Archive of Our Own

"Romelle?"

She could see her brother's careful approach reflected in the dark window, his hand coming to rest on her arm as he leaned forward to look at her, concern softening his warm brown eyes. Romelle offered him a brief half smile, then turned her eyes back to the figure disappearing into the darkness at the end of the path beyond the castle.

"I don't know what to do for him any more, Bandor," she admitted softly. "I just don't know."

It was one of those annoying contradictions of life, Keith mused to himself, that when all you wanted was to be alone, it was a guarantee that someone would find you out.

In his case, it was inevitably going to be Lance. He didn't need to see his teammate's reflection in the rec room window to know he was there, his walk slowed to a nonchalant stroll, hands tucked deep into the pockets of his navy blue dressing gown. He came to a halt beside Keith, rocking back on his heels, giving the impression of being deep in thought.

"So," he began, and Keith hid his wince. He wasn't in the mood for talking.

Lance wasn't in the mood for evasiveness. "You gonna tell me what's going on?"

"What makes you think something's going on?" Keith replied, glad he could keep his voice calm and controlled amongst the confused frustration buffeting his emotions.

Lance just gave him what Keith had privately termed The Look. "Don't treat me like I'm stupid, Keith. You haven't been the same since we got back from Pollux." With Keith finding the stitching of his shoes more interesting than conversation, Lance's voice dropped, understandingly. "What happened while we were there, Keith?"

Keith shrugged and tried a brief smile. "Nothing much. We ... talked. That's all." His memory drifted to some of those conversations; occasionally terse, some passionate in that rational, focused way they both had, many often intense and overpowering. "We just talked."

"So why the one a.m. angst?"

Good question, actually. Partly the reason for that 'angst', in a way. He shrugged again. "It's ... complicated," he admitted softly.

Lance snorted. "Bullshit." Keith shot him a betrayed glare. Lance looked back, unwavering. "It only has to be as complicated as you make it, Keith."

Keith eyes narrowed. "Which means?"

Shrugging, Lance turned to look at their reflections. "Well, for one thing, I'm not bothered by it. But even if I was, it's still not a reason to complicate things."

Brows narrowed further, Keith found something to gaze at in the dark somewhere off to his right; somewhere away from Lance. "There's not complicated, Lance, and then there's impossibly simplistic," he remarked.

"Why?" He honestly looked bemused. "Sure, it's not that long ago, but really, it feels like some other lifetime. We're different people. Different lives. Our experiences have changed us, Keith, his and mine." He shrugged, an easy thing. "We're a good memory. I like that."

He let that settle. "What about Allura?" he said softly.

"What about Allura?" Lance replied, almost as subdued. He shrugged again, flashing a slight smile. "She's not stupid, Keith. I know we think of her as the Princess, but she's not, you know." Keith looked back to him, sharp, abrupt. Lance's smile grew, and grew soft. "She's Arus' Queen, Keith. Just because she's taken a stance about her title, she's still Queen in all but name. She knows that. Doesn't matter what she might wish or dream or fantasise, at the end of the day she'll step up and do what she needs to do for her people. And that may not be you."

It was painful, but it was still true.

His shoes remained uncommonly absorbing tonight. "And Romelle?"

"Ah. Yes." Another small smile, an awkward one. "Well, Romelle is harder. She understands him. Parts of him not even we'll ever touch. And she really does love him."

"See." Keith rocked slightly on his heels. "Complicated."

"Only if you're trying to make him love you more."

There was something in that bland, bald statement that unsettled Keith from his determined introspection. Had it all worked out, until that. A wisp of a memory tantalised, a remark heard in some distant somewhere: it's impossible to take someone who is truly someone else's.

'I never intended...," he stumbled on the soft, distant words.

A hand fell warm and heavy on his shoulder. "We never intend to fall for someone, Keith. Not really. But with lives like ours, we'd be fools not to hold onto it for as long as we can."

His eyes were a soft sorrow as he turned again to Lance. "And how long is that?"

Lance's smile was in kind. "Every day we have, Keith, is a day longer."

A day longer. A life extended. Strange; he could actually live with that.

"Romelle?"

Sven's voice gently lilted over the 'el's in her name and her heart skipped, just as it always had when he spoke her name.

That 'always' was ending all too soon, yet this had lingered far too long. She placed her pen in the holder and gathered her skirts around her as she slid past the delicate legs of her desk. "Sven," she said, reserved yet warm, and held her hand toward him. Another 'always', buried deep in their short time together.

"Princess," Sven bowed his head, respectful, distancing himself in that way he had.

His fingers remained curled around hers; everything else quivered with a need to be somewhere else. She tilted her head and looked at him, really looked. "Sven, why are you here?" she asked carefully.

"I..." He tried, but he just couldn't put a voice to the whirl within.

She smiled, soft with sorrow. "We can't continue, Sven. Not this way." He looked down at their hands entwined, and what she realised she had to say already hurt deep. "You're using me, Sven."

Shaken, Sven's head snapped up sharply. "No!"

Romelle smiled and stepped closer, gently cupping his cheek with her palm. "You are, Sven. You mightn't know it, but every day you stay, you're using me."

"Romelle-" It wasn't like that. It was never like that!

She shushed him with a finger to his lips. "It's all right, Sven. Honestly it is. You needed the space to mend, I know that. But now it's time you let go. The time for hiding is past."

'Mend?' he thought. It was as true any anything else he could think of. To be honest, he'd been mending broken pieces of the life he'd had before...

Before.

The thought choked at him. "Romelle," he said, almost breaking again. "I never meant..."

"I know," she replied, and kissed his cheek with such a deep, gentle affection, her other hand still curled against his face. "Go," she whispered. "Make the call. It's time for your life, now."

He didn't have much left, but he could give her the respect and devotion of his honesty. Cupping her face with large, careful hands, he kissed her forehead softly, and paused long enough to wipe away her tears with gentle thumbs.

She knew. Of course she knew. Even if the calls, the conversations had remained private, protected, she would have known. It wasn't something you could be around someone so closely and not be aware of.

It should have bothered her more. Strange, but it didn't. More like a door that had just been closed, the lock making a person aware that the extra room beyond was an interesting idea, but not necessarily a practical one.

No, there was a rightness about this, a sense of completion, of coming home. As if this one lost soul held the final arc of their circle in his hand, whole only when he found his place, his future amongst his past.

All the fragments, together in the end, the broken pieces falling back into place once more. Maybe not quite how they'd envisioned it, but it worked all the same.

Yes. Yes, this future she could accept, unintended though it may be.

And now the Queen of Arus slept.

~fin~