paradisalogs | she's seeing too clearly what she can't be; {open}

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she's seeing too clearly what she can't be; {open}

Who: Queen Anne Boleyn & YOU
What: Late night drunken wanderings in the snow. Who knows what will happen.
When: Tonight!
Where: Anywhere between the castle and in the City Royale.
Rating: PG, for now???

She feels ill. That is the only word that can describe it. Not just in her belly, but in her mind, her soul. She is ill with grief, and with longing. She is ill with knowing.

Anne stands before her glass mirror, darkened gaze staring at the flatness of her stomach. It carries nothing, she knows, but her shame. Will I never have a son? It is God's will that he ought to have a boy, for there must be a living image of his father. Of course, she thinks. Elizabeth had said her brother ruled.

But she had never said who the mother was.

Ill, ill, ill. She weeps, satin skirts wrinkled from her tight grips and tugs, so distraught there is nothing to do but tear at herself. She doesn't mar her own skin, her beautiful skin, because Henry would want her to stay beautiful. He would also want her to smile, but she cannot force it no matter how often she practices before that mirror. Even the wine doesn't help, and she drinks until her lips are stained as if painted rouge.

I am cursed. God has abandoned me, and my child.

But Anne doesn't want to think so. She wants to continue believing that this is naught but a dream. She wants nothing more than to hold feasts, to dance and laugh and be merry. To play with fairies and rule these people and be respected and loved. But she would have none of that. Not in England, and not here. She has only her daughter, and even that is now denied her. The childhood has escaped her, the ability to guide and love. Elizabeth is a woman grown now, with secrets that Anne can only dream about. And oh, does she dream, stretched out near the hearth in her drunken stupor. In her dreams, in her nightmares, the dragon eats her every time. And when she is consumed, Henry stabs the dragon through the heart as if to save her. But inside the beast's gut, she hears her daughter's scream, and she echoes the cry when the steel impales her as well. He is not aiming for the dragon, but for his forsaken wife. No, not forsaken. Null and void.

She is a bastard, and you are not my wife!

She awakens sweat soaked and shivering, gasping for breath and holding one hand over her heart, the other over her neck. Behind her, the fire has dwindled, and she can once more feel the cold creeping into her bones. But she ignores it, standing and reaching for her favorite cloak, the dark blue velvet lined with pearls. It comforts her now, and helps shield her disheveled appearance, as she steals out into the night.

Anne doesn't know where she is going, but she knows she cannot remain here. This castle is born of magic, of curses, and it's infecting her. So she seeks out the city, despite the late hour, hoping to clear her head in the frigid air. Her steps are slow, unsteady, but she carries on, her eyes unseeing while her feet blindly guide her through the streets.

Someone will have answers, or someone will be punished. For the moment she would find pleasure in either goal.

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It'd be funny to think that a queen and a cowboy may have had similar ideas. Spike had been spending his night innocently taking up a bar stool in one of the pubs that were used to his quiet patronage, up until closing. If he'd stayed at the castle, Jo would have let him stay as long as he'd like, but somehow being served by ghosts once the staff went home never sat too well with him.

In either case, he took to the streets with only a vague direction in mind. Nobody bothered him, as usual. He barely even spotted a late night pickpocket in months, let alone something more interesting. That was one thing he could never get used to. They hadn't kept him from occasionally looking over his shoulder, but he'd become less and less hopeful as time went on. He'd probably sleep a lot better if he saw more action than the kind of magic pranks that he kept falling for.

Maybe they were just waiting for him to drop his last guard. He could pretend.

Those thoughts drifted as a cold breeze hit his face. Any warmth he'd felt in his veins seemed to evaporate too soon, and he paused to light a cigarette. It was such a routine occurrence that the sight of a woman ghosting through the streets may not have caught his attention at all. Only when he detected a hint of desperation that he raised his voice before she passed.

"Getting away from the castle?" That was an easy enough assumption. Spike had been around long enough to spot a resident in any setting. He doubted she was a pickpocket, but he decided to keep his hopes up anyway.

The voice is familiar, but not enough for her to recall a name. There is that vague sense of recollection, but it doesn't quite overcome her immediate wariness about being spoken to by a strange man on the street in the middle of the night.

