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Chapter Text

After Christian and Cyrano disappeared from sight, headed off to distant battlefields, Roxane was too consumed with grief and confusion to think clearly for days. She sat around the house, afraid to be away in case news were to come, and at last news did come, in the form of a letter from her new husband.

"Roxane,

"We have arrived at the front. You may not know where it is, but I know where you are, shining across the distance, my North Star in this as in all things. No darkness of war can overpower that light. No cannon fire can compare to the sound of my heart when it rests against yours. Surely you felt it when we embraced, and you know.

"My lips caress this letter, as they would rather the place from which your own words spring: hand; lips; your very soul, if they could.

"I will write every day there is time for it, and there will be much time, as I would forfeit anything from my day rather than the ecstasy of writing your name.

"Oh, Roxane, Roxane, Roxane! I am, Roxane--shabby and useless and tired as the phrase may be--Roxane, I am yours.

"Christian"

She kissed the letter, then clutched it to her heart. He was safe. At least when he had written this, he was safe.

He proved honest, too. The letters came in floods, batches of them at a time, to be savored over a week or devoured in a day, as the mood struck her. He spoke often of her, rarely of himself.

Never, as she realized one day, of their mutual acquaintance.

"I wonder you never speak of Cyrano. Have you not been sent to the same front, after all? I did hope it would be the case. He is often underestimated, but is brave as a lion, cunning as a fox, and strikes quicker with his sword than a snake. Simile fails me. Suffice it to say, he is a worthy protector, and I had so hoped the two of you would be together. I wonder, too, that he does not write now and then, from wherever he is. If you see him, convey my fond wishes for his continued health and strength."

The reply came a few weeks later.

"As to Cyrano, we have indeed been posted together. He is busy writing memoranda related to the war, but accepts your kind greetings and offers his in return."

"Are you sure it was Cyrano to whom you spoke?" she began writing back. "His words usually flow more readily than...."

Cyrano's face came to her, earnestly looking up from a dark street as he promised that Christian would write.

Why had she asked him to promise that?

Why had he agreed that he could?

She dropped her pen and sat back, mentally reviewing all of the letters that Christian had sent to her. There were passages....

Roxane leapt from her chair and turned to the box in which she kept the letters, sorting frantically, setting some side-by-side. Yes. There had been several passages that referenced knowledge he could not have possessed. She had thought perhaps Cyrano had been speaking to him of her, or that he had been watching her since before their eyes had met, as he had admitted that night months ago.

The night he had spoken with a different voice, deeper and more familiar, but one she had been as deaf to as though her hearing were affected by the darkness, not simply her vision.

"Cyrano," she breathed.

She had married Christian. And Cyrano had not objected. Nor had Christian, who must be complicit in this plan. How could they do such a thing?

No sooner had she condemned their deceit in her thoughts than she felt a strong pang of guilt over her flirtation with a rich and powerful man for petty pecuniary purposes. He had sent Christian to the war because of her. The entire regiment. All of their blood was on her hands, and she dared despise for one second the men who had conspired for her heart?

Christian wasn't taking advantage of Cyrano, she knew. Her whole life, she had watched her friend stand for his own interests, fight for the respect he deserved. If he was not fighting now, it was by choice. He chose to love her under the name of another man. Why?

"Cyrano, why didn't you tell me?"

His eyes when she was making her confession of love at first sight–the brightness of their eager expectation. How could he have told her, when she had revealed her love for someone else? A love that she believed had grown roots through correspondence with a man who was so much more eloquent in his absence than he was in person.

Hours later, after she had composed herself, she took up her pen.

"Your soul speaks to mine as though they have known each other always. I love that soul as though it were my own, and in a way, it is, and has been, and I pray will be. There are many dangers in war that you must know, but of which you have not spoken, thinking to spare me discomfort. I am not so fragile as you must think me, beloved. Were you to return damaged or disfigured, do you fear that would ruin you in my eyes? No. Your soul cannot be touched by mere weapons of war. Were you to return half a man to the world around, still to your Roxane you cannot but believe that you would be everything. Now that you have secured my very soul to yours, you will never lose me by such a trifle as outer appearances. Fear not, beloved soul. Speak on, whatever comes."

The last words of love came covered in blood, wrapped in a letter written by another hand. 

Christian was dead.

Chapter Text

Cyrano survived. Miraculously, brokenly, not entirely willingly, he survived.

