Post by Muse on Feb 16, 2013 12:55:14 GMT 10
Title: Wandering Feet (People Like Us)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1,478
Prompt: #1 Liam/Thayet
Summary: In the end, it’s not the end, it’s just another kind of beginning and Thayet is finding that she needs the screams of the sea birds and the wind in her hair and the road beneath her feet.
A/N: Hi!! I really hope you like how this fic happened; I liked that you liked “canon deviations” but then my brain went very straaaaange, so I ended up starting over a few times before really being taken by this plot bunny(hence the late update, I still <3 you!) I hope you like how it turned out!
The first steps up the gangway onto the courier vessel toTortall are shaky ones, and not just because Thayet doesn’t have what Alanna’s large friend Raoul calls her “sea-legs” yet. She’s never seen this much water in one place, and it smells sharp and green. Thayet licks her lips, salt chapping her skin as her fingers clench on the rail. Above them, sea-birds scream and wheel in the late-morning sun, and Thayet jumps a little when Liam places a steadying hand on her back.
“Unsteady already, your highness?” He asks with a grin.
Feeling the bobbing of the deck below her feet, Thayet turns enough away from the sight of all that water—that wonderful, terrifyinggraygreenblue expanse—to look Liam in the eyes. “It gets more—“ she waves her hands like the motion of the waves, looking for a word she hasn’t learned to describe this new sensation, “—than this?”
The worry completely gone from his face for the first time in weeks, Liam tilts his head back and laughs freely. “Princess, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Thayet’s knuckles whiten on the rail, and she tracks a gull as it skims across the surface of the water for a long moment. “I’m not a princess anymore; I’ve left that all behind in Sarain.”
She feels, more than sees, Liam roll against the rail so that he can lean back against the rail. “Fair enough,” he says, and nothing more. The wind lifts his hair and pulls at hers, teasing it bit by bit from the thong tying it away from her face.
The lurch of the ship, a jerk that has her stumbling back to her feet next to the solid, unmoveable Shang Dragon, is unexpected and breaks the mood, but in a pleasant way that releases them both from the quiet and puts them back in motion. “I’m really going to have to get used to this,” Thayet grumbles, shoving her hair ungently out of her face with the heel of her hand.
Smirking, Liam points across the deck, at Alanna. Despite the air of nobility that seems to have descended on the Lioness since Sir Raoul overtook them, even dressed formally as she is, Alanna retains no dignity as she pulls herself to the rail and heaves over the edge, green-faced and unhappy. “You’re not going to have to try very hard to be the least sea-worthy among us,” he mentions wryly, and Thayet slaps his arm gently.
“You’re being terrible,” she informs him, hiding her giggles as poor Alanna grimaces again.
“Maybe I am,” Liam agrees good-naturedly, and the utterly innocent look on his face has Thayet laughing out loud. As Udayapur disappears into the waves behind them, Thayet feels her spirits lift, soaring above the whitecaps with the gulls.
It isn’t until they ride into House Olau, in Corus, that it really sinks in for Thayet. Alanna is becoming, more and more, Sir Alanna of Trebond and Olau, a daughter of Tortallan nobility and a knight with more than a little standing. Coram is her guardsman, and has a home and duty of his own. They belong, she thinks suddenly, as their party dismounts in the courtyard.
She bites her lip and plays with the ends of the reins in her hand, feeling more out of place than she has since the nights in abandoned and burned out barns in Sarain when Thayet woke from screaming nightmares to Buri’s pale, pinched face. Buri fidgets, on her right, adjusting one of the packs affixed to her pony’s saddle.
Before any of the hostlers reach her mount, Thayet speaks up hesitantly. “Buri and I should find an inn somewhere, if you can direct us.”
Alanna’s face shows more surprise than anything else, as though this is completely unexpected.
“I know one,” Liam says, and for a moment Thayet’s stomach does a weird flip-flop, until he continues, “We can stay together.” His eyes are pale; a shade of blue-green that takes Thayet by surprise.
Recently, his eyes have been as deep and intense as the waters they’ve travelled, and Thayet is so surprised that she’s noticed something as personal as eye color that she almost misses Alanna saying dimly in the background, “Don’t be ridiculous; why should we split up?”
