COMMENTARY: Nocturnal
So ages ago I did a poll about which fics my illustrious readership would like to see get DVD-style commentaries.
The only two to get votes were my angstastic Victorian Richard/Aumerle fics, so I am doing both. Eventually. Here's the first one; you can read the original fic here.
Title: Nocturnal
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): past Richard/Anne (with reference to past Richard/Robert de Vere), unconsummated Richard/Aumerle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3080
Warnings: attempted suicide, disgusting references to Foxe's Book of Martyrs, buckets of angst, substance abuse, and gratuitous quotations; briefer instances of Victorian orientalism, incredibly dodgy familial relations, institutional homophobia, and 19th-century psychiatry. Also I'm not sure whether people said "fuck" this much in the 1880s in real life.
Summary: Edward York is not very good at being the strong one.
Notes: Part of the same AU as all these fics. This fic is set before the action of the play would start, but does have a basis in actual history: in 1395 Richard II ordered Shene Palace, where Queen Anne had died, destroyed (it was later rebuilt by Henry VII). For those of you whose brains do not vomit up 17th-century poetry at random intervals, Richard's quotations are from, roughly in order, Donne's "Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day"; Othello; Donne's "Broken Heart," and then the Nocturnal again; Keats' "Ode on a Nightingale" (yay for poetry written in the same century as the fic is set!); King John; and The Duchess of Malfi. The martyr that Richard recalls reading about is Master John Hooper, bishop of Worcester and Gloucester. His incredibly unpleasant tale can be read in Actes and Monuments,Book 11. Drayton Parslow is a real place; I'm sure it's very nice really. Finally, many thanks to lareinenoire, speak_me_fair, and gileonnen for beta-reading and general encouragement.
I'm not sure, to be honest, whether this AU counts as open or closed; I certainly don't mind having it open, but the one you should ask is lareinenoire, as she started it. I just kind of climbed aboard for the second tetralogy.
This is how I kind of operate with AUs -- I rarely start my own, I just get really possessive about other people's. Although I was in on the academic AU from basically the beginning, as far as I can recall. In the case of this one, I'd been really impressed by the stuff in the first tetralogy that lareinenoire had already written, and was really curious about how the second tet had gone down in that universe. And then one day in chat we got to talking about how Victorian!Richard II would probably be fun -- I was all "OPIUM DENS" and she was all "GAUNT WITH A MONOCLE," which I think illustrates our respective sets of interests pretty well, all things considered.
***
Richard's gaze was intent as he poured the water over the spoon, watching the green slowly give way to swirls of opalescent white.
It wasn't until well after I'd written most of this fic that I realized it wouldn't necessarily be immediately clear to the reader what he is doing! On the other hand, I assumed the fic would have a very tiny audience and most of them already know how to drink absinthe.
In case you don't, however: absinthe is generally served with cold water and sugar (to mask the bitterness of the liquor -- nobody drinks absinthe straight-up unless they're completely degenerate), and there's a whole ritual around it. How it works is -- you'll be served a glass with the undiluted liquor in it, which is bright green, along with the water and the sugar cubes, and a special flat spoon with slots in it. You put the sugar cube into the spoon, and drip the water slowly over it. The liquor will turn from clear and bright green to a milky pale green -- the process is called louching (from the French louche for "shady," which we now always use metaphorically in English).
There are also places with fountains that will control the drip for you -- there is a place near my university that has one, in fact -- but obviously that is not what Richard is doing here.
"Do you know what I see, Edward?" he said.
It was no good trying to guess what Richard was getting at when he got like this, and anyway, it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. Edward just shook his head, blankly.
"I see all the days of my life ahead of me, without Anne. I can't imagine anything more unbearable." He lifted the glass, drank deeply. "Nothing would make me happier than being rid of the lot of them."
He drained the glass then, and tilted his head back as though he were contemplating the pattern on the ceiling. "I am by her death -- which word wrongs her -- of the first nothing the elixir grown."
I've wanted to use Donne's Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day in a Richard/Anne fic for ages, anachronistic as it is. One of the nice things about the Victorian AU (and the academic AU) is that I can get in all the literary references I can't use in canon period!
The title of the fic is, of course, referring to the poem. If I'd thought to put an epigraph, I'd have used this:
[Love] ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death-things which are not.
Edward had no gift for consolation, and he wasn't sure there was any to be given, as much as he wanted to give it. He could no more reach his cousin in the depths of his grief than he could restore the dead to life. When he thought of how Richard used to be, before Anne died, he wasn't sure that reviving the dead wasn't what he was really trying to do.
I like the sentiment in that last sentence, but man, that is awkward prose.
He remembered lively soirees in Mayfair and languid summer afternoons at Shene House, Richard's laughter and Anne's wit.
He remembered, too, the clenching feeling in his heart whenever he saw the way Richard looked at her.
And now Anne was dead, and it was as if it had broken something in him irreparably -- like everything alive about him had been buried with her.
One of the things I fretted over with this fic -- there were many -- was making sure Anne seemed like an actual person in it rather than a conduit for slashy angst. I mean, I have a ton of headcanon about her and everything, but I don't think I've actually managed to finish any of the fics in this AU in which she appears. I should remedy that, because she is awesome. (She went to Girton College!)
"You're drunk, Richard," he said, finally. It was, after all, not his first glass this evening. Or his second.
"It's John Donne," Richard said, not looking at Edward.
From "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day," which I have wanted to invoke re: Richard and Anne in a fic for ages, and the Victorian AU has given me a chance. Go me.
Incidentally, Richard's fondness for Donne, demonstrated repeatedly in this fic, makes him somewhat unusual for the period. Donne's poetry (as opposed to his sermons) wasn't very well-regarded in the nineteenth century; it wasn't until the early part of the twentieth century that it began to be taken seriously again.
"You're still drunk."
"This is my ancient..." He waved his hand vaguely in Edward's direction, still focused intently on the ceiling.
Richard's quotation makes Edward into Iago, which is so inappropriate to poor loyal Edward that it's kind of hilarious. It's from Othello II.iii, Cassio insisting to Iago that he's not drunk. I would like to say the incongruity was intentional, but actually I am just fond of quoting that bit when I am drunk.
Fun fact: in the 1965 film of Othello Cassio is played by Derek Jacobi, who would of course later be a lovely Richard II in the BBC Shakespeare series.
"This my right hand, and this my left. Well, God's above all, and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved." He leaned forward, looking at Edward now as if he'd never seen him before.
"God, I hate my life," he said. "I hate my life."
It had been over a year since the terrible summer in which first Richard, and then Henry Lancaster and his father,
This was written before Richard got a surname in this universe. He didn't actually have one until "Do not see my fair rose wither," because there was no way to avoid it. The one we picked was later deemed an illustration of our having "less than the brain of the average cheese sandwich." Which is unfair, because lareinenoire is quite clever.
had lost their wives, and for the most part, it seemed as though the shadow that hung over the family was finally lifting. Edward's own father, widowed two years before, had remarried fairly quickly, to a woman even younger than Edward -- gossip had it that she was interested in both Edmund's money and his much more attractive son (a rumor that Edward had no interest in confirming even though it was completely true)
When I wrote this, I had the suspicion that Edward had had an entirely uninspiring affair with his stepmother (which I think was going to be the case in the historical novel commodorified and I were at one point sporadically writing, because York actually did marry a woman young enough to be his daughter), largely out of boredom. I think I have changed my mind about this, on the grounds that I can't actually imagine this Edward having sex with a woman.
