Even as temperate as these waters are, for Yule there is always snow in the Capitol, a white frosting that overlays the twelve islands of the Crescent turning it to a fondant wonderland. Minaret towers and basilica domes gleam with ice and snow.
     Two days until Yule proper, and the kingdom is nightly celebrating, if wistfully, one of its most beloved figured, Tiernan of the Winter Diamond. For his cause, and in his honor, diamonds have become the gift of the season and the theme about which every home and business, large or small, has decorated. Babies born during these last days will bear a version of his name. Tiernan. Terry. Winter. Tinne.
     The outpouring of love has been immense and appropriate. The kingdom that could not have been without him cannot imagine, now, what it will be like without him.
     The people of the kingdom are not alone in such thoughts. Their former king feels much the same.
     Requests, letters of best wishes and condolences have been received by patient and considerate seneschals. But none of those seeking to speak with Iowerth Rhudd Draig have actually been given access. Gatherings that have been held in his honor and in Tiernan's have not been attended. And though advisors have given their advice that he should be seen, he has politely countered with very reasonable excuses.
     Since returning several days ago now, Iowerth has not left the private halls of the royal floor, the twelfth floor, not even to haunt the kitchens, as he would on late nights when he was king. Sequestered, he sits in the apartments that he gave to Tiernan, though the chamber with the large pool and bath has long since been taken over by the new king. Lights off, the chamber only lit by a few candles placed here and there, Iowerth watches the ships at the harbor, moored in for the night -- and some for the season. He looks back to the book on his lap and props his feet up on the ottoman.

     You are being given your space - by most people, at least. But in one corner, shadows coalesce and become solid, until the Holly King leans back in his corner, languid and louche, watching you watch the ships. "I'm beginning to think you only call me when you need something," Gwilym cracks, then moves forward without waiting for your reply.
     Deft hands pluck a bottle from the air, and the finest of crystal goblets to follow. He sets them down with a maitre d's aplomb, pouring wine with a steady hand. Have you ever known a hand more steady than his? And he drops to a crouch, and he watches you, head tipped to a slight angle.

     Periwinkle eyes lift immediately, his hands sliding against the book, closing it. "How else would you know that you are needed?" he says quietly. "You would be upset if we didn't call you." The words are all repeated by rote, said a thousand times, but not like this. Iowerth watches his brother study him.
     He doesn't ask what the wine is. It doesn't really matter. Sitting forward, he takes a glass. He sits back and studies you in return. "What are you looking for?" Iowerth wonders. He pauses for a sip of the liquid. "Some signs of Christmas spirit?" Though the words are drolly chosen, they are quietly spoken and not at all with the timbre of a man who is capable of witty repartee. Though his body goes through the motions of it in a reflex whenever you're around.
     "Speaking of... it's almost your big hurrah for another year, Father Christmas. How are you faring? Let me be the first to ask you." Iowerth sips at the wine, looking into the dark color of it as it lowers. "Is this fig and quince?"

     "For my brother," Gwilym answers, ignoring everything else. "What else would I be looking for, oes?"
     He smiles at you, and he shrugs. "I am single. I'm faring as well as can be expected in the dark of the year, when all those I love are plunged into darkness. I'm not the one who can lead y' out of darkness. I wish I were." His smile is tinged by that knowledge. He does wish he could protect you, guide you. But he knows, clearly. His path isn't for you. And he's let go of that; how much he's wished it, all these years. He's had to let go.
     It isn't for you. His path is a resolute and bloody way, noisy, bright and murderous. Yours has more cannonballs; his has more whips and chains. It is just the way it is. "Plum and quince, but no figs. I wouldn't do that to y', brawd." Gwilym straightens, and he moves to settle a hand on your hair. "You know I love you, oes?"

