Take Me Back

[dray]

Characters: Brandili, Akadine
When: Just after Missive
Wordcount: 2373
Summary: Brandili and Akadine reconcile with bad news. Brandili goes into some of her childhood, new territory for her secretive self.
Notes: Crossposted to rainbowfic


Something was wrong. Akadine had dispersed the outdoor class for the day with nothing more than a couple of bruises and one boy's dented ego, and gathered her daughters to supper. Her wife had been scrubbing vegetables out front on the stoop, smoking away with her pipe clamped firmly between her teeth. That was the first sign; Brandili didn't use the stuff much, said she'd broke the habit though Akadine knew she slipped out every now and again to puff away after a fight or some hard news had been broken.

Supper was uneventful, but while Brandili made all the same motions to chat with Anahi and Vianne about their day in her home tongue, teaching her molasses-slow wife a few conjugations and verbs along the way, she was curt enough that Akadine could tell the woman was upset with more than her inability to grasp even the simplest parts of another language. The worst came to pass after the girls had been bundled into bed.

"What's up your butt?" Akadine asked, tone a careful drawl as she plunked down on the low couch in front of the fireplace. Brandili, next to her, was fingering a blanket they'd picked up when they first moved to town, and Akadine watched her fingers moving almost obsessively over the stark zig-zag shapes.

Though her lips were pursed hard, Brandili only shook her head, then gestured to the mantle. Akadine should have seen it earlier: under her old sword there was an opulent looking scroll tube. Small, elegant, ivory white with golden caps... she recognized it instantly and surged off the couch, hissing in surprise. "How'd this get here? Did Seldo sweep in? Why didn't you say anything!?"

She grabbed the tube and began to unscrew the cap. Simultaneously, Brandili said, "No, don't!"

The magical spell cracked open, the message inside the tube played out--fainter than the first time that Brandili had watched it, with their main room faintly visible through Duke Seldo's illusion. He walked through the couch to confront Akadine, though all the words he said were undoubtedly for his ex-wife's ears. Akadine looked fit to slug him, but she refrained. She wasn't so slow that she couldn't recognize a ghost-like illusion of an idiot when she saw him.

She clutched the tube in one fist, beating it against her open palm like a billy club. "We gotta pack up," she decided, frankly, pale eyes glittering with anger. "We'll put a couple of horses together, ask the mayor for a cart. The girls saved a few coins from when Owen visited; we can pay the old lady off if we need to, make some coin on the river. We can probably make it halfway to the ocean before anyone even thinks to ask. We'll be on the sea before mid-summer. He'll be pissing his pants and we'll be laughing."

But Brandili had not said anything, remained stiff in her seat, glaring down at their blanket.

"Come on--I know you don't talk about home, but what other choice do we have? I'm not going out in a blaze of glory when you know the girls can't be kept safe."

"Nobody has to fight to the death," Brandili snapped, thumping open palms on her lap. Her gaze snapped up to her wife, and they locked eyes for a few moments.

Akadine relented. "So what, then? You gonna tell me anything, or am I gonna have to grope around in the dark like you always make me do?"

Brandili hitched her shoulders up, her elegant neck lovely even under such miserable tension. Akadine put the tube carefully back on the mantle (it was gorgeous, after all, and it was theirs now if she could scrape that garbage message out of it) and settled in next to the tall, unhappy woman. She wrapped an arm around her wife's shoulders and squeezed her, grumbling what she figured was the equivalent of a purr. They shared a few minutes of quiet, fire popping and throwing embers against the grate now and again. They shared warmth.

Then Brandili drew a breath that went all the way to her gut, exhaled it, and folded her hands into a tight ball in her lap. "You gotta understand. I wasn't much older than a kid at the time. I didn't want to sit and watch my mother and cousins settle disputes between the herds and the flocks and the tribes and the city folk. Compared to all the work grandma did, it was deadly boring.

"Where I'm from, family's everything. You don't have a strong connection between family--your own mother and siblings or the bigger extended family... nothing else matters half as much." Brandili twisted her lips unhappily. "Thing was, what made grandma so great was the fact that she didn't sit at home while her husbands did the hard work afield. She went all around the grass wastes and the dead desert all her life. She fought when she needed to, she tamed the gryphons, she made our ports and the wealth the gryphons guarded in the cliffs safe to exploit." Pausing, looking side-long at Akadine, who's attention had been perked, she added, "yeah, it's not called the Ruby Coast just because the rock's rusted."

"You're not making me want to visit less."

Brandili snorted, then unfolded one dark hand and patted Akadine's thigh. "I'm telling you why I can't. And why we probably shouldn't. Not until they know where I been and what's happened since."

"You're telling me your family's likely to kill the messenger?" Akadine, piqued more than perked now, lifted her chin.

"Not so much. Owen will be fine... I just think they'll appreciate the distance I used in sending him, more'n me. At least with the girls. They know how dangerous the ocean can be. Half the marauders out there come from tribes opened up when grandma freed up the coast; it's no place for babes."

Akadine kneaded the shoulder under her hand and said, "I thought you said you weren't much more'n a kid when you did your thing?"

"Yeah." Brandili sighed. She didn't say anything for a few moments, and Akadine wondered if she'd fucked up somehow, but then her wife took another careful breath in. Her shoulders let themselves down like ratchets--not fully relaxed, but trying. "Yeah. I was fourteen. A couple of years younger, you either join the guard if you're a boy, or you sit in on council lessons if you're a girl. If you're both or neither, you get to choose, but usually those wind up working with magic, since they have a better knack for understanding. Doesn't matter if you're the oldest or not, you're part of the stewardship for the city like my mother was, you sit on the council and you listen to disputes and you learn about the family history of every single tribe, herd, and flock all the way back to the big Uplifting when the stars cracked the earth and made us."