But, then, what is it she's looking for?

She stops to turn, squinting in the darkness at whatever it is that he's doing, and waving a hand at the smoke.

"I suppose that is one manner in which to explain it. Have we met, sir?"

Edited 2013-02-18 07:58 (UTC)

Bingo. He wondered if he should feel sad that he was right, but residents did have a certain way of sticking out like a sore thumb.

Her voice held that same familiarity to him, and if he could put his finger on it, he would say something charming and deceptively humble in response. He couldn't though, so he shrugged instead.

"Do you know many shady men who stay out this late?"

Anne actually has to consider that before laughing outright, both hands lifting to cover her mouth as her hood falls back. But it is so funny, to her at least, how many shady people she has come to tolerate in reality since arriving here. It's a mixed laugh, one of amusement and scorn.

"The answer might surprise you, sir."

The laugh was more of a reaction than he'd expected, and he found himself smiling back. He really did run into some interesting people on these excursions of his.

"Maybe not. I've seen the types of men who come out of the woodwork at the first sight of a pretty face." Still, he was curious. She looked like someone who had a story about her, and he was just buzzed enough to want to hear it.

Anne does her best to study his features, as much as one can with blurry vision and poor lighting, but she's sure she's never seen him before. The voice is familiar, though, so he must be some sort of castle denizen, she suspects. She's heard countless voices over the journals, she can't be expected to remember all of the names attached to them this soon.

She feels guilty to be thinking of such trivial details, to stop walking, to laugh. It sombers her almost instantly, though a smile born of high manner remains, along with her jest.

"Are men as free with their hearts as women now?"

He shook his head, amused by how innocent that comment came out. Not that he was attempting to make her nervous about walking around by herself at night. That rule may apply in other places, but considering, she was safer anywhere other than the castle.

"Is that what brought you out?"

Edited 2013-02-24 13:17 (UTC)

"Men? Perhaps."

More thought is given to the topic at hand before she feels it necessary to continue, but she eventually does, and then she's looking at him in a whole new light. Sizing him up.

"Men who can hunt. Men who can slay."

His eyebrows rose slightly, just when it suddenly dawned on him why she seemed familiar. It was always the ones who seemed innocent.

"Is that so?" Spike kept his tone casual, and did his best not to sound overly interested. It'd been a long time since he had any work, which clouded his judgment. "You'd have to be lucky to find someone like that."

"Yes..." Her voice comes out small, and she feels overwhelmed at the prospect of stumbling around this frozen city all night like a drunk commoner, pleading with people to please look for her daughter. How long has she been walking and talking already? Is this really what she's been reduced to, despite the jeweled gown beneath her fine cloak and rings adorning her fingers?

"None have been any true help thus far. She is gone to me, my Elizabeth."

She can't even call herself Queen to bring more command, though wonders if it truly matters, given that the claim seems to get laughed at, anyway. She is learning to expect little, and somehow still everything at the same time, and this unsteady conflict is why she can't help but glare at this man for reminding her of her hopelessness before she turns to walk away, back as straight as she can manage in these conditions.

Edited 2013-02-24 13:46 (UTC)

Maybe it was the fact that his judgment was clouded by more than pent up frustration that came with unemployment that he reached out for her arm when she turned away. There was something unreadable in his eyes as he took in the woman in front of him. He'd barely gotten the tail end of that story.

"It must be hard for a queen out of her kingdom," he said quietly. Not quite sympathetic, but tinged with an urging for her to continue. "I'm sure you usually have people who do that for you."

While normally she might be wary of this man's sudden shift in interest, her own brain is muddled by recent nightmares and heavy drinking. But she's quick to latch onto his words, nodding while stepping closer and settling her other hand over his.

Nevermind that touching a queen without permission could be considered a crime. There is no real order in Paradisa, as she's reminded of again and again, and this is attention being paid to her that could end on a positive note. If she could just... If she could just focus.

"Yes, and I still know so little of the— the— the procedures expected here and you see, you see, there is a dragon where my daughter ought to be. Now if you laugh, I will slap any smile right off your face, for I am not making a jest."

Spike didn't laugh, although he wished he could. He was more familiar with dragons than he ever wanted to be. Enough that he would more than justify any amount of drinking on her part.

