looks away and it’s over.
Owen rides into camp on the first day of the rainy season. She is delighted to see him and he is delighted to see her, and they have a history together that rejuvenates itself over the following week.
He tells her that he’s been stationed with her at Mastiff because Wyldon had requested another knight to assist with the watch command, and Kel wastes no time in congratulating him. It is a big honour, and she invites him to celebrate one evening in her rooms. It starts off as platonic, but this leads to that and suddenly they’re not just together but together.
That is the difference between Kel and Margarry. Kel will never be the wife who sits and waits, and when Owen rides into the dark with the other men of his patrol, Kel doesn’t watch him go and she doesn’t listen for the sound of his return. Instead, she busies herself with work of the camp, busywork to tide her over until she feels his arms slip around her from behind, his breath on her neck, his face in her hair.
One day, when Owen returns from a three-day ride with a handful of others, he comes straight to her as she works at her little table in the corner of the office. Owen barely looks around, attention fixed on Kel as she half-stands, and within seconds he has her in his arms, his mouth on hers and his hands hot against her linen shirt. Kel responds in kind, equally as eager, desperate for the attention she no longer gets in this manner.
They don’t break apart until they’re both out of breath, and even then they stay close, exhaling with little puffs of air from one mouth into the other. They are content – she is content – until there is a sound from the open doorway. Wyldon stands there, staring in at them, cup of tea in one hand and the other resting against the doorframe. His back is ramrod straight, and his mouth tight in a thin, white-lipped line. Almost immediately, Owen steps back, and Kel can tell that he is thinking of Margarry.
Yes, she feels a pang of guilt at the thought of Owen’s betrothed, but she too knows Wyldon, and she knows that he understands the loneliness of knighthood.
“Is this appropriate?” the older man says stiffly, disapproving. Owen fumbles for words, beginning to apologise just as he did as a squire, before realising that the gaze of his former knight-master was not fixed on him.
Rating: PG
Length: 651
Competitor: Owen
Round/Fight: 2/B
Summary: In which Owen loves Kel who loves Dom and Owen who loves Margarry, but then there is Wyldon.
Note: Can be read as a sequel to Melancholy, but isn’t necessary. Also, this does not make me an Owen-supporter this round! I’m just balancing out the Dom fic I posted.
-
Dom doesn’t come back for her.
It has been eight long months and she has received nothing but a single letter, sent from his new post only three weeks after he’d left Mastiff. The writing had been hurried and messy but still beautifully his, and Kel had kept it in her pocket for many days. It certainly had done the trick, quelling the loneliness she still sometimes feels in the night. Now the end of the year is approaching and she keeps his letter folded neatly in her chamber drawer, no longer in her pocket.
It isn’t that she is lonely by the strictest sense – she is, after all, living in a fort packed shoulder-to-shoulder with men in barracks and men in tents – but she is lonely in that the one person she would have preferred to be with most is simply not there.
And so she works through the free time that should have been spent in a carefree manner. Lord Wyldon continues to find work for her to do, and Kel continues to do it, and the more time she spends with her commander, the less she misses Dom. She doesn’t kiss him again, but sometimes he looks up at her to find her staring at him, and it is awkward but at the same time it isn’t, and then someone looks away and it’s over.
Owen rides into camp on the first day of the rainy season. She is delighted to see him and he is delighted to see her, and they have a history together that rejuvenates itself over the following week.
He tells her that he’s been stationed with her at Mastiff because Wyldon had requested another knight to assist with the watch command, and Kel wastes no time in congratulating him. It is a big honour, and she invites him to celebrate one evening in her rooms. It starts off as platonic, but this leads to that and suddenly they’re not just together but together.
That is the difference between Kel and Margarry. Kel will never be the wife who sits and waits, and when Owen rides into the dark with the other men of his patrol, Kel doesn’t watch him go and she doesn’t listen for the sound of his return. Instead, she busies herself with work of the camp, busywork to tide her over until she feels his arms slip around her from behind, his breath on her neck, his face in her hair.
One day, when Owen returns from a three-day ride with a handful of others, he comes straight to her as she works at her little table in the corner of the office. Owen barely looks around, attention fixed on Kel as she half-stands, and within seconds he has her in his arms, his mouth on hers and his hands hot against her linen shirt. Kel responds in kind, equally as eager, desperate for the attention she no longer gets in this manner.
They don’t break apart until they’re both out of breath, and even then they stay close, exhaling with little puffs of air from one mouth into the other. They are content – she is content – until there is a sound from the open doorway. Wyldon stands there, staring in at them, cup of tea in one hand and the other resting against the doorframe. His back is ramrod straight, and his mouth tight in a thin, white-lipped line. Almost immediately, Owen steps back, and Kel can tell that he is thinking of Margarry.
Yes, she feels a pang of guilt at the thought of Owen’s betrothed, but she too knows Wyldon, and she knows that he understands the loneliness of knighthood.
“Is this appropriate?” the older man says stiffly, disapproving. Owen fumbles for words, beginning to apologise just as he did as a squire, before realising that the gaze of his former knight-master was not fixed on him.