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I had no internet while on holidays. This resulted, logically enough, in my rereading both 'King of Attolia' and 'Conspiracy of Kings'. I've always meant to write something with Relius and Teleus.
Title: The Love I Bear Thee
Rating: Mature
Fandom: Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Characters/Pairings: Relius, Teleus, mention of Eugenides and Irene. Relius &/ Teleus
Summary: In the aftermath of 'King of Attolia', Relius finds himself a man with a broken hand, a mended cloak, and more love than he had previously either hoped for or understood. A love that survives torture may survive anything, after all
Wordcount: 2443
Warnings/Notes: Aftermath of betrayal and torture, recovery, forgiveness, love, duty and loyalty
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: The Love I Bear Thee
Rating: Mature
Fandom: Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Characters/Pairings: Relius, Teleus, mention of Eugenides and Irene. Relius &/ Teleus
Summary: In the aftermath of 'King of Attolia', Relius finds himself a man with a broken hand, a mended cloak, and more love than he had previously either hoped for or understood. A love that survives torture may survive anything, after all
Wordcount: 2443
Warnings/Notes: Aftermath of betrayal and torture, recovery, forgiveness, love, duty and loyalty
Disclaimer: Not mine
The Love I Bear Thee
It was time to leave the infirmary. He would not be returning to his old apartments. His successor, Baron Hippias, would have laid claim to his office, if perhaps not the living spaces attached to them. Even if he had not, Relius did not think he could bear to set foot inside them again. He was no longer as he had been, and not only because he was no longer Secretary of the Archives. There are things which cannot be endured without changing he who endures them.
The king knew that, Relius thought. Better than anyone, perhaps.
A light knock sounded from the door frame behind him. It was not quite diffident, but it was more hesitant than might have been expected. He turned, ungainly around the hand still slung bandaged across his chest, and raised a questioning eyebrow towards his friend.
"You looked pensive," Teleus offered softly. "I didn't wish to startle you."
Relius laughed a little. His hand twinged at the motion, but it was healed now, as much as would be possible, and it was nothing that could not be borne. He shook his head, and moved to stand beside his friend.
"Some thoughts it is better to be startled from," he said. There was a flash of something in Teleus' eyes, a memory and a darkness. Relius knew what he was thinking, and shook his head to dismiss it. "The fear of the unknown is a terrible thing. Sometimes it is better to be spurred to action than to sit in contemplation of it."
Teleus paused. "The unknown?" he asked, and it was somewhat cautious. This, too, was a change that had come upon them. Within them. Such was the cost of failure. Relius sighed, and moved to lean against his friend's arm. Teleus, juggling briefly to move a bundle of cloth out of the way, allowed it.
"I am lost," Relius admitted. It was no secret to be kept. Not from Teleus. "I am not who I was. I cannot return to it. I fear for what happens now."
"Relius ..." his companion said.
"Will you walk with me to my apartments?" Relius interrupted him. "I'm afraid I don't yet know the way. Will you show me?"
It was abrupt, dismissive. It was no tone to take with a friend, or for a request.
Teleus did not rebuke him for it.
"... Yes," said Teleus. "I will take you. I came for that, in fact. The king sent me."
Relius smiled, not entirely happily. "Of course," he said. Of course the king would realise. Of course he would send Teleus. It did not surprise him at all.
Teleus looked at him. There was pain in his eyes, Relius realised. Pain and grief, and perhaps something not unlike guilt.
"I would have come anyway," the captain said softly. Relius blinked at him. "I would not have left you alone. Not for this."
"I know that," Relius said. Teleus didn't answer, and Relius stirred in confused anger. "Teleus?"
The captain looked away. He didn't remove his arm, though. His support remained beneath Relius' good arm.
"Let me walk you to your apartment," Teleus said softly. "And when we are there ... perhaps you will take a cup of wine with me? It has been ... some time."
"... Of course," Relius answered. He felt a chill inside him. He felt as a man on a precipice, and he knew not how he had come there, nor how far the fall. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. Since the king, more familiar all the time. But he had not thought to feel it from Teleus.
The cost of failure. A vast and widening gyre. It could not fail to terrify.
"I, ah," Teleus started. He shook his head, an odd stammer as he stepped back, and reached instead to offer something. The bundle he had moved to allow Relius his arm. Relius glanced at it, and back to his friend's face. "I brought you something," the captain said, and Relius could not read his expression at all.
He took the bundle instead. Unfolded it. Something seized in his chest, before he even fully realised what he held. Teleus stared at him, mute with that unnameable thing.
The cloth was a cloak. Rich and velvet, very clean, and mended a little in one corner.
