OOC: Takes place after THIS post but certainly before Faelyn is with child.
aelyn staggered home. She had indulged in the most brutal and wanton pleasures of the flesh with Marius. Every muscle ached as she got out of the car and all but limped toward the Chateau de Rochefort. Her body was a mass of cuts, bruises and contusions that she would most likely need to take at least a little time to heal. Inside the house, probably waiting somewhere near a fire with a glass of brandy, and filled with barely-masqued concern would be her husband. With as much control and quiet as she could muster with her aching finges, she closed the door silently behind her. Inwardly she hoped that no servant was still up and awake in order to make a fuss. Right now she knew that she and Sebastien would most likely have words. Surely she was certain that she would not welcome all that there was to discuss between them.
As suspected, Sebastien was sitting in the library, with a glass of brandy that was not likely his first, and a book. Even at this vantage point she could sense his brooding. She knew that he would not be pleased and she tried very hard to sound as normal as possible as she entered into the room. “You’re up late,” she said softy.
Life Belongs to Sekhmet 
Long fingers caressed the paper, Rochefort’s eye reading passage after passage of the 17th century copy of Les Femmes Savantes. A moment later, Rochefort glanced up at the tall windows facing the front of the Chateau. Was that the sound of car tires on the wet pavement? He listened intently, and was rewarded with the slamming of a car door. Why yes, yes it was. Another glance showed the time on the clock, and Rochefort simply nodded before taking another sip of brandy and trying to return to his comedy. She’d be in momentarily, and he’d get her a brandy, and… and where the hades was the woman?
Finally she came through the door, walking slowly, stiffly. Dark hair wisping down covered his face, slightly hiding his eye from her. However it did nothing to hide her from him, and he watched her from under lowered brow, very, very intently. The sound of her voice caused him to raise up finally, losing the mask of nonchalance he’d been portraying, and carefully he placed the Moliere beside him on the end table.
“Late, or perhaps early.” Face on he addressed her, bringing the brandy to his lips once more. “And you Faelyn, you are up before the sun as well. How energetic!” This was not the face of her husband she could see, it was the face of a warrior, an assassin who was slowly, surely picking apart her walk, her stance, even that tone of voice.
Finally he moved, up off the chair in an instant, already half way across the room before he spoke once more. “You are hurt.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
Faelyn nodded. His eyes missed nothing. In an instant he was beside her, hovering close, observing even her breathfalls trying to guage the extent of her injuries. “Oui,” she said, “but not so much so that I cannot walk or stand. I just need a bath. Do you think you could help me get one?”
She knew that he would do so, but not without checking her over and making sure everything was just so. If there was one thing she could count on with her consort, it was that he would see to ever detail numerous times before he was personally satisfied with anything. No dobut when he saw the remainder of her injuries, some of them deep in spit of the yarrow that Marius had applied to help heal her. It did help staunch the flow of bleeding, but unlike Marius, Faelyn’s skin would not not heal nearlhy so quickly. She winced as she brushed up next to him, “Help me?”
“Just a bath?” He could smell the blood on her now, he could see the black-on-black splotches where she’d bled through her bandages and through the black, throw-away sarong she was wearing. “What I think, mon amour is that at the moment a bath is the least of your problems.”
That he would help her was a given, but perhaps not in the way she wanted. Scooping her up in his arms, he went back through the open door and up the grand staircase to the second floor. Holding her firmly, he took one, then two stairs at a time, practically leaping from step to step as he hurried her into their private wing. “And you shall let me decide whether or not you will do much walking as well. Non, no arguments, Madame de Rochefort.” He took his eye off where they were going to glare down at her a moment before raising his head once more to view their destination. “No arguments, Faelyn. Do you understand?” Again, not a question, although for her sake it was couched as one.
He set her down once, to open the door to their suite. Then before she could do more than take a moment’s breath she was back in his arms as he went through the door, kicking it shut behind them. Straight through the bedroom and on to the master bath, with the deep marble tub. So deep, so luxurious that it had a faucet on either end, and three steps leading down into it.
Rochfort set his wife down once more, pushing her to sit in the chair near her vanity even as he was walking away to twist the dials and send steaming hot water into the tub. A glance at his hands and the big man went silent, even his breath stilling in shock, seeing the crimson that stained his fingertips, his palms.
