23 - Julian

GM: Meals pass... enough for a hint of fuzz to grow in on your head. Your bruises from Gerard are forgotten.

Your sensitized hearing picks up a soft clash outside. Is that an armored body sliding to the floor?

Helena: I push myself to the back of the room, as though that makes any difference.

GM: A key turns, and the door opens. Julian. Even if you didn't know his armor, you recognize his scent... the fear beneath it.

"Benedict returns... but I have a loose end before my exile."

You hear a knife drawn, as if you weren't worthy of a sword, or he wanted something for closer quarters....

Helena: "I'm ready," I say. Holding...

GM: That pauses him. "You... awaited this?"

Helena: "It is... fair. Not to me, perhaps, but to all the others who have made this tragedy."

GM: He steps into the room. "How... even minded of you, golem.

"Does it help to think that Oberon made us all monsters?"

Helena: "I do think that. I don't know that it helps, but I believe it to be true." I stand slowly, my hands loose, backing up just a little.

GM: Against the wall soon. He comes another step. "Had we not poisoned you, would you demonstrate your mother's arts?"

Helena: "My mother's arts were shapeshifting and good intelligence gathering skills. The former I had. The latter I have. But I don't know..." But I do know. "Fiona..." I breathe.

GM: "Was Fiona's hand behind your decanter? I thought she had the stink of a redhead on her, after."

Helena: …someone's art made that demoness more to him... "I don't know.

"You have been brought to this point by many actors, as have I. They used you, as they did me."

GM: "You wouldn't tell me, even if you did. You'd let me twist. Like them."

Helena: "I would not."

GM: He steps that last step. "Liar!" You feel the knife's approach. Is it threat or deathblow?

Helena: (I wonder, can I reasonably survive it, if I change while it's happening? I find I... want to give him every chance to know himself before I am forced to kill him, if I am)

GM: (The construct would want to know... would press you, keep you alive to suss out his tormentors... to hear their names.)

He may intend to level the knife at your throat to make you... tractible

Helena: I hold up my chin, then and say to the whistling air, "I hate what you have done. Perhaps I hate you. But I would not hold it from you if I knew."

GM: The last you say with the knife pressed against your windpipe, but it is only the smallest scratch, most of the pressure from the hilt. Where are your hands as he moves corps-a-corps?

Helena: Beside me. If he stands there more than a second I will actually put them on the sides of his armor, above his hips, like you might to someone in an intimate conversation.

GM: He stands, his armor rigid against you. When your hands rise, he presses, and then the knife's pressure eases a shade. "You lie about not having your mother's arts...."

Helena: "Why did you hurt her so, after, when it only made the pain in you worse?"

GM: He freezes a moment at the unexpected question, and then, with surprising candor, "I thought I could break through to the other side. I was wrong."

Helena: I wish I could see his face. "I understand that."

GM: "To be betrayed so...." The knife is loose in his grasp.

Helena: "I understand I should blame all of them as much as you. They saw this day coming, or another like it, if they could drive you to that act."

GM: He recovers on the knife handle, but does not press. His free hand settles on your arm, just below the elbow. "Our father tolerated no weakness. Tried to breed it from us, for the war with his kin. He succeeded." Bitter spat those last two words

Helena: "Was that the last tenderness you allowed yourself? Before they ripped it from you and you had to exorcise it in her pain?"

GM: He turns it around. "Are you offering it to me? A bargain for your life, stolen daughter?"

Helena: "I do not think you will let me live, no matter what I offer. But I would know. I was brought into this world by it, and I would know."

GM: "When I first lay with her, I loved her, with all my crippled heart." The memory is still behind too many walls for you to reach, but your very soul recognizes it.

Helena: ...all the little pieces, so sore used...

GM: Would that he could have been even a lowly knight, and happy there on the board, rather than a pawn among pawns.

Helena: I say it as blank as I can, as though the death has passed through and left me empty, instead of still raging. "They say you took my love from me."

GM: "I thought I could break through to the other side," he whispers, repeating himself into your ear

Helena: "Do you want to die?" I ask him, with puzzlement. "Because once you have become what has been made of you, there is no other side."

GM: "I know. But to fight death is too deeply in us... patterned in us," he adds, chuckling bitterly.

Helena: "What do you want, then? Even when love is offered, now, you will never take it. And you will not stop... hurting." Hurting others or himself, I do not clarify.

GM: "I would not know. None have come to me with love, truly.

"Look at me now, in the embrace of my long lost daughter...."

Helena: "A daughter whom you have already killed, in all but body. And I came. Not knowing your crimes, then, it's true, but wanting to know you. And you spat filth at me to keep me away."

GM: "I could not bear another rejection," he tells the wall behind you, a bit louder now. "Tir saw no good end to us."

Helena: "Tir is a liar, waiting to make fools of us, as all seers are. You have made come true what it showed you, when you could have gone a different path."

GM: His free hand moves from your arm to the wall behind you, holding himself up. So bitterly, "Perhaps so...."

Helena: "I have been given many memories by my mother, an act that saved her but destroyed me. The one I do not have is the one in which you saw her with love."

GM: "I do not know if I can reach that place any longer." No threat or come on this time, just bitter truth, at least, as he sees it, though you feel the memory in him.

