10it was always you falling for me
now there's always time calling for me
I'm the light blinking at the end of the road
blink back to let me know
— Panic! at the Disco, "Always"
"What's this?"
"An invitation."
"To what?"
Malik fixes Pascal with a hard look as she rips open the envelope that he has handed her, and he is strangely silent in response to her second question; she is about to tilt her head and ask him what's wrong when he speaks again, slowly, softly, with words that strike the Amarcian so hard that she sways on her feet and collapses into a chair.
"Hubert's wedding."
always
"What in the hell is wrong with her?"
"She just found out about… this."
"Oh."
When she comes to again, it's to the sound of familiar voices; she lifts her head and stares wearily at the faces of Malik and Fourier, then sighs and closes her eyes, leaning back in her chair. Fourier lifts an eyebrow at her before plucking the invitation — still only half-opened — from the surface of her sister's small table. "I don't see why it matters to you," she comments, using one finger to finish breaking apart the end of the envelope. "Actually, when I first heard of this, I thought you would be happy."
"Happy?" Malik gives the older Amarcian an incredulous look. "Are you blind, deaf, and dumb?"
"… excuse me?"
"Hey," Pascal starts, quietly, and watches as her sister immediately lowers her fist away from the captain's face. "Is Hu really getting married?"
"He is," Malik confirms.
"… who?"
"The daughter of the president of Strahta."
"Oh," she says, because that's all she can think to say. She does remember something like that — something about an awkward proposal that he had been trying to avoid — but she also remembers hearing him speak of his true feelings, feelings he had developed for someone else, and even if they had been against his will —
"Pascal." Malik bends over her and places a hand gently on the top of her head, ruffling her hair in a way that is almost fatherly, and he doesn't see the look Fourier shoots him that is either angry or jealous or both. "It's going to be alright. You can probably talk him out of it — "
"Why would I do that, Captain?" She glances at the card in her sister's hands, stark white with simple silver script on the front, and then she sighs, staring down at her hands in her lap. "Hu's gonna be happy, isn't he?"
"What are you saying?"
"Nothing." She forces a smile. "I'm surprised he even invited me. I'm just gonna be a nuisance."
Fourier groans. "Pascal, what has gotten into you?"
Malik clears his throat and makes some sort of hand motion at Fourier that the younger Amarcian only sees out of the corners of her eyes. There's a short scuffle, and then the two of them end up whispering frantically to one another — Pascal hears the word "denial" more than once — before Malik gives her hair another ruffle, then pats her carefully on one shoulder. "Listen," he begins, "maybe we should go to Strahta and talk to him."
"Why?"
"You know why." He shakes his head at her. "You don't want him to marry that girl any more than he does. But since the two of you have spent the last year dragging your feet and acting like children about this whole thing, and you've started making a ruckus about how you don't deserve him — "
"Shut up," she snaps, suddenly, and stands, refusing to look at him. She snatches the card out of Fourier's hand, ignoring her sister's shriek of surprise, and walks through the open door of her house out into the spring afternoon. It isn't until she stares over her shoulder for a few moments, ensuring that they haven't followed her, that she actually reads the invitation.
It's all very proper, she thinks, reading the script. The date is a little more than three weeks away, and the wedding is to take place in Yu Liberte. She reads the invitation twice before flipping the card over to close it, and then she spots something on the back, written in Hubert's handwriting, tall and thin and oh-so-neat —
I'm sorry.
— and she isn't sure what to think, or feel, or do, but somehow sinking to the ground and beginning to cry into her hands feels like the obvious choice at that moment.
She goes to Yu Liberte not because she wants to, but because Malik and Fourier practically drag her there, one of them on each arm. Halfway through their three day trip she snaps out of the numb, half-aware mood she is in to realize that the two of them bicker just like she and Hubert did, once upon a time, and it's a reminder of why she is in this situation in the first place.
