niteo_logs | (no subject)

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Characters: Elizabeth Tudor, Open
When: [Forward Dated to:] 19th of May
Where: Her sewing chair, common room thing.
Rating: PG
Summary: Feels. Alcohol. How depressing it is to have all your stories end in "and then they were executed." Also: drinking from mid morning is perfectly acceptable for Tudor-times. Triggery? For executions and general horribleness?

Elizabeth prided herself on her mask. Chipped as it was in places, it did not take much for her to smile and cover almost every ill completely until something made her snap. To breeze by like she was unaffected when otherwise her heart was in her throat. So when it slipped, she was left at the strangest feeling of vulnerability. Today happened to be one of those days, where it felt like it was falling out of her hands again, when for sheer anniversaries sake, her mind strayed from her otherwise tight hold. She couldn’t find the energy to be her usual self, her hair was left free, her dress plain black and as she took up her usual seat for sewing, it felt a physical effort to summon a smile. She longed for company, but had long since lost the ability to ask for it.

Her design for sewing was simple, and selfishly only for her, though she’d promised to do things for others (they were at a bundle in a basket next to her chair). A swan with red edging. The mundane action let her mind drift, and the more it drifted, the more she drank, forgetting to even eat. A glass for her fierce mother, whose bold day it was. Another for her father, and Jane Seymour. Half a bottle for Katherine Howard, another half for her brother and sister. A bitter mouthful for Thomas Seymour and Katherine Parr. It became almost calculated. Dudley, Wolsingham, and the decision she had to make. Duty, her country and loneliness. The horror of being in this place, when speaking to Thor and Loki had made her miss her home so much.

By the time she reached half way through the third bottle some time had passed, she was feeling light headed and she sunk back into the chair. She longed for home, of her ladies to sit with, as they laughed over this Lord or that Lady. She fell into memories, and found solace like that. The sewing fell out of her hands, the red thread unravelling as it hit the ground, the swan missing all but it’s head, she drifted off into a unhappy doze, light as it was. The bottles and her half filled glass by her feet, rather telling proof of how much she had drunk. There was enough left, that someone else could have a glass too, should they want it.

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She goes very quiet for awhile, fingers still scrunched up in her skirts, knuckles white. She hadn't touched him at all. It felt so wrong to be betrayed over so small a thing, but it hurt for whatever strange reason. Couldn't place it to her need for control or just frustration again at what she was, but alcohol made those sort of things irrelevant.

"It must be so nice to have secrets. How does that feel, to not have the whole world pawing through your open draws like it has a damn place to be there?"

"My lady must forgive me when I say that I do not have much of a life to talk about at all. I do not have much of a 'self'. When all you do is record wars from the age of six you start to hate humans and close yourself off to their stupidity." His voice grows a bit cold and hard, face closed off. Now she might notice his face is paler than normal, his hands clammy when they had touched her. He's ill from saving material from the flooded river's reach.

"War, no matter the players, is a horrid thing and I did not want to ruin any happiness your majesty might find here. I thought that the wars of my home should stay as they were, of my home. Even here we have put aside the war despite one of the demons' masters being in our presence. There is no reason to fight here, it is not your majesty's war and I am not your majesty's subject."

Lavi gets to his feet abruptly, "I had thought that I was your friend, but now I see otherwise. Forgive me for waking you." He turns and walks toward the door, perhaps he can get Kanda to spar with him - cold or not.

She did then, though it was sluggish, slow realization. All of it was a little too much, all of what he said. She was so useless at this, at people, she didn't want him to go. Didn't want him to leave. He was so good to her.

So she tried, it didn't work, trying to grab his hand, pull him back. Even if it mean she fell out of her chair onto the floor because her legs just wouldn't work. "Lavi, please no don't --"

Cringing she dropped her head down, the dizziness was worse now she tried to move. Elizabeth could practically hear Norfolk's laughing, it was so loud, made her clutch at her head for a moment and try to clear it.

He stops at the sound of Elizabeth falling to the floor, turning back in time to see her clutch at her head. For a few seconds he feels guilty, part of him knew she would try to chase after him and given the amount of alcohol she'd consumed... Well, she wouldn't be able to stably follow him. Lavi keeps his sigh to himself and quietly moves back over to her.

Without a word the redhead helps her up and back into her chair, "I will send someone to attend to you."