Of course, I cannot imagine any version of Edward having sex with a woman, but...yeah.
-- and Uncle John was likely to do the same before too long. The disapproving murmurs had started well before Katherine Swinford and her family had even returned from New York, and a few people muttered darkly that the laudanum overdose that had carried off Constance had been no accident.
There's nothing in AU canon to prove it, but I am pretty sure it was an accident (rather than poisoning, which is the implication here, rather than suicide) and that John is a colossal asshole but not actually a murderer.
Henry, whose wife, Mary, had died giving birth to their daughter Philippa, seemed to have no intention of remarriage, and looked perpetually grim and sad -- but then, he had always comported himself as though he were in mourning.
For Richard, though, there had been no slow, measured return to normalcy. When Edward was still at Eton, Richard's close companion Robbie Vere had died, under mysterious circumstances,
Another thing that's been retconned. Later we decided that Robbie drowned when his boat sank on the way to France, for which see the rest of this sentence. (Poor Robbie. Someday I will finish fic with him in this universe, because he's actually really cool in it. He identifies strongly with the Uranian movement. Also, I am not going to write about it, but he totally slept with Walter Pater at Oxford.)
after fleeing to France to avoid getting arrested for buggery.
The Labouchere Acts being over a decade away. It makes plotting this AU so much more difficult, and the reasons for Richard's family's eagerness to have his boyfriend out of the way have only been shakily translated into this universe, but whatever.
It had been a great scandal, and Richard had been so distraught that he'd had to leave Cambridge and was sent to the Continent to recover his health.
As we know from other fics in this universe, Richard was not actually sent to the Continent at all, but Edward has seen no reason thus far to question the official version of events. He finds out what really happened in "Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue."
It hadn't seemed to help, since when he returned he had seemed drawn and tired and not at all recovered, but Edward could not imagine that even before he left he had been worse off then than he was now: in all things he seemed to be chasing an oblivion just out of his reach.
I still think that last bit is a pretty good line.
He could only remember seeing Richard smile once in recent memory; it had been reassuring until he'd noticed the silver syringe sitting in its open case on an end table.
This I think is the first reference to Richard's opium addiction (well, the syringe would be more suggestive of morphine, but opiates seem to be interchangeable to a degree, and it doesn't seem to have been that difficult to acquire morphine in Victorian London). lareinenoire's "The readiness is all" and my own "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" both make reference to the mostly-legendary Limehouse opium dens, in a way that we hope emphasizes HOPELESS ADDICTION rather than SORDID VICTORIAN ORIENTALISM: this AU has a lot of literary antecedents as well as historical ones, but we do at least try not to unthinkingly reproduce period attitudes.
Edward took out his cigarette case, offered one to Richard. "Here," he said. "Clears your head a bit."
Edward's chainsmoking in this universe came about for two reasons: one is that I needed something to write while he was fretting over how to respond to Richard, and the other is that Victorian gentlemen should always have cigarette cases.
...okay, also I did know what Richard was going to end up doing in this fic and it was imagistically useful, but it was mostly for the sake of something resembling action.
None of this has anything to do with the urban legend that the cigarette case in The Importance of Being Earnest has to do with something about cigarette cases as payment for rentboys.
"Don't want one," Richard said. "Everything I touch turns to ashes, anyway."
Edward lit his own cigarette and watched as the smoke from his discarded match curled idly toward the ceiling, suddenly wishing he were somewhere else. There was usually nothing to be done when Richard got like this, nothing but to sit and listen while Richard talked about how much he wished he was dead, and choke on the millions of things he wanted to tell Richard about how damned terrified he was for his sake.
He has not quite worked up the nerve for "snog the hell out of him" yet. Although he shouldn't at this point because Richard is really, really drunk.
"Edward?" Richard's voice was strangely distant and childlike. "The wallpaper's moving."
I have it on good authority that this is an actual effect of absinthe, which I have never actually had apart from a bit of a Sazerac (which, incidentally, could probably be used to strip paint). Though I am also told, by someone else entirely, that this means you're not drinking the good stuff.
Also, Richard is an aesthete and probably has William Morris wallpaper. Seeing that stuff moving would really fuck with a person, I think.
Edward leaned forward, laid his hand on Richard's wrist. "Are you all right?" he said. "Absinthe does dreadful things to a man, you know."
"Not all right," Richard murmured, "but it doesn't matter. You see that?" he said, gesturing at the walls. "It's crawling away. Everything does. I can't stop it. It all falls apart. Do you know, everyone I loved is dead? I can't bear to remember it. Or to forget. I'm just stopped, Edward, and everything else is moving away from me. Even my damned house is doing it."
"Come on," Edward said, snuffing out his cigarette. "It's time to stop when the wallpaper starts moving."
Edward is a veritable fountain of good advice.
Richard looked lost. "I can't," he said. "I haven't forgotten yet."
Edward moved to sit beside him, and took his arm.
"Have you ever?" he said gently.
Richard did not answer, but he allowed Edward to help him stand up.
For the benefit of highfantastical especially I shall point out that he's probably going to make sure he can get to bed without choking on his own vomit (or someone else's, that's the mysterious part).
A few days later Richard told Edward he had business at Shene House. "I have to be rid of it," he said. "I can't bear the thought that I might find myself back there someday."
Edward nodded -- it might do him good to sell the place off, after all.
In the event Richard was frustratingly inscrutable about the entire affair: he'd insisted Edward come with him, but when they arrived at Shene House he also insisted on going in alone, sending Edward off with the carriage to wait for him in the unprepossessing nearby village of Drayton Parslow.
I apologize if there are any Drayton Parslovians out there. The real Shene was actually in what is now Richmond, for the record, although Richard's soon-to-be-incinerated country house is in Buckinghamshire.
Which was, of course, completely typical of Richard. At least the place had a pub in it.
It is at times like this that I suspect that this song is actually about Victorian!Richard and Edward.
***
Richard has not been back to Shene House since -- he can barely, even now, articulate it even in his own thoughts -- since the day she died.
At the time I wrote this fic, my general style was to write Richard in present tense -- I still can't write him every other way -- and everyone else in past. I've since started using present a lot more: partly this is because the house style, such as it is, for the other AU I write in is present, and partly because I write more sex now and sex is about a squillion times easier to write in present tense.
(In his head he has never left, has not been gone even an hour. When he closes his eyes he still sees her face, blank and empty; when he lies awake at night he remembers the last time he held her in his arms, how very still she was; not a day before he had fallen asleep listening to the beating of her heart, and now he could never do so again. No wormwood, no morphine, no nepenthe will take that image from his mind.)
I think everybody gets one chance to write something with the word "nepenthe" in it, and I have taken mine.
...man, this section is a lot harder to comment on, and I am sort of worried that I'm just sporking my own fic anyway.
He lights the lantern he has brought with him, and it is bright enough the house becomes recognizable as something other than an ominous black shadow in the gathering dusk.