They'd kept up conversations with each other, after everything had been said and done; the communicator had been a source of amusement for her, at first, bringing rigid, carefully composed messages that had made her laugh even though she'd known it was wrong to do so. She'd teased him a little, maybe a little too much, but she'd also found something comfortable and wonderful in the words he sent to her, and it had been impossible to keep herself from feeling … differently … for him, after a while. He'd come by to visit her, after half a year had passed, and she'd spent the entire time wracking her brain for something to say that was safe —
— but then he'd left just as quickly as he'd arrived, frustrated and flustered, and she'd spent most of the next two weeks sprawled out on her bed with a hand over her heart, wondering what in the hell was wrong with her and why she hadn't been able to speak in his presence.
Their messages after that had strayed closer and closer to romance; he'd admitted once, in words she had been able to understand, that he loved her. She'd stared at the communicator and typed out some sort of nervous dismissal — something like don't be silly, Hu — and then she'd buried her head beneath her pillow and thought long and hard about her feelings, and what she wanted, and was she even worthy of being loved by someone?
She'd decided on "no," eventually. And everything he'd said after that had been ignored or rebuked or tossed aside, and even when he'd showed up at her door and taken her hands in his and asked her to please, pleasenot push him away, to allow him to love her and give her everything she wanted, she hadn't been able to face it. Her feelings had terrified her, then — and they still do, now, in the present time, as she stands in Strahta with a warm breeze on her face and a nervous tremor in her heart.
Malik and Fourier deposit her at the door to the presidential palace and tell her not to come back to the inn where they will be staying until she's talked Hubert out of getting married. She protests, weakly, but Fourier screams at her to stop being such a coward and makes her mad enough to go through with it. So she marches into the building, knocks on the door of Lieutenant Oswell's office, and he answers immediately —
"Pascal?"
— and at the sight of his face she realizes that she has no idea how to form words into sentences or even think coherently in his presence. He stares at her as if he's seen a ghost, and she stares right back at him, willing herself not to cry or scream, but when she opens her mouth not even a single sound comes out. They look at each other in silence for a moment, and then he sighs, reaches for her wrist, and guides her carefully out a back door, back into the sunshine and heat.
"I didn't have a choice," he tells her, ten minutes later, as they sit a safe distance apart on a bench in the garden behind the building. She is still having trouble forming words, but he seems able to talk just fine — almost normally, she thinks. "I simply couldn't wait forever. Mr. Paradine's offer was reasonable, after all."
She looks up at him, swallows, and forces out a single word: "Liar."
"… again, I had no choice in the matter." He doesn't meet her eyes with his. "There was no possible way to reject him when I had no reasonable explanation for doing so. Had I already been betrothed to another, things may have been different."
She draws in a breath, opens her mouth to protest, then remembers this is her fault and presses her lips tight together again.
"I," he starts, slowly, softly, as if sensing her urge to argue, "waited as long as I could. But it was not sensible for me to cling to the hope of … of the person I truly loved coming to terms with her own feelings. I couldn't deny the proposal on the basis of such a thing. And my own heart simply couldn't bear it any further." He raises his head and stares up at the sky above them. "I waited a very long time. But I could not wait any longer, and thus my decision was made."
"Hu," she finally forces out, beginning to tell him what she's wanted to say since receiving the invitation, "please don't do it — "
"Who is going to stop me?" He doesn't look at her when he interrupts, and his voice is full of hurt and ice cold. "Are you?"
"I," she starts, and clenches her hands tight together, "I — want to stop you. I know you don't want to do this. But I don't deserve — "
"That," he interrupts her, and rises from the bench, "is what I thought."
"Hu!"
"I truly loved you," he murmurs, and she finds herself frozen in place, unable to move; his voice is sweet and kind and everything she has ever wanted to hear, and the words are so good to her heart, too good — "and I love you still. I will always love you, for the rest of my life. But — " His words are unsteady, and there's pain, real pain in her heart when she hears them, like a knife shoved in and twisted. " — it came time for me to realize that no good would come of one-sided love. Nor could I bear the weight of knowing that choosing to express my feelings led you down a path of confusion. It is better for us both to move on, to live separate lives." He glances over his shoulder, and behind his glasses his blue eyes are sad. "Someday, perhaps at least one of us will be happy. And that will be enough."