It was the cloak he had worn as Secretary. The cloak that had accompanied him to his cell. The cloak the king had used to make a pillow for him while he questioned him. The cloak he had ... the cloak he had been bundled in when Teleus had carried him, in his own arms, from that dark and terrible place.
He could not breathe. He must, he knew he must, but he could not.
"I didn't know if I should bring it," Teleus whispered, soft and earnest. He lowered his head, the better to look Relius in the eyes, and his expression was full of pain and yet also something else. Determination, maybe. Intent. "I knew it would remind you, and I didn't want to do that to you. I didn't want to hurt you. But the king thought I should bring it. I think I know why, now."
"Teleus." He struggled, the knuckles of his good hand white around the cloth. "Teleus ..."
"I thought you had betrayed us," Teleus went on. "I struck you before the Queen, because of that. I should have known better." He shook his head, forestalled any objection Relius, too familiar now with this conversation, might have made. "And then, I knew it for failure instead, but it made no difference. It made it worse, maybe. You hadn't betrayed us, but you would die anyway, and suffer first. The blow I struck you would be the least of what you suffered, but all I could think was that you had felt it first. Of all of us there, I had struck you first."
"It was deserved," Relius managed. It was. Why did none of them believe that? The queen, the king, his friend. Why could none of them let it rest?
"... I would have tortured you," Teleus said, and his expression made Relius think of the Queen, as she sat beside him and called herself a scythe. "Had he not pardoned you. Had he instructed me in that cell. You know I would have tortured you."
"It was your duty," Relius said. They were not empty words. Not between the two of them. They never had been. "He is the king. He is our king."
"Yes," said Teleus, and these words, too, were not empty. Never again. "He is my king, and always will be. But he was not then. I refused your pardon for that reason. For her sake. Not because I wanted to leave you there. Not because I wanted to punish you."
"I know," Relius said. He leaned forward. He let the cloak fall to the floor, and rested his hand on Teleus' chest instead. "Teleus. My friend. I know. I always knew."
Teleus looked at him. His hands were fisted at his sides, his expression fiercely intent. He leaned into the hand on his chest. Relius could feel him trembling through it.
"He bid me bring the cloak to you," the captain said haltingly. "I thought it a reminder, at first. I thought he meant to remind me, or you, of what had happened down there. That we had betrayed each other. But I realise now ... it was simpler than that. A reminder, yes, but not of what happened in that cell. He is not that cruel."
Relius laughed. It was cracked, and not pleasant, but it lightened the pain in his chest.
"He is," he said, with some amusement. "He is that cruel, Teleus. Only when it is deserved, though. He does not like to strike without cause."
"I know," his friend answered, and there was a smile there. A lightness, a relief. A king. They had a king, as strong and as cruel as their queen, and as kind. "I am glad enough we don't deserve it. I have seen his temper now."
"Yes," Relius agreed wryly. "Worse than the Queen, I think. At least with her you know what is coming."
He paused. Even as the words fell from his mouth, even as he heard them, he paused. There was truth in them, and beneath it, the echo of the fear that had dogged him since his pardon, the precipice on which he stood. A worse fear than anything he had felt in that cell, more cruel by far. And, infinitely, more kind.
There was a kind of safety in the certainty of chains. And in the unknown, however terrifying, there was a kind of freedom.
Teleus watched him closely. Seeing, perhaps, the transformation. The acknowledgement of a precipice, and the decision to leap regardless. There was an echoing knowledge in the captain's eyes, an echoing determination. There had to be. Their course had been set, their loyalty offered, and there would be no turning from it now.
"Worse than the Queen," Teleus said. "Yes. And still ... still we love him. You and I. As we love her. Isn't it so?"
"Yes," said Relius. His hand ached against his chest, the memories in both their eyes, and only once before had he meant an oath as firmly. "As we love her. Yes."
"It is strange to me," Teleus said carefully. Watching him. "To imagine that love can survive torture. I have seen it now. In the king. In you. I know it to be true. And yet ... I had not dared hope. I am no king or queen, for you to forgive me torture."
Relius swallowed. "You are my friend," he said.
It would not have seemed enough, once. To risk all for love, for friendship. Love had led him to that cell, after all. The foolishness of trust, in a woman who had in all likelihood never cared for him at all. Yet love had also spared him. The love of the king he had tortured. The love of the queen who dared to trust him.
For the love she bore him. For the love he bore his friend.
"It was your duty," he said, more clearly. It was important to be clear. It was important that it be said. "We both know what duty is, Teleus. You are my friend. I could never begrudge you. I would never want to. You carried me from that place, when no more choice was given to us. You held me in your arms, and carried me yourself. I do not forget that."