She loved it here. He cannot bear to think about that now. It will change nothing -- he cannot burn away the last year, or even his memory of it -- but neither can he stand the thought that the place where she died should continue standing, to offend the earth with its presence. Whatever peace it might bring him to know that it has been annihilated, he will gladly take, however insignificant it will be.
He hesitates only a moment longer. Then, with all his strength, he hurls the lantern through the window. The crash of glass and the ensuing rain of shards is gratifying, in a metaphorical sort of way: therefore I think my breast hath all those pieces still, though they be not unite.
More Donne: this is from "The Broken Heart," which is my favorite Donne poem.
The fire spreads quickly, catching hold of the curtains, spreading out along the walls. It is breathtaking to watch. The speed of it is no surprise, for Richard knows too well how quickly something can be destroyed.
It is that thought that draws him to the threshold.
It would not take long. They say the smoke will kill a man before the flames can touch him. It would be over quickly, and without much pain.
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her...
Another part of the Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day. This particular application of the text is not precisely what Donne meant, I don't think.
Richard is light-hearted and light-headed as he approaches the door; he takes the handle, instantly jerks his hand back, stifling a cry.
Victorian Eton did not have a Fire Safety unit. Yeah, I've still got nothing. Although I think this is a damn fine paragraph here. Poor Richard.
I do sort of wonder about my tendency to make Richard suicidal -- it's a justifiable extrapolation from canon, certainly, but I lean on it a lot. Perhaps it's because I imprinted on Harry Berger's reading, which really emphasizes Richard's self-destructive tendencies, though he sees Richard as gleefully self-destructive, and there is not much gleeful about my Richard. Especially in this AU, because we figured the nineteenth century would grind a man of his temperament to powder.
It is too late: the flames have reached the other side of the door, and to go in now would mean death by fire rather than smoke. He examines the blisters beginning to form on his hands and thinks of how it would feel to burn to death, and cannot escape a memory of reading from the Book of Martyrs as a child, with its pictures of bishops and laymen alike going to the flames with hands outstretched in agony and faces completely unmoved -- the appearance of peace amid the conflagration was ineffably terrifying. People burnt to death would die horribly, with blackened skin and blistered flesh: he has never forgotten the one man in the book who died at the stake with fat and water and blood pouring from his fingers' ends.
Richard is thinking of the martyrdom of John Hooper of Gloucester, or at least I was when I wrote this. It's one of the grossest bits of the Book of Martyrs, because it takes Hooper 45 minutes to actually catch fire. Here is what happens when he finally does:
The third fire was kindled within a while after, which was more extreme than the other two. In this fire he prayed with a loud voice, "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus receive my spirit!" And these were the last words he was heard to utter. But when he was black in the mouth, and his tongue so swollen that he could not speak, yet his lips went until they were shrunk to the gums: and he knocked his breast with his hands until one of his arms fell off, and then knocked still with the other, while the fat, water, and blood dropped out at his fingers' ends, until by renewing the fire, his strength was gone, and his hand clave fast in knocking to the iron upon his breast. Then immediately bowing forwards, he yielded up his spirit.
You can see why this stuck with Richard, I imagine.
It is appalling, unconscionable, and he stumbles back towards the gates, a safe distance from the blackening timbers, now cast into sharp relief against the blazing fire, and sinks down onto the grass. He can almost hear Thomas's voice in his head -- you're a damned mollying idiot, Richard, can't even kill yourself properly.
One of the recurring problems I run into in writing this AU is finding homophobic slurs that are both in-period and comprehensible. "Molly" is a little too early and "nancy" is a little bit late, at least for someone of Thomas' age, so I erred on the side of archaism.
It all seems faintly ridiculous: Richard finds himself laughing, a sound horrible to his own ears, even as he breaks down into choked sobs.
Anyone passing by would surely think him a lunatic.
The very word is like a bell: news is certain to get back to his family, after all. It will confirm their worst suspicions about him. They would seize upon any excuse, after all, to send him back there, and the memory of leather straps and icy water and endless rows of green tiles
I was moving house while writing this fic, and the green tiles were inspired by one of the buildings I looked at -- indeed, the fact that the place looked like a Victorian mental asylum is the main reason I didn't move there, although it was even cheaper than the place I moved into (which I have since moved out of). My current apartment has no tiles other than in the bathroom.
I am not sure why I associate green tiles with Victorian lunatic asylums, but I totally do.
I was also about to say that this was the first reference to Richard's stint in the lunatic asylum, but actually that honor goes to "To Mock the Expectation of the World" -- I think I'd written this one first, but lareinenoire is a much faster writer than I am.
is almost enough to make him cast himself into the flames after all, as widows in India were said to do upon their husbands' funeral pyres.
The former Indian custom of sati, or suttee as it was generally spelled in this time period, is difficult to address without opening a veritable Pandora's box of intersectionality pertaining to gender and colonialism. I completely tore my hair out over whether I should leave this in or not. I think what made me decide it was acceptable was -- well, period-accuracy, but also the fact that it's Richard Identifying With The Colonized Woman? But I'm not sure that I made the right call or whether I'm not any better at not being failtastic than the people who write Supernatural RPS centering around nonwhite people's calamities (and no, I'm not looking for reassurance or cookies).
But not quite enough. It doesn't matter, anyway: if he cannot endure a few minutes' torment, he will face the same drawn-out emptiness anywhere.
It is reassuring to know that there's no need to wonder when it will stop.
I struggled a lot with the end of this section -- I think because that particular emotional register was hard to maintain, at least, at the time I wrote this fic (I have since written fics that are grimmer for longer). I'm still not sure I hit precisely the right note on which to end it.
***
It was past dark and Edward, to distract himself, was half-heartedly endeavoring to flirt with the handsome waiter at the Three Horse Shoes when Richard returned -- pale, disheveled, smelling of sweat and smoke and kerosene. He sat down across from Edward and, without a word, took the wine bottle and Edward's glass, filling it carefully with shaking hands and then draining it quickly.
I sort of wonder if Edward got laughed at for drinking wine in a pub in 1881.
"We may wish to notify the fire brigade," he said, his voice unnaturally calm despite his haunted appearance. "There's been an accident at Shene House."
Edward was suddenly glad that Richard had taken his glass, since otherwise he would probably have dropped it on the floor. "You mean you -- oh, God, Richard. Hold on. Let me pay the reckoning, and then we'll handle it, all right?"
speak_me_fair wrote some alternate dialogue for this scene which was really cool and which I didn't use at all because, well, she wrote it, and not me. But she is pretty much the nonpareil for writing Aumerle, so I thought I ought to mention it.
If Richard was even listening to him, he gave no sign of it. He started to pour another glass of wine, and this was the last thing that Edward's already-frayed nerves could handle -- before he'd even really thought about it, he pulled the glass out of Richard's hand. Richard was shocked enough by his sudden decisiveness that he offered no resistance, and the force of Edward's movement left a spreading purple stain on his shirt.
"What the hell -- " Richard started to say, and Edward, for what was almost certainly the first time in his entire life, cut him off.
"Christ, Richard, just stop, all right?" he said. "Stop it. I can't fucking stand this anymore."
"What?" It was like someone had thrown a switch that had brought Richard to frantic life. "You can't stand it? You don't know the first damned thing about it, Edward, so why don't you just fuck right off?"
Hey, people could have said that in 1881! ALL THE WORDS EXISTED.
