The aviary is not necessarily the ideal spot to be if one wants to be alone with one's thoughts. There is a constant avian white noise, the warble and burble of birds sleeping and waking and in various states of activity. But if one is wanting to drown out one's thoughts, to smoke without being harassed by servants, this is as good a place as any.
     William stands near the aviary's exit to the garden, the cigarette smoke curling alongside the tendrils of vines, his eyes scanning the sky and the distance and the frontiers of his own mind. Cigarette ash falls to the stones of the floor to be swept into obscurity by the wind. In another night, it may very well seem as if he had never been here, just one more specter in centuries of such.
     Of all his trips to Powis, this was, by a wide margin, the quietest, the oddest, the least comfortable. And for all it may, or may not, turn out to be, he is satisfied he came. There will be no regrets for that.
     He has not changed from the last time anyone saw him. His expression is placid. It is merely any old night on the old veranda for the old duke and his cigarette.

     There is no attempt made to sneak up on you. Fiona has left Davydd to his other pleasures; food, drink, whatever's on the telly if he's so minded. There are always plenty of little maintenance-like chores to be done around a castle as lady of the manor - so she slipped off. Something to do with provisions, no doubt.
     But it was not to a pow-wow with the castle's kitchen staff that she slid off. Instead, she made a quiet round, finally coming outside to the night air. She is dressed for it; skirt and blouse as earlier, with a pullover and scarf added to it, warm woolens along with the quiet, almost sturdy chic. Her hair is in one long golden braid, and her wedding rings flash from her fingers, the pink diamond around her throat.
     "It's a good place not to think, isn't it?" It is how she signals her presence from the middle of the aviary steps. She gives you that courtesy, though assumes your hearing as good as her husband's. "With all those birds at all hours of the day and night. Funny how the picturesque can be so shrill. Not that I was ever shrill."
     She smiles at you without self-consciousness. It is funny, isn't it? Fiona comes to the base of the steps, looking over at you. "If you're looking to be alone," she adds placidly, "say the word and I can always leave. Between me and Davy, I shouldn't wonder if you're in need of aspirins."

     "It is a better place not to think," William counters. He turns to you a moment or two after he speaks. You did not surprise him, not with your arrival. "You would not believe it of me," he speaks in quiet French, remembering your facility with it. "...that I think too much."
     His indigo gaze resumes its consideration of the gardens, the horizon, both what he sees and what he feels. "You do not have to go. This is now your home. You belong here, with those you love and those who love you." Ash is swept up before it can even fall upon the stone. Near him, perhaps you can smell the cinnamon he wears, the clove that infuses what he smokes, perhaps you can feel the way the air defers to him. "No, you do not need to leave me alone, Fiona," William murmurs.
     He is quiet for several more moments, merely staring out upon the world rolling ahead before him, as if he were the alpha and omega. He would not make such a statement, not now. But when one has his age, his charisma, it cannot, perhaps, be helped.
     "I have gathered that you are principal in his life. You have the love of two men." And now he is looking at you. "One of them has been my friend. The other, an associate. I am sure you know by now the peculiar lives of these men whose lives you yourself have changed."
     It is an opening for you to admit what you know, that you know they are something more than they appear. That he is something more than even he appears.
     "Was him going to the Court of the Silver Tree your idea?" Court of the Silver Tree. The fairy court of London. It was Davydd's destination once. He never made it.

     She moves slowly, carefully, coming to a halt nearby, where she can lean on a railing. Both hands fold there, and she looks at you as you speak, then across the scenery. "Love changes things," Fiona says simply. "Sometimes deliberately, though it shouldn't; sometimes just by its presence. We can fight against it, we can try to chase it off, we can run from it, but it's hard to escape it. Everyone wants to be loved by somebody, especially when in love themselves. And then, bit by bit, the compromises creep in. Marriage is especially about a series of compromises, I've found."
     She smiles a little bit, glancing down at her rings, then looks up at you, to your gaze. She has always been one to meet gazes, even yours. "I know you two have been friends a long time. Enemies with respect, friends. Brothers. I know how much he values you," Fiona says carefully. "I've seen him cry."
     She is answering you, the question you didn't say. The question you ask openly makes her show her surprise. "The what? Oh, that thing. No, that wasn't my idea. I'm not even sure who they are. Definitely not sure that they'd do me or him any favors." She shakes her head vigorously, so that her braid thumps against her back. "They never did me any favors when I could have really used it. If only to be sure I wasn't cracking up. Not," she flashes a quick smile again, almost laughing, "that I'm bitter, or anything."