This, then, was to be the penance for his deceit: to bear the death of an honest man on his hands; to know himself the author of Roxane's suffering; to lose the solace he had taken in the correspondence that had been assumed to be generosity.

For despite Christian's final wish, Cyrano could not imagine telling Roxane the truth now. The duke may not have sent Christian to the war, were it not for the marriage Cyrano had furthered through lending the younger man his words. Even if he had, it would not have been Cyrano's revelation that disoriented the man and sent him stumbling intentionally into the line of fire.

The best course of action now would be to make his home in that new country, far away from Roxane. Perhaps to let her think he had died, too. She would mourn him, but never have a chance to discover him–and to hate him for it. 

Yet he could no more extricate himself from Roxane's orbit than if he had been the moon and she the Earth, and so he let himself be packaged up and carried back to the city where he had begun to weave the lies between her and Christian. Once there, he would remain silent, look for glimpses of her, attempt to determine what she needed to hear him say. They would no longer be words of desire, but of consolation at her bereavement, ongoing apology without confession from his side.

How could he face her, with Christian's betrayed face in the space between them?

They brought him to the hospital in the dead of night. He woke to white surroundings and an angel with a halo of glowing red hair. 

But he had not earned heaven.

Chapter Text

As soon as she heard that the veterans of the war would be returning, Roxane had volunteered to nurse them back to health. They had not all come at once. It took a few months for some to be well enough to travel. Every morning, she scanned the new arrivals, looking for Cyrano. One morning, she was rewarded. 

The fact that she didn't cry, or even pale, at the extent of the injuries to her oldest friend could be attributed to all she had seen in the previous months. She ran her hands carefully over the scarring wounds, and noted with concern that one wound, to his left shoulder, had not yet closed completely. 

His brow furrowed as he slept. Her fingers traced the lines, smoothing them away, then followed the track down into the beard that had grown in his absence. 

"Roxane…" he sighed, and she halted her movements. "Overcome.…"

She drew her hand away, only to find his and take it in both of hers. 

"Cyrano?" she whispered. "Cyrano, I'm here."

His eyelids fluttered open, and he gazed at her with an open rapture that dove into a penetrating despair. "Roxane," he repeated raggedly, and shut his eyes tightly. Tears squeezed from their corners, regardless.

She had promised herself to let him speak of it first, but the question slipped out before she remembered the promise: "Do you have a confession to make?" 

"Yes," he mumbled, then cleared his throat and opened his eyes, looking at her with a mournful expression that caused an almost physical pain. "Yes." He pulled his hand away. "I did not keep him safe."

"It was not yours to promise."

"In a way, it was. And in that way, I failed to keep him safe."

She searched his face and saw no sign that he knew she understood his meaning.

"You must forgive yourself. It was war."

"But all is not permissible or fair, even in…war."

"I forgive you."

"I don't deserve it."

"Isn't that the point of forgiveness?"

His face pinched together, and she turned to look for the nearest nurse. 

"I'm sorry," he said. 

"I've told you, I forgive you. Cyrano…I'm glad…."

He shook his head, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling. 

"I'm sorry it was me."

Roxane wondered if he meant that he were sorry he had returned, and not Christian. Or sorry that Christian hadn't written, after all. Not even before the war. Not even once.

She didn't want to ask. She wasn't sure she could take either response. Besides, he was already looking exhausted. There would be time for questions later. 

"You should rest." 

He nodded. Another tear slid from his eye. She reached out to brush it away, but he turned his face to the wall. 

"If I'm not here when you wake next, don't worry. I will see you again soon." She almost thanked him for not making her angry, a callback to a time she told him his death would cause that emotional response, but it felt too like a joke, too soon after too many other deaths. "Sleep well, my friend."

Though the rise and fall of his chest wasn't steady enough to indicate he was sleeping yet, there was no answer.

Chapter Text

Roxane saw Cyrano every day for the next several months of his recovery, though she was unsure how many of those days he was aware of her. He drifted in and out of sleep, both real and feigned. It took weeks before he would speak of the war, telling her only that words should not be used to create those pictures. 

"Especially when one is an artist." Unconsciously, she placed a hand over the letter she carried tucked into the left side of her bodice.

"You should take care," said Cyrano. "Much can be contagious in a place such as this." He tapped his shoulder and winced.

"Possibly we share a wound," she replied, trying and failing to hold his eyes. She repressed a sigh and moved her hand. "It is where I keep the final letter I received from…"

"...Christian?" Cyrano finished quickly. "A deep wound, indeed."

