When he woke, it was stirring himself from a bad dream. Arguments, things said, hurtful things admitted -- all were digested, slowly, as Davydd sat on the edge of his bed in his London loft. It was just now rush-hour; he could tell by the humming, throbbing of constant traffic, horns, sirens.
     But it was dark. He could feel that much, though there were no windows, no hint of the hour past his walls. But there was a comforting coolness, the sheltering shade that all of his kind could feel.
     The Day is disconcerting. Night is natural.
     With the hangover of regret, the words still lodged in his brain, Davydd rolled upward and doused his head and body in a heated shower. He steamed there for a good solid half hour, his mouth cottony and his eyes fuzzy. He stared at himself hard in the mirrors of his large master bath. Such a confessional; there was no place to hide from his reflection.
     You, Davydd ap Owain, are a bad person.
     The remnants of the person that he was do still exist, despite the magical maw of bloodthirsty hunger. They are found in his regret, in his guilt, in the spreading of his hands on the bathroom counter. They are heard in his sigh.
     There are some who are good at loving. You, sir, are simply not one of them. The green eyes judge the face that holds them, and the morning's ritual shave is ignored, the 12th Century beard left to stand as a mark, a raise of a flag to his internal, remnant humanity. His mea culpa.
     Dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, he looks ready for court or for the opera, but for the noticeable absence of a tie. His hair is left to dry on its own, and it is doing so in disorganized waves, the wet hair dark red and the drying strands burnished copper. He pours a whiskey, and he triples it. He takes out a cigarette, and he lights it. And Davydd ap Owain takes a seat in the leather recliner that is his throne on earth, settling there with a fuck me sigh of tobacco smoke.
     He shakes his head as he stares at nothing. Not nothing -- he stares at his thoughts and at the contents of a dream.

     There has been no warning given. He has not called your wife, his mother, or any other member of the family, to reveal the discussion you and he have had. While Gwilym has revealed to you his bruised heart, he has had no intention of making that knowledge more widely known (he barely intended to tell you, yourself).
     He is taking solace in his lover's arms Somewhere Else. You are given plenty of space for thinking, for brooding; to pass your night in such, if you wish.
     Or you would be, if your phone were not ringing. Doesn't the world know you have bigger problems on your plate? Pesky world.
     It is your wife (of course). On the other side of the invisible line, she stands in soft cotton and clean denim, looking for all the world like a holdover from the seventies. She is comfortable, though, and right now, after a long night of her own, that is what she has most desired.
     Davy? If you're there, pick up. I've got lots of Pashmina's vindaloo and naan, and if you don't want any, I might just eat it all myself...

     Dark green eyes shift to the side, as if he were glancing at the annoyance of an actual ringing telephone. But the sound only rings in his already full brain, rattling there as he billows smoke.
     I'm not sure how peckish I am, love, he answers after a moment. But you're welcome to eat at the loft if you like. He won't change your plans if you have them, but if you want to come over, the door's open.
     It's not that he's non-committal. Maybe he sounds like he has something on his mind (he does), maybe a little low-key (he is). What kind of naan? he wonders. He's such a man-fant.
     He sips at his whiskey, sighing out a distilled breath as he pulls the cigarette back toward him. With a mixture as this, you'd think it'd be a recipe for setting himself on fire. It's as close as he comes to suicide.
     Just a warning shot over the bow, his voice pops up again: I'm having a lousy fucking evening. So... you know... I can't make you any promises, much as I'd love to.

     Cherry, comes the prompt rejoinder. Since around me, it's the only kind of cherry you're getting. You already had mine, remember?
     She is a bit merry, though not drunk. She has not been drinking, yet. Fiona is already stepping into the elevator at the base of the building, having only waited to make sure that you did not have company already. And, mixing the best of both worlds, chocolate chantilly lace cake for dessert. I was in the mood for something decadent and sinful.
     And yet, perhaps your mind tells you, she is here instead of at Rhodri's. There are the footsteps pacing impatiently in the elevator, sounds with a tap-tap-tap along the hall until she is sounding a different tap-tap-tap at your door.
     Bad mood? Wales didn't lose again to Scotland, did they? She is not mocking you, but there is a light tone to it. Whatever it is, she will be there for you. Well, you can share my naan anyway, you old dragon. I need my Davy tonight.

