Snow

It snowed that night, the sky filling with clouds and then endlessly drifting streams of snow.

David had waited for it, longed for the soft sounds it made, for how it would fill the sky, and when it finally came he thought of himself wrapped in it, of the entire palace surrounded by it, and smiled. There was a mirror on the wall and he looked at his smile, at his mouth stretched up wide and cruel, and liked it. He watched himself until the mirror iced over and then shattered, and then he watched the snow again. He willed it to fall faster, farther. Forever.

When it was still dark he watched a group of servants enter the gardens, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands, shoulders hunched against the cold. They began to clear everything carefully, wiping away the snow so it looked like it never fell at all. The pleasure he'd felt before faded and he thought of his nurse's hands trapped on a pew, of the look on her face as he watched her wait helplessly for them to warm. He watched the servants, working in the dark because of him, and thought of Alec underground, trapped in the dark and digging because rocks there held value to those with power.

The snow stopped and when the sun rose it cut through the gray clouds, scattering red-yellow light everywhere. David watched one of the servants cleaning the gardens stop and lift his face up toward it, smiling a little before turning away to brush snow off a clump of flowers. The servant's hands were shaking from cold but he still moved them carefully and when he was done the flowers looked beautiful, shining bright in the early morning light.

David looked at the shards of glass on the floor. After a moment, he got up and picked them up, placed them in a shining pile on a table in another room, out of sight. A maid, tall and strong and clearly not a maid at all from the short sword worn strapped to her side, came in when the sun had risen higher and the servants were gone, leaving the gardens empty once more. She asked him if he wanted another mirror.

"No," he said. "I don't."

Michael came back when the sun had reached the top of the sky and David sat watching the gardens with a tray of uneaten food in front of him. He slid across the ice-coated floor, a look of surprise crossing his face before it was replaced by a grin shaped by surprise and heat. He stopped near him and shifted from one foot to another, low laughter as his feet slipped again.

"Cold in here," he said, and as David looked at him his smile faded into something softer.

Something hopeful. David looked back out the window and hated the sharp pricking of joy he felt hearing Michael's soft sigh. He knew staying in this place would turn him into what he never wanted to be.

"Does--" Michael cleared his throat and he sounded like David had when he'd talked to Alec on a long-ago night, when he'd known what he wanted but was so unsure of how to say it, to ask. But I want to stay with you. "Does it--the cold--bother you? Because I could have someone build a fire or bring you some blankets or…"

"I don't feel it." He wondered what it would feel like to walk through the pretend desert Michael had created, what he would find on the other side. Who he would think about if he looked up at the fake sky.

"Oh." Michael was silent for a moment and then he moved a little closer, looked out at the gardens. "Which one is your favorite? I like--" He pointed at the one filled with flowers. "And Alec, he liked--" He broke off and when David finally looked at him Michael was watching him.

"I used to wish that--" Michael said, and David shook his head. He didn't want to know about Michael and Alec, didn't want to hear their story. Not now. Not ever. He knew that if he did he wouldn't be able to bear it. Michael nodded and there was understanding in his eyes. After that they didn't talk. They just looked out the window together, at all the perfect worlds laid out before them.

Michael came to see him every day. Every day he'd come and David would wait, a long while at first and then less as loneliness bloomed inside him, before he would turn away from the window and see Michael sitting there, a hesitant smile on his face.

At first Michael only asked if David needed anything, if he'd slept well. Polite questions, soft questions, and the first time David answered him the smile that lit Michael's face cast rainbows around the room, the ice that had coated everything cracking and yielding to the sun because David had never seen anything as lovely as Michael's smile. That day he let Michael take him to the gardens, walked through one laid out with trellises of climbing flowers and soft blue grass blowing in a wind that wasn't real.