     There is a shared smirk for the Silver Tree. The only thing more useless than a fairy is a fairy committee. "I'm glad that was merely his phantasm. That... I can deal with." He pauses a moment more. "He and I have known one another for many, many years. I will not rehash it for you. You have heard it all, I'm sure." There was a ripple across his expression for the mention of Davydd's tears. He does not doubt that Davydd has had them.
     "Over the course of our... eight centuries," he whispers, going ahead with it, "... we have never found ourselves walking the particular path we are now on. After so many years, you'd have thought we'd walked them all." He's speaking rhetorically, and to himself. "His family here has grown, but the family he has had for the last six centuries is struggling, Fiona. We are... I am," he counters, "... grappling with trying to understand why. Why .. in that moment... he sacrificed one for the other."
     His expression says loudly and clearly that he does not expect you to have an answer for him. "You have borne him a grandson. Two... grandchildren," he quietly corrects. "And... a son?" Leaning against the stone wall of the aviary, William turns fully to you, his gaze direct, his expression placid, showing little emotion either way. Interest, perhaps. Yes, there is that. "A son named Edward," William repeats, "... and a grandson named William. And he did not tell William or Edward the first," a motion to himself and to the other who is here in absentia, "... any of it." He pauses, tilting his head slightly. "I will admit to being ... confused by this."

     She listens, again in silence, looking at you. Watching you. There is something of understanding, and she turns to lean against the railing, much as she would were she wearing jeans instead of this - for her - more formal ensemble.
     "I think you're over-thinking his grasp of a given situation at a given time," Fiona says finally. She sighs a little bit. "Yes - three in all. One son, two grandsons. It's his turn next," she adds with a small smile; it is for your information more than any reminder of her own. Things are balanced, here. They run according to their own rules - but there is a balance.
     Slowly, she moves to a ledge, sinking onto it, hands clasped under her chin as she looks to you. "When he met me, he was afraid I - in my quest for answers, and I'm sure you remember what I was like then - that I'd explode his life," Fiona says candidly. "In my search ... that he would be found out. The secrets he'd kept. He didn't want that - partly out of survival instinct, I imagine. I don't know that much about you - or Edward. I know a little bit, as you say. But ... what he didn't realize then, though he knows now, I wasn't looking for random chunks of answer. No vast and lofty secrets about the hidden masters of the world, or whatever. I was trying to make sense of what was insane in my own life. He was afraid of how it'd hit close to home - and, being Davydd, the closer it hit to home, or he thought it hit to home, the faster he started burning those bridges."
     She sighs, scrubbing her hands over her face. "I'm not trying to just - defend him," her voice is muffled by her hands, "and you've known him long enough to know what he's like. But for a moment, pack half your brain away and think from the point of view of instinct." She takes her hands away, frowning a little. "...He did what he did, I think, because he was scared of losing you and Edward. He held onto the secret because he had held onto it so long that holding it in had become second nature - and when he felt that was threatened, he reacted without thinking. Finally - I'm guessing here, at this point. We haven't talked about it that much. I'm guessing he finally decided to tell you."
     She stands again, holding up a hand. "Not done yet - you can't sum up eight hundred years in one sentence without practicing first, and I've got smaller chunks of time with which to work and a lot less practice. So he decided to tell you, even though by that point you'd really rather he'd gone on holding onto it. The truth changes things. Extrapolating from his behavior, he figured that out from your reactions as much as anything else. But to him ... he wasn't choosing me over you. Probably he expected you to ... make an end to him, because he really doesn't love himself. He was giving you, I think, first refusal. And then," she shrugs, looking up with a rustle of wool garments, "you didn't kill him. But you, shall we say, made your displeasure known. Shall I continue?"

     He looks upon you with interest as you put into simple words things he has known, suspected, and have confirmed in your part what little explanation Davydd himself has been able to offer. Are you the rosetta stone to Davydd ap Owain that we've all be waiting on? At last, a lexicon.
     "I am enraptured by such a comprehensible explanation to what has been confounding to me, even knowing all this. So...please," he smiles slightly, more in his gaze than upon those lips. William gestures for you to continue. His gaze settles over you like a coat as he finishes the cigarette.
     "You are saying that he did this... to protect Edward and I..." It is a question. A point of clarification. To protect us, and not himself. But then... why bring the fairy court into it? Was that madness only, as we first suspected? Or are Eduard and I the strange Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to his Hamlet? I would not have seen that coming...