Without another look at her, Rochefort moved around the room, lighting candles, fetching blanket-sized towels and bandages, cloths, oils and ointments from the other room and setting them on the edge of the tub. Preparations complete, Rochefort walked out to return once more with a cup of steaming hot herbal tea. The scent of chamomile, lavender, and raspberry leaf filled the air as he brought it to her, held it to her lips until she was steady enough to take it from him. And when she tasted it, the honey within made it sweet, and the brandy made it warm her stomach.
Finally, He undressed himself, scattering boots, pants, underclothes in his haste. Naked he strode over to the sitting woman, and without a word, picked her up and into his arms yet again. The tea sloshed over the cup, spilling hot against his chest, but he never winced, never blinked. Never spoke.
Sarong and all, Rochefort carried his wife down the steps into the tub, stopping only to settle her on a towel that he’d placed in the water to comfort her body far better than hard marble ever could.
“Show me” His hands were soft, so gentle on her body as he undraped the sarong from her sitting frame, settling it down around her waist.
She winced as his hands pulled away the sarong taking some of the blood soaked bandages with it. Marius had done his level best to patch her up with some yarrow and good old fashioned field dressing, but it had not been enough. Inwardlhy she was thankful that Sebastien was behind her t the moment. For she knew as soon as he laid eyes on the wound under her rib from the arrowhead flint, he would most certainly give voice to his displeasure. His touch raised gooseflesh on her skin, There was always that between them, that sure energy that existed. It was nearly a living, breathing thing outside of themselves.
Sebastien’s touch was gentle and she did not regret showing him the herbalist’s craft of the wortcunner’s arts. He had learned quicckly and had the touch of the alchmeist and the healer. Had he not been a warrior, he could easily have been a physician or a Magus. When he came in front of her to see the wound, she saw his jaw grind, but that discomfiture paled compared to the sensation of pain as the Sarong pulled away from the deeper wound. “That hurts, she said simply.
Her answer was silence. Complete and total silence from the man in front of her as he hunched down in the water to get a closer look at her wounds, his fingers gently rinsing away the blood, then pressing, prodding the wounds and moving the flesh to see how deep the torn muscles went. But if he spoke no words, his emotion spoke volumes as his eyelid lowered to cover that steel cold, hard glint. Cold with barely controlled rage, and more than a little fear.
The water swirled around them both, warm, nearly as warm as blood itself. And it was starting to darken as well, Faelyn’s blood clouding it from clear to a light red.
“It would” he finally replied to her, his words clipped and precise. Refusing even then to look up at her face, Rochefort instead leaned back to uncap a jar of ointment. Uncapping another jar and one more still, he poured honey, liquid gold into the palm of his hand. And with the other, he scooped out a few fingers of ointment, mixing the two together and then reaching for the third before he stroked his hands across her broken skin and swollen, angry red wounds and scrapes.
Elocampagne and all heal, coneflower, Danae’s Hand, and honey to bind and keep out infections, those were the ingredients, that was the mixture he made. His hands soothed over her skin as Rochefort slid around his wife, coating her flesh in the soothing gel.
Wiping his hands on a nearby cloth, he pulled more jars towards them, and with the tip of his first finger spread the oils within on her bruised throat, her aching muscles. Arnica and lavender is what he used, and indeed the scent of lavender filled the room.
But still he would not look at her face. Still he would not raise his head and let her see the barely caged animal fury in his eye. And still he would not speak to her.
In spite of his caring touch and healer’s attention, the silence between them was nearly deafening. Only the sound of the water, or of a jar being cast aside and her own laboured breathing broke the heavy veil that hung between them. The herbs soothed and settled into her battered skin as if by magic.
She sat near the edge of the tub on the stairs, wanting to eas herself even deeper into the water. No doubt the ointments would have to be reapplied. It was the warmth of the water that she sought, for she could feel the palpable rage that seethed within her husband, and there was no warmth there. She ached almost as much to have that nurturing touch of his against her skin, the sound of his soothing in her ears as much, if not more than she was in the need of physical healing.
