Repairing the Ravages Made By Generosity Added to Love (Or: As In a Mirror, Dimly)

Although Reinhard returned to Phezzan on July 18th, Annerose did not speak with him in more than a brief greeting for several days. It was easy to avoid him. Since he was bedridden, unless she entered his rooms, she would not see him. She didn’t seek him out.

It was force of old habit. Over the past decade— longer than that— her conversations with Reinhard had been rare, and each one stood out in her memory as a marker of a specific point in time. Her childhood by his side blended into an indistinguishable fog, a dream that no longer seemed like it could have been real. But after she left him for the first time, her memories became sharp and clear as glass shards. She remembered the first meeting that she had been allowed to have with Reinhard after becoming part of the Kaiser’s court; Annerose thought she could have recited their conversation from that day word for word.

Reinhard had been utterly distraught, then. Annerose decided the only way to counteract his spitting anger, to keep him from leaping to attack when the Kaiser himself entered the room, was to smile as calmly as she could. And lie.

“How pleasant the rooms are in the palace, Reinhard. How nice to walk through the gardens and feel the sun. How kind His Majesty is to me. I couldn’t complain about any of it.”

And if he knew she was lying, and hated her for it, at least that kept him from doing things that would only end up hurting himself. That was her goal.

That conversation had been the first of many, all in the same shape. The lies grew easier to deliver the older she was, with more experience telling them. And her practiced smile and delicate voice became such second nature that there were times when she almost wondered if she wasn’t lying, if the Annerose who might once have objected, who resented her life in the palace, had died, and this beautiful automaton was all that was left.

Was there any honest thing she could even say to Reinhard? She wasn’t sure anymore.

Even when she had first traveled to Phezzan, for his wedding, she wasn’t as honest as she could have been. She spent her time telling him how he should behave towards his future wife, and pretending to be happy even as she was pale with a sick fear— the feeling that, having entreated Hilde to care for her brother, she had cast her into the flames. 

“How wonderful it is that you’re marrying Hilde,” she said. “How wonderful of a wife she will be to you, and you a husband to her.” 

It was the same as it had been between them for years: her false smile, so natural on her face, as she coached him— goaded him— into doing what he needed to do.

They had only spoken on the subject once. Perhaps that was all either of them could keep up the pretense for, or perhaps it had been all that was needed on that occasion. 

But now, she didn’t want to speak to him because she felt like that would somehow make the inevitable real. If they spoke, to mark this moment in time, it would be because there was a reason for her to see him, which meant that she would need to acknowledge what nobody wanted to say directly: Reinhard was dying. She didn’t want to somehow make that true, as if by holding back everything she had to say to him, she would be keeping him here in the world, giving him one more thing to fight for— something to pry out of her.

And, besides, he hadn’t summoned her. If he wished to speak with her, he would. 

But, as the weather in the capital on Phezzan grew more and more ominous, unseasonably cold winds carrying the monsoon thunderstorms with an unusual force, Annerose began to feel a new kind of creeping dread. As she sat in her room and watched the rain slash down the huge glass panes, Annerose realized she was doing something that she hadn’t done in years: she was waiting for the Kaiser to summon her. And the waiting was the intolerable thing.

Thunder rumbled off in the distance, and Annerose put down the embroidery she had been barely working on and paced her room. It was late in the evening. She had already had her dinner with Hilde, who had barely said anything. With her, at least, there was no need to pretend.

Lightning cracked the sky, and the power flickered and went out. She waited for the emergency generators to kick on, but realized that this building had not had the extensive work done to it that Holly House had, to make it suitable as a permanent residence for the royal family. The emergency generators would need to be turned on by hand. It would take a minute.

The sudden pitch darkness in her room, leaving the only physical sensation the shaking boom of thunder that rattled her to her core, made Annerose remember something she thought she had forgotten, or perhaps had dreamed.

Reinhard used to be scared of the dark, and she had always gone to comfort him when he cried out for her. She had a vivid sensation of sitting on his narrow bed with him, stroking his hair until he fell asleep.

The memory urged her to move, as if in the darkness, she had passed between the waking world and the world of memory or dream. Annerose fumbled through the darkness, out of her room, down the long hallway, towards Reinhard’s room. The guards standing in front of it were on high alert, the glow from their flashlights roving across the floor, then up her body when she came nearer. She blinked into the light.

“May I go in?” she asked.

“His Majesty is sleeping,” one of them replied. But when she didn’t turn away, they opened the door and let her into his quarters. She was a little surprised— she had expected that they would at least knock. But perhaps Reinhard had given standing orders that she was to be allowed in at any time. She didn’t know how she felt about that idea.

Reinhard was on his bed, which was so large that it only served to make him appear tiny and frail. There was enough city-glow light piercing through the rain and the windows that Annerose could see the shine of his golden hair, splayed out on the pillow. He was on his side, turned away from her, facing the window. She thought he was asleep, but then she heard his voice, still imperious, even though it was softer than she had ever heard it.