He leaves her with that, and she sits on the bench alone for a while, looking after him, realizing that it is too late, far too late, for her to be coming to terms with how she feels, with what she deserves. She knows now that she loves him — though perhaps she's known that all along — but she still wonders why he would love her, why he would choose her, risk his political standing for a silly woman five years his senior who forgets to bathe and eats nothing but bananas.
She's realizing, though, that it shouldn't matter why — that she should have simply taken his feelings at face value, accepted them, should have loved him back. But it's too late. It's all too late now.
When she finally stands, it is on unsteady feet; as she makes her way to the garden exit she notices a young woman with blonde hair standing by herself in the shadow of a tall tree, her brown eyes fixed on Pascal. The two of them look at each other in silence for a while until the woman smiles, and the Amarcian turns away, hurrying through the gate, all too certain that she has just seen Hubert's future with her own two eyes.
Malik and Fourier try to cheer her up, when she returns to the inn, but she locks them out of her room, throws herself on the bed, and cries loudly into a pillow. They bang on the door for a while, insisting on taking her out to a pub — because, Malik says, she'll forget all about Hubert if she drinks enough — but she ignores them and eventually they go away. She hears them arguing in the room next to hers for a while, but then her sister laughs — a rare sound — and they leave together, probably to go drinking without her. It's at least a little consolation, she thinks, knowing that they might become friends at the end of this.
When she hears knocking on her door twenty minutes later she ignores it, thinking it's Fourier again, trying to force her way in. But the knocking continues, and her muffled shout of "go away" does nothing to stop it, so she rises to her feet and storms across the room, growing angry instead of upset, and when she takes the knob in one hand she clenches the other into a fist —
— but Hubert is behind the door, and she drops her fist immediately, confused, staring at him. He is breathing heavily, as if he has run the whole way to the inn, and she isn't sure how he could have known that she was here, in this room; she wonders if Malik or Fourier found him and said or did something, but when she opens her mouth to ask she still can't talk. She's beginning to hate the way he is able to make her speechless —
"May I come in?" he asks suddenly, softly, and all she can do is nod. But she's grateful, somehow, that hedoesn't seem at a loss for words.
He enters the room and she shuts the door carefully behind him, and as soon as the lock clicks in the latch he speaks again, turning his head to look down at her. "She called it off," he says, and the disbelief in his voice is almost certainly mirrored in the expression on her face. She blinks up at him, feeling her eyes go wide, and when he finally looks at her there is confusion in his eyes. "After you left — "
"Who's," she starts, unsure, "who's she?"
"My fiance — no. The president's daughter. She is no longer my — " He shakes his head hard, suddenly. "What — did you say something to her — ?!"
"Say?" She gapes at him. "I didn't say anything. I didn't even see — " She draws in a breath. "… oh … maybe I did see her. But I didn't say a thing, Hu! I just — "
He takes her by the shoulders, and she shivers beneath his grasp; she thinks he is angry, but his touch is warm and urgent and she wants more of it, regardless of the circumstances. "She told me she wanted me to be happy, and that it wasn't possible if I were to marry her," he continues. "Why would she say something like that?"
She chews on her bottom lip for a moment before deciding to answer. "… so, um, maybe she heard you say you loved me?"
He groans. "Pascal…"
"What?" She is regaining her ability to speak rapidly, and she frowns at him, swallowing down the lump in her throat. "There was some chick standing there like, the whole time! It's your fault for not noticing."
"… perhaps." He glances away. "And because she is the one who broke the engagement, it is not as if I am in any kind of trouble. The president was not happy, but she made it very clear to him that it was no fault of mine."
"Oh."
"But I — " She sees him visibly swallow. "What am I to do…?"
She doesn't quite know how to answer. But his hands are still on her shoulders, and she remembers the time that he arrived on her doorstep and took her hands in his and begged her to let him love her, begged her to stop pushing him away. She looks from his hands again to his face, studying the worried look in his eyes, the way his lips are pressed tight together, and when the urge to kiss away that frustration strikes her, she doesn't fight it.