"Don't tell me what I know," Edward said, his voice coming out now in a frantic, sharply-edged tangle of words. "All right? I can't stand seeing you kill yourself by degrees -- " he broke off there, because his throat felt too tight to continue and his face was hot and his eyes prickled.
Edward has made a very poor choice of words to say to a man who has just seriously considered burning himself to death. Not that he has any way of knowing that at this moment. Poor Edward.
Richard looked nearly as shaken as Edward felt, at that.
"I'll kill myself however I damn well please," he said.
That may, in fact, be Richard's motto.
"Come on." Edward hated the quiver in his voice: there was not time for his rapidly-growing sense of dread. "We can't go back to London and just leave it there." When he moved to take Richard's hands, Richard drew back -- but he made no more argument.
This was meant to suggest that he's burnt his hands, of course. (she says, unnecessarily.)
The thing about Richard when he got extremely angry was that the really scary part didn't usually last very long. Edward had only seen him as angry as he'd just been once before -- when Dick Arundel had elbowed his way into the chapel just as Anne's funeral was about to begin. It had been terrifying: before anyone could stop Richard he had thrown himself at Arundel with fists flying, and the service had been delayed for several hours so they could clean the blood off the floor.
This really happened, more or less. Although I have the feeling that in this universe Arundel exists largely to get his nose broken; I have no idea who he is except that presumably he is somehow connected to the family and is Thomas' friend.
Arundel still had a crooked nose as a result of the thrashing Richard had given him, and indeed Edward himself had taken an elbow to the eye as he tried to hold Richard back, but then, too, he had quickly broken down once the damage was done. (Richard had apologized to him later, and Edward keenly remembered Richard's long fingers brushing gently across his bruised and swollen cheekbone.)
HANDPORN. ALSO FACEPORN.
"No," Richard said, seemingly from a great distance. "I suppose we can't."
It was drawing near to midnight by the time they were able to set out for London. Shene House was irreparably damaged, of course. Richard had instructed that anything regarding any expenses incurred as a result of the fire be sent to him in London -- with remarkable composure, Edward thought, all things considered, but then, Richard had always been unsettlingly good at that. He had always thought it a peculiar honor, that he was one of the few people that Richard allowed to see him at his worst -- perhaps it was a strange way of showing love, Edward thought
In fact, he is right. One of the things I do try to show, with I'm not sure how much success, is that Richard really does love Edward as best he can; he's just really bad at it.
-- but his seemingly-easy slides from despair back into something resembling presentable were deeply perilous, like dark water filled with jagged rocks.
"I am not mad," Richard said, flatly, as they sat side by side in the brougham resolutely not looking at each other for too long.
Edward had already decided that contesting this statement would be a terrible idea when Richard continued: "...I would to heaven I were, for then 'tis like I should forget myself."
Richard's choice of play is actually very period-appropriate, since King John was very popular with the Victorians.
I always feel a little bit weird referencing the history plays in this universe, though it is clear (obviously, since this bit is in this fic) that they exist; in fact, Richard actually references his own play in "The readiness is all." And then Sherlock Holmes makes fun of him. I love that fic so much. Anyway, we may all just assume that nobody notices that they all have the same names (which isn't weird) and life stories (which is) as a bunch of English monarchs who had plays written about them!
More Shakespeare, then. No help at all. Richard always did that when he didn't want to tell you something -- Edward supposed it might have been more illuminating if he gave a damn about Shakespeare, even if what Richard had just said was clear enough.
The reaction I gave to Edward about Richard's constant Shakespearing is the way I always assume people feel when talking to me. Without the abject and painful love, I mean.
I would remark that I kind of want an Aumerle except that I don't feel comfortable wishing that on anyone! Because, honestly, his life sucks on toast.
"I don't guess you want to tell me why you did it, then," he said, finally, though it felt like a ridiculous thing to say.
Richard looked him in the face for the first time since they'd left the Three Horse Shoes. In the faint light he seemed terrible, pale and hollow-eyed, and Edward shivered.
He probably looks like a blonder and clean-shaven version of the "L'absinthe rend fou!" guy.
"I doubt you're really as stupid as you pretend to be," he said. "I told you. I had to be rid of it."
He leaned back against the seat then and closed his eyes. Edward watched him for what felt like an age, before giving up and lighting a cigarette, assuming he had fallen asleep. He was at a loss to explain how Richard might manage that, given the circumstances, but then, he didn't seem to get much of it these days.
"Please, don't do that," Richard said suddenly, the panic that sharpened his voice more startling than his sudden movement.
"What?" With one hand Edward waved his match in the air to extinguish it, jerking it awkwardly as the heat neared his fingers; with the other he tried to keep his recently-lit cigarette from igniting his greatcoat.
It is a magic cigarette that vanishes after this line! Or something. I don't imagine Victorian carriages having ashtrays, but maybe they did.
"I can't bear the smoke," Richard said. "Because -- God, Edward, it could have been over tonight. I couldn't do it. And I wanted to. I thought I did. I don't know."
"What happened?" Edward asked, forcing his voice through the knot tightening in his throat. "Richard, please, tell me."
Richard looked away from him then, turning towards the rolling blackness passing by the window. Once again the silence before he spoke seemed to stretch on infinitely.
Also I kind of suspect that a lot of this scene is ripping off the carriage ride in "To Mock the Expectation." Although Richard has a bigger carriage (a hansom has four wheels and a brougham has two, and yes, I totally looked this shit up).
"I nearly went in, you know."
"What?"
"During the fire. If I'd thought of it soon enough -- it would only have taken a few minutes. Wouldn't even have hurt very much. Because of the smoke, you know."
Edward felt his heart drop into his stomach and his hands turn cold: he wanted to pull Richard into his arms and cling to him for dear life, to kiss his forehead and his eyelids and his lips until his pain had vanished, to shake him senseless -- how could you even think about leaving me, you complete bastard?
I BET WE ALL WANT HIM TO DO THIS. Completely inappropriate as it would be!
I don't think I initially meant for this fic to be a sort of deconstruction of h/c, but it sort of gestures at it here, and the followup, "Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue," does so in an even more brutal manner, although by that point it was deliberate -- Richard and Edward have basically the least healing sex they can manage.
I am, incidentally, eventually doing a commentary on that one, too.
"And I couldn't do it," Richard continued. "I couldn't do it. I went to open the door, and it was hot, and I burned my hand." He held out his right hand, and Edward could just barely make out the red welts that cut across his fingers. "It's so stupid, isn't it? Only a few minutes." He shook his head, burying his face in his hands. "I know death has ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits..."
Richard is quoting The Duchess of Malfi here. I think this is probably where his fascination with doomed literary women started. One of my unfinished fics also has him identifying with Ophelia, and the Lady of Shalott.
"Richard -- "
"For a second, I didn't want to die, Edward," he said, his voice choked and distant. "I don't understand it."
Edward wrapped his arm around Richard's shoulders and could feel him trembling. He leaned close and pressed his lips to Richard's temple, and Richard laid his head on Edward's shoulder and reached up to cover Edward's hand with his own.
"There's nothing you can do to save me, Ned," he said. "But I'm glad you try."
I also had a hell of a lot of trouble ending this fic. But I think I did hit the right note here: pretty much the entirety of how I see their relationship is summarized by that line.
