The last bits of summer sun caress the grassy lawn of the east courtyard garden; tourists are still milling about the terraced gardens. It's that time of year when the lower parts of the house are avoided by the family and the people of England and Parts Further are given access to the Clive artifacts, the gallery and gardens in particular. It's the time of year when the master of the house, when he's up and about, has to take his nasty cigarette smoking habit outside. But these are the concessions one must make to government if one wants to dip one's hands in the government till.
The east courtyard, on the other hand, is completely private. Penelope's Tree (well, a child of a child of that tree) rests in the center, and wildflowers are left to come and go as they please. It's the first bit of garden to lose afternoon light. Right now, the sun is in the three-o'clock position, about to cast the garden into shade.
Half in light and half in darkness, what better arrangement for the two who lie there, spread out on their backs, their legs stretched out in opposite directions and their heads resting side by side? Aeron and Bran fit together like puzzle pieces. They are dressed identically and but for the opposite nature of their tattoos they would be impossible to tell apart. Eyes open, Eyes closed (half sun, half shade), they each lie there with an arm slung across their eyes: one tattooed, the other not.
It would appear, on first glance, that they could both use a hair of whatever dog has bit them both, but there are no drinks, whatsoever, in sight.
She has two new babes in arms, but thank god for servants. Fiona is taking a small break from breastfeeding, nappies, and more breastfeeding by walking around the grounds. She's dressed in post-maternity jeans and the sort of sweater which can come off in a hurry (Davydd must love those) and a thick padded bra to help counter any leaking. "Hello, boys," she calls, smiling fondly at her middle set of sons. "You two look restful, except I know you two better than that."
Perhaps it's maternal sense, to know when her babies need her. Even when her babies are all grown up. She goes to stand under the tree, looking down at the two of you, out of the sun herself. She doesn't want to freckle or burn; her hair's about medium length today, worn in a loose braid. New mothers rarely have time for more complicated hair than that. "Someone steal your beer?" she asks teasingly as she lowers herself to sit crosslegged. She pats her lap. "Come on, then."
The thing that most endeared their parents to them, and frightened their enemies (and sometimes their friends and other brothers), is their uncanny ability to do everything in perfect unison. They really are Frick and Frack. And so as their mother (you) stands over them, and then sits, they reply in unison without missing a beat, like a well-trained vaudevillian twin act:
"We're depressed..."
"And in love..."
"Maybe more miserable than depressed..."
They sit up long enough to turn about and rest their head upon your lap, a head for each leg. Eyes open and unshaded now, you can see their faces well enough. They are both completely ill and miserable. Happiness isn't for everyone...
Aeron's eyes are mostly black with a corona of brilliant emerald; Bran's eyes are mostly green with deep black at the rims and the occasional sliver of shadows in the otherwise verdant color. Both sets look up to you with their father's face, only younger. And older. And again at once they say: "We have something to confess..."
And then Bran gives you a pointed look: "But you must promise not to tell, on penalty of not having to feed us nearly as often."
"We do mean it this time," Aeron echoes. And the twins turn heads to look at one another. "You go first," Aeron quietly insists. "It's easier to digest..."
"Ugh, God," Bran wrinkles his nose and grimaces. "Paper, scissors, stone; be fair, brawd."
The twins raise their right hands, knocking their fists together three times. Bran chooses stone. Aeron chooses paper. Bran sighs and rolls his eyes. "Alright, I will go first." Grimacing again and folding his arms against his chest, Bran squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm in love with Madison West..."
She smiles down at you, stroking both of you at the hairline. "Who would I tell? My boys are my boys, and who am I going to tell, anyway? Your father has his secrets, and I've always helped to keep your secrets even from him - although," Fiona muses practically, "he knows more often than you might think."
But she said she'd keep it to herself, and she will - look at her husband's secret, your father. Leaning back against the tree, she slips her arms around you both tolerantly. "Oh? All right. You're in love with Madison West. Well, I think you two are a much better match than she and Balthazar were. Is she in love with you?"
That, after all, is the question for the ages. Fiona bends to kiss the top of Bran's head, then pats Aeron's arm. "Go on, dear. Wherein lies the problem?"
"They do rather get on like a house on fire. If the house were his..." Aeron stops just short; and he doesn't need his brother's glare or punch to the shoulder (or nose...or groin) to do so.