No, he wasn't getting away that quickly, so she grabbed onto his wrist with all the strength she possessed to pull him back to her. No, he couldn't leave her alone. She couldn't stand it right now. She was just frustrated.

"I'm, I'm so sorry Lavi. I don't know how to be like..." a normal person? Well she was a normal person here, that didn't make any sense. "I don't want to go home but I do. I know what I have to do, but I don't want to. I'm frustrated. You and Cross, the both of you confuse me. I want ask things, I want to know what happens... God, I sound as crazy as my sister." But at least it was just alcohol and a tumour and the strain for four years ruling. She let him go then.

"Sorry, I truly am sorry, that I do not know even how to have a simple friend. You can go."

Elizabeth doesn't quite manage to pull him as close as she likes, Lavi doesn't display a lot of his strength publicly. Play a lot of your cards close to your chest sort of thing. It's the way that he's been raised.

"Then ask, just do not demand that I tell you or get offended when I do not share something. There are some things that I do not yet know about you either, majesty. You are not an open book." On the contrary, right now you're being rather tightly lipped. But on mentioning her past Lavi reviews his memory to find out why she's acting this way, the only thing that happened of great circumstance that stands out... Well, is her mother's beheading.

His anger eases a little, as does the cold facade on his face and once more he moves to crouch in front of her. "The only way that you will learn is if you keep this one, my lady. Many friends have fights and make up with little consequence."

As long as he doesn't leave hurt, her usual way of admitting apology was having people let go from the tower with their heads in tact. This is sort of strange and... difficult.

"Hardly. All the things I would wish never known are openly gossiped about, I cannot imagine they escaped history books." Not that they knew of any part of her own conflict. She still had no idea if she should hate her father or not. She still didn't know if she could kill Dudley either. Nor could she express a single part of her confliction about it. Perhaps that was what he was talking about.

When he says that though, drunk as she is, she hugs him. Regardless of him being sick, and leaves a kiss in his hair. Being affectionate is as much a habit as concealing everything.

He was still a little hurt, not to mention he doesn't know her usual way of apologizing. There are quirks of hers not explained in the tomes and verbal recordings of other Bookman. Though he would rather not go to the Tower at all, much less exit it to be beheaded.

"Even a Bookman cannot be everywhere at once..." Those were decisions that she must come to on her own with Walsingham's guidance and those of her other advisers, those she still trusted anyway. "There are some things about my lady that are still lost to time."

Lavi is surprised by the hug, to be honest, their contact up until this point had been mere touches of hand to the other's or a sight ruffle of his hair. He slowly wraps his arm around her as well, sighing a little, "Majesty, you should be in bed."

There's no tower to send him too. So he's safe from any misfortune of her wrath.

"... No, but my job isn't to be quiet Lavi. You understand duty well enough, but there's a difference between us both in what we do." Belatedly, she realised she was crying, so she didn't raise her head, just kept it down so he wouldn't see it. Thank god she wasn't hysterical. But she'd rather lost that ability, the alcohol had done it's work.

"... and I told you to call me my lady or Elizabeth. If you're not my subject, don't call me that." She pulled away then, wiping at her face.

"I do not ever recall you ever being quiet in the tomes I have read," he smiles a little, wishing he dare pat her back or head. But he'll still play a proper gentleman and touch no more than he should. "You must rule and I must record, but all I ask is sober questions next time there is something you wish to know. It is not too big of a boon.

"I remember, my lady," the smile on his face sobers and he offers her the tail end of his scarf in place of a handkerchief.

"No. You wouldn't be either if you had my advisors. I'm tempted to take them all shorter by a head if I could. Well I guess I'm a few down at this point. Though I do feel bad for Arundel, he really didn't deserve to be killed. Perhaps I just should of put him in exile. But he would of just come back, no doubt." Mostly she's joking, though she doesn't even care if it's appropriate to joke about her power to have men murdered.

She's glad he didn't, she'd of found that kind of action condescending, and really her pride has taken enough of a beating right now. "My mother just asked to be judged kindly before she died. That is all we can ask, any ruler that does their best from those that write of us. We ultimately pay for our mistakes in our own blood, in all our years. My mother did, so did cousin Katherine. God it's been only so few years and I found grey hairs on my head." Carefully hidden as it was. "And... I'll try. I don't say it for pity that I do not know how this goes. May be it's how we're raised, or it's in the blood, but we don't ask, we don't apologise and we don't go back." She gave him a crooked smile.