     Your knocking at the door is preceded and answered by the approach of his feet on the hardwoods of his floor and the opening of the door to greet you.
     You haven't seen him unshaven in a while -- years -- and only then just in the earliest of mornings when it grows back and he looks like a Welsh king napping in a glade. He's wearing it now, taking shelter in the undergrowth it provides. It follows the line of his jaw, trimmed as he was for court on his last living day, and around his mouth. "More like Wales losing to Wales," he gravels, the cigarette stuck in his mouth bobbing and puffing with his syllables. Davydd moves to the side, opening the door wide for you and ushering you in with a sweeping gesture.
     You can see the whiskey on the small chair-side table. You know what sort of evening it's setting up to be. Davydd closes and locks the door behind you. The pain, the regret that his soul wears in the otherworld is etched on his body, at the corners of world-weary eyes, in the heaviness of his limbs as he heads back to his leather recliner.
     He settles in it with a sigh, knocking the ash off the end of the cigarette into the heavy, retro tray and taking up the glass of whiskey, finishing it in a swallow. "I spoke with Gwilym," he notes. "It didn't go particularly well. I've really fucked things up this time." His hand comes up to his face, gripping the bridge of his nose and squeezing. He lowers it, blinking hard to clear away the emotion, and with it safely couched, for now, he pours himself another glass.
     Shaking his head, Davydd frowns. "It's beyond one conversation," he rumbles. "If I live another century, that might just be enough time to straighten the shite out..."

     The food is set aside; it can wait. She moves to you, arms lovingly entwined around your neck and shoulders as she leans in and up to kiss your cheek. "Yes, well, the Welsh are usually their worst enemies. That's something I learned from being married to you."
     You are your own worst enemy, after all. How can you deny it? She moves to disburse food from packets and containers, wandering from kitchen to table and back. She does stop as you begin to speak, turning to watch you silently.
     "He has his own pain, Davydd." Fiona waits until you're settled in your fear, then speaks. "Don't add it so much to yours. What happened that needs straightening out?"

     "He doesn't trust me. He's scared to death of me. He is defensive to protect himself against me. And my disappointment in him. There was more. It was all fairly damning." Davydd takes a swallow of his whiskey, letting the burn of it express itself with the glowing of the cigarette's coals as his breath tugs at the fire.
     "...My apologies for... how I was the last time he saw me... it's just not going to be enough, Fiona. I'm not sure what will. I've hurt him. Apparently since the day he was born. I abandoned him, in his eyes, and I have tested and punished him all his life, with him constantly failing or feeling as though he's failed. In the end, it doesn't matter if it all feels the same."
     Dark green eyes shift their attention to you, landing their attention there heavily. "He says he doesn't hate me... if that's a consolation. I'm sure somewhere in my gut it is, but I wish my heart and head could feel it like that. I've been sitting here... wondering what the hell I'm going to do about ...whatever it is in me that won't allow me to love my family. Whatever it is in me... it's the same with Gwilym as it was for his namesake. All around me are the scattered bones of destroyed relationships. I can't stand graveyards."
     With a sigh, he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the cushion of the chair. "I keep trying, and I keep failing," he mutters. "So I'm not sure what to do now. God knows, I'm not going to ask Iowerth. I don't think I could bear his honesty after his brother's."

     She listens to you without speaking, without giving reservations or hesitations or excuses. You have a lot to say, and she has a lot to hear. Slowly, she returns to the separation of food from its packaging, ladling things out onto plates before she then comes over to you. A fist in your hair, she tugs lightly, leaning to kiss your forehead.
     "First of all, he doesn't hate you and that's a start. It sounds like he still wants you in his life, or he wouldn't be telling you all this, Davy. With all my issues with my mother, you know, I've never once told her how I feel." She looks almost surprised at that acknowledgment, then straightens, looking at you.
     "What is in you that makes it hard for you to love your family is your work and your curse, both of which take you away from us," Fiona says with quiet bluntness. "It is not that you love us any less. It is that campaigning is hard on you and hard on your family. It separates us, for as long as it takes until you are off the campaign trail. And yes, that is hard on children as well as wives and husbands. How could it be anything else?"
     Her hand falls to your head, patting you as if you were her dog. "Davy, we all make mistakes. But it sounds to me that if he felt abandoned, it would not be just you who abandoned him, yes? Come eat; we'll talk over dinner. No point in letting the food grow cold."

