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i.
Sometimes, in the late evenings, when the sun is low and dusk spreads through the windows and paints the shadows red, sometimes her face is cast in sharp relief, and Orsino can only see him.
He did not think to miss Cesario.
He has only and ever known Viola, he tells himself, tearing his eyes away from the he that he does not miss. Viola turns to him, laughing, and Orsino smiles in return.
He does not grieve for what he has not lost.
ii.
Viola spins.
Viola spins, alone in her room, her dress clinging to her hips, spreading wide around her legs.
She is not one, she knows—has never been one, has always been Viola-and-Sebastian, has always been two.
(Thinks, now, she might be more—
Thinks, now, of Viola and Cesario, of herself and herself, of the brother she carved out of her very skin and now must return, how Cesario—herself, brother to herself, a placeholder for what she thought she had lost, a song of grief that became her own—lies still uneasy beneath her skin.)
Viola spins and spins.
(Her brother returned from the sea, and she does not—
cannot—)
iii.
Olivia has always known that love has a price.
She had a brother, too, and he did not return. Not from the sea, not from the ground, not from the house she built in her heart for him. Miracles are few and rare indeed.
Olivia knows that love has a price, but she has always paid it in full.
Not Cesario, then.
Not even Viola, of the full lips and the splendid eyes.
Sebastian is both, and neither, and she loves him anyway. Will learn to love him for himself, for he said yes, and sometimes—rarely—that is enough.
Viola is sister, and Orsino family too, and Sebastian lover.
(Sebastian lover, she thinks, and her breath catches in her throat at the thought of his steady hands and slow smile.)
Cesario she tucks into her heart. Cesario she keeps for herself.
Olivia knows that secrets can be forgiven; she knows love can be mourned and celebrated as the same.
iv.
Orsino watches her, his Viola.
There are traces of Cesario in her wrists and the edge of her smile—more than traces in the spread of her waist beneath his palm. He wonders if he were blind, that he did not see before—
He wonders if he is blind, that he does not see it now, always, for Viola brushes against him and he is a tangled ball of confusion and desire, and still his name rolls unbidden across his tongue and he barely bites it back—
(Cesario, he says in the darkness,
and in the darkness, Cesario comes.)
v.
Antonio gave everything, and was pardoned in return.
Antonio gave everything—his money, his time, his freedom, his heart—and won himself a pardon for a crime he did not regret.
Antonio handed his heart over freely, knowing it would be broken, and smiled upon the breaking.
There is a cruelty to be had in love, and yet its disciples kneel down faithfully to accept the pain.
Sebastian smiles, and hugs Antonio close in celebration, and Antonio has built a temple to love, has surrendered everything to love. He swears he can see it on Sebastian’s face as he holds Olivia’s hand.
Antonio drowns, and there is no one to pull him out of the sea, and yet he smiles at Sebastian, and says yes. Yes, I am glad for you.
vi.
Viola slept and Cesario walked for a while.
She brushes her hair out—longer, now—and does not miss the bindings over her breasts. There was freedom in Cesario, but it is not a freedom she is willing to buy, not when the cost of it is Orsino and Viola both.
She stays in a prison of walls and expense, walks in a prison of cloth and dress, embraces her prison of etiquette and duty. Miracles are costly, but she will pay it—for herself, for Sebastian, for Orsino. For Olivia, too, who loved too well and too deeply.
(Cesario, she says in the darkness,
and in the darkness, Cesario comes.)
vii.
Sebastian dances with Viola as the music rises.
Her hair is shorter, and somehow that surprises him most—more than this story of Cesario, more than his own rushed wedding, more than his sister returned to him.
(Somehow a desperate hope never learned to wither in his chest. He mourned Viola, but he never quite believed.)
His sister returned to him, and yet sometimes she is a stranger at the edges, shadowed and uneasy in the half-light.
(“I never had a brother,” he said once, and yet now he thinks—
He thinks he would have loved Cesario as he loves Viola.)
Her small hand on his arm and her laughing gaze as she steps from his side to Orsino’s, and Sebastian thinks—briefly, wonderingly—if Orsino would have loved Cesario as well.
viii.
Orsino kisses Viola’s palm, and wrist, and shoulder, and neck.
His beard scratches her lightly, and she tips his face up to hers, smiles into his mouth, swallows her name as it falls from his lips.
He has relearned her body—studied the curves and the soft spots of her, his hand lingering against her skin as he traces the known and unknown both.