The first touch of her lips on his is painfully short, barely a whisper, because he draws back and gasps and looks as if he is going to scold her. But he sees something — perhaps it is the wanting on her face, which she knows must be clear — and then he seems to give in, and this time when she stands up on the toes of her boots he is there to meet her. Her eyes close as he kisses her, and it's warm and soft, and his hands move away from her shoulders to the exposed skin around her neck, sending a heavy shudder down her body. She grabs at his coat and tugs him close, and her eyes fall closed as they kiss again and again, and to hell with not deserving this — she wants it too bad to think about that anymore.
"Pascal," he sighs, when they break apart, and the knife that has been thrust into her heart is gone at the sound of her name in his mouth. "Will you…"
She doesn't have to know what he's thinking, what he wants to say. She leans into him and hugs him tight, and eventually he reciprocates, folding her into his arms, and she thinks she could stay here forever. But then he bends to kiss her again and she forgets about the idea of forever altogether, because there's nothing more important than the present, than this, than the way he is holding her and touching her and kissing her breathless.
They manage to forget about Malik and Fourier, somehow, too. When the pair arrives back at the inn and Fourier throws open the door to Pascal's room, there is a short series of shrieks and rushed apologies and laughter, the latter mostly from Malik and the former from everyone else.
"This really isn't what it looks like," Pascal insists as Hubert blushes and attempts to hide beneath a pillow, and Malik only laughs harder, because he probably knows full well that when two people are found half-naked under the sheets of a bed in an inn, it usually is exactly what it looks like.
"You're going to spoil your wedding night," the captain comments, and although it's meant to be a jab at their expense, Pascal notices the way he smiles and actually looks a little happy at what he's implying.
The pieces fall neatly into place after that. At breakfast the next morning, before Hubert comes to meet them, Pascal declares that she is moving to Yu Liberte, much to Fourier's dismay. The older Amarcian starts to protest, but then Malik gently places a hand on her shoulder and leans over to speak softly into her ear — Pascal catches something that sounds like "you won't be alone" — and then Fourier blushes and sputters and forces out a "fine, do as you please" before smacking Malik in the arm and glaring wordlessly at her plate.
When Hubert shows, he takes a seat beside Pascal, clears his throat, and announces that he has been unable to cancel the arrangements for his wedding. His former fiancee, he says, has taken full — public — responsibility for the breaking of their engagement, but the venue, the flowers, the catering have all been paid for and cannot be taken back. They have a wedding and a groom, but no bride.
"Which," Hubert says, at the end of his explanation of the situation, "leads me to believe that I ought to find a couple willing to marry on the date that was meant to be my wedding day."
"What about Asbel and Cheria?" Malik suggests, but he's smiling, and Pascal knows exactly what he's thinking, and a nervous tremor catches her body in its grasp. She grasps her hands together beneath the table and waits, and when Hubert looks wordlessly at her, one eyebrow raised slightly, she can't help it — she wants it more than ever now, wants him, wants to hear him say again that he loves her and will always love her —
"No," she says, and her voice is unsteady but she forces a smile, sees Hubert's expression soften as she speaks, "that's not right. It should still be your wedding day, Hu."
"Should it?" He chuckles, and reaches for her hands, covers them with one of his own, and his touch is warm and wonderful and feels like home, and she knows what she wants, what she needs, is more important than that screaming voice of self-doubt that tells her she doesn't deserve it. "Then where do you suggest that I find a bride?"
Her heart feels like it's going to burst. "Is there something you maybe want to ask me?"
He doesn't ask, but he doesn't need to; instead, he leans over and kisses her, right there at the table in front of Malik and Fourier, and when Fourier groans and shakes her head Malik tells her that she's just going to have to get used to it.
Three weeks later Hubert tells Pascal again that he truly loves her, that he will love her always, until the end of his life, but this time he doesn't sound sad and this time she's not fighting back the urge to cry. And she smiles up at him and squeezes his hands tight and promises the very same thing — that she'll love him always, until the end of her life — and that's when the small audience at their wedding bursts into spontaneous applause. She laughs and he smiles, and now they know that both of them will be happy, truly happy, no matter what the future brings.