     "Single?" Iowerth's voice is sudden, a cannonball blurt. Eyebrows drawn together in concern, he sets his wine aside. "What happened, Gwi..." His question catches in his throat, and he swallows. "If you don't want to discuss it, please don't feel obligated. I'm just... I thought you were ..." Happy? Mated? None of those words seem to fit. He'll let you fill in the blanks.
     Closing his eyes as you settle your hand upon his head like a benediction, Iowerth nods once. "Oes, I do know, brawd." He opens his eyes, his hands folding at his stomach as his legs lower, his feet planting on the floor. "It's just as well," he murmurs, "...being a lighthouse is a bit dull and unfulfilling." He rolls his shoulders, his eyes going to his hands. He turns the wedding band around on his finger. It feels loose. Tenuous.
     "Rocks are thankless and the boats are no better," he metaphors on. His fingers let go of the ring and he sits forward to take up the wine again. Plum and quince. He can taste it now. "When I thought of how my life was going to go or be, I never saw it going this way. I guess I should have learned to play the odds and run the numbers."

     "And do me out of a job?" He grins again, and then he settles on the arm of your chair, rubbing your scalp gently. "You can't run numbers on love, Io. Life doesn't work that way; and where angels and devils are involved?" He rolls his eyes expressively. "They're the original game-changers. Hate the bloody bastards."
     He grins at you, but his eyes are serious. You are the one person who sees both his eyes on a regular basis. "Nothing specific happened, brawd. I just ... got tired of chasing my tail. He can't complete me. Nobody can complete me. What I want and what I need - well, it was just time. It wasn't doing him any favors. I am a very unhealthy man to love."

     "Rest assured in that I would make a very lousy Holly King," Iowerth notes, glancing up to you briefly. He closes his eyes, swallowing. The glimmer of emotion is swallowed. "I could never master what you've mastered, or pay the price you pay every day. And have for years now."
     He blinks his eyes open, his eyes burning with strain and restraint. "I'll be the last man on earth to ever give you advice on love," he notes, looking at you and then sipping at the wine. "I'm sorry all the same." He doesn't tell you that you'll find love again. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Maybe you want it, maybe you don't. He doesn't dare make the sweeping guarantees that others have attempted to make for him.
     Those guarantees that are, just now, sticking in his throat to choke him. You will find happiness, they say. No, he wants to tell them: you are wrong.
     "I'm sorry all the same," he repeats softly. "Though... brother... you've never lacked for company. The line is ...and has always been... long."

     "And that's well and good, for when company is what one wants." Gwilym shrugs, watching you. "It doesn't matter, oes? Really. I'm fine."
     It is you he's worried about. Gwilym rubs your cheek and then shakes his head. "What can I do?"

     "I wish I knew." He actually smiles at that. "I wish I knew what to ask for. Everything I say sounds like a big complaint." He closes his eyes, sitting forward, leaning forward as your hand works against his scalp. "I don't know, Gwi. I'm just ...focusing on Ani, Sabira and Tanira right now. I can't think of anything else. Balthazar and Gruffydd are fine men. Hurting, but doing so with such grace and determination. I am not as worried about them. Maybe that's just what they want me to think..." He shakes his head.
     Again, nothing for himself...
     "I guess just... when you can... be around for them. Just being back here." His words come to a sudden halt on his tongue, syllables slamming into one another in the pit of his throat. "Just being back here," he says again after a moment, "... even these few days, there's just... so much attention. I don't want people looking at me. I appreciate their sympathy. I just ... can't handle the attention right now. Maybe moving to the Philosopher's Island will help." Exhaling, he sits up. He doesn't want wine. It offers him no solace. Coffee is what appears on the table in front of him. Enough for two, if you want it. He adds cream to his, and a single cube of sugar. "Or maybe the island I left to just be a garden. Maybe Ani and I can be there for a while until he finishes school. Sabira will hate it," eyes widen to punctuate the words. "But maybe not." He looks at you. "I would ask you to move in with me, but I know better." He smiles at you, reaching up to cover your hand with his own. "After a day, you would need to go. And... I'm sure by the spring... it will be harder and harder for me to be here. God," it's a curse and a supplication. Iowerth puts his head in his hands, covering his eyes as they leak.
     A quick inhalation as he sits up, and the oceans of his eyes suddenly dry. Iowerth sips at the coffee, but then sets it aside to be ignored like the wine that came before it. Nothing suits him. In fact: how often, one may wonder, is he eating? He looks at you, then looks away. "Arian suggested that I start building things again. Maybe building a new house would help. Or a new ship. I should probably have an occupation other than sleeping and weeping." He rolls his eyes, then rubs them closed. His words ring with that old, sardonic humor, only without a note of humor in his tone.