"... I would carry you again," Teleus said, very quietly. "I hope never to have to. But of all the duties asked of me in this, that one alone did not grieve me. You are my friend also, Relius. I would give a great deal to carry you from darkness."
Relius could not look at him. Tears clouded his eyes, tightness seizing his chest, and he looked away. He turned blind eyes instead to the cloak, lying still and mended on the floor.
"I am glad," he managed at last. "There is little left to me, Teleus. I am lost. I do not know my way anymore. Not even the way to my bed. I am glad that you are still my friend. I ... I don't know that I could have borne to lose that also."
There was silence, for a moment, and then Teleus moved. Slowly, without speaking, he knelt down, to the floor on which Relius had fixed his gaze, and gathered rich velvet once more into his hands. He looked up, met and held tear-filled eyes, and reached out to rest his hand on Relius' knee.
"You are not lost," he said quietly. "That is what the king meant to remind you of, I think. That is why he sent this. It was with you in that cell. I carried you here in it. It is yours, Relius. Even now. Because ... because you are still the man who wore it. You are still her servant. Even in torment. Even in death. You did not betray us. You failed us, as we failed you. But you have never betrayed us."
Relius keened. He could not listen to this. It was something the king would have said. Had said. But it hadn't meant the same thing from him. It was not the king he had failed. It was not the king who had found him with poison in his hand and a confession already written. It was not the king who had realised with stunned horror that the betrayal was no ploy, but very real.
It had been Teleus. It had been his friend, who knelt before him now, and offered comfort.
"I wish I had not struck you," Teleus said. "To torture you would have been my duty. I cannot argue that. But I wish I had not hit you. I wish I had not been the first."
"Please," Relius whispered. "Please, not this. Please, Teleus. Stop it."
"I will," Teleus agreed, instantly. "Don't worry, Relius. I know it hurts you, and I will stop. But I want you to remember. Whatever you have lost. You are not different in my eyes. You are not less than you were. I regret every action I took that made you doubt it."
He stood. He levered himself to his feet and then, slowly, very gently, he gathered Relius to him. Carefully, as mindful of his injury as he had been in that cell, he took Relius into his arms, and laid the cloak across his shoulders.
"I will show you to your rooms," Teleus said. "I will carry you to them, should you need it. Now and every time you ask. Please. I beg you. Never hesitate to call for me. Never believe I will not come. Only for our king and our queen would I abandon you, and I think now they will never ask it of me. They know the love I bear you."
A kiss on the cheek, a letter in the darkness, and a cloak. Yes, Relius thought. Yes, his king and his queen did know.
"... No more than I bear you," he said, quietly. "Teleus. My friend. There was a cup of wine you promised me. Take me to it. Take me home."
Teleus laughed. Thick and wet and relieved. He stood back, held Relius' shoulders between his hands as he looked at him. There was joy in his eyes, Relius saw. There was love.
"As you wish, my friend," his captain said. "As you wish."
It was time to leave the infirmary. He would not be returning to his old apartments. His successor, Baron Hippias, would have laid claim to his office, if perhaps not the living spaces attached to them. Even if he had not, Relius did not think he could bear to set foot inside them again. He was no longer as he had been, and not only because he was no longer Secretary of the Archives. There are things which cannot be endured without changing he who endures them.
The king knew that, Relius thought. Better than anyone, perhaps.
A light knock sounded from the door frame behind him. It was not quite diffident, but it was more hesitant than might have been expected. He turned, ungainly around the hand still slung bandaged across his chest, and raised a questioning eyebrow towards his friend.
"You looked pensive," Teleus offered softly. "I didn't wish to startle you."
Relius laughed a little. His hand twinged at the motion, but it was healed now, as much as would be possible, and it was nothing that could not be borne. He shook his head, and moved to stand beside his friend.
"Some thoughts it is better to be startled from," he said. There was a flash of something in Teleus' eyes, a memory and a darkness. Relius knew what he was thinking, and shook his head to dismiss it. "The fear of the unknown is a terrible thing. Sometimes it is better to be spurred to action than to sit in contemplation of it."
Teleus paused. "The unknown?" he asked, and it was somewhat cautious. This, too, was a change that had come upon them. Within them. Such was the cost of failure. Relius sighed, and moved to lean against his friend's arm. Teleus, juggling briefly to move a bundle of cloth out of the way, allowed it.
"I am lost," Relius admitted. It was no secret to be kept. Not from Teleus. "I am not who I was. I cannot return to it. I fear for what happens now."
"Relius ..." his companion said.
"Will you walk with me to my apartments?" Relius interrupted him. "I'm afraid I don't yet know the way. Will you show me?"
