Lamentations (1/1, THE TUDORS)
Jun. 26th, 2010 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sevendeadlyfunPairing: Henry, Anne Boleyn, Henry/Anne Boleyn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Her name escapes his lips, a pleading for both her love and her mercy. Shortly before Henry's death, his sins (and wives) return to haunt him.
Disclaimer: This a work of fiction based on the Showtime series The Tudors. I have no rights to the characters as they are portrayed, but then honestly I'm not sure Showtime does, either. In any case, this is not based on the historical lives of King Henry VIII or Queen Anne Boleyn but on the fictional characters and events from the series. Historical accuracy certainly not guaranteed.
A/N: Because I watched the series finale and couldn't bear the ridiculousness of Anne's return, I rewrote it to suit myself. Spoilers for Season 4, Episode 10 of The Tudors.
He senses her. There’s no chill wind, nothing stirs in the room behind him. All the same, he knows she is there. He feels sure he would know her among a hundred other shades and shadows.
“Why are you here?”
Those few words, gruff and impatient, are the only ones he can muster. He shouldn’t be surprised to see her, but he is. He hasn’t even spoken her name since the day of her execution. He did not think to be troubled by her again.
He turns slowly, wincing as the weight shifts on to his wounded leg. The dead offer obeisance to no temporal lord and so she remains upright, watching him with shrewd, steady eyes.
“You are not as I left you,” she observes drily.
The richness of her voice, in death as ever it was in life, cuts him to his quick. He had forgotten her voice; its timbres and textures lost, as so much of her has been, to the mists of his memory. As he meets her gaze, he understands that forgetting has been his wisest course.
“If you have traveled from Hell merely to note my increasing age, I fear you have spent much to achieve little,” he tells her and though he wishes it were not so, he can hear the spite in his voice.
“You never bid me farewell, sweetheart,” she replies softly.
He stumps forward, brushing past his long-dead wife. As he walks, the air stirs and he smells –for almost an instant – the sweetness of her hair, gotten by a costly perfumed oil she so favored to maintain its lustre. It is a scent that stirs his traitorous memory with recollection of a thousand past moments of lust and laughter.
“And why should I call you sweetheart?” he demands, refusing to meet her accusatory gaze. “After all that you did to me.”
“I did nothing to you,” she asserts, and her words wound him. “Never did I betray you.”
The rustling whisper of her skirts fills the room. He waits almost impatiently for the clasp of her hand over his. He thinks he might even miss her touch - the merest fancy of a man grown beyond his first youth and the lovely woman who shared it.
But she never touches him.
“I was innocent of the charges against me, “she continues. “I thought you knew.”
He closes his eyes against the pain that spills into her words. What he knows and remembers and feels puddles in the corners of his eyes, the precious few tears he has spared for his own pain and the many losses he has endured. Her return brings to bear how costly his love has been – both to himself and to his realm.
“Anne. “
Her name escapes his lips, a pleading for both her love and her mercy. He cannot rebuke the dead and surely her faults are long since accounted for. But she’s gone – vanished across the frail divide between this world and the one beyond.
He accounts himself no fool. She leaves because she need no longer seek him out. She knows the truth – perhaps the only virtue the dead can truly own.
The chasm between them narrows with each passing day. Soon enough he’ll take his place in the tomb. Soon enough.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Her name escapes his lips, a pleading for both her love and her mercy. Shortly before Henry's death, his sins (and wives) return to haunt him.
Disclaimer: This a work of fiction based on the Showtime series The Tudors. I have no rights to the characters as they are portrayed, but then honestly I'm not sure Showtime does, either. In any case, this is not based on the historical lives of King Henry VIII or Queen Anne Boleyn but on the fictional characters and events from the series. Historical accuracy certainly not guaranteed.
A/N: Because I watched the series finale and couldn't bear the ridiculousness of Anne's return, I rewrote it to suit myself. Spoilers for Season 4, Episode 10 of The Tudors.
He senses her. There’s no chill wind, nothing stirs in the room behind him. All the same, he knows she is there. He feels sure he would know her among a hundred other shades and shadows.
“Why are you here?”
Those few words, gruff and impatient, are the only ones he can muster. He shouldn’t be surprised to see her, but he is. He hasn’t even spoken her name since the day of her execution. He did not think to be troubled by her again.
He turns slowly, wincing as the weight shifts on to his wounded leg. The dead offer obeisance to no temporal lord and so she remains upright, watching him with shrewd, steady eyes.
“You are not as I left you,” she observes drily.
The richness of her voice, in death as ever it was in life, cuts him to his quick. He had forgotten her voice; its timbres and textures lost, as so much of her has been, to the mists of his memory. As he meets her gaze, he understands that forgetting has been his wisest course.
“If you have traveled from Hell merely to note my increasing age, I fear you have spent much to achieve little,” he tells her and though he wishes it were not so, he can hear the spite in his voice.
“You never bid me farewell, sweetheart,” she replies softly.
He stumps forward, brushing past his long-dead wife. As he walks, the air stirs and he smells –for almost an instant – the sweetness of her hair, gotten by a costly perfumed oil she so favored to maintain its lustre. It is a scent that stirs his traitorous memory with recollection of a thousand past moments of lust and laughter.
“And why should I call you sweetheart?” he demands, refusing to meet her accusatory gaze. “After all that you did to me.”
“I did nothing to you,” she asserts, and her words wound him. “Never did I betray you.”
The rustling whisper of her skirts fills the room. He waits almost impatiently for the clasp of her hand over his. He thinks he might even miss her touch - the merest fancy of a man grown beyond his first youth and the lovely woman who shared it.
But she never touches him.
“I was innocent of the charges against me, “she continues. “I thought you knew.”
He closes his eyes against the pain that spills into her words. What he knows and remembers and feels puddles in the corners of his eyes, the precious few tears he has spared for his own pain and the many losses he has endured. Her return brings to bear how costly his love has been – both to himself and to his realm.
“Anne. “
Her name escapes his lips, a pleading for both her love and her mercy. He cannot rebuke the dead and surely her faults are long since accounted for. But she’s gone – vanished across the frail divide between this world and the one beyond.
He accounts himself no fool. She leaves because she need no longer seek him out. She knows the truth – perhaps the only virtue the dead can truly own.
The chasm between them narrows with each passing day. Soon enough he’ll take his place in the tomb. Soon enough.