"It was the most heart-breaking letter I have ever received, but also the most beautiful."

Silence had her automatically checking to see if her companion had fallen asleep again. He was starting at the ceiling, but listening. 

"The letters used to be so passionate. Full of desire. During our separation, they evolved. The passion remained, but there was more of friendship, as well. I loved their author so much the better for that; I wouldn't have thought it possible."

Cyrano made a noncommittal sound deep in his throat. 

"Why did I never receive a letter of friendship signed by Cyrano?"

"You were a married woman. It would hardly have been appropriate."

Roxane let out a strangled laugh. "Ridiculous. You are my oldest friend. I missed you."

"You did?" His eyes were mournful, disbelieving.

"How could you doubt it?" she asked reproachfully. "Can you tell me you did not think to write, even once? On the day of your final battle, not even then?"

"Christian wrote. That is what matters."

Roxane brought a hand over the letter again, a tear fighting to make its way out of her eye.

"Perhaps…one day.…" He was silent for a long time. She waited for him to continue. "Perhaps…one day…you would let me read it."

"You need only ask."

He didn't ask. No matter how long she waited for him.

Chapter Text

When Cyrano was released from the convent's hospital, he rationed his visits to Roxane. Once a week was the most he would allow himself, and for a long time that was under pretense of appearing for medical attention. (He did not expect that Mother Marthe was fooled, since he never followed her medical instructions.)

Though he would not allow himself to visit his muse daily, he secured a small room with a view of the edifice where she resided, far away and high above him.

Roxane had entered the convent as a lay sister shortly after receiving Christian's last letter. She knew that the Comte de Guiche would be back. She permitted herself only the occasional trip to the nearby marketplace, but mostly stayed cloistered within the high, bright walls. She never ventured anywhere close to Cyrano's residence, but she had repeatedly stated her reason for that omission to be distrust of De Guiche.

"Besides," she added once, "I have much to atone for, and where better than in this holy place?"

"Atonement?" he asked, nearly scoffing. "You?"

"Are we making confessions?" she queried softly. 

"Keep your counsel," he replied, choosing to ignore the disappointment in her eyes.

"Had I not encouraged De Guiche because I loved what his money could buy, some may yet be standing whole among us."

"Christian."

"And Le Bret. And the others. And you."

Cyrano grinned darkly. "Ah, but I was never whole to begin with."

"Don't talk that way," she rebuked him. 

"You mustn't blame yourself. Our regiment would still have been one of the best, and therefore valuable to the fight. De Guiche would still have been in charge of the orders." 

"I would never have met Christian, had I not encouraged the count. I could not have afforded tickets to the theatre that night."

Cyrano nodded slowly. "Fate may still have drawn you together. You may have come as one of the groundlings."

"Why must I never accept any blame," she asked, "while you insist on shouldering so much?"

"I can bear more. My shoulders are stronger." A sudden twinge caused him to twist inward in pain. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "One of them, anyway."

Chapter Text

"Curse the war," grumbled the woman selling fruit. "Soldiers coming back half men."

"Or a quarter man," said an elderly pensioner counting out coins for his purchases. He turned on Roxane. "Isn't that right? The dwarf came back crippled, didn't he?"

She shot back a stinging reply, but only when it came to her hours later. In the moment, she gaped and sputtered.

"Shame," commiserated the fruit seller. "So many other whole men lost."

Roxane did manage a reply then. "Cyrano's loss would have surpassed that of any taller man."

"To who?" the woman rejoined. "Nobody has time anymore for pranks at the theatre and clever verses."

"He's more than that."

The elderly man scoffed. "Not now that he can't fight, he isn't."

She nearly left without buying any strawberries, after all, but that was the only cart selling them, and they were Cyrano's favorite.

On the way back to the convent, she began a mental litany of what she meant by "more."

"He likes strawberries the best, but he always makes you eat at least half of them because he says they make him sick. He can't stand bad verse; it gives him headaches. He'll sing opera to you, if you tease him to do it, but only under protest, because he doesn't like the way his voice sounds when he sings. He sings beautifully. He never believes you when you tell him."

He didn't. Never truly believed her any time she ever complimented him, never once since they met. He had always treated every affectionate remark as if it were a secret joke, instead of a genuine expression of her feelings. She used to think they were both in on the joke, that he was simply too humble to accept a compliment directly.