"Oes," Bran grunts a bit (so like his da), when he doesn't want to vocalize what's in his heart. "She loves me. Wants the whole thing, you know, respectability. Eventually. The whole thing makes me just want to scratch off my skin. I'll fuck it up. Who am I kidding? Me? Be faithful? A married man? To one woman? With only two hands? I'm not husband material. I've absolutely nothin' to offer her. A hard cock and a hard time," he says without thinking. Smirking, Bran looks to you. "Sorry. You know what I mean. I don't have anything to do with respectability. I have enormous tracts of land. I do have property. But... the very idea of actually living there. I don't know how, mum. I know how to kill things and shift realities. But to...stand still? How do I do that? I don't know how to be ...you know... a boyfriend or a husband."
"It's not your strong suit..."
Bran snorts to his brother, "You're telling me. Now, while she's thinking of that, you tell her your bit."
Aeron opens his eyes and looks up at you. He has all of the stillness that Bran lacks. "I'm in love with my brother." He quick glances to his twin. "Not this one."
"Duw, thank Christ not..."
Aeron's mouth twitches at his other brother's discomfort. "And I have all my life. He'd flip if he knew I'd said anything," he looks back to you, "...but I can't keep it hidden anymore. This secret....has isolated me," Aeron admits softly. "I have no purpose but that to which is his. I have no hobbies, no interests, no friends, no lovers. I have no one save him. I don't know how to be with other people. I am not well liked. I have no social skills. I am a thing not a person."
"Well," Bran says softly, looking to his brother, "...I like you..."
"Diolch, brawd..."
"And I have friends everywhere and harems and now this... delightful red canary bird," Bran explains more seriously, "...and yet... I am also isolated. Unable to really talk about it. My fam would freak; hers would likely declare war. Who knows what Gillian and Balthazar would do or say."
Your first pair of identical twins, those Davydd doppelgangers in more ways than one, look to you in despair, making a perfect circle, as ever. Balanced, in even this. "What do we do?" they ask you, their voices softly doubled.
She sighs. "Oh, my dears, my darling boys." Fiona sighs, hugging you both tightly. She listens through, and although she's a trifle shocked, in truth she's less shocked than she could be. It does, after all, explain a good deal. "It's the curse of this family, in so many ways; that where our hearts lead, we follow, and damned be the consequences. Sometimes it leads us to happiness, but so often we have to struggle with it - and in truth, without the struggle, we're nothing. We're less than we otherwise could be. It makes it a very hard row to hoe."
She sits up a bit, adjusting a bra strap. "All right. First things first." She looks at both her sons, resisting the urge to say the first thing which comes to her mind; such impulses are common, but with her sons, rarely as productive as she'd like. "Aeron," she begins with first, "your heart has always been closed up tightly and ringed round with thorns. I don't blame you for loving Gwi - at least, I am assuming it is Gwi you mean, and don't worry, I won't tell him that you told me. I'm here to help my sons, all of them, even the ones who don't tell me their problems." She runs her fingers affectionately through Aeron's hair with a smile. "Gwi is very easy to love. Many have cast their hearts at him and lost their own; I don't believe he does it deliberately, but he needs more than any one person can give, and he will take everything that is given to him. You can't pour all your energies there, Aeron, not and remain a whole person yourself. He is, of all my sons, the only one with whom I would reconcile myself to keeping a harem." She cuts a look to Bran. "That's including you, darling."
That having been said, she gently takes Aeron's hand and lifts it, squeezing a little. "You know why it's unhealthy. It's not because it's your brother, although that doesn't help; the secrecy itself keeps you isolated, and that isolation turns into a self-perpetuating cycle. Gwilym is an adorable, wonderful boy," all her sons are her boys, still, "even if he is a murderous assassinating creature at times. Just like all my boys can be, really." Her fond smile doesn't alter one whit, aside from the creeping amusement of the irony of it. "But he's like a steady diet of nothing but chocolate fudge, dear. It's going to poison you in the long run. I think you need to think not about him and think more about what's best for you. Chocolate fudge is permissible - but not as a steady diet."
She turns now to her other son present, and squeezes his hand gently, in similar fashion. "You love her, but you are afraid of losing your identity, of your identity being shaped to her desires. There's always some slippage in a relationship - just ask your father sometime about how much we pushed and pulled and ran and chased." Fiona laughs a little. Ah, memories. "It was hideously painful at the time, to be honest, but ... here we are now, mm? But no, you shouldn't have to feel you'll be giving up all of yourself to become what she wants. That being said, is that what she wants, or are you basing this on random comments, on the dialogue inside your own head? A dialogue takes two or more parties for it to be a real dialogue, sweetheart."
She ruffles Bran's hair, and adds, "I don't think her family would declare war. They might not be happy, no - but her brother and her sister are now married into our family, and they've been defeated by her at the gate once, when they came with the intention of trying to bring her back, remember? If she is in love with you and has chosen you, then no one else is likely to cause a difficulty, or not for very long. Truth be told," she smiles, "she reminds me a little of myself, when I met your father and a little after. Only less angry. Now... for what you should do..."
