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rainbowfic2012-03-12 11:22 am
kay_brooke) wrote in rainbowfic2012-03-12 11:22 am
Black #8, Snow White #2, Tyrian Purple #14
Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Black #8 (black and white), Snow White #2 (poison apple), Tyrian Purple #14 (eternal sleep)
Styles/Supplies: Frame
Word Count: 2,035
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; character death, assisted suicide
Summary: They told themselves they didn't really want him to die.
Anthony killed himself in the end.
Of course nothing deadly was allowed in his room: nothing sharp, nothing long or thin enough to fashion into a rope, no substances that he could use to poison himself. Because he had shown in the past that he was willing to go to those kinds of lengths, and his brother and sister did not want him to end his life.
Why they didn't want this no one, not even they, could say for certain. Both Gyeth and Kyla knew that Anthony's death, either by his own hand or through natural causes, would pass mostly unremarked. The citizens of the Empire knew nothing of Anthony's whereabouts, and it was safe to assume that most of them thought—or at least hoped—the mad former Emperor dead already. The people in the palace would most likely breathe a sigh of relief once Anthony was no longer among the living. He was powerless now, a prisoner in the place he had once ruled with an insane fist, but as long as the man continued to draw breath there was a chance, no matter how small, that the bad old days could return. Anthony was not, everyone knew, above murderous rages. There had never been any proof that he had been the one behind the attempts on Jay's life all those years ago, nor that he had been responsible for the murders and murder attempts on various members of the nobility and the royal families of other countries. But everyone knew the truth, or at least thought they knew the truth.
Several times the High Councilors themselves recommended that Anthony be put to death. The fear lurked even in them, far in the back of their heads, and they turned that fear into as many logical arguments as they could muster without quite knowing why.
The charges against him were great, they argued. It mattered not that nothing had ever been proven. The investigations could be reopened, they argued. It was through Emperor Gyeth's decree in the first place that the investigations had not been pursued further in the first place.
He was a raving imbecile, they argued. The madness had grown so that it shoved out everything else in his head, so that his lucid periods—never that many or long to begin with—were non-existent. It was a kindness, they argued, to put the man out of his misery.
But Gyeth said nothing on the matter, changing the subject whenever it was brought up. Kyla only ever said, simply, “He is being cared for.”
Indeed he was being cared for, outfitted in his former rooms, the ones he had lived in as a child. His brother and sister had hoped that putting him into familiar surroundings would calm his rages. It hadn't seemed to work, but it was hard to tell anymore. Who was to say that his raving wouldn't be worse were he ensconced somewhere else?
He was brought three meals a day, leftovers from Kyla and Gyeth's own dinner table. He was brought snacks and wine (never enough to do himself harm) and entertainment. For awhile a nurse had come in every day to take him for walks around the garden, but after he had somehow obtained gardening shears and attacked several of the gardeners, wounding two before the guards were able to restrain him, he was no longer allowed outside. It was a small mercy that he had shunned his salkiy Gifts his entire life, because he was unable to control them well enough to direct any attacks against people that way.
The High Councilors secretly lamented that same fact, because if perhaps Anthony had actually killed someone with magic they would finally have enough grounds to order his execution.
But despite that both Kyla and Gyeth knew that Anthony had done terrible things during his time as Emperor, and despite that they knew he was miserable locked up in his room even with all the entertainment the palace could provide, neither one could condone his murder. Because that's what it would be at that point: murder. Gyeth had thought more than once of allowing the investigations into his crimes continue, just like the High Councilors wanted, because he was sure that something would be uncovered, and then the decision whether or not to execute his own brother would be out of his hands. Kyla more than once wondered if she should restore Anthony's outdoor privileges. He couldn't be trusted, but if something should happen, perhaps that would be enough to take the decision out of her hands, too. But she couldn't stand that thought of someone getting hurt through her own machinations, so she never said anything.
Both held a guilt that they couldn't quite define. It was guilt from the fact that they had never been close to Anthony, guilt that they hadn't tried harder to get to know him back when he was sane. As is the way with guilt, reality played little part in it—anyone would be hard-pressed to find a time when Anthony was sane. Perhaps when he was still called Jannad and lived among the salkiys, but neither Kyla nor Gyeth knew anything of that except as a fact about their brother that had never had any kind of impact on their own lives.
But still, guilt was what stayed their hands. There was a small part, deep inside, that wondered if Anthony's condition was their fault, a part constantly whispering to their subconscious things that reason would dismiss out of hand. Kyla and Gyeth were, above all things, ruled by reason, but even they could not completely ignore that tiny, malicious whisper, the one that kept them awake at night sometimes.
There was also a measure of vain optimism and hope, too: perhaps one day Anthony would get better.