Since his return, she had realized it wasn't humility that had held him back. He had chosen to fight off the blows from a world that considered him a freak by donning pride like a coat of mail. Such blows would rain down all the more furiously were he to love her openly, and though insults to her for her folly in loving him would glance off her skin, they would bury themselves in his heart, live there all his days. 

Her own heart broke at the realization that he would not stand against the world with her, but then he had been standing against the world his entire life. How could she fault him for imagining she would see it as he did?

She would not insult him by peeling his armor off.

When–if ever he were ready, he would set it aside on his own terms.

Chapter Text

The day Cyrano asked to read the letter…the day Cyrano's love mattered more than his pride…the day Roxane received his confession and returned her own for it…the day Cyrano truly trusted her for the first time…the day Cyrano….

Sister Claire had found Roxane by Cyrano's prone form, momentarily paralyzed with shock. The sister had knelt beside her, placed her arms around her, and held on as the cognizance of what had transpired crashed into Roxane with the force of a tidal wave. Roxane cried tears of mingled sorrow (twice now, she had lost him) and anger (how dare he speak clearly only when he knew he must leave) until neither would come, and she sat with dry eyes as nurses brought a stretcher and carried away the body of the one she loved beyond anything else in the world.

On the most wonderful, horrible day of Roxane's life, she wrapped her hair in dark cloth, covered her shining clothing in a dreary, forlorn cloak, and ventured down into the city she hadn't entered for three years, searching for Cyrano's lodging place. She hungered for something of his to hold onto, perhaps a scrap of writing unstained by the blood of another. 

She was not prepared for what she found when the landlord opened the door for her, the sheafs of sonnets and half-written letters composed to "Dear Roxane," "My only light," "Angel of a thousand blessings," "Beloved Roxane"....

"Your face rises before me as my pen sinks to the paper. Your eyes, bright with honest faith in me. How will those eyes dim when I begin to speak honestly to you? How will that faith survive the secret I must reveal? Yet reveal it I must."

Roxane traced the lines. "My love, it was you who lacked faith."

She pulled the next letter out: "Words fail me. Me! Who am I without them? Both more and less than you know."

And the next: "I love you. There it is. Stark and unyielding. You may begin to despise me now." She built a fire when she reached the letter including this passage, solely for the purpose of using it to light the kindling. 

"Last night I dreamed you knew, that you had always known and always forgiven me. You brushed away all of my tears, as you once tried to do in the early days at the hospital. Your hands were gentle. If I could only speak to you as I do in my dreams."

"Why couldn't you?" she murmured, and was answered by the next fragment.

"I begin to know myself as a coward."

"No, my love."

"You will tell me not to say such things, but I must. There are many things I must say that I have been too afraid to speak, too afraid to write…or rather, too afraid to show you, for if you ever visit this space upon my death, you will find all I have written that I was too much the coward to send. I picture you here, your presence the only light in the darkness of the evil of my life, and I repent of all the secrecy and polite lies that kept me from being the one to speak these words to you."

"Why couldn't you have trusted me?" she whispered.

"I hear Christian's voice in my mind. He told me that you loved me, or would once all was revealed. He said you deserved to choose between us. He ran into the line of fire on the strength of that belief, but how could I do the same when I came home? If he were right, I could have kept him safe by revealing myself to you long ago. But if he were wrong–so much worse than the laughter of crowds, than your own laughter had I confessed sooner, would have been your righteous wrath. I was in the wrong, either way."

"I would have forgiven you," she said. "I do forgive you."

"If you find this place, you will have enough to read to keep you occupied for…all the years we should have had, perhaps, had I shown you the very first one. Should I have burned them all? Possibly. Part of me hoped for a conflagration in the night that would have consumed me with them. I know that is a wicked hope."

"Some intelligence exhibited, foolish man."

Roxane kept working her way through the letters. Some she burnt as especially bitter, but most she set aside in organized piles. The unfinished letter on Cyrano's desk, the one smeared with his blood, she folded and tucked into her bodice over the final letter he signed as Christian.

After some hours, she found what appeared to be the first letter signed with his own name.

"Roxane,

"I write with terrible news. Christian is dead. (You know this by now. That news, though indeed terrible enough on its own, is not what I must convey to you.)

"You, who have memorized every one of the letters signed with his name, have surely surmised even this early into my confession that the handwriting in this letter is the same. You may be trying to reassure yourself that I was merely his scribe, but I am afraid I must remove that comfort from you. 