     "I understand him very well," Fiona murmurs. There's a hint of colour to her cheeks, but she smiles, glancing down and then back up as she exhales. "Of course to protect you, not just himself. Have you ever known anyone worse at protecting himself, when it comes right down to it? If he had to go to war to protect you, he would in a heartbeat. Never mind the risk to himself; he'd do it, and that'd be an end to it."
     There is no indignation, just overwhelming confidence in her own assertion. "He's been trying to kill himself for centuries. I think I've mostly got him broken of that habit, but like any other road to self-destruction, he has his good days and his bad days. Sometimes he'll fall off the wagon. All I can do is love him enough to keep trying to set him straight."
     She moves to one of the benches, restless with all this standing, sinking down onto cold stone. "There was madness in doing that, but there was also shortsightedness. He wanted to do the right thing, and he just didn't know what the right thing to do was. Believe me," Fiona smiles wryly, "I was not consulted. At that time, when he decided to do something, he might tell me - more often not - and then he'd go and do it. Which I can't entirely blame him for; I was what, nineteen? And what did I know about anything? Even if Davydd ap Owain were accustomed to taking advice from little girls, I was also in his bed, which while it didn't mean he didn't respect me, it's hard to overcome eight hundred years of cultural assumption. No; he was I think expecting you to if you didn't kill him, throw him out on his ear. If you had no more ability to love him, with the truth being out, but enough fond memory of him not to kill him, what other course would be open to you at all?"
     She looks up, absently picking at a fraying edge of fringe on the cuff of her cardigan, blue eyes intent on you. "But as I'm sure you know, as long as you're alive, if you've got a title, there's an element of responsibility that goes along with it. Self-destructive as Davydd might be, he's still as determined to do his duty as any Englishman - and wouldn't he just pull a sour face for me putting it that way!" Fiona laughs quietly, then shakes her head. The smile remains, but her tone returns to seriousness.
     "If he can't do his job one way, he'd do it another. And if your company - yours and Edward's, and the society of which you are jointly a part - had no room for him at that point, he would have to find another avenue to continue his work, wouldn't he? Well ... if you cross the lot of you off the organizational chart ... what comes next?"

     "There was no need to cross us off. We would have gone anywhere for him, with him. We have for centuries. What he did was panic," the commander's tone can be heard in that. "But," he exhales, "... everything you say is true. You do have an excellent grasp of him for a girl of such.... tender age," William almost smiles. Almost. With another breath, he takes a seat on the stone railing that keeps people from walking off the path and down to the next plateau the hard way. "Edward and I loved him. I still love him," he confirms for you. "And he should have known us better. That is what we are struggling with. That he, for that moment, did not. And he, in that moment, betrayed everything we had ever been to one another. I am here... because I am trying to forgive him. I am trying to love him. And I am trying to understand him. Many in my position would have given him the death he so craved." William looks from the Welsh countryside to you. "I am not such a man to do this to one I have loved for so long. To Edward, he was all but a father-figure. I am pessimistic about their future. I ... have had enough internecine struggles in my life to not want another one."
     As you speak of what comes next, William's mouth, perhaps his most beautiful of all striking features, curls downward in a frown of thought, of weighty consideration. "He separated from us... to protect us from the secret he felt was about to be revealed... by you," his mouth upturns slightly, "...and as part of that, he was going to align himself with the court, or make it their responsibility." Black eyebrows knit together in thought as he stares forward across the wilderness. His mind is a thicker forest than that just now. "But the damage would have been done regardless. But in our ignorance perhaps we would not be considered complicit. Hmm... a gamble. But I suppose I can see a pattern to it, obscure as it may be."
     "I wonder," William suddenly murmurs, "... what you think of all this, caught up between such drama with such men as we..."