     "Stop being so damned selfless. It's acceptable to want, to need, to want to be greedy. You're pissed off, aren't you? And hurting. I'm not sayin' you have to cry on my shoulder - you wouldn't anyway, knowing you." Your twin grasps your hair, not too tightly but not altogether gently either. "D'you have to keep it all in and be a bloody gentleman?"
     Gwilym exhales and shrugs. He's somewhat resigned to you and your ways by now. "Building's better than destroying. Or throwing the baby out with the bathwater," he cracks, settling back on his heels. He takes your hand gently between his own. "I can stay with you a while if you like, brawd. I'm not doing anything else. If it's what you want and need... why wouldn't I? Or you could come with me. Or I could go with y'. I'm here, aren't I?"

     "I've cried on your shoulder once this week. I don't know that I can afford to keep you in wardrobe if I make it a daily habit," he smirks. It's odd to see it, that expression, after it's been gone so long. It haunts his face with memories of his youth, born again as he seems. "I'm not angry. What's the point of being angry? With whom? Tiernan? God?" Periwinkle eyes roll a bit at that.
     "I'm gutted," he says as you let go of his hair and take his hand. "I feel like my intestines are over there," he jerks his chin toward one corner of the room, "...and my heart? Pulverized bits of meat, who knows where it is anymore. But... no... not angry," he murmurs.
     There is a glimmer of your brother's usual temperament, flashing in those eyes as you get a look for your Not doing anything else. "Other than maintaining the balance of the Otherworld, you're free. Yes." Iowerth looks to his hand in your hand, glancing to your face now and then.
     Anguish moves over his expression in the twitch of his lips, the muscles just beneath his eyes, ending in the twitch of his eyebrows. Needing you means acknowledging the incomprehensible. Iowerth swallows the taste of the sea in his throat. At least he hasn't lost touch with his endearing stubbornness.
     "Maybe you could spend a week with us after Yule," he says. "That would be the longest we've spent with one another since... what... we were seventeen? Actually seventeen, not looking like we're seventeen." Which he doesn't -- he is firmly and forever, now, in his twenties. "And... see how things go. I don't want to be ... I don't want to ask you to drop everything and come running. As you've always done."

     "Pssh. You don't pay for my presence. You're graced with it. Gifted with it." But for all the joke to his words, he looks at you seriously, bringing your fingers to his lips for a moment. And he straightens. You can't accept what he offers. What else is new, really?
     "If I come running, it's because I want to, Io," Gwilym points out, his hand touching your forehead. "When've you been able to make me do anything? The only time you 'made' me do anything, was when you 'made' me tell you about being stuck under your bed, those years ago." He gives you a half-smile, though there is sympathy there, and he shakes his head. "Learn to take a little, not just give. You'll live longer..."
     And he begins to recede to shadows. He would stay, if you wanted him right now, but right now you want the splendor of isolation. And he can't really blame you. All he can do is give you what gift he has to give.

     "Then, Father Christmas," Iowerth whispers, looking to you as you start to dissolve, "...give me what you think I deserve. You're the one with The List."
     It was supposed to be my turn to give, not take...
     Iowerth rises, his eyes full of grit, his throat closing with the silt of a king's guilt. He puts a hand to his eyes, pressing and rubbing. Oh, there is anger -- but it's not at God, and it's not at Tiernan, and it's not at you. It's not even directed to Fate. The sea is angry with itself.
     All I've done all my life is take. And now when I have to give, I have nothing to offer. He waves the coffee away, and likewise the wine. He turns from your departure, turns to look at the ocean outside the window, at the waves that throw themselves against the rocks.

Posted by rowan at September 30, 2010 04:28 PM