The only two to get votes were my angstastic Victorian Richard/Aumerle fics, so I am doing both. Eventually. Here's the first one; you can read the original fic here.
Title: Nocturnal
Author: angevin2
Play: Richard II
Character(s)/Pairing(s): past Richard/Anne (with reference to past Richard/Robert de Vere), unconsummated Richard/Aumerle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3080
Warnings: attempted suicide, disgusting references to Foxe's Book of Martyrs, buckets of angst, substance abuse, and gratuitous quotations; briefer instances of Victorian orientalism, incredibly dodgy familial relations, institutional homophobia, and 19th-century psychiatry. Also I'm not sure whether people said "fuck" this much in the 1880s in real life.
Summary: Edward York is not very good at being the strong one.
Notes: Part of the same AU as all these fics. This fic is set before the action of the play would start, but does have a basis in actual history: in 1395 Richard II ordered Shene Palace, where Queen Anne had died, destroyed (it was later rebuilt by Henry VII). For those of you whose brains do not vomit up 17th-century poetry at random intervals, Richard's quotations are from, roughly in order, Donne's "Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day"; Othello; Donne's "Broken Heart," and then the Nocturnal again; Keats' "Ode on a Nightingale" (yay for poetry written in the same century as the fic is set!); King John; and The Duchess of Malfi. The martyr that Richard recalls reading about is Master John Hooper, bishop of Worcester and Gloucester. His incredibly unpleasant tale can be read in Actes and Monuments,Book 11. Drayton Parslow is a real place; I'm sure it's very nice really. Finally, many thanks to lareinenoire, speak_me_fair, and gileonnen for beta-reading and general encouragement.
I'm not sure, to be honest, whether this AU counts as open or closed; I certainly don't mind having it open, but the one you should ask is lareinenoire, as she started it. I just kind of climbed aboard for the second tetralogy.
This is how I kind of operate with AUs -- I rarely start my own, I just get really possessive about other people's. Although I was in on the academic AU from basically the beginning, as far as I can recall. In the case of this one, I'd been really impressed by the stuff in the first tetralogy that lareinenoire had already written, and was really curious about how the second tet had gone down in that universe. And then one day in chat we got to talking about how Victorian!Richard II would probably be fun -- I was all "OPIUM DENS" and she was all "GAUNT WITH A MONOCLE," which I think illustrates our respective sets of interests pretty well, all things considered.
***
Richard's gaze was intent as he poured the water over the spoon, watching the green slowly give way to swirls of opalescent white.
It wasn't until well after I'd written most of this fic that I realized it wouldn't necessarily be immediately clear to the reader what he is doing! On the other hand, I assumed the fic would have a very tiny audience and most of them already know how to drink absinthe.
In case you don't, however: absinthe is generally served with cold water and sugar (to mask the bitterness of the liquor -- nobody drinks absinthe straight-up unless they're completely degenerate), and there's a whole ritual around it. How it works is -- you'll be served a glass with the undiluted liquor in it, which is bright green, along with the water and the sugar cubes, and a special flat spoon with slots in it. You put the sugar cube into the spoon, and drip the water slowly over it. The liquor will turn from clear and bright green to a milky pale green -- the process is called louching (from the French louche for "shady," which we now always use metaphorically in English).
There are also places with fountains that will control the drip for you -- there is a place near my university that has one, in fact -- but obviously that is not what Richard is doing here.
"Do you know what I see, Edward?" he said.
It was no good trying to guess what Richard was getting at when he got like this, and anyway, it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. Edward just shook his head, blankly.
"I see all the days of my life ahead of me, without Anne. I can't imagine anything more unbearable." He lifted the glass, drank deeply. "Nothing would make me happier than being rid of the lot of them."
He drained the glass then, and tilted his head back as though he were contemplating the pattern on the ceiling. "I am by her death -- which word wrongs her -- of the first nothing the elixir grown."
I've wanted to use Donne's Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day in a Richard/Anne fic for ages, anachronistic as it is. One of the nice things about the Victorian AU (and the academic AU) is that I can get in all the literary references I can't use in canon period!
The title of the fic is, of course, referring to the poem. If I'd thought to put an epigraph, I'd have used this:
[Love] ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death-things which are not.
Edward had no gift for consolation, and he wasn't sure there was any to be given, as much as he wanted to give it. He could no more reach his cousin in the depths of his grief than he could restore the dead to life. When he thought of how Richard used to be, before Anne died, he wasn't sure that reviving the dead wasn't what he was really trying to do.
I like the sentiment in that last sentence, but man, that is awkward prose.
He remembered lively soirees in Mayfair and languid summer afternoons at Shene House, Richard's laughter and Anne's wit.
He remembered, too, the clenching feeling in his heart whenever he saw the way Richard looked at her.
And now Anne was dead, and it was as if it had broken something in him irreparably -- like everything alive about him had been buried with her.
One of the things I fretted over with this fic -- there were many -- was making sure Anne seemed like an actual person in it rather than a conduit for slashy angst. I mean, I have a ton of headcanon about her and everything, but I don't think I've actually managed to finish any of the fics in this AU in which she appears. I should remedy that, because she is awesome. (She went to Girton College!)
"You're drunk, Richard," he said, finally. It was, after all, not his first glass this evening. Or his second.
"It's John Donne," Richard said, not looking at Edward.
From "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day," which I have wanted to invoke re: Richard and Anne in a fic for ages, and the Victorian AU has given me a chance. Go me.
Incidentally, Richard's fondness for Donne, demonstrated repeatedly in this fic, makes him somewhat unusual for the period. Donne's poetry (as opposed to his sermons) wasn't very well-regarded in the nineteenth century; it wasn't until the early part of the twentieth century that it began to be taken seriously again.
"You're still drunk."
"This is my ancient..." He waved his hand vaguely in Edward's direction, still focused intently on the ceiling.
Richard's quotation makes Edward into Iago, which is so inappropriate to poor loyal Edward that it's kind of hilarious. It's from Othello II.iii, Cassio insisting to Iago that he's not drunk. I would like to say the incongruity was intentional, but actually I am just fond of quoting that bit when I am drunk.
Fun fact: in the 1965 film of Othello Cassio is played by Derek Jacobi, who would of course later be a lovely Richard II in the BBC Shakespeare series.
"This my right hand, and this my left. Well, God's above all, and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved." He leaned forward, looking at Edward now as if he'd never seen him before.
"God, I hate my life," he said. "I hate my life."
It had been over a year since the terrible summer in which first Richard, and then Henry Lancaster and his father,
This was written before Richard got a surname in this universe. He didn't actually have one until "Do not see my fair rose wither," because there was no way to avoid it. The one we picked was later deemed an illustration of our having "less than the brain of the average cheese sandwich." Which is unfair, because lareinenoire is quite clever.
had lost their wives, and for the most part, it seemed as though the shadow that hung over the family was finally lifting. Edward's own father, widowed two years before, had remarried fairly quickly, to a woman even younger than Edward -- gossip had it that she was interested in both Edmund's money and his much more attractive son (a rumor that Edward had no interest in confirming even though it was completely true)
When I wrote this, I had the suspicion that Edward had had an entirely uninspiring affair with his stepmother (which I think was going to be the case in the historical novel commodorified and I were at one point sporadically writing, because York actually did marry a woman young enough to be his daughter), largely out of boredom. I think I have changed my mind about this, on the grounds that I can't actually imagine this Edward having sex with a woman.