“Kaiserine, you don’t have to be here. Alexander Siegfried is certain to be more worried about the storm than I am. I doubt babies enjoy thunder very much.”

Annerose sat down on the bed next to him, behind his shoulders where he couldn’t see her. “You’re not scared of the dark anymore, Reinhard.”

“Annerose!” he said, and for a moment the joy and hope in his voice was too much for her to bear. He struggled to turn over to face her, but Annerose put her hand on his shoulder, and he stopped moving, remaining with his face to the window. Even through his nightshirt, his skin was fiercely warm. Lightning streaked the sky once again, and the thunder rumbled half a second later.

“I’m here,” she said. She stroked his hair. Near his forehead, it was soaked with sweat, but it was still softer than silk. With it so much longer than it had been when he was a child, and with him so small and facing away, Annerose had the momentary, discomforting sensation that she was someone else, and it was her that was lying in the Kaiser’s bed, being touched. Her mirror image. The mirror spell was broken when Reinhard spoke again.

“You did always tell me that my hair would shine bright enough to see by,” he said. “That’s a funny lie to tell, but it worked on me for a while.”

She shook her head, but he couldn’t see it. “I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“No,” he said. He was silent for a moment. “Did you just come because you thought I would be scared of the dark?”

“No,” Annerose said. “Yes.”

He laughed, weakly. “Fine.” His breathing was deep but shuddering, like he was having trouble getting enough air, no matter how much he took in. It seemed like he was doing his best to control it, like a person on the edge of tears. His voice was still calm, however. “You could have come before now, but I’m glad for Thor providing you an excuse.”

“I thought you were going to summon me,” she said.

He moved his arm, raising it to his neck. She couldn’t see him fiddle with his locket, but she could feel the movement, and knew what it meant. “I wasn’t planning on doing so.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t order you to love me. Or I shouldn’t.”

She froze, her hand trapped in the gentle waves of his hair. She almost got up to leave, but couldn’t move. “You wouldn’t have to order that, Reinhard.”

He was quiet. Outside the window, the exterior lights flicked back on, the emergency generators finally shaking to life. The light in Reinhard’s room remained off, but now she could see his reflection in the window, and her own. His eyes were closed.

“Why didn’t you come earlier?” he finally asked.

“I told you to come to me when you were ready to rest,” she said. “If you didn’t call me—”

“Hah.” He paused, the brief laugh having taken something out of him. “You knew I would never want to take you up on that offer. That was the only reason you made it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Even now…” he continued, as if she hadn’t said anything. “I hope you didn’t come because you want to convince me to rest.”

“Reinhard—”

“I don’t want to.” His voice was hard, and though the words ought to have rung with his old childhood petulance, they held nothing but resignation.

Annerose squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. “Do you really feel like I want you to—” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.

“No. I’m sorry.” The hardness had gone out of him. He shifted, the light chain of his locket rattling. 

“I never wanted this. All I ever wanted was for you to succeed. And be happy,” Annerose said.

Reinhard let out a breath. “I know.” He didn’t sound like he believed it.

“If I could take your place, I would.” Even as she said it, she didn’t know if she was lying or telling the truth. It was what she had done for him as a fifteen year old, but that old self of hers was long dead and gone. Annerose was just the ghost that remained of her.

Still, it didn’t matter if she was lying or not, because Reinhard reacted as violently as his body would allow. His whole frame tensed, and he tried to get up, but Annerose’s hand on his shoulder, even without exerting much pressure, kept him down.

“Don’t say that,” he said, real pain in his voice. “Please.”

“It’s true.”

“I wouldn’t ever want you to die for me,” he said. “It would make all of this—” He tried to breathe, struggled, tried speaking again. “I did all of this for you. So you could be happy.”

He was lying to himself, if he believed that.

“I know,” she said.

He tried to relax, she could feel it in the way he pushed his face further into his pillow. “I wish I could make you promise to be happy, to make it all worth something,” he said. “But I shouldn’t do that to you, either.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you think you will be?”

She couldn’t answer that. Her most natural mode of looking into the future was one of dread. And the dread of Reinhard dying— that was close enough that it swallowed all the light in the universe. 

“Yes,” she lied.

“Good,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

She was silent for a minute, stroking his hair. She almost wondered if he would fall asleep. That would make it easy for her to slip out of the room, and not come back. But his eyes were open, and he was watching her reflection in the window, staring at her. She found that she wanted to ask something.

“Were you happy, Reinhard?”

“For a while,” he said. He clutched at his locket, glints of gold shining between his fingers, like his hair twisted between hers. “When I was a child. I think I was happy then. And after Friedrich died, before Kircheis—” He stopped. “You were free, and we had the whole universe just to ourselves,” he said. “That was what it felt like. Or what I think it must have felt like. Maybe it wasn’t like that at all.” He closed his eyes. “Were you happy, then, too?”

