[January 31] [Original Short Story] Anih

[principessar.livejournal.com]

Title: Anih
Day/Theme: Jan. 31 'If I could live with you'
Series: Original
Characters, Pairings: Yasit Leader (Anih Rasinkiya)/ his mistress, Sayani Miranina
Rating: PG-13ish?

Author's Notes: Here I'm just trying to get to know my new characters and experimenting with a scenario. The set up--call it classic, call it a little cliche... but yeah, this is basically me playing with new characters. Hope you enjoy.

 

Anih

“No,” he said, his tone firm but gentle. He regretted having to say it to her, but he did not regret his answer. “No, you can’t. You know very well you can’t.”

            “It’s only for two months, while you’re in the north. Your wife won’t come to see you; she never travels, does she? Nobody need find out. I can hide and nobody need know I’m there!” Sayani cried. “Listen, we have so little time together as it is and when you go back south I don’t know when I shall see you again!”

            “I think that’s not so bad,” he replied, his tone uncomfortable. “We probably should be seeing less of each other, anyway.” He looked away from her as he spoke.

            “Anyi,” she chided – that’s what she called him, Anyi, a nickname for the name that he wasn’t even supposed to be called anymore. He supposed she deemed it more Ileni than the conspicuously-Yasit Anih. The part of his mind that had been trained to be constantly suspicious cautioned him that this nickname was her attempt to control him, to make him into someone familiar, but even if this were true, he didn’t mind it. She would be simply the latest in a long line of people who had tried to control him.

            “Anyi, don’t speak like that. Why should we see less of each other? We love each other and that doesn’t affect your… your fighting or your rule or… I love you! And, you hardly love your wife, so…”

            He shook his head, half-smiling, but as soon as he was conscious of the smile he suppressed it. “Don’t call me Anyi,” he told her.

            “I’ve always called you Anyi.”

            “Well, stop.”

            “What else should I call you? Anih? I thought that wasn’t your name anymore.”

            “If it ever was.”

            “What should I call you? My liege, like your soldiers?” Her tone was mocking; she laughed once she was finished speaking. “I’ve got to call you something! What does your wife call you?”

            “Look, Sayani,” he cut in. “You can call me Anyi for all I care. I just, oh, let’s be serious here. I don’t think I should see you anymore!”

            “Do you suddenly love your wife?” Still mocking. “Just get a missive, you’ve got a little one on the way, that might well be another man’s, for all you know about your home?”

            He sighed. Dark eyes met dark eyes, hers laughing, his chastising. “You know what? I wouldn’t even know, if my wife had a child. And of course I love her. I love all of my people. I don’t love you.”

            Was he kidding? Was he lying? She chose to believe the former. “Oh, you are such a good king, kind and wonderful. You love every one of your citizens. How many times a week?”

            That did it. “I don’t love you!” he shouted. “I don’t love you!”

            “Do you hate me?” Mocking even still. “Love isn’t the opposite of hate, you know. It means I’m on your mind, if you hate me.”

            Did he love her? Did he hate her? He shouldn’t, not either. He shouldn’t care a thing about her. But, he should have never met her! “Well, yes, I do care for you,” he confessed, “but I shouldn’t. If I was a stronger person, I wouldn’t. And after I die, my successor will be a better leader than I and he won’t care a thing if you die! I shouldn’t care a thing about you! I should want you to die! I would, if I could!”

            “You love me so much,” she purred.

            He shook his head, more than exasperated. “Sayani Miranina, do you understand a single word I’ve said? You should be afraid of me. I tell you that I’d hurt you if I could and you laugh? I mean it! Someday I’d… I’d order your assassination.”

            “You would take it back, before they carried it out,” she told him smugly. “That is, if your men could even reach me. That’s the thing, being the deposed ruler and all of that. You’re not really king of anything at all. Your few men could be caught like that.” She snapped her fingers. “That is, if you even tried at all.”

            “You’re right,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t. Because I couldn’t. So, what’s that? I hate myself.”

            “You shouldn’t hate yourself. I love you, and if you’re good enough for me, you ought to be good enough for yourse…”

            “Look! I don’t love you, for the last time! I don’t love my wife, I don’t love my people, I don’t love you! I don’t love anyone at all; my father never loved me and my mother only who I was meant to be!” He was shouting now. His own feelings confused him so, he switched to the feelings he knew he ought to have, to the words that he must have recited a thousand times. “I don’t know how to love, and if I do I should forget! I’m not a person free to love whomever he will; I’m Yasit Leader, with the sole purpose of regaining Kichen for the Yasit people only and avenging our losses in Ileni blood! You’ve heard those brutal things we say! Five for every one of us, ten, a hundred! They won’t spare you and nor should I!”