"It's more common than you'd think." Although he wasn't prepared to elaborate. He wasn't even sure why he said it, except that he wanted to keep her from getting too worked up before he knew what he was dealin with. "You need someone to track down a dragon?"

"No, I am hoping someone else I've spoken to will dispose of that monster soon enough. It's still sitting on her very bed as if it had ownership. Elizabeth herself is nowhere to be...found..."

It's such a struggle not to cry, no matter how old your daughter is, to imagine her in danger of any kind. And Anne, damn her books, has a vivid imagination.

"Her eyes, blue like mine, and ever so sharp. She has the reddest hair, it's so very busy, curling here and waving there, and you know it's part of her very personality. I could see it even then— now—" she stumbles over the confusion of time in regards to her own daughter, once again, and it frustrated her. But it also makes her realize she's talking a lot to this man. This man who is asking a lot of questions, but he never asked her if she was a queen.

He had just told her she was, like he knew. How? Someone who had responded to it? Someone who had read it and instead spoke with others their conspiracies?

Her entire posture seems to stiffen up, grip on his arm tightening with nails just starting to dig in. She's looking right at his face now, squinting with her lips pursed in concentration when she isn't speaking in a decidedly firm whisper.

"And who are you, to track down a dragon or a princess?" Queen, she knows, but doesn't care. Her sweet, sweet little Princess Elizabeth... "Who are you?" Anne Boleyn repeats, almost silkily, while leaning in closer to someone she's already deciphered as a bounty hunter.

Edited 2013-02-24 15:31 (UTC)

As she spoke about her daughter, Spike remained silent. He didn't even move when her grip tightened and he could feel her nails start to dig into his arm like claws. He knew that he had caught her at a vulnerable moment, the least he could do was to provide some kind of anchor. Like he could understand the troubles of royalty. Although she spoke to him like he would, and not only when she was tipsy.

"Just some strange guy with too much time on his hands." Not the answer she was after, but it was his way of dealing with expectations. He was a nobody, who was perfectly suited to being put in harm's way. He could make it just that easy on her. "I remembered you."

His answer only amuses her, in a light way that's unexpected in her grief. Again, that brings guilt, but what doesn't, these days? She might as well be Catholic.

"I am, after all, memorable," she concedes, lightening her grip only slightly as she tries to straighten up again. "And you're the witty master bounty hunter, is it not true? You must forgive me, it is not now your work, but your hair..."

Her smile is remarkably fond as she pushes up onto her toes to brush her fingertips against his hairline. "It reminds me in no small amount of my dearest friend Mark. Oh, I miss him so." Unbid, as much as any of her touch has been, Anne falls against him in a tight hug, her smile wavering at the last moment. "I miss them all. Now her more than breath itself. What shall I do, Master Spiegel?"

He'd put himself in that position, but the intimacy of her touch seemed to rattle at something unsettling inside him. When she embraced him, his thoughts derailed completely, and he stood there for several seconds to allow that memory time to pass.

She remembered his name. Usually that would mean he was moving up in the world, which is how he'll pretend to take it.

"I'll walk you home."

"No," Anne's quick to counter with, both hand bracing against him and pushing, though she's the only one to step back. Looking toward what she thinks is the shadow of the castle in the distance, she waves a hand in eager dismissal. "That is no home of mine. I came out here...with good cause, and look, I have found someone to be of use. You will find her."

But he isn't a member of her court, isn't that true? He may not react well to an order. May even get angry, there's no telling, he has a strange look in his eye she can't quite read just yet. It she could read it, she could better use it.

"I will pay you," Anne hurries to add on, reaching out to take his arm again, this time to try and pull him with her out into the frozen street. "I will pay you your weight in sovereigns. I would promise you a title, were you to excuse the little detail of land..."

Throughout Anne's sudden bout of panic, Spike remained almost eerily calm. A practiced demeanor, and as inebriated as he admittedly was, illustrated just how many times he'd been put in that situation before. Spike was well aware of how to disguise his emotions until he heard all he needed. He even allowed himself to be dragged along as he listened to every word.

Something about this woman. Sure, she was a queen (and the first one of those to ever show an interest in his work), but there was a fire of defiance in her that made her stand out more than anything. He just so happened to like that.