Liam just waits, and Thayet’s mouth twitches up into a smile.
He winks.
That evening finds them all in Sir Myle’s large library, and Thayet looks up more than once to find Liam’s gaze squarely on her. She bites her lip, feeling heat spread down her neck from his direct attention.
It’s easier to try and refocus on George’s tall-tales (because that couldn’t really have happened, could it?) and Sir Myles’ stories about Alanna from when she was a page, and then the King-to-be’s squire. The redheaded knight turns interesting shades of purple while George jibes softly, and Thayet sighs as she watches them.
Gradually, the group breaks up. Buri heads to bed with a sleepy wave a little before George receives a message and disappears into the evening. Coram and Rispah drift away, as do Sir Myles and Eleni, and then Alanna begins to snore curled in the chair by the fire.
“I should—“ Liam motions to the sleeping knight, and Thayet hides a yawn with her hand as she nods.
“I’m surprised she managed to stay awake,” she mentions frankly, remembering that Alanna had been sick most of the time they’d spent onthe ocean.
Liam looks fondly at Alanna before scooping her out of the chair with no more effort than if he’d bent and picked up a kitten. “She’s stubborn.” At the door, he turns, just enough to call back. “I’ll…”
Thayet waves him out as she stands, wandering through the room to the window. A deep bench had been installed and furnished with cushions, and resting her forearms on the sill gives Thayet a perfect view. Curled up, she watches as the lights of the city blink out and men carrying ladders over their shoulders light the street-lamps. It looks like a dance, carefully choreographed and perfectly memorized, and part of Thayet wonders wistfully if the same men do the same job, day in and day out. It seems so…
“Hey,” Liam sits carefully on the other end of the bench, joining Thayet. “You alright?”
Thayet opens her mouth, words lining up to speak about her happiness to be in Tortall and her thankfulness for the kindness of Sir Myles and Alanna, which are true, but what comes out instead is, “It’s so…close.”
Liam blinks, and words trip over each other in Thayet’s haste to try and make heads or tails of what she’s just said. “There’s all these people, living practically on top of one another,” she thinks she’s babbling, “and everyday they do the same things. Every day.”
Liam hasn’t stopped her yet, and she sighs. “Travelling, it was just us, you know? Even on the ship, which was cramped, all around us was endless green water and salt wind and I felt—“ she breaks off, looking back at the streetlamps.
“Here I just feel…pinned down.”
A few moments later, Liam tugs gently on her hand, pullingher back from the thoughts inside her head and towards him again, but Thayet surprises them both when she leans over and meets him, gently pressing her lips to his.
“Me too,” Liam murmur quietly when the kiss ends, his fingers tighten around hers just enough to be reassuring. The calluses on his fingers are startlingly gentle as his hands come up to cup her face, and this time he meets her when she leans back down to him.
“What will we do?” Thayet asks, her fingernails scraping over the short hairs at the base of his neck in another pause, and the sounds of their breathing keep time between them.
Combing fingers through her hair, Liam hesitates. “…Thayet.” He pulls back slightly, rubbing self-consciously at the knife-scars on his knuckles.
Firmly, Thayet covers his hand with hers and rewords her question. “You and me—and probably Buri, because she won’t let me out of her sight—people with wandering feet and open-sky hearts…what will we do, here in this city?”
Liam releases the breath he had been holding and turns his head to press a kiss into the palm of her hand. “Explore,” he offers, covering the word with another kiss before winding his arms around her waist. “Until there’s nothing left here to find.”
Thayet’s fingers skim his shoulders and down his arms as she thinks.
“And then?”
Carefully, she looks back up at Liam through strands of hair, fallen over her eyes. He looks back, lifting her hair off of her face.
“And then,” he kisses her once more, “There’s a whole world of open roads and empty skies for people like us, people with wandering feet.”
I love how you've brought the other characters into it, and the details are awesome. You play off the canon incredibly well, from Alanna's seasickness to the scene at House Olau. And the imagery is gorgeous too: As Udayapur disappears into the waves behind them, Thayet feels her spirits lift, soaring above the whitecaps with the gulls.
