Post by Muse on May 1, 2011 7:16:47 GMT 10
Title: Memories
Rating: PG
Word Count: 572
Pairing: Gary/Raoul – Team Moustache Curtains
Round/Fight: 2/C
Summary: Cause when a heart breaks no it don’t break even. Jon notices that something’s changing his friends and it’s starting to break his heart. Breakeven part 8, set post-Lioness Rampant.
When he was a child, he used to have great dreams about being King, Jon remembers, and he would tell them to anyone who would listen. He’d inform his father of all of the things he’d achieve, and tell his mother all about how the kingdom would flourish. He remembers, in between battles with his tin soldiers on the floor of the Royal Nursery, how he and Gary would talk about what they planned on doing once they had the freedom to do it.
None of the memories ever included this, Jon thinks as he stares around the council chamber at his closest friends and advisors. The room itself is in shambles, the table and the chairs the only things still in working order, and there are as many ghosts as there are faces.
Alanna, gone to the desert to grieve.
Duke Gareth, recovering his heart attack in Naxen under his wife’s watchful eyes.
Alex, buried deep beneath the ground.
Myles looks back at him, the weight of responsibilities greater than any of them can bear pressing down the corners of his lips until Jon doesn’t know if the man’s smiling anymore or not.
Myles doesn’t look around, and Jon knows why; his own eyes skitter restlessly, refuse to settle, roving the room and never stopping on any one face.
If he looks at Gary, looks at Raoul, really stops and looks at them, takes in their faces, Jon’s afraid that he will fall apart.
Gary rubs his forehead with one hand as he flips through one of the reports in front of them, and Jon can’t stand how sunken and dark Gary’s eyes have become. His cousin has lost his spark, somewhere in all that paperwork, and if Jon could he would force Gary to take a break, to get out of Corus, take Cythera somewhere where he needs only spend time on himself and not his country…
Raoul is no better than Gary, but his eyes haunt Jon for a different reason, dull and blank as they stare unseeing at the paper before him. Jon knows the signs of too much to drink, notices how light makes Raoul blink and noise has him flinching. Keeping his Knight Commander inside, prisoned within the Council Room walls is slowly smothering Raoul, but Jon can’t afford to send him outside.
His best friends, mere shadows of their former glories, sit fading fast before him as Jon tries to hold this Council, this kingship, this country together with sheer will, and they are doing so without a word of complaint.
This silence is the most damning, and Jon wishes they would notice what he is turning them into.
A sharp comment from Gary, a demand and a raised voice would be normal.
A challenge, a silent slap of a glove and a retreating back that drove him to the practice courts to face the blade of Raoul’s sword would be normal.
He’s deprived them of both.
Jon busies himself with his papers as the meeting winds to a close and his advisors melt away into other never-ending duties (that he gave them, his mind tells him), and he only looks up when they’re all gone.
Thayet finds him almost an hour later, tears streaming silently down his face.
He can’t stand who he’s become, that he would let them—no, turn them into people so far removed from the Gary and Raoul he remembers.
QC by: greenie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 572
Pairing: Gary/Raoul – Team Moustache Curtains
Round/Fight: 2/C
Summary: Cause when a heart breaks no it don’t break even. Jon notices that something’s changing his friends and it’s starting to break his heart. Breakeven part 8, set post-Lioness Rampant.
When he was a child, he used to have great dreams about being King, Jon remembers, and he would tell them to anyone who would listen. He’d inform his father of all of the things he’d achieve, and tell his mother all about how the kingdom would flourish. He remembers, in between battles with his tin soldiers on the floor of the Royal Nursery, how he and Gary would talk about what they planned on doing once they had the freedom to do it.
None of the memories ever included this, Jon thinks as he stares around the council chamber at his closest friends and advisors. The room itself is in shambles, the table and the chairs the only things still in working order, and there are as many ghosts as there are faces.
Alanna, gone to the desert to grieve.
Duke Gareth, recovering his heart attack in Naxen under his wife’s watchful eyes.
Alex, buried deep beneath the ground.
Myles looks back at him, the weight of responsibilities greater than any of them can bear pressing down the corners of his lips until Jon doesn’t know if the man’s smiling anymore or not.
Myles doesn’t look around, and Jon knows why; his own eyes skitter restlessly, refuse to settle, roving the room and never stopping on any one face.
If he looks at Gary, looks at Raoul, really stops and looks at them, takes in their faces, Jon’s afraid that he will fall apart.
Gary rubs his forehead with one hand as he flips through one of the reports in front of them, and Jon can’t stand how sunken and dark Gary’s eyes have become. His cousin has lost his spark, somewhere in all that paperwork, and if Jon could he would force Gary to take a break, to get out of Corus, take Cythera somewhere where he needs only spend time on himself and not his country…
Raoul is no better than Gary, but his eyes haunt Jon for a different reason, dull and blank as they stare unseeing at the paper before him. Jon knows the signs of too much to drink, notices how light makes Raoul blink and noise has him flinching. Keeping his Knight Commander inside, prisoned within the Council Room walls is slowly smothering Raoul, but Jon can’t afford to send him outside.
His best friends, mere shadows of their former glories, sit fading fast before him as Jon tries to hold this Council, this kingship, this country together with sheer will, and they are doing so without a word of complaint.
This silence is the most damning, and Jon wishes they would notice what he is turning them into.
A sharp comment from Gary, a demand and a raised voice would be normal.
A challenge, a silent slap of a glove and a retreating back that drove him to the practice courts to face the blade of Raoul’s sword would be normal.
He’s deprived them of both.
Jon busies himself with his papers as the meeting winds to a close and his advisors melt away into other never-ending duties (that he gave them, his mind tells him), and he only looks up when they’re all gone.
Thayet finds him almost an hour later, tears streaming silently down his face.
He can’t stand who he’s become, that he would let them—no, turn them into people so far removed from the Gary and Raoul he remembers.
QC by: greenie