     "That's just ... Time, Fiona. If it were just that, couldn't it be remedied when I am around? It's not just Time," he counters as he slowly rises, pausing to stamp out his cigarette. He's not hungry -- you can see him almost protest it -- but he goes to the table as you ask, sitting there and stretching his legs out.
     His mouth frowns, the frown all the more apparent for the attention the beard draws to it. "It's how I was when I was with him. It's how he perceived me to be. I have failed him, and now he has to decide to love me. It just crushes me," he shakes his head at it, his hand lightly shoving the plate away. If he'd given it more than a finger tap it would have crashed against the wall.
     Davydd takes only glancing looks at you, his gaze always returning to rest somewhere in space, somewhere on the table. But he doesn't see the food -- only a banquet of his mistakes. "He said he wouldn't be able to be honest with me if it weren't for his lover. Have you met him?"
     Him. So he knows. But there seems nothing attached to that word: him. His voice falls quietly on the term. "He's afraid to tell me, don't you know how crushing that is? That he's afraid to tell me, to share anything about his lover with me. And I know I've given him reason. I flipped over Iowerth. He's probably been shaking in his boots ever since. God, I'm such a prick," the hiss of his anger, self-directed is sudden and emotional. "My own grandson can't share his joy with me because I'm an asshole. Look at what I'm doing, Fiona."
     He stands up from the table, his hands on his hips as he paces away. "We all make mistakes. But we don't all make our children quake in fear and ... well, if he doesn't hate me, he probably should. It says more about his heart that he doesn't than what I deserve." Folding his arms at his chest, he leans against the wall in that borders the bedroom hall and the where the dining table rests. He shakes his head in silent condemnation.
     God doesn't have to send him to hell. Davydd's doing a good enough job of it himself.

     "Darling, at some point in our lives, we all have to decide whether or not to love. Whether or not to forgive. It sounds as if he's had some things on his mind for a long time, and he finally told you - but him telling you does not mean that it's all your fault. We all make our own personal bugbears where we find them."
     She puts together a plate, putting it aside and then sighing as you speak - as you rise, as you make yourself a caged and restless animal. "Yes, I've met him," Fiona tells you quietly. "A nice young man. I can see why he likes him, even if not why he is as besotted as he is."
     She moves to follow your pacing, moves to intercept you, her hands rising to your shoulders as if to tell you 'stop'. "I can tell you why he didn't tell you himself, you know," Fiona continues, voice quiet. "If you need to know - think about what happened with Iowerth when you found out. Gwi has always watched what has happened to others - he has always taken risks, Davy, but he has also always feared the consequences of those risks far, far more than Io ever has. He has walked in some ways on the knife's edge that I was on when you met me - do you remember?"
     She pats your shoulders with a lift and a fall of both hands, shaking her head slightly. "I don't think he's been shaking in his boots, Davy. I think he's been paranoid - but if I know him, he has been afraid not so much of your anger itself, but of what, to him, it would mean. Not that you'd yell at him or threaten him or anything like that, but that it would mean, simply - that you don't love him anymore. He would not be this afraid, if he did not know that you love him - his fear is that your love might prove to be conditional. That you might ... stop ... if he does not manage to be what you want him to be." She looks up at you, a tenderness in her eyes, her hand lifting to cup your cheek. "Isn't that what you've been afraid of all this time with me?"

     "Iowerth's... revelation changed me," he murmurs. "And I didn't want to change. But I love my son. And I love my grandson. What matters to me is their happiness, but even though I tell them that they won't believe me. Perhaps Iowerth. But not Gwilym. He thinks everything I say that is positive is a test; and everything I say that is negative is the truth. I mean, what am I to do with that?"
     Davydd stills as you touch him, his back going to the wall. He gives it his weight, even as he gives you his pain. He is unable to hide it. It turns his face red. His eyes spit tears. His mouth twists like some lightning-struck beast. "I lost the men I named them after, and I'll never get them back. And now... I'm losing the namesakes too. Over some of the same issues. I'm at a loss, Fiona. I don't know what to do. I tried to love them. I told them I loved them. I tried to show them. And it's still all bolloxed up."
     Davydd turns his head. His tears do not shame him; what brings them up does. Still, he does not like to be looked at when he is this emotional. Like Gwilym, he does everything in his power to make it go away, or make it less than it is. "My love has been conditional," he whispers, his voice cracking. "All I've ever given anyone, Rose, William, Edward, you, Iowerth, Gwilym, even Rhodri for all I know... are conditions... circumstances under which I'd love you. Cause me grief, and I cause you strife. That's a pretty picture. Duw," he exhales, his head lifting, tilting back so his head bumps against the wall, "...I really need to be off this planet..."