“I don’t know,” Annerose said. This was as close to the truth as she could get, even if it was an unsatisfying answer. “I can’t remember. I should have been.” She would have at least tried to put a smile on her face for him, as she was so used to doing.

“Would you be happy now, if Kircheis was here?”

“With you like this?”

“I wouldn’t be like this if Kircheis was with me.” That was a stupid thing to say, but she could tell that he believed it wholeheartedly, if nothing else. There was conviction in his voice. But it shifted to half a whine. “Please, tell me.”

“Why?”

 “Did I steal your happiness, when he died for me?”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t steal it.”

“Then why did you leave?” he asked after a moment.

“I—” She shook her head.

“Fine.”

She took a second before she said anything else. “What else could I have given you, if I had stayed, Reinhard?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t have asked you for anything. Never.”

He was telling the truth, of course. But she thought of Kircheis. “You’ve never had to order me to love you,” she said. “I think—”

“What?”

“I did order Sieg to love you, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that,” she said, finally. “But I don’t really think I had to. We were alike, in that way.”

He made a soft, anguished noise, and buried his face in his pillow. “He told me to tell you that he kept his promise.”

“I knew he did,” she said. Again, she found herself comforting him, stroking his hair until some of the tension fell from his shoulders, until he got his breathing under control. She wondered if she resented him for it. She couldn’t tell. She was so empty, watching his reflection and hers in the window pane, like the reflection of her was all that remained. When he lifted his eyes, red with suppressed tears, she tried to smile a gentle smile, their eyes meeting in the window.

“I would have died for him, instead,” Reinhard said. “I wanted to.”

“I know.”

“Or you. If I needed to.”

She shook her head. “No, Reinhard.” She tried to keep her voice calm and firm, though she worried that she was slipping into addressing him like a child— it was hard not to. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to throw yourself away for me. It wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“Why are you the one who gets to decide that?” he asked, real anger in his voice. “Why do you get to say that, but I can’t? And I—” He collected himself. “Kircheis was worth more than I was, no matter what anyone says. And I’m not worth more than you.” This outburst exhausted him, and he ran out of breath.

It wasn’t worth it to argue with him. She just stroked his hair. The silence became unbearable, and he was looking at her in the reflection, waiting for her to say something. She should have gotten up and walked away.

“You had a future, Reinhard. I never did. That was why I could give everything I had for you. It was worth it. You would live for both of us.”

“I never asked you to do that! I never wanted to live for three people.”

“It was a gift, on both of our parts.”

“I didn’t want it! I didn’t want Kircheis to die for me, and I didn’t want you to—” He still couldn’t even bring himself to name what had happened to her, after all these years. Childish of him. But it wasn’t like she needed the reminder. “All I ever wanted was for us to be together. Both of you threw that away. And you call it a gift. I somehow made you think that I needed that from you, or deserved it. I don’t— and I hated it!”

She felt herself grow cold. She tried to shove the feeling down, to keep the calm smile on her face, but he was allowed to be so vicious and angry, and she had only one weapon at her disposal. Her tone was smooth but cutting. Glass again. As the lightning flashed outside, it split their reflections into shards.

“Reinhard, did you ever think about what the alternatives were?”

This made him freeze. “All the time.”

“And what did you imagine that they were?”

“We could have run away together, just the three of us.”

“You’re dreaming, Reinhard.”

“No.”

“If I had refused the Kaiser, I would have been dead, and so would you,” she said. “That was one alternative.”

“And the others?” His voice was much quieter now. The thunder finally rumbled; the storm was moving away.

She closed her eyes. “If I thought of it as a gift to you, I could survive it,” she said. “That’s all. It gave me a reason to stay alive. Maybe it was selfish of me to put that burden on you, but it was all that I could do.”

This time, when Reinhard shifted, trying to get up, she let him, dropping her hands from him. He struggled to sit, and it took all his effort, but he managed it.

He touched her cheek. It didn’t bother her, since it was only him. The boy she had held as a baby, whose scrapes she had kissed better, the child who she had dressed and cleaned and fed, and comforted at night when he was scared of the dark. His hand on her face was hot, and she realized that she was crying when he wiped away a tear with his thumb. Her eyes were still closed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” she replied, mechanical.

“I should have understood. And been grateful.”

“You were a child.”

“Am I still?”

She finally opened her eyes. Reinhard’s expression was soft and pleading in the dim light. It didn’t hurt her any to tell him what he wanted to hear. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

There was relief in his smile, when she said that. “Thank you for coming here.”

She shook her head. “I should have come earlier.”

“It’s alright.” He looked at her, really looked at her. “I missed you, but it’s alright.”

“I’m here now.”

“I know.” He took her hand. “I wish there was something more I could have done for you.”

“Knowing that you loved me was always enough,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be more than that.”

“I do love you.”

He was sitting in front of her so stiffly. That might have been because of the effort required to hold himself up, but she wondered how long it had been since he let someone embrace him. 

She reached for him, and he fell into her arms, like he was a child again, or still, but it didn’t matter.