1602 and Alias not-quite-drabbles
Nov. 26th, 2004 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI hope everyone American on my list had a nice Thanksgiving - ours is in October, so no holiday here. The muse talked to me, and I wrote two more loosely holiday-related not-quite-drabbles (am forbidden to use the term by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ide_cyan). Firstly, more Elizabethan mutants:
There was some talk that the King’s grandmother, Juana La Lorca, had been witchbreed. That this had been the true reason why her father and her son had shut her away from human company. She had not been mad, people whispered, not at first, not until even her youngest daughter, her last companion, had been taken away from her. But she had been marked as the devil’s child, she who was the daughter of the most blessed Isabel and in the end her only heir. It was not to be born.
“If the Lady Juana was witchbreed” said young Carlos Javier to his companion, “the King might be inclined to change the laws. He even might petition the Holy Father on our behalf. After all, he must fear that he, too, could be one of us. Or his children.”
“Do not pretend to be a numbskull, Carlos,” replied the Venetian who only recently had altered his name to accomodate the Castilian tongue. “It does not suit you.”
“But who can watch his brothers and sisters burn, and not feel the flames licking his own flesh?”
His companion’s smile was as sharp and thin as a blade, and without any joy. “Are we not all brothers and sisters in Christ, Carlos? At least that was what I was taught.”
***
On to some first generation spy folk:
Inevitably, someone somewhere at the office mentioned that more people committed suicide during the Christmas holidays than at any other time of the year. There was the usual mixture of depressed sighs and nervous laughter, but for some reason, Arvin Sloane, who had been on his way out, stopped and drew Jack aside.
“You know you could visit us, Jack,” he said. “You and Sydney both. Emily would be glad.”
As in most conversations with Arvin these days, Jacks found the replies he wasn’t able to give of more interest than anything he actually could say. The silences between him and his daughter on anything resembling a family holiday were growing longer every year, but this was still preferable to allowing her anywhere near someone like Sloane before she was ready. On another level, he felt vaguely insulted by the implication of Arvin making the offer just now. What had been breakable in him had been erased years ago, and the memory of the woman who had never been Laura was far too perverse to keep to some kind of calendar. A third part in him wondered whether this was about Christmas at all. Ever since joining SD-6, he lived with the knowledge that Arvin could discover what he was really doing at any given moment.
It would be like Arvin Sloane to deal with such a discovery in the disguise of friendly invitation.
“I know,” Jack said, and was aware that Arvin correctly interpreted this as a refusal, when basically everyone else would have felt the necessity to ask. Because they could read each other that well.
“Invitations don’t expire with the holidays, Jack,” Arvin replied, and maybe he even meant it.
That was the most disturbing possibility of all.
***
ide_cyan). Firstly, more Elizabethan mutants: There was some talk that the King’s grandmother, Juana La Lorca, had been witchbreed. That this had been the true reason why her father and her son had shut her away from human company. She had not been mad, people whispered, not at first, not until even her youngest daughter, her last companion, had been taken away from her. But she had been marked as the devil’s child, she who was the daughter of the most blessed Isabel and in the end her only heir. It was not to be born.
“If the Lady Juana was witchbreed” said young Carlos Javier to his companion, “the King might be inclined to change the laws. He even might petition the Holy Father on our behalf. After all, he must fear that he, too, could be one of us. Or his children.”
“Do not pretend to be a numbskull, Carlos,” replied the Venetian who only recently had altered his name to accomodate the Castilian tongue. “It does not suit you.”
“But who can watch his brothers and sisters burn, and not feel the flames licking his own flesh?”
His companion’s smile was as sharp and thin as a blade, and without any joy. “Are we not all brothers and sisters in Christ, Carlos? At least that was what I was taught.”
***
On to some first generation spy folk:
Inevitably, someone somewhere at the office mentioned that more people committed suicide during the Christmas holidays than at any other time of the year. There was the usual mixture of depressed sighs and nervous laughter, but for some reason, Arvin Sloane, who had been on his way out, stopped and drew Jack aside.
“You know you could visit us, Jack,” he said. “You and Sydney both. Emily would be glad.”
As in most conversations with Arvin these days, Jacks found the replies he wasn’t able to give of more interest than anything he actually could say. The silences between him and his daughter on anything resembling a family holiday were growing longer every year, but this was still preferable to allowing her anywhere near someone like Sloane before she was ready. On another level, he felt vaguely insulted by the implication of Arvin making the offer just now. What had been breakable in him had been erased years ago, and the memory of the woman who had never been Laura was far too perverse to keep to some kind of calendar. A third part in him wondered whether this was about Christmas at all. Ever since joining SD-6, he lived with the knowledge that Arvin could discover what he was really doing at any given moment.
It would be like Arvin Sloane to deal with such a discovery in the disguise of friendly invitation.
“I know,” Jack said, and was aware that Arvin correctly interpreted this as a refusal, when basically everyone else would have felt the necessity to ask. Because they could read each other that well.
“Invitations don’t expire with the holidays, Jack,” Arvin replied, and maybe he even meant it.
That was the most disturbing possibility of all.
***
