tv realm - episode 1x10 (stranger in a strange land)
His mother used to say he gave too easily of his affections.
It’s true, still. But he’s learned now to recognize with whom it might be possible.
-
He watches her for days before approaching.
-
“I enjoy the way you dance.”
She starts, hand to her breast, and while he can’t say it excites him, it does make him smile.
She steps back, unsettled for a moment, before lowering herself. “My lord?” said hesitantly.
He returns the gesture and she rises to meet his eye.
“The way you dance,” he says. “Technically, similar to those around you, but you move with a certain… presence.” He looks past her, to the king and his sister, before meeting her gaze again. “You think of nothing but the dance, of moving well and correctly with your partner. Nothing but the enjoyment of the moment. Not to impress or garner attention, which in turn does both.”
“I - thank you,” she says. She curtsies again and turns to leave.
“You may call me Elijah,” he calls after her, and she looks back at him. “When you see me next, Mistress Boleyn. And I shall call you Anne.”
She tips her head to him, and takes her leave.
-
Court - the court of human kings - has always bored him. These men playing at power with no understanding of what it truly means.
It remains, however, the most likely place to find Katerina. She, who clearly has a talent for positioning herself in power, would seek out those already with it instead of trying to gain her own right away. Not that it would be possible for her, at this time.
It is at the English king’s court where he first sees Lady Anne, and where he continues to attend - though he has it on good authority that Katerina has fled the country - to continue to do so.
-
“I revoke my earlier statement,” he says, some weeks later when he is her partner in the dance.
Her eyes. All of her emotion and intelligence resides in her eyes. Her face makes no movement but her look is inquisitive.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are indeed attempting to garner attention,” Elijah says, and it is the fortune of the dance that brings them both face to face with the king.
When he has her attention again, he says, “You must be careful. Henry is not known for his faithfulness.”
“To speak ill of the king and in such an overly familiar manner is treason,” Anne hisses on a turn.
The music and their movements come to an end. Elijah steps into her space once more to ask, “And to dishonor your queen? What crime is that?”
-
Her brother, George, is a braggart overly concerned with pleasure (like so many in his company) but he has a simple mind; a mind easily manipulated and provider of a wealth of information.
-
“You do not sleep with him, and yet he remains infatuated,” Elijah says on their next meeting, outside of her family home. “That’s very interesting.”
“How are you here?” she asks. “Why were you not announced?”
He looks at her then, the way she gathers her skirts as if to run but her back remains straight as if she only plans to call for his removal.
“Are you not tired of pretending to be afraid?” he asks. “I certainly am.”
She stares, those eyes brighter in the sun, and drops her skirts.
“I’ve asked about you,” she says. “No one knows who you are, or remembers meeting you or ever seeing your face.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Elijah says.
(And this - this moment when the right question is asked - this excites him.)
She steps closer. “What are you?”
Elijah smiles.
-
Anne no longer speaks to her brother about the king. Or anything else.
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She speaks to Elijah.
-
She watches him feed, but only once.
He doesn’t kill the girl, doesn’t really need her, but Anne had wanted to see.
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“He’s in love with me,” she tells him, on a walk around the grounds of Hever Castle.
“How can you be sure?” he asks.
“He’s told me,” she says. “I can see it. I feel it.”
Elijah nods. “And do you love him back?”
She walks a little faster, creating a distance. “Does it matter if nothing will come of it?”
He laughs, and she pauses to scowl at him. “What is funny?”
“You, my dear Anne,” he says. He takes her hand in his. “For thinking that I could believe that you won’t get what you want. We both know you will, in the end.”
“You have a great deal of faith in me,” she says, sliding her hand onto his arm. “I fear it may prove misplaced.”
He stops them. At a pace that almost hurts, he moves so slowly, Elijah places a soft kiss on her cheek. “It’s not faith when the outcome is certain.”
-
He asks her, again and again, do you love him back?
“I fear you are overly concerned with the king’s heart,” she teases one day.
-
After that he asks, “Is the love true, if it is not returned?”
She does not answer him.
-
Until the day she says, “Yes.”
He tells her then, “You must be careful. Powerful men are not often ruled by their affections. And when they are, it is not their affections that are punished if the end result is not what they wished.”
-
He gives her his blood only once. This sickness, this sweat that has gripped the country and killed thousands. He refuses to let it take her.
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“Do you understand,” he asks late one night, voice quiet so not to wake her family, “what it is you’re doing? The consequences of what you and Henry are attempting?”
“Is it so wrong to want to be his wife?” Anne asks. “To have the respect I deserve when I am the one the king wants, the one he sees as his equal? To give my family -“
He silences her with a hand in her hair and a kiss to her forehead. “Shh.”
He pulls back only when her heartbeats have slowed, her breathing less harsh. He keeps his hand in her hair.
He looks in her eyes, can see them clearly in the dark, defiance overtaking the fear that lurks there as well.
He nods. “Ainsi sera, groigne qui groinge.”
She smiles.
--
For the first time since she met him, Anne has to wait for Elijah to come to her. He has never been late, never failed to arrive when he said he will and she knows that this will be the last time.
When he comes to her room, jaw tight and body stiff, she does not hesitate to pull out the small knife she took earlier from the kitchen.
She looks him in his eyes, chin raised, when she says, “I want to know what it feels like.”
She doesn’t wait for him to speak before raising the layers of cloth around her legs and drawing the knife down the delicate skin of her outer thigh. It stings and she gasps, but she does not know if it is from the pain or how quickly Elijah stills her hand, the cut only a few centimeters long.
She meets his eyes once again, and they look as they did when he fed from her maid, lifeless yet intense.
Hungry.
She skims her hand down the slow trickle making its way to her sheets and raises her finger to his lips.
“You must stop tempting fate, Anne Boleyn.” He sucks her finger into his mouth. He closes his eyes for a brief moment. When they open again, they are the same as they have always been, blue, caring, and amused.
“If it is fated, then nothing I do will be able to stop it,” she says. She skims her finger up her leg again, offers her finger. “Do you disagree?”
He takes her finger, as she knew he would. “I will miss you,” he says after releasing it. He gathers her sheets to staunch the blood flow.
--
When the first light of the sun breaks over the horizon, she declares, “When you return, Lord Elijah, I will be queen of England.”
His return is unlikely, they both know.
Still, he replies with a deep bow of his body, “I have no doubt, Lady Anne.”