     "I think that you're all rather silly," Fiona says calmly. "Davydd most of all, of course. What it comes right down to, after all, is that he was scared of losing the people he loved, and it's always easier to say nothing when you're scared of what might happen. Saying it could result in bad things. When I came along, he was at first afraid that my poking around uncontrollably would result in bad things, and then he felt, I don't know - responsible, like he had to step up to the plate. So he changed direction. And for him it'd been going on for a while, he'd been torturing himself with it; but when he went to you with it, it was sudden. You couldn't know he'd been wrestling with it for - what, a year or two? Alright, that's not a very long time to you, but it's still a pretty long time to have dread eating you up. So he was after telling you, to be honest with you and to get some relief from that dread even after he'd ensured I wouldn't be blurting out anything in mixed company."
     She stands up, turning towards you and regarding you steadily. "He regards Britain as his responsibility, you know. He still feels that sort of thing. He has to work at it. And what can a king do, without support? So yes, he wanted to protect you from that; but he also wanted to get on with his job. And you - well, I don't blame you for being upset with him for not telling the truth, but at the same time, I don't see that it changes who he is. The base assumption might prove to have been off, but he's still the person he's shown himself to be. He's still lovable, foolish, wise when the moon's just right, possessed of insane appetites and lunatic dreams, liable to take his own fool head off or poke an eye out with a stick if he's not careful, brave enough to charge against an army if any one of his family, you and Edward included, needs it of him ... in short, he's still Davydd. I know he misses you both dreadfully, and I hope for one that he won't have to go at it without you."
     She takes a deep breath. "But if I could forgive him for sleeping with a whore," Fiona says steadily, "and make allowances for what he is to ignore that he'll screw other women to feed his appetites - and to you, maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, what with the difference in our eras, and our mortal states, as it were, but I think you know my personality well enough to have an idea ... if I can love him and forgive him for the mistakes he's made and for the mistakes I know he's still going to make - then I think you two should be able to realize he's still the person you thought you knew. I wish he were able to talk to you to tell you about everything, all of it. But I also know why he's afraid to, and why he can't, and why even if he could, it would be too hard on both of you, for him to say and you to listen. You've had eight hundred years of knowing him as you thought you knew him. Now you're trying to run a horse at a wall, both of you, but at the last minute you're pulling away because you think the wall is too high. But it's not, you know. And the more you go on running at the wall, the taller it's going to seem. There's noone going to cut you off at the knees if you just dismount, or even just ride around it."

     From the mouths of children...
     He realizes that it is impossible to explain to you just how upset the apple cart had been that week, how eight hundred (or in Ian's case, twelve-hundred) years of architecture could have come tumbling down. And there is nothing that makes a vampire more nervous that to realize just how precarious life can be. That is something mortals understand, know, truly feel better than those who have stepped outside the cosmic circle.
     And so when you speak of what he should forgive, there is simply a nod. "That is why I am here," William says quietly. "Precisely why I have come, even without warning, to his doorstep. Because I wanted him to know that I love him. Even if we are not speaking to one another as we used to. Even if the words and the laughter are not coming as they did before. We are not comfortable with one another yet. But all things have their beginning, ne c'est pas?"
     William rises from the railing. He looks up at the castle, peering at its red stone. "He's still my familie," Plantagenet says. "One day, we will both remember."
     After a breath of smoke from a newly lit cigarette is released, he looks to you. "I am glad you are with him, Fiona Arundel. And... congratulations... on your growing family." With that, he turns from the view of the castle and glances out to the gardens again, seeming prepared to head off into the night that brought him here as secretly. Maybe there is a reason your son was named after him, after all.

     She has no way of knowing; no way she could know. Even if explained to her, it is doubtful that she could understand it without having the same reaction that she already has had. But she listens to you, looks to you, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. "You will always be welcome here, as I think you know. He does love you; and he hasn't traded one for another, which I think is what you really need to take from all this," Fiona says finally. "Trading was never a part of the question. All you have to do is look at him and how he looks at us - me, Rhodri, Gwilym, Iowerth, Peter - to know how astonished he is that we are here, still here, with him, still loving him."
     She smiles at you as you turn. "He is always prepared to lose us and never quite ready to admit that he can't lose us. For years now I've told him that he's stuck with me; I think it's maybe finally starting to sink in. I hope so. He deserves to be loved. And a kick in the pants, but we all deserve a little bit of that, don't we?"

     "Hmmm.... mais oui," William says after a moment's thought symbolized by his mouth's tugging on the cigarette. He releases smoke as he releases his smile, one seeming to beget the other. "That is true for everyone. And he has been prepared to lose for so long he has forgotten what it is to win. That is his to deal with. But... I will take what you have said. I appreciate your candor."
     "Tell him," William continues, looking back to you, "...that I will see him tomorrow night. Early. Before I return to Scotland. Tonight... I need to... wander a bit."
     He needs solitude. Time. Quiet. All these to sort out his thoughts -- of what he knew, what he understood, and what you have said to him.
     "Nos dda, Fiona. Bonsoir," William says congenially, and then he turns and continues down the stone path from one plateau of the garden to the next.

     "Good night," Fiona bids you, turning to the steps leading back up. You will go down, and she will go up; a divergence, to be sure. "I'll tell him. I hope you'll avail yourself of the food before you go, though. I'd hate to spend all day cooking and not have someone rave over it."
     She leaves with a laugh, letting those most ordinary of words serve as closure for you. What Davydd doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

Posted by rowan at December 17, 2006 12:23 AM