Of course, I cannot imagine any version of Edward having sex with a woman, but...yeah.
-- and Uncle John was likely to do the same before too long. The disapproving murmurs had started well before Katherine Swinford and her family had even returned from New York, and a few people muttered darkly that the laudanum overdose that had carried off Constance had been no accident.
There's nothing in AU canon to prove it, but I am pretty sure it was an accident (rather than poisoning, which is the implication here, rather than suicide) and that John is a colossal asshole but not actually a murderer.
Henry, whose wife, Mary, had died giving birth to their daughter Philippa, seemed to have no intention of remarriage, and looked perpetually grim and sad -- but then, he had always comported himself as though he were in mourning.
For Richard, though, there had been no slow, measured return to normalcy. When Edward was still at Eton, Richard's close companion Robbie Vere had died, under mysterious circumstances,
Another thing that's been retconned. Later we decided that Robbie drowned when his boat sank on the way to France, for which see the rest of this sentence. (Poor Robbie. Someday I will finish fic with him in this universe, because he's actually really cool in it. He identifies strongly with the Uranian movement. Also, I am not going to write about it, but he totally slept with Walter Pater at Oxford.)
after fleeing to France to avoid getting arrested for buggery.
The Labouchere Acts being over a decade away. It makes plotting this AU so much more difficult, and the reasons for Richard's family's eagerness to have his boyfriend out of the way have only been shakily translated into this universe, but whatever.
It had been a great scandal, and Richard had been so distraught that he'd had to leave Cambridge and was sent to the Continent to recover his health.
As we know from other fics in this universe, Richard was not actually sent to the Continent at all, but Edward has seen no reason thus far to question the official version of events. He finds out what really happened in "Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue."
It hadn't seemed to help, since when he returned he had seemed drawn and tired and not at all recovered, but Edward could not imagine that even before he left he had been worse off then than he was now: in all things he seemed to be chasing an oblivion just out of his reach.
I still think that last bit is a pretty good line.
He could only remember seeing Richard smile once in recent memory; it had been reassuring until he'd noticed the silver syringe sitting in its open case on an end table.
This I think is the first reference to Richard's opium addiction (well, the syringe would be more suggestive of morphine, but opiates seem to be interchangeable to a degree, and it doesn't seem to have been that difficult to acquire morphine in Victorian London). lareinenoire's "The readiness is all" and my own "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" both make reference to the mostly-legendary Limehouse opium dens, in a way that we hope emphasizes HOPELESS ADDICTION rather than SORDID VICTORIAN ORIENTALISM: this AU has a lot of literary antecedents as well as historical ones, but we do at least try not to unthinkingly reproduce period attitudes.
Edward took out his cigarette case, offered one to Richard. "Here," he said. "Clears your head a bit."
Edward's chainsmoking in this universe came about for two reasons: one is that I needed something to write while he was fretting over how to respond to Richard, and the other is that Victorian gentlemen should always have cigarette cases.
...okay, also I did know what Richard was going to end up doing in this fic and it was imagistically useful, but it was mostly for the sake of something resembling action.
None of this has anything to do with the urban legend that the cigarette case in The Importance of Being Earnest has to do with something about cigarette cases as payment for rentboys.
"Don't want one," Richard said. "Everything I touch turns to ashes, anyway."
Edward lit his own cigarette and watched as the smoke from his discarded match curled idly toward the ceiling, suddenly wishing he were somewhere else. There was usually nothing to be done when Richard got like this, nothing but to sit and listen while Richard talked about how much he wished he was dead, and choke on the millions of things he wanted to tell Richard about how damned terrified he was for his sake.
He has not quite worked up the nerve for "snog the hell out of him" yet. Although he shouldn't at this point because Richard is really, really drunk.
"Edward?" Richard's voice was strangely distant and childlike. "The wallpaper's moving."
I have it on good authority that this is an actual effect of absinthe, which I have never actually had apart from a bit of a Sazerac (which, incidentally, could probably be used to strip paint). Though I am also told, by someone else entirely, that this means you're not drinking the good stuff.
Also, Richard is an aesthete and probably has William Morris wallpaper. Seeing that stuff moving would really fuck with a person, I think.
Edward leaned forward, laid his hand on Richard's wrist. "Are you all right?" he said. "Absinthe does dreadful things to a man, you know."
"Not all right," Richard murmured, "but it doesn't matter. You see that?" he said, gesturing at the walls. "It's crawling away. Everything does. I can't stop it. It all falls apart. Do you know, everyone I loved is dead? I can't bear to remember it. Or to forget. I'm just stopped, Edward, and everything else is moving away from me. Even my damned house is doing it."
"Come on," Edward said, snuffing out his cigarette. "It's time to stop when the wallpaper starts moving."
Edward is a veritable fountain of good advice.
Richard looked lost. "I can't," he said. "I haven't forgotten yet."
Edward moved to sit beside him, and took his arm.
"Have you ever?" he said gently.
Richard did not answer, but he allowed Edward to help him stand up.
For the benefit of highfantastical especially I shall point out that he's probably going to make sure he can get to bed without choking on his own vomit (or someone else's, that's the mysterious part).
A few days later Richard told Edward he had business at Shene House. "I have to be rid of it," he said. "I can't bear the thought that I might find myself back there someday."
Edward nodded -- it might do him good to sell the place off, after all.
In the event Richard was frustratingly inscrutable about the entire affair: he'd insisted Edward come with him, but when they arrived at Shene House he also insisted on going in alone, sending Edward off with the carriage to wait for him in the unprepossessing nearby village of Drayton Parslow.
I apologize if there are any Drayton Parslovians out there. The real Shene was actually in what is now Richmond, for the record, although Richard's soon-to-be-incinerated country house is in Buckinghamshire.
Which was, of course, completely typical of Richard. At least the place had a pub in it.
It is at times like this that I suspect that this song is actually about Victorian!Richard and Edward.
***
Richard has not been back to Shene House since -- he can barely, even now, articulate it even in his own thoughts -- since the day she died.
At the time I wrote this fic, my general style was to write Richard in present tense -- I still can't write him every other way -- and everyone else in past. I've since started using present a lot more: partly this is because the house style, such as it is, for the other AU I write in is present, and partly because I write more sex now and sex is about a squillion times easier to write in present tense.
(In his head he has never left, has not been gone even an hour. When he closes his eyes he still sees her face, blank and empty; when he lies awake at night he remembers the last time he held her in his arms, how very still she was; not a day before he had fallen asleep listening to the beating of her heart, and now he could never do so again. No wormwood, no morphine, no nepenthe will take that image from his mind.)
I think everybody gets one chance to write something with the word "nepenthe" in it, and I have taken mine.
...man, this section is a lot harder to comment on, and I am sort of worried that I'm just sporking my own fic anyway.
He lights the lantern he has brought with him, and it is bright enough the house becomes recognizable as something other than an ominous black shadow in the gathering dusk.
She loved it here. He cannot bear to think about that now. It will change nothing -- he cannot burn away the last year, or even his memory of it -- but neither can he stand the thought that the place where she died should continue standing, to offend the earth with its presence. Whatever peace it might bring him to know that it has been annihilated, he will gladly take, however insignificant it will be.
