Snow

-- "I have to say goodbye," he said. "Please."

Michael tilted his head to one side a little, looking at David as if he were a puzzle he needed to understand. "I've never been one for farewells," he said softly. "But you--" His smile grew broader, softer. "I guess you are. Go on, then. Say goodbye. Someone will help you find your way back when you're done."

***

She was waiting for him in the hallway. He walked past her like she wasn't there.

"Alec," she said and then he stopped, turned to face her. He looked like he always had, the same dark dust all over his hands, the same thin smile, the same sharp eyes that looked right at you and saw exactly who you truly were. She'd always been able to see what had drawn Michael to him.

"Judith."

"It was necessary. He couldn't stay with you. He's--"

"I know."

"This wasn't done--" she paused, not sure what to say. "This wasn't done to hurt you. I didn't think--I didn't think you'd ever come back here, least of all with someone like--"

"I know," he said again. "Believe me, I never planned on it." He paused for a moment. "I know you love M--the King. I know you want him to be happy. Just…"

"What?" she said, unable to help herself. He'd never asked for anything, not even when she'd been waiting for him when he returned from the mines one evening, when she told him the King would be unable to see him again, that he'd been reminded of who he was, what his duties were.

He had just stared at her and then said, "Tell Michael," slowly, carefully, letting the name detonate between them, "that I understand."

"Promise me you'll be careful with him, Judith. David doesn't--he doesn't understand how things are. He needs…." His voice cracked. "Just promise me."

"You--" she said, shocked by the look in his eyes. When she'd told him about Michael she'd seen that he'd known what was coming and had guarded his heart well because of it. With Michael he'd been hurt. Hurt but able to move on. But now…now she saw he'd tried to do the same and that he'd failed. He'd given his heart, given everything. He'd fallen in love. She hadn't thought he was so stupid.

"Promise me," he said again quietly, brokenly, and she nodded. He turned and walked away.

"I'm sorry," she said after he was gone and she was, a little. Her words echoed back at her through the crystal hallway, unheard. She folded her hands together and walked back down the hall, toward the King.

***

He couldn't find Alec. David ran down one hallway and then another, endless twists of gleaming rock. Then he saw him, impossibly far away, and called his name.

Alec didn't stop. David called his name again, louder, and ran faster, breath rushing out of him, the walls echoing the sound of his breathing, of Alec's name, back to him over and over again.

Alec stopped.

"I just--" David said when he reached him. "You have to say goodbye."

Alec started to say something sharp, cruel--David saw it in his eyes--but then he looked away from him, as if he couldn't bear to see what was in his face. "You'll be fine here," he said. "You'll be happy."

"I won't."

"David--"

"I'm not the Ki--I'm not Michael." His own voice tightened saying that name, at the thought of hearing Alec say it so easily.

"No," Alec said, and now he was looking at him. "You're not."

"I want to stay with you. I--I love you." He'd never said it before and knew, as soon as he did, that he wouldn’t say it again. It didn't matter. It wouldn't change what was happening. It wouldn't change anything.

"No," Alec said softly. "You don't love me. You ran away and straight to me. That's not love.

You don't--you don't know what it is."

David nodded, biting his lip. He couldn't feel it. He bit harder and still felt nothing. He could see the walls around them clouding, crystallizing with cold. He didn't feel that either.

"Don't," Alec said, and touched his face, traced a thumb across his mouth. "I'm not worth it."

"You--" David said and there was something scratching at his throat, clawing up behind his eyes.

He stared at Alec, saw the way his hands were resting shaking by his sides, a dark smear across the glittering black dust that covered his thumb. He could feel bits of the dust stinging into his mouth now, into his heart. "I won't forget you."

"Of course you will," Alec said gently.

And then he walked away.

***

Michael courted him. That's what he'd called it anyway, afterwards, and David thought it was a good word. It sounded nice, slow and gentle and exactly like Michael coming to see him in the rooms he'd had him put in, a gleaming suite with enormous windows that looked out onto gardens sculpted to look like oceans and forests and hollows where nothing but flowers bloomed.

There was even one made into a desert, piled high with brown sand and covered with blue yellow glass shaped to look like sun and sky.