Work Text:
Five years later
"I'm tired of essays," Will said to Jane, late in their first year of university, as they walked back from a lecture on the Dal Riata.
"Even on the structure of pastoral care in early Ireland?" Jane teased, knowing from previous conversations what he'd been assigned for this week, and how unexcited he was to write it.
"Especially on the structure of pastoral care in early Ireland," Will said with feeling. "Let's get Chelsea buns and sit by the river."
It was a bit uncharacteristic of Will, who was normally extremely conscientious about his schoolwork, but Jane could see why he was feeling restless. It was a beautiful spring day, of the sort that was all too fleeting; the warm sun already gave hints of the coming summer heat.
They stopped by Fitzbillies to pick up the buns, then wandered slowly to the Cam. "Will?" Jane asked.
Will made a noise of enquiry.
Jane said slowly, "I've been wondering for a while. Is this a coincidence? That we are at university together? That you came up for history, and I came up for English, and that we're even going to one set of lectures together — that we're friends with Bran, that he comes to visit sometimes --" Something pushed at the back of her mind; five shall return, and one go alone, but it receded even as she tried to remember further.
He looked at her, in his face something that seemed like compassion, although she did not understand why. "Yes, a coincidence," he said gently. "It means nothing more than --
"That you came here, and so did I," she finished, and did not understand why she felt a twinge of disappointment.
"And that we're friends," he said, smiling at her. "You, and me, and Bran. Not all things are planned. Or should be." He looked around. "This looks like a good spot," Will said; "hold on, I'll get the buns."
You're changing the subject intentionally, Jane thought, slightly fretfully; why? Is it because I mentioned Bran?
He scrabbled in his bag, finally emerging triumphantly with a slightly squashed confection. He handed it to her. Their fingers touched, and Jane was sure she had not imagined the warm current that passed between them. But Will hastily drew his hand back, otherwise not acknowledging the contact.
Will was so careful, Jane thought; careful never to touch her, except by accident, as if — as if he feared something that would happen, if they touched. She sighed and started eating her bun. Will dug out another one for himself.
They ate for a while in companionable silence, until Will broke it: "How's Welsh going?"
Jane made a face at him, licking the last of the sticky sugar off her fingers. "Better. I got some nice comments on my essay on Culhwch and Olwen. And then Bran is helping me with the language." She kept her voice light.
"Oh?" Will said, in a similar tone, elaborately casual. "How's he helping, then?" Carefully, the way he was always careful when he talked of Bran.
Jane grinned, although with an edge of sadness. If Will weren't so careful… "I've started to write him in Welsh." Jane laughed briefly. "And he's been sending back corrections. If I don't take a first in Welsh this year, it won't be his doing, he says."
"In my last letter from him," Will started, "he said he might come visit weekend after next."
"Tia will be glad," Jane said absently. "They seemed to hit it off quite well." Jane's roommate, in fact, would be ecstatic; she had not stopped talking of Bran since his last visit. "She likes him quite a lot. I think they've been writing as well, though of course not in Welsh. Though Bran's been teaching her how to pronounce things --"
"Bran -- seems to like you a lot," Will said tentatively, not looking at her.
Suddenly Jane was tired of it all, tired of the dance Will always seemed to be doing around Bran. "Will." She waited until, drawn by her silence, he finally looked up at her. "I know you and Bran are friends. And maybe he does like me. But — but -- I think you like me, and I know I like you. I've liked you for ages. And you're your own person, you don't belong to him just because he's your best friend. Bran isn't — isn't —" She cast about for how to describe it, and her mind snagged on the Arthurian images Barney had returned to at art school. "He isn't King Arthur, and you're not his Merlin, and I'm not Guinevere--"
It was a terrible metaphor, she knew, and the thought came to her that he might laugh at her, although Will never made fun of her. But what she was unprepared for was the arrested look that crossed his face, as if she had said something profound, as if he was starting to understand something he had never understood before.
"Yes," he whispered, his eyes wide with emotion. "Yes." He touched her hand, deliberately, and they both shivered. "Jane—"
Ten years later
Jane gazed at Will as the minister spoke. Behind them, Jane knew, were their families, brothers and sisters and parents and friends, come to watch them be wed. She felt the regard of Barney and Simon and their parents behind her, and heard the rustling as well as the hasty shushing of the children in Will's large family; his older brothers and sisters had by now produced so many nieces and nephews that Jane despaired of keeping track of them all. The only family who was not there was Great-Uncle Merry. His death had been ten years ago, but she still felt his absence.