Hope and guilt kept Anthony imprisoned in his room, a constant roiling ball alternating between rage and depression, a man that couldn't even be called a thinking being anymore. But perhaps there was a measure of rationality left, just a tiny spark that hadn't yet been completely extinguished, because, once deprived of anything that he could use to harm himself, Anthony took the only path he had left to end his own existence. He stopped eating.
Or perhaps it was just part of his illness and there was no actual thought involved. Either way, Anthony's body began the long, torturous path to death by starvation.
At first, they couldn't force him to eat. He still had strength enough to fly into violent rages and attack anyone who came near him. Anthony wasn't uncommonly strong, but the combination of unpredictability and an utter disregard for his own well-being made him dangerous. It took at least four guards to hold him down, and sometimes a potion from the apothecary worked to make him fall asleep for a little time, but making him eat was such a struggle that it hardly seemed worth it.
But after awhile, as Anthony lost strength, it became easier to force him to eat. Still he wasted away, the will to live completely gone. The nurse was giving food to an empty shell.
Kyla and Gyeth kept these latest developments from the High Councilors, because they knew the argument what should be done with Anthony would only begin anew. They desperately held on, not wanting to think of a time when their brother no longer existed, of a time when his death would be on their hands.
But the one person they couldn't hide him from was Jay, who after all these years was still the only person who would count Anthony a friend, even after he had tried to kill her. Soon after Anthony started wasting away, Jay arrived at the palace with the Kandelian ambassador, just as a pleasure visit. Jay dined that night with Kyla and Gyeth, and it wasn't long before she brought up the topic of Anthony. The last time she had been at the palace Anthony had still had limited privileges to move about as long as there were guards and nurses around. He had dined with them that time, silent and still, focusing only on his food. He had looked up once when Jay called his name, and there was a flash of something like recognition in his eyes before he had turned back to his plate, eyes downcast. He uttered not a word.
Kyla and Gyeth sighed, and explained that Anthony had taken a turn for the worse. He hadn't been eating, they explained, and it was a battle to make him. Jay showed no alarm or concern or even sympathy. She simply nodded as if she had confirmed something to herself, and said, “I wish to see him.”
“He's dangerous,” said Kyla automatically, not even thinking about who she was talking to. Sometimes they got requests like that, from physicians, from the High Councilors. Of course the answer was always no, because the only thing anyone could predict about Anthony's reactions was that they would be harmful.
Jay merely raised an eyebrow at her, and Kyla flushed red. Yes, of course. Jay was the one person Anthony might not attack, if there was anything at all left of him in there. In any case, Jay had once been the captain of the Court Guard and was a decorated warrior in her own right. She would know how to approach Anthony, and she wouldn't let him surprise her.
Jay set her fork down and said, “Whenever you are ready.”
Kyla nodded, and Gyeth indicated that the two of them should go on without him. Gyeth seldom went to Anthony's room. He could feel Anthony in a way Kyla didn't understand, and he was afraid.
Anthony was lying on his bed when Jay and Kyla entered the room. He made no movement and no sound, nothing to indicate that he knew anyone else was in the room with him, but he wasn't asleep. His eyes stared, unblinking and unseeing, at the ceiling. For one heart-stopping moment Kyla thought he was dead, but then she could see the slow movement of his chest, up and down, as he breathed. She told herself that the feeling flooding her body was relief, not disappointment.
“Oh, Anthony,” said Jay, and now she did sound remorseful. She turned to Kyla. “Have you thought of giving in to his wishes?”
Kyla sighed. Not Jay, too. “We're not going to allow him to starve to death, no. That's a terrible way to die.”
“It is indeed,” said Jay. “It is right that you are not allowing it. You say you must force him?”
“Yes,” said Kyla, her voice catching. “He struggles, but we must persevere.”
“Yes,” Jay agreed.
No one knew how Jay did it, in the end. She spent no more than a few moments in Anthony's room the two days she was at the palace, and there was someone with her at all times. But Jay had been trained as a spy and an assassin, and if nothing else, was part of that half-mythical order of the Sun Guard, who had their own secret and perhaps magical ways of doing things. No one could ever say for certain, and Jay never revealed anything.
They knew it had to be her, though, when the vial of poison appeared on Anthony's bedside table and he drank it before anyone realized what it was.
They knew it had to be her because no one else would have dared to oppose the Emperor and Empress's wishes. And no one else would have escaped their punishment.
Above all, they knew it was her because when Kyla asked, Jay told her.
"Why?" asked Kyla. "Was it revenge? For when he tried to kill you all those years ago?" Jay's personality had softened with age, but she still had a hot temper. Kyla had never known her to hold a grudge, but perhaps an assassination attempt by someone one had once been close to was enough to change that.