He hesitates only a moment longer. Then, with all his strength, he hurls the lantern through the window. The crash of glass and the ensuing rain of shards is gratifying, in a metaphorical sort of way: therefore I think my breast hath all those pieces still, though they be not unite.
More Donne: this is from "The Broken Heart," which is my favorite Donne poem.
The fire spreads quickly, catching hold of the curtains, spreading out along the walls. It is breathtaking to watch. The speed of it is no surprise, for Richard knows too well how quickly something can be destroyed.
It is that thought that draws him to the threshold.
It would not take long. They say the smoke will kill a man before the flames can touch him. It would be over quickly, and without much pain.
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her...
Another part of the Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day. This particular application of the text is not precisely what Donne meant, I don't think.
Richard is light-hearted and light-headed as he approaches the door; he takes the handle, instantly jerks his hand back, stifling a cry.
Victorian Eton did not have a Fire Safety unit. Yeah, I've still got nothing. Although I think this is a damn fine paragraph here. Poor Richard.
I do sort of wonder about my tendency to make Richard suicidal -- it's a justifiable extrapolation from canon, certainly, but I lean on it a lot. Perhaps it's because I imprinted on Harry Berger's reading, which really emphasizes Richard's self-destructive tendencies, though he sees Richard as gleefully self-destructive, and there is not much gleeful about my Richard. Especially in this AU, because we figured the nineteenth century would grind a man of his temperament to powder.
It is too late: the flames have reached the other side of the door, and to go in now would mean death by fire rather than smoke. He examines the blisters beginning to form on his hands and thinks of how it would feel to burn to death, and cannot escape a memory of reading from the Book of Martyrs as a child, with its pictures of bishops and laymen alike going to the flames with hands outstretched in agony and faces completely unmoved -- the appearance of peace amid the conflagration was ineffably terrifying. People burnt to death would die horribly, with blackened skin and blistered flesh: he has never forgotten the one man in the book who died at the stake with fat and water and blood pouring from his fingers' ends.
Richard is thinking of the martyrdom of John Hooper of Gloucester, or at least I was when I wrote this. It's one of the grossest bits of the Book of Martyrs, because it takes Hooper 45 minutes to actually catch fire. Here is what happens when he finally does:
The third fire was kindled within a while after, which was more extreme than the other two. In this fire he prayed with a loud voice, "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus receive my spirit!" And these were the last words he was heard to utter. But when he was black in the mouth, and his tongue so swollen that he could not speak, yet his lips went until they were shrunk to the gums: and he knocked his breast with his hands until one of his arms fell off, and then knocked still with the other, while the fat, water, and blood dropped out at his fingers' ends, until by renewing the fire, his strength was gone, and his hand clave fast in knocking to the iron upon his breast. Then immediately bowing forwards, he yielded up his spirit.
You can see why this stuck with Richard, I imagine.
It is appalling, unconscionable, and he stumbles back towards the gates, a safe distance from the blackening timbers, now cast into sharp relief against the blazing fire, and sinks down onto the grass. He can almost hear Thomas's voice in his head -- you're a damned mollying idiot, Richard, can't even kill yourself properly.
One of the recurring problems I run into in writing this AU is finding homophobic slurs that are both in-period and comprehensible. "Molly" is a little too early and "nancy" is a little bit late, at least for someone of Thomas' age, so I erred on the side of archaism.
It all seems faintly ridiculous: Richard finds himself laughing, a sound horrible to his own ears, even as he breaks down into choked sobs.
Anyone passing by would surely think him a lunatic.
The very word is like a bell: news is certain to get back to his family, after all. It will confirm their worst suspicions about him. They would seize upon any excuse, after all, to send him back there, and the memory of leather straps and icy water and endless rows of green tiles
I was moving house while writing this fic, and the green tiles were inspired by one of the buildings I looked at -- indeed, the fact that the place looked like a Victorian mental asylum is the main reason I didn't move there, although it was even cheaper than the place I moved into (which I have since moved out of). My current apartment has no tiles other than in the bathroom.
I am not sure why I associate green tiles with Victorian lunatic asylums, but I totally do.
I was also about to say that this was the first reference to Richard's stint in the lunatic asylum, but actually that honor goes to "To Mock the Expectation of the World" -- I think I'd written this one first, but lareinenoire is a much faster writer than I am.
is almost enough to make him cast himself into the flames after all, as widows in India were said to do upon their husbands' funeral pyres.
The former Indian custom of sati, or suttee as it was generally spelled in this time period, is difficult to address without opening a veritable Pandora's box of intersectionality pertaining to gender and colonialism. I completely tore my hair out over whether I should leave this in or not. I think what made me decide it was acceptable was -- well, period-accuracy, but also the fact that it's Richard Identifying With The Colonized Woman? But I'm not sure that I made the right call or whether I'm not any better at not being failtastic than the people who write Supernatural RPS centering around nonwhite people's calamities (and no, I'm not looking for reassurance or cookies).
But not quite enough. It doesn't matter, anyway: if he cannot endure a few minutes' torment, he will face the same drawn-out emptiness anywhere.
It is reassuring to know that there's no need to wonder when it will stop.
I struggled a lot with the end of this section -- I think because that particular emotional register was hard to maintain, at least, at the time I wrote this fic (I have since written fics that are grimmer for longer). I'm still not sure I hit precisely the right note on which to end it.
***
It was past dark and Edward, to distract himself, was half-heartedly endeavoring to flirt with the handsome waiter at the Three Horse Shoes when Richard returned -- pale, disheveled, smelling of sweat and smoke and kerosene. He sat down across from Edward and, without a word, took the wine bottle and Edward's glass, filling it carefully with shaking hands and then draining it quickly.
I sort of wonder if Edward got laughed at for drinking wine in a pub in 1881.
"We may wish to notify the fire brigade," he said, his voice unnaturally calm despite his haunted appearance. "There's been an accident at Shene House."
Edward was suddenly glad that Richard had taken his glass, since otherwise he would probably have dropped it on the floor. "You mean you -- oh, God, Richard. Hold on. Let me pay the reckoning, and then we'll handle it, all right?"
speak_me_fair wrote some alternate dialogue for this scene which was really cool and which I didn't use at all because, well, she wrote it, and not me. But she is pretty much the nonpareil for writing Aumerle, so I thought I ought to mention it.
If Richard was even listening to him, he gave no sign of it. He started to pour another glass of wine, and this was the last thing that Edward's already-frayed nerves could handle -- before he'd even really thought about it, he pulled the glass out of Richard's hand. Richard was shocked enough by his sudden decisiveness that he offered no resistance, and the force of Edward's movement left a spreading purple stain on his shirt.
"What the hell -- " Richard started to say, and Edward, for what was almost certainly the first time in his entire life, cut him off.
"Christ, Richard, just stop, all right?" he said. "Stop it. I can't fucking stand this anymore."
"What?" It was like someone had thrown a switch that had brought Richard to frantic life. "You can't stand it? You don't know the first damned thing about it, Edward, so why don't you just fuck right off?"
Hey, people could have said that in 1881! ALL THE WORDS EXISTED.