Helena: "Before I do this, you must know I hold hate in my heart for you. I know we will fight, or you will simply kill me. But hate is not the only feeling, there, and, if you live, I see the only chance for you to be anything... other than you are is to remember love. I risked love for Saras, and he is dead, and I am ash... and knowing that I would do it again. For love." I put my hand to the edge of his gorget, to pull him down towards me, and I kiss him, once on each cheek.

GM: The knife moves away, enough, and your move is not resisted. The first cheek is hard and cold, but the second... he grants you the key, and with it a whispered, "It must be now, for I will justify it all in time, and continue my father's path."

Helena: "Remember..." I breathe.

I open the door

or the door is opened.

GM: "I loved her," he admits, trying not to bring the blade back in line.

Pain, Pattern, the Chaos of your elder birthright. You are wind and cloud, floating silver orbs hovering at your last kiss.

Helena: I put one of my shifted hands into his chest and the one by his face into his skull, and turn off his heart and head at the same instant.

GM: You become solid, and he becomes dead.

A sliding, and the armor falls, bearing the body with it.

Helena: I slide down beside him, and pull his hated head into my lap, and alternately beat him uselessly and cry over him without tears.

GM: Benedict finds you thus. Speechless.

Helena: "You live," I choke out. "You live.

"I prayed..."

GM: "Yes," to the first, and just a hand on your shoulder to the second. "The services of a surgeon, who sacrificed much, brought me back after too long, Granddaughter."

Helena: I turn to look at him, but of course cannot see. "He was with you?"

GM: "He was."

Helena: "But..."

GM: "Not now. Cage your questions."

Helena: I nod.

GM: He bids you rise, gentle strength. "Your pardon, and then your home."

Helena: The word "home" rings hollow, but I lean into him if he will let me. I do not care a moment that he is Lord General. Unknowable.

GM: Benedict is unaccustomed, but he finds a hug for you, a holding to let you shiver until you can stand properly. Grandfather in truth, just for this moment

Helena: What is "properly" at such a time? I stand.

GM: He takes your hand.

Helena: Before we step out among the others, I whisper, "He had to die. But other hands staged this."

GM: "I know," is his only answer.

Helena: I follow him out.

GM: You hear men, lining the halls now it seems, and you pass them by. You are led to the same chamber where your sentence was carried out. Random proclaims your sentence served, your wolf's head revoked, your welcome restored. "We only hope you will take it," he adds at the end.

GM: Benedict is at your right hand throughout.

Helena: "Perhaps in time, Your Majesty." I want to add, "when there is heart and spine in Amber's Throne," but I just bow my head meekly.

GM: The hall is quiet until Benedict gets you outside, and then there is a murmuring inside behind you. Ahead, you hear gasps, and then a gentle cheer. Voices from your time at the Embassy resolve as friends approach; Hoss, Meyani, Linna... many others.

Helena: I am aware of my state, but not embarrassed. I hold out hands to them, only briefly.

GM: They gather around you, immune to Benedict's glower for the moment... though they are obliged to walk along as you make toward the Embassy.

GM: Benedict continues to lead, but leaves you a hand to greet and bid farewell

Helena: I can only think ...home, home.

GM: The gate is prepared, and a greatcloak thrown around your shoulders. The secretary is here, but says nothing. The new ambassador, a very competent man from Jesby whose name escapes you at the moment, praises your freedom - mercifully briefly.

Benedict himself leads you through the gate, holding off all others with a gesture.

Helena: I try to stand... properly.

GM: Benedicts help is subtle, and you manage.

GM: On the other side, a palanquin awaits. Benedict puts you in it, sitting opposite, still silent. No fanfare in Chaos at all

Helena: I think I fall asleep a second, for the stillness, and the slight motion of the palanquin.

GM: You awaken to the sound of water lapping at your pond. Benedict helps you down, almost offering to carry you, but then letting you walk. They left you far, letting your house come to you slowly.

Helena: I know the footing well enough, but not enough to go so far, and I let him guide me.

GM: He leads you, silent until the door. On the patio, as he opens the door. "I have arranged for your care. Go." You feel a salute in his manner.

Helena: I say nothing. What can I say? I step through, my hand ahead to the side to find the back of the familiar chair that should be there.

GM: Just as you find the chair, you hear a sharp intake of breath. "Helena?" It cannot be Saras.

Helena: I grip the chair edge tight, ready for yet another cycle and return from this place to the cell.

GM: Then he is beside you, but not touching you yet. "Can you ever forgive me? Benedict needed help, from one they would not seek. He helped arrange my death, one for Julian to boast of." He sobs to see you so.

Helena: "You are not dead." I am. He is not. Ironic.

GM: "A simulacrum, with all my memories." He waits, praying you will reach for him.

Helena: "Please be real," I beg. I reach out towards him with both hands.

GM: He takes your hands, laughing and crying at once. "I am real, I swear it." Still distant, not knowing how much you hurt.

Helena: "You are my life."

GM: "You are mine." Starts drawing closer, seeing if you can bear it.

Helena: I am shaking hard.

GM: He is very careful

Helena: "Serpent, the world was cold without you."

GM: "Would that I could have taken your place." His arms encompass you, so tenderly. "What have they done to you...?"

Helena: "I don't want to think about that right now. Hold me. Let me sleep."

GM: "Yes." He holds you there until he can stop shaking himself, and then gently lifts you into his arms, carrying you to your bed.

Helena: I sleep in his arms, and do not let go.

GM: *fin*