It was abrupt, dismissive. It was no tone to take with a friend, or for a request.
Teleus did not rebuke him for it.
"... Yes," said Teleus. "I will take you. I came for that, in fact. The king sent me."
Relius smiled, not entirely happily. "Of course," he said. Of course the king would realise. Of course he would send Teleus. It did not surprise him at all.
Teleus looked at him. There was pain in his eyes, Relius realised. Pain and grief, and perhaps something not unlike guilt.
"I would have come anyway," the captain said softly. Relius blinked at him. "I would not have left you alone. Not for this."
"I know that," Relius said. Teleus didn't answer, and Relius stirred in confused anger. "Teleus?"
The captain looked away. He didn't remove his arm, though. His support remained beneath Relius' good arm.
"Let me walk you to your apartment," Teleus said softly. "And when we are there ... perhaps you will take a cup of wine with me? It has been ... some time."
"... Of course," Relius answered. He felt a chill inside him. He felt as a man on a precipice, and he knew not how he had come there, nor how far the fall. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. Since the king, more familiar all the time. But he had not thought to feel it from Teleus.
The cost of failure. A vast and widening gyre. It could not fail to terrify.
"I, ah," Teleus started. He shook his head, an odd stammer as he stepped back, and reached instead to offer something. The bundle he had moved to allow Relius his arm. Relius glanced at it, and back to his friend's face. "I brought you something," the captain said, and Relius could not read his expression at all.
He took the bundle instead. Unfolded it. Something seized in his chest, before he even fully realised what he held. Teleus stared at him, mute with that unnameable thing.
The cloth was a cloak. Rich and velvet, very clean, and mended a little in one corner.
It was the cloak he had worn as Secretary. The cloak that had accompanied him to his cell. The cloak the king had used to make a pillow for him while he questioned him. The cloak he had ... the cloak he had been bundled in when Teleus had carried him, in his own arms, from that dark and terrible place.
He could not breathe. He must, he knew he must, but he could not.
"I didn't know if I should bring it," Teleus whispered, soft and earnest. He lowered his head, the better to look Relius in the eyes, and his expression was full of pain and yet also something else. Determination, maybe. Intent. "I knew it would remind you, and I didn't want to do that to you. I didn't want to hurt you. But the king thought I should bring it. I think I know why, now."
"Teleus." He struggled, the knuckles of his good hand white around the cloth. "Teleus ..."
"I thought you had betrayed us," Teleus went on. "I struck you before the Queen, because of that. I should have known better." He shook his head, forestalled any objection Relius, too familiar now with this conversation, might have made. "And then, I knew it for failure instead, but it made no difference. It made it worse, maybe. You hadn't betrayed us, but you would die anyway, and suffer first. The blow I struck you would be the least of what you suffered, but all I could think was that you had felt it first. Of all of us there, I had struck you first."
"It was deserved," Relius managed. It was. Why did none of them believe that? The queen, the king, his friend. Why could none of them let it rest?
"... I would have tortured you," Teleus said, and his expression made Relius think of the Queen, as she sat beside him and called herself a scythe. "Had he not pardoned you. Had he instructed me in that cell. You know I would have tortured you."
"It was your duty," Relius said. They were not empty words. Not between the two of them. They never had been. "He is the king. He is our king."
"Yes," said Teleus, and these words, too, were not empty. Never again. "He is my king, and always will be. But he was not then. I refused your pardon for that reason. For her sake. Not because I wanted to leave you there. Not because I wanted to punish you."
"I know," Relius said. He leaned forward. He let the cloak fall to the floor, and rested his hand on Teleus' chest instead. "Teleus. My friend. I know. I always knew."
Teleus looked at him. His hands were fisted at his sides, his expression fiercely intent. He leaned into the hand on his chest. Relius could feel him trembling through it.
"He bid me bring the cloak to you," the captain said haltingly. "I thought it a reminder, at first. I thought he meant to remind me, or you, of what had happened down there. That we had betrayed each other. But I realise now ... it was simpler than that. A reminder, yes, but not of what happened in that cell. He is not that cruel."
Relius laughed. It was cracked, and not pleasant, but it lightened the pain in his chest.
"He is," he said, with some amusement. "He is that cruel, Teleus. Only when it is deserved, though. He does not like to strike without cause."
"I know," his friend answered, and there was a smile there. A lightness, a relief. A king. They had a king, as strong and as cruel as their queen, and as kind. "I am glad enough we don't deserve it. I have seen his temper now."
"Yes," Relius agreed wryly. "Worse than the Queen, I think. At least with her you know what is coming."