She waves his offer off. She's got her own after all, tucked in her sleeve. One of those things ladies always carry at least. "Then use one or the other..."

"Those in exile often do find ways to have their plans completed even from afar. I would be careful of whom you lock away in exile, my lady... And remember their deaths might be far more disastrous to your future than you like." Like the death of Mary Stuart for example. Though in the end it was righted and things went the way that Elizabeth had hoped.

He remembers well that she's older than he is and thus he shouldn't treat her like a child, much less even like a friend because she is still a queen. He hugs and hangs on his friends all the time but that's not something he can see himself doing with Elizabeth. "At least grey hairs can be plucked out or dyed, my lady." Lavi smiles a little bit, "I care to think it has more to do with raising, even still it is a hard thing to change. But once the idea is in your head you often think of it in quiet moments."

Lavi nods his head, "I will, my lady. I am afraid I do not know you well enough yet personally to use your name."

"I know... I know. And for it, I bloody my hands. At least I have not yet killed any of my own family members... or at least direct ones." Her relation to Norfolk was distant at best.

"Yes, but I have the misfortune of knowing they're there and I'm not even thirty yet..." She laughs quietly, though it's tired. "Perhaps you're right." But it wasn't something she was allowed to undo either. But she wasn't going to mention that. She'd already disregarded him and his ideas enough so far. "I've done enough thinking for today, so I'll save it for another. It's just... a very bad day." Alcohol aside.

"There's not much to know, I'm brash, loud and violent when my temper is called into being. Does that match what the books say?" And just like that, she pushed it aside as well as she could, he really did not have to deal with what she had in her mind.

"I have had a few silver hairs myself, my lady." And he's barely even twenty, shouldn't be at home. Yet here he is with silver hair from stress of things to do here, of wanting to be home and being unable to go.

"Then perhaps instead of thinking it might be time to just do, like taking something for tomorrow's hangover and some water before sleeping."

A slight chuckle, "That is not all that there is to Queen Elizabeth, surely. Though the books do mention it."

"Just a few then," it seemed a good idea to run her fingers through his hair then, as if she were looking for them. "Well, you're safe for the moment. I cannot see anything showing obviously." How odd. Here she was so unstressed except for moment's like this one... and a few other things she didn't feel like bringing up.

Elizabeth lent back a little then. "I still think the water is going to give us all plague. I'd much rather drink wine. It kills bugs. Everyone knows that." She gives him a short grin.

"No... not at all. Queen Elizabeth is vain, sharp and able to say words eloquently enough that, with only a little bit of kidnapping, she is able to get laws pass. Elizabeth just likes dancing and horse riding." There was a difference between the two, hard as it was to keep them apart. There was only one place that it blurred into one, but that too private, for any one.

Lavi always plucks them out when he spies them though they would add an interesting highlight to his hair, "I am sure I will find one on the morrow." It is probably more the wine and less of what Lavi is saying or doing.

"I have bottles of purified water in my room, my lady. It has nothing in it that will harm you." Not all water is bad.

"I am afraid the former might be easier to acquire than the latter," but he shall keep it in mind and look for music of her period.

"Young men such as yourselves ought not to have such things. You ought to be chasing girls and playing tennis..." Probably. She's good at making horrible situations in her mind.

"I'm still not convinced. Even though I've had plenty of it. It made me queasy for awhile at least..." She was just being petulant now because she could, though it's not meanly said.

"Dancing? I wasn't aware anyone here can dance?" At least not what she knew. "And I know there is not a chance I shall go riding like I do at home, not ever." Another thing she missed.

"I am afraid that even if I were not a Bookman or Exorcist that would not be allowed of me." He was an orphan and probably would have starved or been put to work, there was no time for fun and games even in his time for the poorest of the poor.

"Please? For me? It will help clear your head," Elizabeth, don't act younger than he is. Come on now.

"I was taught a dance or two, I have seen many a jig. Cross would likely know more though I am not sure of the others.

"Even the poorest of people have fun my lord, they dance around maypoles, receive gifts at Christmas. They dance and they sing louder then any Noble does." That much she at least knew to be true. She'd been poor as a children, but no less exuberant.

"You know? I'm tempted to throw a temper tantrum to do my father proud and he'd have men beheaded for telling them bad news, but even now I know you're probably sick of me and I should just put myself to bed." She sighed, leaning against him a little again, trying to summon the energy to get up and move.