She considers you both. "Aeron, you need to spend some time away from Gwi," Fiona tells you. "See him one day a week; no more, no less. I want you to travel widely, wherever you wish, but I would suggest spending some time in my kingdom and perhaps in London. Wherever you are called other than to his side. Do this for the next three months. If there is no change, no improvement, we'll revise."
"Bran, you need to stop worrying about what isn't here yet. You say you love her; examine your feelings. If you can live without her, then you're not ready to marry her yet anyway. I'd say, really, to do the same as Aeron for a bit, to see if she is something you long for, or just what's between her thighs." Fiona smiles wickedly at you both. She's hardly a virgin; you're both here, after all, aren't you? "You both need time out of the capitol, away from your objects of desire, to clear your head. Make what excuses you need, and for goodness' sake, let yourselves live! Open yourselves to the universe, and realize that yes, while the universe isn't always gentle, it usually does use lube with us."
Chocolate fudge is a powerful addiction. At the prescribed edict, there was some digging of heels into the metaphoric rug of the universe. But, feeling it, he stops to consider it. Aeron glances to her, to his twin, and then looks Someplace Else. "Okay." He looks back to his mother. "I am a bit exhausted, what with all the fudge," he speaks so softly. A very quiet admission. That is, perhaps, the greater confession. "One day a week," he confirms after a moment more of silence. "But what if he needs me in between? He can still call me? I am the only one who can really pull him out of the shadows. When he goes to that place, he needs me."
The need goes both ways, like the pin and the grenade.
Bran looks to his brother then up to his mum as she prescribes his own medicine. "I don't know. We don't talk much, to be honest," he smirks, echoing Balthazar's own words. "We start but then it all starts to get pretty fuzzy." He pauses to take in your recommendation, glancing to his twin again. They give and receive mutual, if silent, support. "Do you want to go somewhere together? Maybe Paris..."
"New York," Aeron replies in a hopeful tone.
"We can do that. And Istanbul. You like the coffees," Bran notes.
"And the Flowering Tree. We ...haven't been there in a while..."
"Maybe years now," Bran notes.
They look to one another and then to you, saying in those perfect, unisoned voices: "We will do as you suggest, mum. And thank you. This wasn't easy for us, you realize."
Bran reaches over and pats his twin's chest, solidly. "Come on, let's go get a drink and wake da. It's been ages. Hey, you know we should all get in the bed," he says to Fiona with a wide, sparkling, Davydd's comet smile. "You, me, Aeron, Wren and ...what's the other one's name again? Oh, and the dogs..."
Aeron grins. "He'll hate that, and love it. Then he'll make us get out and babysit. You letting him near you yet?"
"It's never easy." Fiona smiles tolerantly, chuckling at the two of you. "Never. We find out way with difficulty, and speaking our hearts and minds doesn't come easy to any of us; we guard ourselves too heavily." She ruffles your hair and sits up with a small groan.
Turning to Aeron, she smiles sadly. "He needs his struggle too, Aeron. If he is in danger of dying, yes, go to him. If he is merely struggling - you need to let him struggle. The wound which is too heavily supported leads to atrophy, you know. I have no doubt that he adores you, because behind your masks and chains, you are an adorable, wonderful boy." She touches his cheek gently. "But you need to get to a point where you can allow others to see that side of you - not just him. You are the Holly King's raven, not his slave - and you need not to enable him in his own slavery, either."
She turns to kiss Bran's cheek. "Now, now. Your father's an old man, set in his ways. So," and she shows that yes, indeed, she is your mother, varicolored eyes sparkling with mischief and delight, "let's go do it, shall we?"
Your Twa Corbies sit up and give you your lap back and gallantly they turn about and offer you a hand each. They can help you rise, even while sitting. Bran is the first to rise, helping you up and himself.
It's Aeron who remains seated for a moment more. The thought of allowing Gwilym to struggle scratches at his guts like a animal. It is just as hard for him to think about setting the mask aside to let others see him for who and what he really is.
No one knows that feeling better than his copy. Your hand in one hand, Bran reaches and pats his brother on the shoulder with his other. "Come on," he whispers. "It'll be fun."
What he's really saying is: it'll be alright.
Aeron looks up at him, at you, and then hauls himself up using his twin's hand. There's not a soul on earth who'd believe it, not even those who know them. They'd shock a nation if anyone saw them walking with their arms around one another's shoulders, Bran's hand a gentle reminder against Aeron's head.
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making mane.
And tane unto t'other did say:
O where shall we gang and dine today...
Posted by rowan at June 20, 2010 10:23 PM