     "You tried to love them, and you did. They are fine young men in many ways. Don't take all the credit for where they fall short. Rhodri and I can share the blame, and there's plenty of it to land on themselves and on others as well." Fiona sighs, resting both hands on top of your head, touching her lips to your scalp. "You want to know what to do? You have to do what hurts the most. You have to go back to him and tell him you're sorry for hurting him, and ask him if you and he can start again."
     Her hands run down to cup your face, nudging with gentle insistence for you to look up at her. "He isn't a little boy anymore; he's a grown man. He idolizes you, he always has. It's always hard when we realize our idols have feet of clay, Davy, isn't it? But you're just a man. Old, powerful, tired, kingly - but still, just a man, and prone to mistakes the same as every other creature that wanders under any sun."
     Her hands draw away slowly, and she moves towards the table. "Come. Put some food in your belly. Soon enough it will be time for the conditions you've labored under to pass. I've seen your soul, Davy, and I know you to be a good man, a kind man, at heart. There are layers and layers between yourself and your soul, is all - and some of it might be your fault, but some of it is just the labour of your destiny. Do you think Mithras expected you to replace him? Do you think he was a better man than you?"

     "He wasn't a man at all," Davydd whispers. He seems resistant to the idea of feeding himself. Even blood holds no great sway with him at the moment. It is a distant horn calling him to a hunt. He's not in the mood.
     "I wish Gwilym were the only one I've disappointed. I could insert Edward's name at any point during this argument and it would be the same." It is as I thought, Edward-bach. I can't be in this world if you and I are not friends. The world isn't big enough. I've only sought to fill the void you and William left behind you, only to replicate our argument. I'm a bigger fool than even you thought.
     His arm lifts swiping at his face, clearing off the remnants of his outburst. "I have told Gwi this already. I just don't know what it's going to take for me to meet him halfway, to try to salvage the relationship. It makes me sick to see myself ... replicating pain." He shakes his head. "I'm not hungry, Fiona. Go ahead and eat. If I put any food in my system, it's just going to come back up on me."
     Hands on his hips, he stares hard at the floor, as if it were somehow to blame. Moment by moment, his expression starts to soften. He glances over to you, his skin splotchy with his spent tears. "I don't remember what I was like as a man," he quietly notes. He pushes off the wall and finally rejoins you at the table. Taking a seat in a chair, he folds his arms against his chest. Sometimes that position reflects thought; tonight, it reflects defensiveness, protection against hurt.
     He sits there quietly for a time, looking at you and glancing away.
     "Mithras... was simply going to use me. I don't know how. We didn't talk much. I don't want to talk about him," he offers suddenly. "I've already said his name twice; once more and we might have another guest for tea." It would be impossible, of course, but Davydd doesn't put anything past Fate.

     "Your time here is drawing to a close." Fiona ignores the food, settling on the edge of the table. "This is just a symptom of it, Davy. You'll be joining me there, and there is still some work to lay the way. Yes, you need to talk to him. Yes, it's going to be hard - I do feel your pain, my love." She sighs, reaching a hand out to you. "But you need to stop placing all this weight on you."
     A finger taps to her lip, blue eyes observing you quietly. She doesn't speak right away, watching you with thoughtfulness. "You were a good man. You will be a good man again. You have been trying to be a good man. Yes, you may have made mistakes. You may even have hurt him greatly; I don't know. He hasn't told me such a thing, Davy. But he does believe that you love him. He is afraid of losing your love. If you do not talk to him now - what message do you send, in answer to that fear?"

     He nods, his arms unfolding to rest on his thighs as he sits forward. "I will see if he will join me for dinner or something," he mutters after a moment or two of quietly nodding. "Don't mention it to him," Davydd says, lifting, straightening, "...if you see him. I don't want him to think he can't trust me. Anymore than he does already."
     Turning, Davydd reaches to take a piece of the bread. He looks at it more than eats it, folds it to give his hands something to do. "Speaking of grandsons who don't know me," he starts, looking up at you with something of a wry look, "...how's Peter these days?"
     He is ready to take a break from his own misery. It is the start of finding other things to talk about. Not tremendously off-topic but just enough to give himself a chance to breathe.
     In his mind, he can see the hazy images of a dream, of you and he standing in the middle of a lake, naked. Finally, you make love beneath the moon.

Posted by rowan at March 11, 2007 04:00 PM