Will fidgeted, very slightly, the only outward sign of what Jane knew was a great deal more nervousness than he would ever admit to.
She was not herself nervous. In some ways, she thought, she had loved Will even before they had met at university. In Wales, perhaps; he had been there at Great-Uncle Merry's death; had comforted her. Or she might have started to love him even earlier, in the mountains, when she had first heard him sing. It had almost been as if the mountains were singing… and why should that remind her of a dream of a rose-coloured ring and — an old Lady?
Thinking of Wales, she could not help looking very briefly at Bran where he stood at Will's right hand, but he was smiling, without any hint of strain or regret. She saw his eyes go to Tia at Jane's side, and Jane smiled as well, turning her glance back to Will as he began to speak.
"I, Will Stanton," he said clearly, "take thee, Jane Drew, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward —"
And Jane said the vows in her turn: "— to love and to cherish, till death us do part —"
And Jane was astonished to see tears rolling down his cheeks.
Thirty-five years later
"Ah, Will, Jane, my thanks to you for venturing out on such a terrible night. Tia will be sad to have missed you."
Jane brushed the last lingering flakes from her coat before removing it and handing it to Will, who placed it on the hook neatly. She smiled at Bran. "That's all right; she and I are going to have lunch next week. And we couldn't pass up the chance to see you, Bran.
"After how busy you've been lately," Will added, "and then the assassination threats —"
Bran rolled his eyes as he handed both of them drinks. "Dewin, at this point it is no matter, you know. We have done it, we have pushed the pact through, there is nothing they could do even if they shot me." He grinned mischievously. "If they did shoot me it would go through even more quickly, public opinion would make sure of that."
Jane shuddered, curling her hand around the glass. "I'm glad you're the politician, not me."
Bran shook his head. "If you only knew how many times I wished in the last year that I had become a sheep farmer after all; at least Da and John Rowlands would have been happy, then… I thought we were headed for war for certain, and with no one caring that this one would be a war that no one would win, and all of us would lose. And yet, because of all the work and care and watchfulness of so many people around me, the worse did not triumph over the better, this time."
He looked at Jane as he said it, and she recognized it as something Great-Uncle Merry had said, long ago, although she could not remember when. Will said lightly, "And because Prime Minister Davies saw what to do, and did it."
Bran burst out laughing, almost hysterically. "Dewin, that is the most simplistic way imaginable of putting it. One might as well say that it was also because a certain professor of history had certain insights…" At Will's hasty demurral, Bran grinned and shrugged. "Is that how I started calling you dewin, Will? Do you remember?"
"It was a long time ago, now," Will said, "that you gave me that nickname; I suppose the reasons are lost in the mists of time."
There was a finality in his voice that did not invite discussion. Jane looked at her husband curiously; she had long ago realized that there were subjects that Will turned away from, but she had never been able to exactly figure out why.
"Ah well," Bran said, dismissing the subject; his mind had moved elsewhere. "You know," he continued thoughtfully, "because of my mother, you know, and Da's admission that I wasn't his biologically-- I used to imagine that my father was someone great. Like a modern-day King Arthur, you know? Those sorts of adolescent fantasies." He grinned. "But — you know, I'm good at what I do," he said. "Since university I've known I had a gift for this sort of thing. Maybe my biological father was a politician of sorts."
Jane caught a glimpse of Will's face, and almost jumped back at the mix of emotions in it; and then it sealed over into a look so bland she thought she must have been mistaken.
She must have imagined it.
Forty years later
Bran moved restlessly on the hospital bed, picking at the blanket; the doctors had said that the end could be expected at any time. Tia had died instantly.
Jane, standing helplessly next to the bed with Will, thought that the warmongers had finally gotten what they wanted, the assassination of the man behind what was already starting to be called the Davies Peace. But, Jane thought fiercely, they had not, and would not, kill what he had done. The peace would hold; would be stronger, as he had once said, for his death.