"Sounds like a lot to keep in your head."
Brandili snorted again. "'The roots and the branches are all connected. Forget that, and the tree withers.' It's something you get beaten in if you quarrel." She brought her hands back together, thumbs moving nervously against one another. "It's worth it to my people, any case. You get really different groups bringing in really different points of view, so you gotta learn impartiality. Compassion, being stern, staying fair. The whole reason we have such a big council is we need to take in a lot of facts, hash it out, convince the Voice one way or another. It's tough, and it grinds, and it's a rough place for a fourteen-year-old who knows every story about direct blood like Queen Monawe going on adventures.

"I could feel it, in my blood. I needed something more."

Akadine smiled, her thin lips forming a twist of deep understanding. "So you busted out?"

"I didn't need to bust. I told my family I wanted to try for magic studies; I had some other stuff going on then, seemed like a good place to start." Brandili frowned to herself, gaze focused either on her lap or in the middle distance. "Turned out that wasn't for me, but by that point I was out of the city, and I was frustrated, and I was thinking more on the path my grandma forged." She jerked, a single laugh more a snort of sardonic humour. "I figured I needed to forge one, myself. Instead of going inland, I went to the coast. Least tame, and all. From there, I was working on the docks, making a new name for myself. Wasn't really checking in, dropped out of touch.

"My mother didn't like it. Started chasing me--had a couple run-ins with my older brother, had some ugly words. It was a long time ago." Akadine squeezed her again, once Brandili had gone silent. "I wound up on a ship, which I'm not lying was tough on a girl with big aspirations. You have to have less compassion and more being stern and staying fair, put it one way. My lessons served me out, but I wasn't ready for how rough it could be when your captain's the sole authority and half the crew have a different opinion."

Akadine grunted, thoughtful. She didn't want to push when Brandili had finally opened up about a topic that she'd sat silently on since they'd met, even if the fire of curiosity was roaring inside her. "So tell me how you got from there to the mysterious noble with the killer hair?"

Brandili brought a hand up, inadvertently fingering her scalp where long locks had once grown. She gave her wife a dangerous look, but if there was malice, it was only because of Akadine's poorly placed attempt at humour. "Captain told me if I kept it long I'd get tangled in the rigging, get myself hung up for the gulls to peck my eyes out. Couple of years later, after the mutiny, I decided I knew enough to do what I liked, and it got me a reputation. A good one." She dropped her hand so that her fingers rested across Akadine's. "You braid a few sharp edges into hair and nobody grabs it for long."

"Well, shit." Akadine raised both brows. "I want to hear more about that."

"Maybe one day." Brandili leaned in against Akadine, finally, resting her cheek against her wife's scalp. "Thing was, I made a promise to myself, when I lost sight of land the first time. 'Whatever's out there, I'm not coming back until I tame it, make it see sense the way that my grandma managed with vicious predators.' I thought I could do it alone, for the longest time. When I... agreed... to marry Seldo, it was because I told him everything, and he agreed to it. He..." She stopped. Akadine could feel her jaw grinding, and she squeezed Brandili to bring her back to the present.

"He did everything he could to make it sound like he was up to the task. It wasn't until after we were out of court that true colours came through. You know the rest."

"So what are we gonna do about him wanting Anahi?"

Brandili pulled away, hands coming together in her lap again. "I haven't given up yet on that promise."

Akadine stared at her. "Are you shitting me?"

"Do I ever?" Brandili stood up, paced back and forth between their couch and the fireplace. "Anahi will have to confront her father's blood eventually. I already see it in her. She needs to know both sides, and she needs to know she's too good to be his property. I can't control if she wants to rule this backwards forest or if she wants to go home to the destiny my family thinks I shirked, but she's got big decisions to make--and I can't let her wither."

Akadine blew out a thin stream of air, scrubbing her bangs free from her eyes. "This is dangerous, Bran', you know the Duke doesn't ever do something honest when he can punch you in the dick and take what's yours. How do you think he inherited the title? He's the younger brother, you know?"

"I know all about his family." Brandili cast her wife a sour look.

"Okay. Okay. Well, we have a couple of months to put something together. I don't want to play with fire when our girls are concerned. I really don't like it... but I see your point. If it winds up in a fight to the death, though..."

"It won't."

"If it does, you know I won't turn tail. And I expect you're going to do some hard talking with Dorada and the other ladies you trust best around these parts, because I can tell you now that nobody's gonna appreciate a visit from the Duke, save maybe the magicians up the side of the mountain." Akadine pushed herself upright, ignoring the painful creaking in her knees as she intercepted Brandili's pacing. She tugged her into a tight hug, ignoring also Brandili's stiff body and the way her wife's nervous energy crackled off of her. "You just promise me you're doing this for Anahi, and not for you."

Brandili went fully still under Akadine's vice-like hug. She locked eyes with her wife again, her frown deepening. "She's family. She's my girl. Life won't ever be easy for her, but I'm not doing this for revenge. I'm doing it for her."

"I never said you can't do it for revenge," Akadine hissed, a humourless grin twisting her face. "But whatever we decide on, she's gotta be sure she's got options. She's too young yet to be set in one path. Far too young." She oofed as Brandili suddenly tugged her into a reciprocal, bear-strong hug.

"I can't believe I still rely on you to council me."

"You didn't pay very good attention to your childhood lessons, I guess." Akadine laughed as Brandili pulled back and gave her a shove. Soon they were on the couch again, making plans, sticking close.


<< Back | Table of Contents | Next >>