He paused. Even as the words fell from his mouth, even as he heard them, he paused. There was truth in them, and beneath it, the echo of the fear that had dogged him since his pardon, the precipice on which he stood. A worse fear than anything he had felt in that cell, more cruel by far. And, infinitely, more kind.
There was a kind of safety in the certainty of chains. And in the unknown, however terrifying, there was a kind of freedom.
Teleus watched him closely. Seeing, perhaps, the transformation. The acknowledgement of a precipice, and the decision to leap regardless. There was an echoing knowledge in the captain's eyes, an echoing determination. There had to be. Their course had been set, their loyalty offered, and there would be no turning from it now.
"Worse than the Queen," Teleus said. "Yes. And still ... still we love him. You and I. As we love her. Isn't it so?"
"Yes," said Relius. His hand ached against his chest, the memories in both their eyes, and only once before had he meant an oath as firmly. "As we love her. Yes."
"It is strange to me," Teleus said carefully. Watching him. "To imagine that love can survive torture. I have seen it now. In the king. In you. I know it to be true. And yet ... I had not dared hope. I am no king or queen, for you to forgive me torture."
Relius swallowed. "You are my friend," he said.
It would not have seemed enough, once. To risk all for love, for friendship. Love had led him to that cell, after all. The foolishness of trust, in a woman who had in all likelihood never cared for him at all. Yet love had also spared him. The love of the king he had tortured. The love of the queen who dared to trust him.
For the love she bore him. For the love he bore his friend.
"It was your duty," he said, more clearly. It was important to be clear. It was important that it be said. "We both know what duty is, Teleus. You are my friend. I could never begrudge you. I would never want to. You carried me from that place, when no more choice was given to us. You held me in your arms, and carried me yourself. I do not forget that."
"... I would carry you again," Teleus said, very quietly. "I hope never to have to. But of all the duties asked of me in this, that one alone did not grieve me. You are my friend also, Relius. I would give a great deal to carry you from darkness."
Relius could not look at him. Tears clouded his eyes, tightness seizing his chest, and he looked away. He turned blind eyes instead to the cloak, lying still and mended on the floor.
"I am glad," he managed at last. "There is little left to me, Teleus. I am lost. I do not know my way anymore. Not even the way to my bed. I am glad that you are still my friend. I ... I don't know that I could have borne to lose that also."
There was silence, for a moment, and then Teleus moved. Slowly, without speaking, he knelt down, to the floor on which Relius had fixed his gaze, and gathered rich velvet once more into his hands. He looked up, met and held tear-filled eyes, and reached out to rest his hand on Relius' knee.
"You are not lost," he said quietly. "That is what the king meant to remind you of, I think. That is why he sent this. It was with you in that cell. I carried you here in it. It is yours, Relius. Even now. Because ... because you are still the man who wore it. You are still her servant. Even in torment. Even in death. You did not betray us. You failed us, as we failed you. But you have never betrayed us."
Relius keened. He could not listen to this. It was something the king would have said. Had said. But it hadn't meant the same thing from him. It was not the king he had failed. It was not the king who had found him with poison in his hand and a confession already written. It was not the king who had realised with stunned horror that the betrayal was no ploy, but very real.
It had been Teleus. It had been his friend, who knelt before him now, and offered comfort.
"I wish I had not struck you," Teleus said. "To torture you would have been my duty. I cannot argue that. But I wish I had not hit you. I wish I had not been the first."
"Please," Relius whispered. "Please, not this. Please, Teleus. Stop it."
"I will," Teleus agreed, instantly. "Don't worry, Relius. I know it hurts you, and I will stop. But I want you to remember. Whatever you have lost. You are not different in my eyes. You are not less than you were. I regret every action I took that made you doubt it."
He stood. He levered himself to his feet and then, slowly, very gently, he gathered Relius to him. Carefully, as mindful of his injury as he had been in that cell, he took Relius into his arms, and laid the cloak across his shoulders.
"I will show you to your rooms," Teleus said. "I will carry you to them, should you need it. Now and every time you ask. Please. I beg you. Never hesitate to call for me. Never believe I will not come. Only for our king and our queen would I abandon you, and I think now they will never ask it of me. They know the love I bear you."
A kiss on the cheek, a letter in the darkness, and a cloak. Yes, Relius thought. Yes, his king and his queen did know.
"... No more than I bear you," he said, quietly. "Teleus. My friend. There was a cup of wine you promised me. Take me to it. Take me home."
Teleus laughed. Thick and wet and relieved. He stood back, held Relius' shoulders between his hands as he looked at him. There was joy in his eyes, Relius saw. There was love.
"As you wish, my friend," his captain said. "As you wish."
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