For the freedom she has lost, she has gained this in turn: her hand cups the back of his neck, tangles with his hair and pulls him into her. Her fingers are sure and nimble as they slide beneath his shirt, skimming over his skin.
She sees it in his eyes, sometimes. How he has yet to untangle Cesario and Viola, how he turns from rough to gentle as his hand slides up her side to cup her breast. How he bumps her shoulder with his as they walk, and then remembers himself, shifting as if to apologize, as if he thinks she’s turned fragile now, with all her secrets exposed. How they stand naked before each other, and sometimes the truth seems too wide a breach to cross.
In the dark all things seem possible, but he leaves the lights on and worships her body, the calluses on his fingertips trailing across her skin.
(This, too, is something she cannot say: how in the darkness she has thought of Orsino kissing Cesario, how Cesario is she and not, how freedom is not so easy to surrender after all.)
ix.
Olivia lets herself imagine it once—a lie unexposed, a loyalty won, a secret kept in faith.
Viola and Olivia, the letters of their names tangled until there was no separating where one began and the other ended.
She imagines it once as their fingers brush in passing—Sebastian but not, Cesario but not—something familiar and yet entirely different.
But Viola is sister and Sebastian lover and Orsino family, too.
These are the rules she has made for herself, and while Cesario was hers, Viola she could not have wanted. Sisters, then, she says.
They become friends.
Olivia never lets her mind stray again, not even when Sebastian—so like his sister—trails kisses down her stomach, and all she can see is his eyes and the dark splash of his hair.
(Cesario and Sebastian and Viola, too, and Olivia digs her fingers into Sebastian’s hair and holds on.)
x.
Antonio tries to leave.
He always returns, but trying to leave should count for something, surely.
Antonio tries to leave, and yet he returns.
Despite the odds, he and Orsino become something like friends, and Viola loves him for her brother’s sake, but maybe for his own, as well. Sebastian welcomes him to stay in his home as long as he wishes, but Antonio paces the gardens and avoids the gaze of Olivia.
Olivia, Sebastian’s wife.
Olivia, who finds him sitting one evening in the gardens, her face luminous and her hands steady as they settle on his.
“I think,” she says, “our ends were less happy than the others.” Antonio looks questioning at her, and she smiles unevenly. “I did not marry the man I knew,” she says.
“Sebastian is a good man,” Antonio says. He starts to pull his hands back, but Olivia increases her pressure slightly, holding him in place.
“I am still learning him,” she says, “but I do not doubt him. Still, it is hard to trade one for another. I loved one man and then lost him entirely. A husband and a sister are reward enough, but grief clings easily to one’s skin. Sometimes one must make an effort to bury it.”
Antonio looks down, down, down, and he does not speak, and still Olivia does not let him go.
“But sometimes, Antonio,” she says, “sometimes the dead are not dead. Sometimes we must have faith they will come back to us. You saved Sebastian from the storm,” she says. “You should not give up on him quite yet.”
His neck is a dull red as he looks up at her, and she finally lets him go. She brushes the hair back from his face.
“My lady,” he says, the words rough against the edges of his tongue.
“My loving Sebastian does not diminish that I loved Cesario,” she says. “I do not believe we are bound to one, nor to be unhappy. Grief does not suit you, Antonio. Come, you must smile.”
“My lady—” he says again, and her lips tug up at the edges.
“It is growing chill,” she says. “You must come inside. I’ve instructed the maids that you will be staying with us indefinitely. You should send for your things.”
She stands, and this time it’s he that offers her his arm.
They walk back up together, and when Sebastian meets them at the door, he thinks the pair of them look somehow softer and warmer in the half-light than they ever have before.
xi.
Antonio stays.
xii.
Viola starts walking out over the countryside by herself in the mornings. Sometimes she shouts out into the sea, kneeling on the ground, her fingers curled deep into the sand. Sometimes she wears breeches beneath her dress and changes in the woods—strips off her dress until she’s free to run, her hair a tangle in the wind. She runs until she’s doubled over with a stitch in her side, her breath coming in harsh gasps, sweat clinging to the small of her back.
The first time he follows her, Orsino can see Cesario in the way she walks in the breeches, in the way she ties her hair up and off her neck. He catches her and pulls her into his arms, and she doesn’t apologize, her hands braced against his chest.
“Viola,” he says, the words spilling out unbidden, “I didn’t mean to make you choose.”
“You married Viola,” she says. She's not sure if she means it as protestation or denial, but his fingers cup her cheek and trail down her neck, the sea air heavy against their skin.
“I think,” he says, his eyes dark as he looks at her, “I think I could have loved you both.”