Work Text:
Alys can pinpoint when her Hanahaki manifested down to the day, down to the very moment.
It was the day after the end of her mourning year.
On the anniversary of Padma’s death, baby Ivan’s first birthday, Alys went out to the place where her husband had died and burned a little of her hair and Ivan’s, and the sense-memory of that was so strong that the only thing that kept her from falling down in the street right then was the knowledge that she held Ivan in her arms.
“Goodbye Padma,” she said to the empty air.
And in that moment she allowed herself to feel. She allowed herself to love him, and she allowed herself to hate him, mourning and fury churning in her like a raging torrent. In this moment there was no one to see (well, probably someone from ImpSec was watching, but no one who mattered), and she let the walls down, let herself break.
Then she wiped her tears away, and kissed Ivan, staring at her in silent confusion, on the forehead, and said, “Happy birthday, darling.”
It was done. She would still grieve him, of course, would likely always grieve him, and she still had not forgiven him, might never forgive him, but it was over. She would still wear mourning gray, as a reminder to everyone else if not herself, to show she was thoroughly spoken for. They were like a shield between herself and the world, and lent her a sense of age and gravitas. But so far as her own heart was concerned her morning year was over. She would always feel his loss, like an amputated piece of her soul. But the mourning year was over now, the amputation was complete. She was free of him.
She had tea the next day with Captain Illyan. They had fallen into a routine over the past year, working together to keep the Residence safe and running smoothly, debriefing each other on various new problems and solutions to them, and increasingly as things calmed down, planning various balls and public functions together. But now, for the first time her heart was free, and the light of that freedom colored him in new ways.
She observed him, the clean, strong lines of him, the look in his eyes when he was thinking, and all the graceful exactness of his movements, his strong hands unthinkingly gentle. He was always exquisitely polite in her presence. He had not really known how gentlemen took tea a year ago, had been a little shy about it; he learned quickly.
“Oh,” she thought, something tightening in her chest, “He’s wonderful. What an inconvenience.”
Later that day as she climbed briskly up the stairs, she had to stop to catch her breath on the second landing.
Odd. She had been running up and down these stairs every day for a year.
Oh, she thought, as realization came to her, Oh dear. This was going to be more than inconvenient.
She thought of Captain Illyan, his attractiveness, yes, but also a myriad other things. His brilliance and quiet competence. His straight-forward practicality and the wells of kindness beyond the steel-door ruthlessness of his eyes.
Yes, she was very much in love with Simon Illyan.
Lady Alys sighed, and went to make an appointment with her physician.