Jay gave her a funny look. "Of course not," she said. "I did it because he was my friend."
kay_brookeStory: The Myrrosta
Colors: Black #8 (black and white), Snow White #2 (poison apple), Tyrian Purple #14 (eternal sleep)
Styles/Supplies: Frame
Word Count: 2,035
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; character death, assisted suicide
Summary: They told themselves they didn't really want him to die.
Anthony killed himself in the end.
Of course nothing deadly was allowed in his room: nothing sharp, nothing long or thin enough to fashion into a rope, no substances that he could use to poison himself. Because he had shown in the past that he was willing to go to those kinds of lengths, and his brother and sister did not want him to end his life.
Why they didn't want this no one, not even they, could say for certain. Both Gyeth and Kyla knew that Anthony's death, either by his own hand or through natural causes, would pass mostly unremarked. The citizens of the Empire knew nothing of Anthony's whereabouts, and it was safe to assume that most of them thought—or at least hoped—the mad former Emperor dead already. The people in the palace would most likely breathe a sigh of relief once Anthony was no longer among the living. He was powerless now, a prisoner in the place he had once ruled with an insane fist, but as long as the man continued to draw breath there was a chance, no matter how small, that the bad old days could return. Anthony was not, everyone knew, above murderous rages. There had never been any proof that he had been the one behind the attempts on Jay's life all those years ago, nor that he had been responsible for the murders and murder attempts on various members of the nobility and the royal families of other countries. But everyone knew the truth, or at least thought they knew the truth.
Several times the High Councilors themselves recommended that Anthony be put to death. The fear lurked even in them, far in the back of their heads, and they turned that fear into as many logical arguments as they could muster without quite knowing why.
The charges against him were great, they argued. It mattered not that nothing had ever been proven. The investigations could be reopened, they argued. It was through Emperor Gyeth's decree in the first place that the investigations had not been pursued further in the first place.
He was a raving imbecile, they argued. The madness had grown so that it shoved out everything else in his head, so that his lucid periods—never that many or long to begin with—were non-existent. It was a kindness, they argued, to put the man out of his misery.
But Gyeth said nothing on the matter, changing the subject whenever it was brought up. Kyla only ever said, simply, “He is being cared for.”
Indeed he was being cared for, outfitted in his former rooms, the ones he had lived in as a child. His brother and sister had hoped that putting him into familiar surroundings would calm his rages. It hadn't seemed to work, but it was hard to tell anymore. Who was to say that his raving wouldn't be worse were he ensconced somewhere else?
He was brought three meals a day, leftovers from Kyla and Gyeth's own dinner table. He was brought snacks and wine (never enough to do himself harm) and entertainment. For awhile a nurse had come in every day to take him for walks around the garden, but after he had somehow obtained gardening shears and attacked several of the gardeners, wounding two before the guards were able to restrain him, he was no longer allowed outside. It was a small mercy that he had shunned his salkiy Gifts his entire life, because he was unable to control them well enough to direct any attacks against people that way.
The High Councilors secretly lamented that same fact, because if perhaps Anthony had actually killed someone with magic they would finally have enough grounds to order his execution.
But despite that both Kyla and Gyeth knew that Anthony had done terrible things during his time as Emperor, and despite that they knew he was miserable locked up in his room even with all the entertainment the palace could provide, neither one could condone his murder. Because that's what it would be at that point: murder. Gyeth had thought more than once of allowing the investigations into his crimes continue, just like the High Councilors wanted, because he was sure that something would be uncovered, and then the decision whether or not to execute his own brother would be out of his hands. Kyla more than once wondered if she should restore Anthony's outdoor privileges. He couldn't be trusted, but if something should happen, perhaps that would be enough to take the decision out of her hands, too. But she couldn't stand that thought of someone getting hurt through her own machinations, so she never said anything.
Both held a guilt that they couldn't quite define. It was guilt from the fact that they had never been close to Anthony, guilt that they hadn't tried harder to get to know him back when he was sane. As is the way with guilt, reality played little part in it—anyone would be hard-pressed to find a time when Anthony was sane. Perhaps when he was still called Jannad and lived among the salkiys, but neither Kyla nor Gyeth knew anything of that except as a fact about their brother that had never had any kind of impact on their own lives.
But still, guilt was what stayed their hands. There was a small part, deep inside, that wondered if Anthony's condition was their fault, a part constantly whispering to their subconscious things that reason would dismiss out of hand. Kyla and Gyeth were, above all things, ruled by reason, but even they could not completely ignore that tiny, malicious whisper, the one that kept them awake at night sometimes.
There was also a measure of vain optimism and hope, too: perhaps one day Anthony would get better.
Hope and guilt kept Anthony imprisoned in his room, a constant roiling ball alternating between rage and depression, a man that couldn't even be called a thinking being anymore. But perhaps there was a measure of rationality left, just a tiny spark that hadn't yet been completely extinguished, because, once deprived of anything that he could use to harm himself, Anthony took the only path he had left to end his own existence. He stopped eating.