"Money and a title," he mused, indulging her as much as he tried to coax her back from the edge of hysteria. "That's a hard offer to turn down."

His response earns a smile, though it is muddled with desperation and even the barest touch of wariness. Because still, now, she is thinking he might just be a cheat and a traitor-to-be. As ought to be anybody she is so quick to hire on any job. She could barely trust anyone she made use in England, why would it be any different in a land she doesn't even know?

"Yes," Anne breathes out in a relief she knows she shouldn't feel. Does it matter that she doesn't technically own any lands? She will make her research and then her claim, it is inevitable. "Yes, you would have to be of poor judgment were you to. I would have you find the mistaken soul who took my daughter, and bring him to me to judge under God's will." Death would come with her next command, there should be no mistake about that, but she would rather see it in this case. Anyone who hurts Elizabeth...

Her hands clasp one of his betwixt them, hardly noticing at all how frigid she must feel, and she brings it up to hover before her mouth as she whispers out, eyes drifting closed with a shudder. "There will be justice, and then I can sleep without dreams."

"Justice," he repeated, transfixed momentarily by her concluding thought; by the way she held his hand. Spike understood what she meant without her having to say it. He wasn't always a bounty hunter, and she had no idea how much experience he had in following orders just like that. There was a time he wouldn't have cared. In a place where death was more of a taunting joke than anything, he sometimes wondered if he still did. (Too much time sitting at a bar had a tendency to allow an unhealthy amount of introspection on the matter.)

The obvious complication she had likely not realized stretched into the silence between them. Missing persons were hardly ever as simple as a kidnapping anymore, and the appearance of a dragon hinted at another memory he had little want of revisiting.

"That would be a nice change of pace."

Even in this state (or perhaps because of), she thinks she has a firm enough grip on his attention. It seems as if they understand each other, and those are the sort of people Anne needs to work for her. If he fails, she may be willing to give him a second chance, so long as Elizabeth returns alive. She thinks if when that happens, she would be hard-pressed to feel scorn for anyone or anything ever again, so gracious and humbled would she be with the Lord's guiding hand.

Eyebrows crinkle as she smiles something born of vulnerability but forged into steel. Even a bounty hunter, a symbol of any kind of hope (better than none) is as good as any. The laugh she lets out hushed against his hands, and Anne takes a step back, dropping her left hand away and pointedly leaving her right still delicately in his own grip.

"Justice, or sleep free of dreams?"

Her laughter was enough to make him feel comfortable with forming a deal while neither of them are sober. A sense of humor in the face of tragedy was something he always prided himself in, so it became a trait that he admired in others.

"Either. I've been here a long time, and I'm still dreaming," he replied with surprising honesty. If he thought he was living in a dream before, his whole opinion changed when he came to live in a castle.

Her next breath is a cross between a nervous laugh and a humbled gasp of empathy. He does understand, Anne guessed correctly. But he is wrong in one aspect; this is her dream, not his. And she can't let it stay a nightmare. There must be good. She can make it anywhere.

Keeping her chin from quivering in any misguided thoughts she might carry, Anne's fingers curl a bit to grip his hand as she gently holds both up closer to his own mouth. If she only flexes out her fingertips, the queen could touch his chin, but she remains still. She watches him aptly, lips remaining slightly parted as she huffs the frigid air in and out in near anticipation. It's freezing, even her bones seem to creak, lips and skin pale aside from the sure flush to her cheeks, but fascination and hope have stifled most lingering misery.

"We cannot expect to awaken without asserting our own wills. As this is my will, you shall seal the deal with a kiss to your lady regent."

A kiss on the hand, he guessed with an unexpected tinge of disappointment. It brought back more memories -- the unfortunate ones that the castle left him with -- of the last time he was sworn in loyalty to something. If she knew his past, she might not be so willing to ask him now.

In fact, it showed a lot nerve that he'd get her hopes up. But he realized that he really couldn't stand leaving her with that look in her eyes, and that his lips were already pressed on her cold fingers.

When he raised his head, he seemed perplexed, wondering when his instincts had taken over while he was lost in another time. Soon after, he smiled, humility clearing his face from any sobering thoughts.

"You'll have to let me know what all that means."

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