"Don't tell me what I know," Edward said, his voice coming out now in a frantic, sharply-edged tangle of words. "All right? I can't stand seeing you kill yourself by degrees -- " he broke off there, because his throat felt too tight to continue and his face was hot and his eyes prickled.
Edward has made a very poor choice of words to say to a man who has just seriously considered burning himself to death. Not that he has any way of knowing that at this moment. Poor Edward.
Richard looked nearly as shaken as Edward felt, at that.
"I'll kill myself however I damn well please," he said.
That may, in fact, be Richard's motto.
"Come on." Edward hated the quiver in his voice: there was not time for his rapidly-growing sense of dread. "We can't go back to London and just leave it there." When he moved to take Richard's hands, Richard drew back -- but he made no more argument.
This was meant to suggest that he's burnt his hands, of course. (she says, unnecessarily.)
The thing about Richard when he got extremely angry was that the really scary part didn't usually last very long. Edward had only seen him as angry as he'd just been once before -- when Dick Arundel had elbowed his way into the chapel just as Anne's funeral was about to begin. It had been terrifying: before anyone could stop Richard he had thrown himself at Arundel with fists flying, and the service had been delayed for several hours so they could clean the blood off the floor.
This really happened, more or less. Although I have the feeling that in this universe Arundel exists largely to get his nose broken; I have no idea who he is except that presumably he is somehow connected to the family and is Thomas' friend.
Arundel still had a crooked nose as a result of the thrashing Richard had given him, and indeed Edward himself had taken an elbow to the eye as he tried to hold Richard back, but then, too, he had quickly broken down once the damage was done. (Richard had apologized to him later, and Edward keenly remembered Richard's long fingers brushing gently across his bruised and swollen cheekbone.)
HANDPORN. ALSO FACEPORN.
"No," Richard said, seemingly from a great distance. "I suppose we can't."
It was drawing near to midnight by the time they were able to set out for London. Shene House was irreparably damaged, of course. Richard had instructed that anything regarding any expenses incurred as a result of the fire be sent to him in London -- with remarkable composure, Edward thought, all things considered, but then, Richard had always been unsettlingly good at that. He had always thought it a peculiar honor, that he was one of the few people that Richard allowed to see him at his worst -- perhaps it was a strange way of showing love, Edward thought
In fact, he is right. One of the things I do try to show, with I'm not sure how much success, is that Richard really does love Edward as best he can; he's just really bad at it.
-- but his seemingly-easy slides from despair back into something resembling presentable were deeply perilous, like dark water filled with jagged rocks.
"I am not mad," Richard said, flatly, as they sat side by side in the brougham resolutely not looking at each other for too long.
Edward had already decided that contesting this statement would be a terrible idea when Richard continued: "...I would to heaven I were, for then 'tis like I should forget myself."
Richard's choice of play is actually very period-appropriate, since King John was very popular with the Victorians.
I always feel a little bit weird referencing the history plays in this universe, though it is clear (obviously, since this bit is in this fic) that they exist; in fact, Richard actually references his own play in "The readiness is all." And then Sherlock Holmes makes fun of him. I love that fic so much. Anyway, we may all just assume that nobody notices that they all have the same names (which isn't weird) and life stories (which is) as a bunch of English monarchs who had plays written about them!
More Shakespeare, then. No help at all. Richard always did that when he didn't want to tell you something -- Edward supposed it might have been more illuminating if he gave a damn about Shakespeare, even if what Richard had just said was clear enough.
The reaction I gave to Edward about Richard's constant Shakespearing is the way I always assume people feel when talking to me. Without the abject and painful love, I mean.
I would remark that I kind of want an Aumerle except that I don't feel comfortable wishing that on anyone! Because, honestly, his life sucks on toast.
"I don't guess you want to tell me why you did it, then," he said, finally, though it felt like a ridiculous thing to say.
Richard looked him in the face for the first time since they'd left the Three Horse Shoes. In the faint light he seemed terrible, pale and hollow-eyed, and Edward shivered.
He probably looks like a blonder and clean-shaven version of the "L'absinthe rend fou!" guy.
"I doubt you're really as stupid as you pretend to be," he said. "I told you. I had to be rid of it."
He leaned back against the seat then and closed his eyes. Edward watched him for what felt like an age, before giving up and lighting a cigarette, assuming he had fallen asleep. He was at a loss to explain how Richard might manage that, given the circumstances, but then, he didn't seem to get much of it these days.
"Please, don't do that," Richard said suddenly, the panic that sharpened his voice more startling than his sudden movement.
"What?" With one hand Edward waved his match in the air to extinguish it, jerking it awkwardly as the heat neared his fingers; with the other he tried to keep his recently-lit cigarette from igniting his greatcoat.
It is a magic cigarette that vanishes after this line! Or something. I don't imagine Victorian carriages having ashtrays, but maybe they did.
"I can't bear the smoke," Richard said. "Because -- God, Edward, it could have been over tonight. I couldn't do it. And I wanted to. I thought I did. I don't know."
"What happened?" Edward asked, forcing his voice through the knot tightening in his throat. "Richard, please, tell me."
Richard looked away from him then, turning towards the rolling blackness passing by the window. Once again the silence before he spoke seemed to stretch on infinitely.
Also I kind of suspect that a lot of this scene is ripping off the carriage ride in "To Mock the Expectation." Although Richard has a bigger carriage (a hansom has four wheels and a brougham has two, and yes, I totally looked this shit up).
"I nearly went in, you know."
"What?"
"During the fire. If I'd thought of it soon enough -- it would only have taken a few minutes. Wouldn't even have hurt very much. Because of the smoke, you know."
Edward felt his heart drop into his stomach and his hands turn cold: he wanted to pull Richard into his arms and cling to him for dear life, to kiss his forehead and his eyelids and his lips until his pain had vanished, to shake him senseless -- how could you even think about leaving me, you complete bastard?
I BET WE ALL WANT HIM TO DO THIS. Completely inappropriate as it would be!
I don't think I initially meant for this fic to be a sort of deconstruction of h/c, but it sort of gestures at it here, and the followup, "Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue," does so in an even more brutal manner, although by that point it was deliberate -- Richard and Edward have basically the least healing sex they can manage.
I am, incidentally, eventually doing a commentary on that one, too.
"And I couldn't do it," Richard continued. "I couldn't do it. I went to open the door, and it was hot, and I burned my hand." He held out his right hand, and Edward could just barely make out the red welts that cut across his fingers. "It's so stupid, isn't it? Only a few minutes." He shook his head, burying his face in his hands. "I know death has ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits..."
Richard is quoting The Duchess of Malfi here. I think this is probably where his fascination with doomed literary women started. One of my unfinished fics also has him identifying with Ophelia, and the Lady of Shalott.
"Richard -- "
"For a second, I didn't want to die, Edward," he said, his voice choked and distant. "I don't understand it."
Edward wrapped his arm around Richard's shoulders and could feel him trembling. He leaned close and pressed his lips to Richard's temple, and Richard laid his head on Edward's shoulder and reached up to cover Edward's hand with his own.
"There's nothing you can do to save me, Ned," he said. "But I'm glad you try."
I also had a hell of a lot of trouble ending this fic. But I think I did hit the right note here: pretty much the entirety of how I see their relationship is summarized by that line.