"Mm, I doubt it's the same." And at the mention of dancing with Cross, she tries her best to swallow the blush working it's way up her throat. "Perhaps he would, but I shall not annoy him further."

"The area I was found in was not kind to six year old orphans." At least he thinks he's an orphan, Lavi's backstory is hidden in shadows for the most part. All he remembers is from six onward until today. "But I do not know what I would have been like if I did not have the life that I do.

"I am hardly sick of you, my lady, I wish only that you are not cursed with a hangover come morning. Medicine, water, and sleep will do you much better." He briefly lets his nose touch the crown of her head, a silent encouragement to lean into him more.

A soft snort, "I do doubt that you annoy him. He seems...fond," overprotective, "of you."

"Most orphans are dead by the time they are six. Plague, wars, famine... the list goes on really. Such as it is, there is not much I can do for it. Though my charity is never lacking." That was all there really was to do, asides from adopt all those children, but that would barely do anything either, just send her broke.

"Ah, that is my payment for being so foolish, don't think on it. But sleep sounds good. I've drunk enough that no quite dreams of death should come creeping." She laughs softly at his encouragement, wriggling closer and getting comfortable like that.

"... That's completely absurd, he's just being a man." And that was clear as she saw it right now. "Nice as it is, it's foolish to think on it at all."

"I know that you will try your hardest to save your people, my lady. They are your children."

He shakes his head, making a place for her. "Even foolishness does not require so steep a price..." Lavi lightly sets his hand on top of her's, "I am sorry for today's old reminders."

Another head shake, "If he were being 'just a man' like he is, Cross would have bedded you already, my lady. He cares for you."

"The only children I know I will ever had. And every single one of them is an ungrateful brat."

"There's nothing to be sorry for, if my mother was any less deserving of the removal of her head, I'd just be a whore's child." Her smile is cruel, if brief. "I always liked the idea that she was a witch, it gave my father a reason for murder. It's Lady Howard I'll never forgive. She was younger then you, and now she's a head shorter too." She's had a long time to be bitter over these things. "All she wanted to do was please and be pleased, but Queen's don't live for pleasure. They must be devoted stone." They live for duty, and it was in the duty Elizabeth knew her fate now waited, with nothing else.

"That's... very foolish to say." She wasn't blushing... and if she happened to be, she'd just blame it on the wine. "Men like that... ah, if he lead an uprising, he'd be the first man I would execute. Men like him are dangerous. He is uncontrollable as a follower, but as a leader? Completely dependable in the end. Easy enough to tell, he didn't snap at Mistress Lin for me, he did it because he knows what has to be done, and does it." And that was more or less the way she saw it, even if it didn't make sense. "Or at least most of the time. I'm sure he just... ignores things when and where he wants, because it doesn't suit him, either. Like I said, dangerous." That was what all her watching had brought her to so far.

"So long as I have been in England I have tried not to be ungrateful," a smile tugs at his lips, small and hidden. He might not be wholly a child of England but he does admire the country.

"It is still not a fond day, I would think." He can't imagine it personally, watching your mother go through those trials and tribulations or hearing about them. He - even with all his training - might not have been able to withstand it if it were his own mother. But he doesn't even know her. "There is no need, at least, to be stone here. Devoted, yes."

A soft snort, "Cross would find it too much trouble, while he does not mind being in charge of us I think he would abdicate any more powerful position. The responsibility is not of his liking..." They had to hunt him down after all, he left the Order physically if not mentally. "But yes, he is a man of action. He does not ignore, he keeps watch because there might be a need for a stronger hand."

"I am glad you are. We're a strange people, I think it comes from being on an island that we share with Scotland. But as long as Mary never tries for my kingdom openly, I suppose all will be well." She settled against him comfortably as she rambled. Not caring if he understood or not.

"I was two and a little more, and I sore her only on visits. But from what I remembered, she cried into my hair, and told me she was sorry..." it was the only memory she had of her mother, and she hung onto it for all she was worth. "Perhaps not, I was on verge of becoming that before she saw fit to take me. Stone that is. As immortal as the holy virgin." If it wasn't completely true.

"No, I thought not. Still, he'd be the ones with any brains as to an uprising. Any one else would just be a figure head for which to rally around, just as I once was." An alternative and less bloody version of her sister. "I wouldn't trust him further then I could throw him if it came to matters of state, for everything that you said."