Keeping up a fallen facade…(WoD)

It was taking all the self-control Hawk possessed to keep from looking at her.

He stares at his cards instead, the numbers and symbols on their faces suddenly meaning nothing to him; a man reading a language with which he has little familiarity. He keeps his eyes averted, his face as impassive as possible, but he’s unable to quash the self-depreciating curl of his lip as he takes another swig from the flask on his hip. He could hear her talking to the returned warriors, his fellow soldiers, her voice as clear and sweet as fine crystal. That sweetness makes him want to stand up, shout, scream, howl. He slouches deeper into his bunk and shuffles his cards around, no longer seeing them. What the hell was the woman doing here in the first place?

He could understand her words with the simple comprehension of a person to whom peripheral observation was second nature. In his mind’s eye he saw every nuance, every lift of a finely arched eyebrow, every tilt of the head, every curve of delicate lips. He could see her in exquisite detail and by some traitorous air current could even smell her, the homey scent of sun-dried linen mingling with the lavender oil she used on her skin to keep it soft. He could tell she’d been overseeing the preparation of the hospital today, by the sharp tang of iodine on her hands, and she’d been working in the gardens for at least part of the day from the smell of her skirts, a damp smell of earth and growing things. All of these combined with the scent of warm flesh and that perfume which was distinctly Evelyn. The combination sent his brain reeling.

Alexander Elias Walker had never had any intention of sleeping with the Queen. To him, growing up, she was a thing of beauty to observed at a distance on the arm of a man much better than himself. She was serene and composed, always pleasant and kind, a woman at home both in times of peace and times of great tribulation. Queen Evelyn Cloudfire, wife to the King and loved by the populace, was a fountain of calmness and wisdom that never seemed to dry up. She sat upon her throne with a distant benevolence; like the mountains, she was beautiful, but like those same mountains, you could travel for miles and never get any closer to them.

He’d belived this for a long time, until he’d finally met her. Met the ‘real’ Evie.

In the palace, late at night during the Summer Festival last year, he’d been walking the halls looking for a particular lady-in-waiting with whom he’d been quite friendly. Unable to find her, he’d been ready to give up and head out into the city proper to look for a good time when he overheard the muffled sounds of weeping coming from the barely-open library door. Opening it and looking in, he’d been shocked to see the Queen sitting alone at a candle-lit table, her face in her hands, crying as though her heart would break.

Hawk was no coward, but he’d almost turned around and walked away that fateful night. There were days he wished he’d had, those days where the guilt of his crimes threated to overwhelm him, bury him in a wave of self-loathing. He hadn’t walked away, he’d stepped towards the weeping Queen and into a strange sort of limbo from which there was no escaping without tearing his own heart out.

He loved her, simply and completely. He’d revered her as his Queen until that moment in the library, where he realized how human and frail she was, and from that night on he’d loved her, wihtout reservations or thought. At the same time he cursed her, but no more than he cursed himself for cuckolding a good man who gave everything he had for his people.

At first he was her friend and confidant, giving her a sounding board when she was alone and feeling sad or frustrated. He’d kept his love for her to himself, buried it deep, covered it over with exploits that either increased or tarnished his reputation, depending on who was talking about them. He thought he’d done a pretty good job of keeping it under wraps until the day Hikaru, the Queen’s longtime bodyguard and mentor, died. The King had travelled out with a contingent of heavy cavalry to deal with an annoying seried of raids by the slavers at State Fair park, leaving the Queen to make the final arrangements for Hikaru, a man whom she’d known for nearly her whole life, alone.

After the funeral, a quiet affair with only the Queen and her close personal staff present, he’d found her standing on the veranda overlooking the lake, clad only in a thin shift and robe in the bitter wind, tears freezing on her pale cheeks. He had called for her maid, helped her to her room and tucked her in, limp and unresisting as a child. As a friend of the King he’d had his own rooms at the keep, and after settling the Queen in for the night had retired to his own chambers, his mind a blur of worried thoughts. Sleep had never been hard for Hawk to find, but that night it was hours before he fell asleep, only to awakened by the feel of a cool hand on his arm and the smell of lavender. Groggy, he’d turned to face her, his Queen, as she sat on the edge of his bed and looked down at him, her dark hair hanging like a curtain under her hood. Unable to stop himself he’d reached up and cupped her face in one hand, felt her lean into it and then lean down to him, her lips cool and somewhat lemony against his.

His heart had opened the floodgates then, all thoughts washed aside by the fact that Evie, his Evie, was there with him, kissing him, and he felt as if he would burst, explode into a million pieces and drift away on the wind, like a dandilion puff in the hands of an expectant child. Later that night as she lay with her head cradled by his shoulder and her hand resting in his he had asked her. "Why did you come to me?"

Her reply. "Because, Alex, I knew you loved me."

They lay in communal silence until he broke it again. Lifting her chin to look at him he’d asked. "Why do you always call me Alex? Everyone else calls me Hawk."

She ran one slim finger down the bridge of his much-maligned nose and smiled a secret smile. "Because you are so much more than a bird of prey, my Alexander. You are Glory, and Destiny is your bride." Her lips rose up to meet his. "Ride her well."

He hadn’t understood her. Not then. Now, things were a little clearer. And a part of him hated her for it.

Regardless, here she was again, cloaked and hooded as she had been before on so many nights. He could feel his hands aching to touch the softness and roundness and firmness of her, felt the old, heavy sinking in his gut as it wrenches and rolls. He wanted her so badly it hurt and the knowledge that could never have her drove that knife deeper and gave it a twist. He must have shot someone’s dog in another life, he thinks in sick misery; he was doomed to only fall in love with women he could never have. First his sweet Bridget, and now Evie.

He finally looks up at her turned back as the squad quietly files out of the barracks towards the motorpool. It’s funny, Hawk thinks as he takes another swig of whiskey from his flask and tosses his cards on the bed. All

he wanted out of life was another man’s world.

How sad was that.