white_flowers | (no subject)

After all that, the woman once known as Blodwen Rowlands lives. Seeing her, Bran turns away, almost angrily, from the men and women fighting on the side of Light.

(I would have killed her. And murder is a sin, boy.)

(I wish you had. I wish I had.)

(Do not say that.)

(Oh, it is all right. I could not have killed her anyway. Immortal, and all that.)

Bran takes four steps towards the woman and stops, staring at her departing back.

It may well have been the sound of footsteps on the ground behind her that caught her attention, for in truth she has not yet gone far.

In any case, she hesitates, then turns.

Blue eyes meet golden ones. She says nothing.

The senses that Bran uses to recognize Light and Darkness, perhaps damaged in the last strike against the Dark, say nothing at all about the woman before him. Bran's mortal eyes tell him that something has happened to her, at any rate. She is Blodwen Rowlands, and she is not.

Flatly, without very much lilt in his voice at all, Bran says, "Now what?"

Perched in a tree ahead of her, apparently quite by coincidence, is Peach.

She's absorbed in chewing on a branch, and makes no move to attract Blodwen's attention. Still, scarlet macaws aren't really designed for camouflage.

"A good question it is, I do suppose," she replies.

The light soft voice, at least, is familiar.

"Do you mean to kill me, then?"

No, and so they are not.

Something twists in her face as she sees the bird, and she turns her steps as though to pass by to the side.

"Going somewhere?"

Still busy with the branch, not looking up.

"Observant, you are," she says-- but she does stop moving.

Bran has a list in his head of things the White Rider has done. It is not short.

At the top of the list, and again at the bottom, Bran thinks of Guinevere, alone with an infant in Owen Davies' cottage when Caradog Prichard came to the door. Once he dreamed of her with her black hair blown in knots and her gown falling off of her shoulder.

Guinevere has gone on to the silver-circled castle at the back of the North Wind. She does not need Bran to avenge her now.

Bran wraps his right hand around Caliburn's hilt. His palm burns. He lets go of the sword.

"No."

"Some things change, like you said."

And they do change, don't they?

"A pity, that."

Each soft word is bitterly clear.

She turns from him once more, evidently meaning to start away again.

She flinches.

"So they do."

Peach doesn't appear to notice.

"So where you going?"

Silence, for several seconds.

"I don't know."

"I cannot say I feel sorry for you," Bran says to her back.

"'S usually good to have an idea."

Still gnawing. A piece of bark falls to the ground.

"So helpful you are."

Flatly.

"We can't do much," she says, "if people don't accept help when it's offered."

"I would not expect you to feel anything for me," she snaps back at him, whirling to face him once more. "Clear enough you made it, long ago."

"And I do not want your pity."

"Oh, and were you offering, dear?"

Bitterly said, as she looks up at the bird.

"Well," and she snaps off a small twig, "I did tell you I'd help you get out of here, a long time ago, if you wanted to try not doing anything dumb."

Coldly, "Good."

Bran turns away, walking shakily towards the bar. The fact that he dares have his back to her speaks of his disdain for the woman who was once the White Rider.

"Why, and here I thought that was no longer an option, not after what happened next," she snaps back.

"For a while it wasn't," she says thoughtfully. "Now it's different, maybe. I said I wouldn't give you a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. It wouldn't be that now."

She shakes her head and looks up at Blodwen. "But all that depends what you want."

There is no sound from behind him.

She watches in silence as he leaves, his white hair gleaming in the twilight as brightly as the hilt of the sword at his side.

Only after the door of the bar shuts behind him does she turn away again, heading into the deepening shadows of the forest.

Her laughter is sudden and shocking and ragged.

"What I want? How can you say that matters now, after what has happened? I don't even know who I am!"

Peach suddenly wishes Cordelia were here.

"It always matters," she says, after a long pause. "What else would? What do you want?"

"Not to be like this!" she cries out, and then turns away from Peach so that the bird cannot see her face.

...Yeah, really wishing Cordelia were here.

"Well, I can't do that," she says. Not just won't: can't, though she doesn't sound especially sorry about it.

"You're on your own with that one. What I can do is I can try and help you get someplace where you can figure out who you are - or we can head back to the bar and I can get you a drink."

She stands with her back to Peach, and her breathing is harsh and unsteady as she looks blindly out across the grass.

"Why?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she asks innocently. "I'd put it on Carl's tab, anyway."

She whirls on the bird, and the high light voice cracks,

"Don't! Don't -- you -- don't mock me!"

There is nothing of that otherworldly coldness in it now, but something lies beneath her tone, something of desperation and despair.

"Not you. Not you."

Peach blinks, and opens her beak and shuts it again, and looks down.

"We don't need reasons to help somebody," she says after an awkward pause, and it's uncertain just who 'we' is. "Only need a reason not to."

She claws at the branch and looks at Blodwen again. "So I'll do what I said, if you want, unless you wanna give me a reason I shouldn't."

She shakes her head, wordlessly.

Tears well in the blue eyes, and she blinks them back, refusing to let them fall.

Peach is silent.

After a moment she leans down and starts gnawing at the branch again, not saying anything, waiting to see if Blodwen will speak.

She looks past the bird into the darkness of the forest beyond, where she has spent so much time.

That, of course, was before.

The silence has almost developed a weight of its own by the time she speaks again.

"I don't know where to begin. Or how. Or-- or even why I should."

She looks back at Peach.

"Don't you understand? There's nothing. He made me nothing."

"Wow," Peach says after a minute, "you're crazy, lady. I'm not mocking you," she goes on quickly. "But - seriously, I know a lot of people who aren't Riders of the Dark and none of them are nothing."

She gestures with one wing toward the bar. "Bunch of 'em over there. You could talk to them and figure out why they do things, if you wanna go get that drink."

She shakes her head, quickly.

"No-- no."

There's a silence, and then she adds softly,

"Not yet. I can't. Not yet."

"All right," Peach agrees amicably. "Well, I'll owe you a drink when I see you in the bar again, eh?"

"All right," she says, and the light musical voice is very soft indeed.

She hesitates, almost as if she might say something else--

(they took the blossoms - and produced from them a maiden - and gave her a name)

--but in the end she merely shakes her head in helpless silence and goes on her way, walking through the edge of the forest.

(I will not slay thee, but I will do unto thee worse than that.)

Lleu never saw her again, after she tried to kill him. After Gwydion avenged him.

"Go well," Peach says - in Welsh, not in the Speech. She drops off the branch and glides quietly back to the bar.