Or perhaps it was just part of his illness and there was no actual thought involved. Either way, Anthony's body began the long, torturous path to death by starvation.
At first, they couldn't force him to eat. He still had strength enough to fly into violent rages and attack anyone who came near him. Anthony wasn't uncommonly strong, but the combination of unpredictability and an utter disregard for his own well-being made him dangerous. It took at least four guards to hold him down, and sometimes a potion from the apothecary worked to make him fall asleep for a little time, but making him eat was such a struggle that it hardly seemed worth it.
But after awhile, as Anthony lost strength, it became easier to force him to eat. Still he wasted away, the will to live completely gone. The nurse was giving food to an empty shell.
Kyla and Gyeth kept these latest developments from the High Councilors, because they knew the argument what should be done with Anthony would only begin anew. They desperately held on, not wanting to think of a time when their brother no longer existed, of a time when his death would be on their hands.
But the one person they couldn't hide him from was Jay, who after all these years was still the only person who would count Anthony a friend, even after he had tried to kill her. Soon after Anthony started wasting away, Jay arrived at the palace with the Kandelian ambassador, just as a pleasure visit. Jay dined that night with Kyla and Gyeth, and it wasn't long before she brought up the topic of Anthony. The last time she had been at the palace Anthony had still had limited privileges to move about as long as there were guards and nurses around. He had dined with them that time, silent and still, focusing only on his food. He had looked up once when Jay called his name, and there was a flash of something like recognition in his eyes before he had turned back to his plate, eyes downcast. He uttered not a word.
Kyla and Gyeth sighed, and explained that Anthony had taken a turn for the worse. He hadn't been eating, they explained, and it was a battle to make him. Jay showed no alarm or concern or even sympathy. She simply nodded as if she had confirmed something to herself, and said, “I wish to see him.”
“He's dangerous,” said Kyla automatically, not even thinking about who she was talking to. Sometimes they got requests like that, from physicians, from the High Councilors. Of course the answer was always no, because the only thing anyone could predict about Anthony's reactions was that they would be harmful.
Jay merely raised an eyebrow at her, and Kyla flushed red. Yes, of course. Jay was the one person Anthony might not attack, if there was anything at all left of him in there. In any case, Jay had once been the captain of the Court Guard and was a decorated warrior in her own right. She would know how to approach Anthony, and she wouldn't let him surprise her.
Jay set her fork down and said, “Whenever you are ready.”
Kyla nodded, and Gyeth indicated that the two of them should go on without him. Gyeth seldom went to Anthony's room. He could feel Anthony in a way Kyla didn't understand, and he was afraid.
Anthony was lying on his bed when Jay and Kyla entered the room. He made no movement and no sound, nothing to indicate that he knew anyone else was in the room with him, but he wasn't asleep. His eyes stared, unblinking and unseeing, at the ceiling. For one heart-stopping moment Kyla thought he was dead, but then she could see the slow movement of his chest, up and down, as he breathed. She told herself that the feeling flooding her body was relief, not disappointment.
“Oh, Anthony,” said Jay, and now she did sound remorseful. She turned to Kyla. “Have you thought of giving in to his wishes?”
Kyla sighed. Not Jay, too. “We're not going to allow him to starve to death, no. That's a terrible way to die.”
“It is indeed,” said Jay. “It is right that you are not allowing it. You say you must force him?”
“Yes,” said Kyla, her voice catching. “He struggles, but we must persevere.”
“Yes,” Jay agreed.
No one knew how Jay did it, in the end. She spent no more than a few moments in Anthony's room the two days she was at the palace, and there was someone with her at all times. But Jay had been trained as a spy and an assassin, and if nothing else, was part of that half-mythical order of the Sun Guard, who had their own secret and perhaps magical ways of doing things. No one could ever say for certain, and Jay never revealed anything.
They knew it had to be her, though, when the vial of poison appeared on Anthony's bedside table and he drank it before anyone realized what it was.
They knew it had to be her because no one else would have dared to oppose the Emperor and Empress's wishes. And no one else would have escaped their punishment.
Above all, they knew it was her because when Kyla asked, Jay told her.
"Why?" asked Kyla. "Was it revenge? For when he tried to kill you all those years ago?" Jay's personality had softened with age, but she still had a hot temper. Kyla had never known her to hold a grudge, but perhaps an assassination attempt by someone one had once been close to was enough to change that.
Jay gave her a funny look. "Of course not," she said. "I did it because he was my friend."
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Also, you can just feel how emotionally exhausted Kyla and Gyeth are, having to deal with Anthony for so long like that. Even I felt that mix of sadness and relief when he finally died.
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