At last as she was closing her eyes to a slight wave of pain, her hand caught his at the wrist, “Sebastien,” she said softly, “Things went badly tonight, and I am sorry for it. I know you are angry, but do you think you might set it aside for a little while.” Inwardly she prayed, he would at least see the reason and give her at least that much.
That brought his head up with a jerk. Splashing the water slightly, he straigtened up to his full height, looking down at his lover.
“Madame.” The words came out slowly, as if he were thinking each and every sylable before speaking it.
“Frances Moira MacKay Faelyn Nic Gan Ceanach de Rochefort. Had I not put my anger aside as you put it, you’d be in the arms of a healer now. And I’d be off to kill a man.” There, it was out.
His body did not tremble, but there was some slight wavering undertone in the growl of his voice, low and monotone as it issued from his lips. “God’s blood woman, I’ve seen inquisition victims fare better than this, this butchery before me. You’d do better to ask the forgiveness of saints, for I am no saint, Madame. I am only a man.” His hand drifted down to linger upon her cheek, and then moved to stir up more arnica-lavender ointment and slide it on her bruises.
“I am only a man and,” his hand came back up to sweep the air, waving down at her body. “This? This is not sex, nor is it passion. This is insanity”.
He had used her names – all of them, which only punctuated to her just how angry he truly was. His words that were spoken slowly and precisely, in as formal French as he could possibly muster, affirmed it more than anything else possibly could have. If he had known more of the Sidhe tongue, no doubt he would have used that for that language reverberated through the soul. The age of it, sheer power of it was primordial. But what he said now was almost as profound in it’s resonance.
“You do not need to blame Marius Sulla,” she said, barely raising her tone, ” the invitation to him to partake of Sidhe mead was mine, the pushing of the boundaries were none but my own doing.” She turned toward her husband now, the water dripping from her limbs and breasts to the surface of the bathing pool.
“I do ask for your forgiveness,” she said, her gaze unwavering at his face, “I have not begged for it. The Saints turn their face from the Unseelie – after tonight, you see a little bit as to why. Unseelie is unblessed, afterall. And as such, you yourself are no longer only a man, Sebastien.” She did not scoff, she did not mock but her expression was one of near remorse, “This…insanity as you put it, is within you, too, now. It was how I revived you, afterall. ” She moved toward him fighting back the need to wince as she moved her arms to encircle him. “You have not felt it’s sting since that awakening,” she continued, her voice, low, hypnotic, “but I warrant you, in due time you will.”
“Would you…” she turned her gaze up to his eye, “more satisfied if I were to agree that I shall only pour out that Hunger upon you from now on?”
His brain and that rage within went silent in shock at her words. Did she? Oh no, she did not, she could not. She did not just presume to think that he would, that he could ever even imagine doing this to her? Did she? She did, oh by the blood of God, by the magics she wove, and the blood spilled to bring him back to life, Faelyn truly believed that he could do the same to her, to his lady, his lover, his WIFE,?
The howl grew within, broke free of his lips and lungs, and barreled it’s way throughout the room. It burst through closed doors echoed down hallways, reverberating in its frenzied savagery and pain.
In a bound he pulled away from her, but in another instant it was she who was in his grasp, as he lifted her bodily out of the tub. A few strides later and they stood naked, wet and dripping before a large mirror in the corner of the bathing room, that floor to ceiling piece of glass, ringed round with lights.
“Do you not SEE what he has done to you!” Rochefort’s arm encircled Faelyn’s body, even now holding her protectively, holding her up, curling her close. So close she could feel the shaking of his body, the war within his soul.
“This man, this beast that poses as man, this lunatic?” The scars on his face stood out starkly, red slashes on pale white skin. Scars on his body stood out as well. But not nearly so well as the multitude of seeping wounds and of bruises that liberally covered his lady’s.
Words flew through his brain, sentences that began, only to spill into others as he fought to make some sense of it, struggled to tell her of what he was feeling without falling to violence himself. Not at his wife – no not that – but outward at the servants, the passers by, other men, and most of all to the one who had treated the woman he loved with such callous brutality.