"I wrote those letters. Every one. Every word true but the signature, which made every word a lie.

"In his defense, Christian was never entirely comfortable with this plan. He didn't know til his last day that I pursued it because it was my only way of pursuing you. I believed that loving you in correspondence would have to be enough, but it was never enough. 

"What would Christian have done if our situations were reversed, and he had been the one to return? Perhaps you would have been ready to accept that he had changed, that the war had driven his fancy words far from him. Surely he would not have left you under that delusion for long. He would have told you about our deception, and you would have forgiven him, and you would have been happy together.

"He would have been brave enough to speak those words to your face. Perhaps I should hold my confession until the day I can read a letter such as this aloud in your presence.

"That day, should it ever come, will be the bravest of my life. Will it be the most selfless, or the most selfish? I have thought on it for so long that I cannot tell."

A knock on the door made Roxane jump, but it was only the landlord, come to ask how things were to be settled up. She looked toward the convent on the hill and noticed that the light was failing. "I'll stay here tonight," she said, pulling a few coins from her purse, "and everything I don't take with me tomorrow will be yours to dispose of as you will."

The landlord agreed. It had been ridiculously easy to convince him that his tenant was dead. She suspected that he didn't much mind if that were true or not, as long as he had seen the color of her money.

Part of her wanted to burn the remaining unread evidence that Cyrano loved her without telling her, but she chose not to listen to the side of herself that was reeling in grief that he had waited so long. That night, she could not bear to read another word. Someday, she might desire to do so. 

The letters packed neatly into boxes, she dusted off her hands and looked around. There was little else left. His pen. His inkwell. A few tattered articles of clothing. He had sold, then, anything of value to anyone but the two of them.

She sat at his desk, lit the candle, set out a fresh piece of paper, and picked up his pen. She turned it over and over between her fingers, feeling the force of the words that had flowed from it–from him–and then she dipped the pen into the ink and began to write. 

"Cyrano,

"How you suffered. How much of that suffering you brought on yourself, I might say, but I will not. I understand, you see, beloved. We know something of the past, little of the now, nothing of the future. How could you have been secure in your mind, you who always tried to script the events of your life? 

"I see you writing us a happy ending, then turning to pen the opposite. I am sure you lived every variation of our story in your mind, and that you could not see your way to the Right Choice. In the end, you chose to speak to my face, rather than allow me to find the answers after your death, and I am grateful for that. Grateful for the chance to kiss you, to let you know that you were loved in return, to hear your confession in more ways than one and to absolve you the best I could with my words and my touch.

"I understand your hesitancy, because to some extent, I shared it. You see, I knew, beloved. I had found you out years before, though sadly not as soon as I should have. Perhaps I should have been the first to speak. I was afraid it wouldn't fit into your play. 

"Here is the ending I write for us…."

Chapter Text

The door of this hovel of a room swings open. There you are. Your death was but a dream. 

"How did you find me?"

"Cyrano! I dreamed you had died. I came looking. I told the landlord you had died, and he believed it. I believed it."

If your death was a dream, then so was your confession. You would have gone pale, seeing me surrounded by the letters. 

"I knew before now. I knew before you returned from the war. I dreamed you finally told me."

"I did come to tell you. I was delayed and arrived later than usual."

"Delayed. That is a word for it."

You look confused. "Roxane, you waited all this time for me to speak?"

"I did not think you would want me to speak first."

You take a step toward the chair, and I hold out my hands to encourage you to come further. "I didn't know what was best," you say.

"Who defines 'best?' You are the best friend I have ever had. The best writer I have ever read. The best playwright, the best actor, the best swordsman."

You reach a hand out, and I grasp it. "The best love."

"I should have listened to your definitions long ago."

"In my dream," I respond, "there was a best kiss, as well."

"I cannot promise you that."

"Will you let me decide for myself?"

You move closer again, and I take your face between my hands. (When I am seated and you are standing, we have often been the same height, haven't we?) You close your eyes briefly, then open them with a sigh.

"That," you say gently, finally after all these years, "I do promise."

You push back the scarf covering my hair, feel a curl between your fingers, and smile in a way you have not smiled at me since before that night at the theatre. Innocent and happy and pleased. I am sure my smile mirrors yours.

And that is the best kiss until that moment. And every kiss since then is the new best kiss.

Roxane loves her Cyrano. 

And Cyrano, at last, loves his Roxane.

The End