            He stopped short; she had fallen silent. Gray eyes gazed up into his own, vulnerable. All of her bravado was gone now. He sighed, shaking his head. “You have to understand.”

            “But, why is that so?” she demanded. “I can see through all your pledges! I know you love me! But why should you hate me? Why…” and here her words were barely more than whispered. “Why do I have to die?”

            “I don’t want you to die!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been trying to tell you that! I suggest you take care of yourself, so that you don’t!”

            “I understand all that,” she told him, “but that’s not what I’m asking. I mean to ask, why… do I, do the Ilenis, what did we do to deserve your enmity? Why should the Yasit people want us to pay in blood?”

            “Because of the conquest! Because, thirty years ago, your people took over our land, killed our nobles, killed our queen, two princes and three princesses, enslaved our people… because it’s what you did to us!”

            “Me? What did I do? I’m twenty-five years old, Anyi. I was born here! Should you exile me to China? To Mongolia? To whatever far-off barbaric place I never knew?” Tears were forming in her eyes now, forming, though she held them in. “Would you have me go there, at the mercy of strangers?”

            “If it meant you lived,” he insisted. “I don’t know how long I’ll live, Sayani. After I die, my successor will be a hard man. I’ll be sure of it!”

            “And why are you in such a hurry to die? You’re only thirty years old!”

            He snorted. “I was born to die young, in battle. It’s inevitable.”

            “Born to?”

            “Raised to.”

            Now she snorted, hers, though, more one of confusion. “Raised to die in battle? God, Anyi, doesn’t that sound tragic. And it really is, if you stop to think that this would be easier if you sought cooperation and friendship rather than hate and vengeance. My generation, yours…”

            “You’re fooling yourself. My people would never, and nor would yours!”

            “Then, just admit defeat! Admit defeat and live!”

            “And betray my people? Like in Tassi Rasinkiya’s reign? Hell no. They never forgave my father. God, he wasn’t even my real father and I’ve grown up just as weak as him.” He looked down, ashamed.

            “He wasn’t your real father? So you’re not really Prince Anih Rasinkiya?”

            “I’m Yasit Leader, that’s what counts.”

            “But Anih Rasinkiya, who is he?”

            “It’s a name they called me, to call me something. I don’t have a birth announcement. Tassi never knew I wasn’t his son. I was born four months after my mother consummated her marriage to him and five months after my mother’s lover was killed in battle. Killed in battle by your people! But, it doesn’t matter who my father is. It’s no longer a monarchy and if I’m not half-brother to Kethi Rasinkiya who should have inherited, only he was killed, also by your people, it doesn’t matter. I’m Yasit Leader; I’ve filled my ranks with men who can fight, not my cousins. I…”

            Sayani shook her head. “Why did you tell me?”

            “What?”

            “I assume you don’t tell just anyone. And you certainly didn’t have to tell me. So, why did you?”

            He frowned. “I’m not sure.”

            She smiled reassuringly. “I’d think a person such as you would be better at keeping your secrets.”

            “I think…” he muttered, “I think it’s because… I’m going to send you away. I don’t want to see you again. I wanted you know because in the end I wanted the last memory you had of me to be the truth, so…”

            She bit her lip. “Would you really send me away?”

            “I will.”

            “Anyi…”

            “Don’t call me that.”

            “We’re back where we started, aren’t we?”

            “We’re terrible for each other. Simply being here, you will destroy everything I’m working for. I care for you, I don’t love you because I cannot, because I’m not allowed to, but I care for you, and as such I want you to be safe. So I will send you away and miss you until I die.” He said all of this in a whisper, his lip trembling. Sayani looked up at him; they met eyes yet again and suddenly she rose, embracing him.

            He tried to resist, but as always, found himself holding her. They kissed once, then again…

           

           He woke up in the middle of the night, sliding out from between the sheets they’d shared. She still slept, her straight, black hair splayed out across her pillow, her breath deep and regular. He sat for a moment, watching her. Perhaps tomorrow he could send her away.

 

-END-