“What in the name of all that is holy were you THINKING? You do not know this man, you have no reason to trust this man, and you let him take such liberties that could well have ended your life or harmed, maimed you beyond repair?” His words grated through bitten lips. The froth at the edges of his mouth tinged with a red, and he stared at her wild-eyed, and at himself in the mirror.
“There are easier ways to kill a man, Faelyn. You didn’t have to show me THIS.” A muttered whisper came next as his eyes dropped from hers in the mirror to the floor at their feet. “I’ve killed, destroyed men for less.”
“And you truly think that I – I could even dream of…” His eye raised up again, staring at hers in the glass, then turning to stare at himself.
“NOOOOOO!” His free hand clenched, and raising back he rocked on his feet, putting all momentum into his thrust as he twisted his shoulder, twisted his arm.
Glass shattered in a blaze of light, thousands of shards cascading in a shower to their feet, even as Rochefort spun away, pulling the petite woman away from the danger. Out of the bathroom he took her, heedless of the glass that littered the floor at his bare feet, no thought for the blood that ran down his hand that held tight to her. Up in his arms she went and then onto the bed she fell, still wet, still warm from the heat of the water.
“You will stay in this bed. You will not move. You will drink your tea, and you will get healed, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” There was water on his face, his wet hair slapping against his cheeks as he lifted a sheet over her body. Wet with water and perhaps something else. But the man in black did not cry, never cried. So he couldn’t be crying now, it had to be just a trick of the light.
“You will stay here, and you will get well, and if – if you ever have these feelings again, you will by GOD stay home and take your hungers, you will take it all out on me, you will Not do this again, Faelyn. Promise me, woman. Never again!”
He clearly misunderstood. The wild glaze that covered his lone eye was that of a man nearly in hysterics. His howl was piercing, not only in sound but the anguish of it ripped through her very being. Faelyn’s perception careened as he lifted her from the bathing pool. For one instant it seemed as if Sebastien would lose his footing on the slick, wet marble and spill them both upon the floor. He carried her roughly causing her limbs and body to ache in spite of his earlier careful attentions. Unceremoniously he deposited her before the mirror. Both of them naked and dripping before the ancient pier glass, he held her fast so that her gaze was thrust forward to stare at the reflection. Sebastien was still wild eyed.
She did see. This was the not-so-subtle reminder of how the Unseelie hunger could manifest itself. Always it seemed to be in dark and unexpected ways that the Seelie and humans and others among the Immortal races saw as dangerously wanton and perverse. Now facing it in a mirror Faelyn was not altogether certain that they were wrong in that assessment. This was not about thinking, or anything at all rational. This was a need, a desire and as such it was an utter madness. Add to that the vitae of the Sidhe mead and the lunacy could be brought to dangerous if not lethal levels.
“Why would you kill a man for doing what is in his nature or what he was goaded to do, Sebastien?” her question hung heavily in the air, and she did not expect him to answer it. He was right, he had killed men for less. The numbers of their destruction too high to even be accurately counted.
She never imagined that he could have done this sort of thing to her, even when they had exorcized the most brutal daemons within themselves upon each other. No. This had been something else entirely. Her face screwed up in it’s confusion at his words. But before she could protest that she would never asked such of him, he had with all of his might taken his fist and smashed the mirror. Shards of reflective glass came tumbling down in an indoor rainstorm of dangerous shards and he yanked her quickly away from their wide reach. Again he swept her up, this time carrying her toward their boudoir and the large canopied bed at the centre of it.
Sebastien sternly deposited her on the bed, both of their bodies still dripping with bathwater, causing the bed linens to cling to her skin. Though she was warm now, she would not be for long if she was left int his state. When he was fluffing her pillows, beating them into submission and propping her up in an exaggerated state, she caught sight of the wetness in his eyes. She was certain that it was not just bathwater from his long hair that dripped that caused it. That clear trail from the edge of his eye made her heart ache. She would never have done anything to have caused him this sort of anguish and clearly she had. Of course, she could not ever let on that she had ever seen any such display of emotion. He had been frightened, very frightened for her. His barked orders at her, she would obey without complaint, but she had to do something to lighten the moment or she knew that he would begin raving afresh.