Bran turned his head slightly, looking at them with his golden eyes; but the gold was dimmed. "Dewin, you are here. Good. Good. And one goes alone — "
Jane felt Will make a convulsive motion beside her. Bran said, "Yes. I think death must break the last magic you put on us." Jane looked at Will questioningly — surely Bran was delirious — but Will only had eyes for Bran. Bran said huskily, "Will, tell me truly. Did I make the right choice? Would my father — would he have been proud?"
Jane saw Will swallow hard. "Yes," he said hoarsely. "Bran, he has always been proud of you. Always, from the very beginning."
Jane's heart wrung. Owen Davies, she knew, had been dead more than three years now. Bran turned to her. "Jane. Jenny." At his old pet name for her, she felt the tears pricking at her eyelids. "Loving bonds. Stronger than even the High Magic, yes - Da, and you, and Will, and Tia —"
Jane glanced worriedly at Will and crouched by the bed, saying, "Bran. Dear Bran. I don't--"
Bran looked beyond them, to something they could not see. "Tia, annwyl..." Then the light went out behind his eyes, and there was no longer anyone there.
Fifty years after
Will brought Jane a tray of shepherd's pie for dinner. She had slept all afternoon, and Will surveyed her worriedly. Her skin seemed almost translucent now, as if she were wasting away from the inside until there would be nothing left.
But her eyes were clear, and she regarded him steadily. "Will," she said, with suppressed emotion in her voice, "I had a dream this afternoon-- about the Greenwitch and the grail. And the mountains singing, and a crystal sword."
He could not help but react. A small thing: a blink, a twitch, but they had been together for a long time, and she could read him as well as he could read her.
"And I think," she said more slowly, "that it all happened, and that the memory was taken from us, and that I remember now means that I am going to die soon. Like poor Bran."
Will sat down beside her bed and passed a hand over his forehead. "Well," he said.
"It was not kind," said Jane, looking at him, "to make us forget."
"No," Will agreed. "But the Light has never been kind."
Jane said, with an edge to her voice, "I was angry, when I woke. I must confess I am still rather angry. I would certainly have liked to have remembered that whole matter between the Light and the Dark. It was not at all what I would have chosen."
"Yes," Will said. "It was, as you say, not what you might have chosen. But necessary."
She paused. She said thoughtfully, "I suppose that maybe-- I can see why it might have been better for Bran not to know. Because he had things to do, and having all this in his head at the same time might have, I don't know, interfered."
This was something Will had always loved about her, from the first time he had met her in Trewissick: that even when she had a vested interest in one side, she was willing to see the other one. "It might have been so. It might have been the case for all of you, that keeping the memory would have changed you too much."
Jane said dreamily, "The midsummer tree, and when the Dark came rising… yes, it was too terribly beautiful, too beautifully terrible. I can see that we might not have been able to hold it in our minds and properly live in this mortal world."
Will nodded. "And because of that, all of you wouldn't have been able to make the difference in the world that you did."
She looked at him dubiously. "Even me? I wasn't Prime Minister. I didn't avert a world war."
He said softly, "You and I had three children. You wrote books. You wouldn't have written those books otherwise. To write about dreams is not the same as writing about what one has done."
She laughed. "The children... well, I do love them. I won't argue with you about that. The books-- they don't change the world, the way Bran did, they're fantasy, children's books--"
Will said sharply, "You know better than that."
Jane breathed, "Oh..." and was silent for a while. Then, a new thought: "You're... you're not yourself going to die, are you."
Will said, "No."
She looked away. "Ah. Shall you — go on as you are now? Or transform into some other person, some other thing?"
Will said gently, "We can't go completely against the laws of nature. I won't suddenly start looking younger than I do now, no. But we can... slow down processes. I won't get any older, either." He left unsaid that he had chosen this, had chosen her: that he had chosen to age the same way she did, to be with her.
He held her hand, and soon enough she went back to sleep. He had used no magic on her, only trusted to her failing body's need to rest. He gently extricated his hand, washed up the dishes from dinner, and went to sit in the chair closest to the fireplace.
His body, of course, would never fail, not while he watched for the Light, not though it took a thousand years, till his children and all his children's descendants had passed away. He sighed. Immortality was not a curse, as he had heard others claim in other places. And it was necessary.
But it was not what he would have chosen.
Will leaned back in his chair and waited for the day to end.