“Sebastien, how do you expect me to sleep in wet bedclothes? Am I now to die from dampness and chill?” she looked about her. Her hair was audibly dripping onto a pillow, running down against her arm and breasts, “Why don’t you ask the servants to come change the sheets and you can sit with me by the fire making certain I behave myself and drink every last bit of my tea.”
His intial reaction was one of silence. He saw his mouth twitch and heard an almost imperceptible sigh issue from him. “Fine,” he said gruffly, “but you will sit on my lap and you will NOT move unless I carry you. Understood?”
Faelyn nodded and in a low and very patient voice said, “Yes, Sebastien. I understand.” Of course, she would never give any indication to him that this was exactly what she had wanted all along.
“Don’t” Was his one word response. “Don’t do it.” His hand had frozen from where it was, and slowly he rested it back down on the arm of the chair.
“Do not attempt to placate me, Faelyn, I am not finished. Non, not by a long shot.” He sat stiff and still behind her, as formal as one could be, with one’s wife on one’s lap of course.
“What?” His voice lowered perceptively, becoming that dangerous, dark growl once more. “Upset? You feel that I am upset? I rather think that word does not begin to cover the depth and breadth of what I am truly feeling.” His fingers began tapping on the chair’s arm.
“Upset. I become upset when you steal all the hot water in the hotel showers. I get upset when I find rust on my blades. This Madame de Rochefort? This is not upset.”
She knew precisely to what he was referring, and he was absolutely right. She had been trying to placate him. She knew that if there was one thing that he always did it was that he always saw things as the were and brought her eyes back on that thing which she had lost sight of. She jad forgotten this one of the laws of Power and now she was paying for it.
“No,” she quipped, “I would classify this as livid.” Her Scots’ conservation of words came out in all of its glory but could not hold in the face of their argument. ” and have you found a spot of rust on any of your blades when you came back? No I made damned sure that they were all as you would have them.”
His eye roamed around the room, to the countless weapons on the walls. Well, not countless. He knew every blade, every quillion, every chip of every blade like the back of his hand.
Gruffly, he answered her, his eye still upon one weapon he never earned in battle, one his lady wife gave him, the one he took when he took up his oath to protect her, to be with her, to partner her and love her, to honor and care for her for so long as they both lived. It was there, in a place of honor, a bit higher on the walls and more tenderly cherished than all the rest combined.
“Well, if there HAD been, I would have been upset. Dammit, woman You know what it is I speak, do not confuse the subject with incidentals now”.
“I…” Faelyn sputtered, “What – ? Fine! You are absolutely right Sebastien. I know you are right. I humbly concede to you, my consort, the better judgement of the two of us because obviously I did not display any in this instance. That being said, and the matter now being PAST,what do you propose?!” She knew he was only being protective of her, but it was no less exasperating.
“What I propose?” The slight rumble in his chest was the only warning she got, the only calm before the storm.
“What I propose, your Majesty, is for you to sit down, cover up, get well and DRINK YOUR FUCKING TEA!”
“I AM drinking my fucking tea!” Faelyn’s voice was sharp and irritated before she downed a huge mouthful of the concoction in one gulp. Instantly she paused and made a face that she probably hadn’t made since she was a child, “Bleh! I can’t drink this! It’s cold now!”
She was sitting in his lap, and he was staring off to the side, watching his hand as the light caught the slivers of glass and small rivulets of blood from where Rochefort had smashed the ancient, priceless mirror. At her complaint, he glanced up to her face, catching that face of hers as she lowered the teacup. He rolled his eye upward, a very typically male ‘why me’ look, and paused before giving a brief nod and a scowl.
“Fine. I’ll get you more.”
With surprising gentleness and ease he lifted her and set her aside on the couch nearbly. His good hand taking the cup from her fingers, Rochefort threw the rest of the cold drink into the fire where the the liquid caused a sizzle on the burning wood. Away into the darkness he walked, leaving her to stare at the flames.
Minutes later he was back, another glass of tea liberally spiced with honey and brandy in his good hand, the other now rinsed off and wrapped in a cloth of some sort.
Setting her cup on the small chessboard beside them, he bent over his wife and pulled her into his arms. Settling them together in the big, velvet backed chair, her husband curled his body around her, cradling her protectively to his chest.
“… Drink…”