Finding Martin

Folly departs the studio and heads back in the general direction she came from, looking and listening and feeling for signs of Martin. She doesn't have a particular destination in mind, because of course she doesn't really know where anything is yet. She just follows her instincts.

She wanders for a while, going back towards the main part of the castle, and eventually, based on the rooms, towards what she expects is the dining area. The kitchen must be somewhere nearby. With the prospect of electricity, it needn't be a separate building.

Kitchen. Yes. Martin just climbed a mountain for jollies, he's sure to be hungry. That must be it.

Eventually she turns a corner and is greeted by a familiar noise: Thelonious' rusty purr.

He's sitting in Martin's lap, with Martin's hand in his neck fur, scratching him. Martin is sitting on the floor of the hallway, his back against the wall, his legs stretched out across it. There are several empty longnecks sitting beside him.

Seeing Folly, he offers her the one he's currently holding, and smiles tightly at her.

She reaches for the bottle, but then she sees his smile; and it tells her everything. She knows what he must be thinking, and it cuts straight to her heart.

"Oh, Martin, I --"

Her hand strays from its path to the bottle and strokes his hair instead. She slides down the wall to sit beside him and smiles comfortingly into his eyes.

"It's okay, sweetie. I told him."

He had opened his mouth to say something, but at her words, he closes it. His eyes close as well, and the breath drains out of him, a breath he probably wasn't intentionally holding.

He slides over, leaning against her.

"I thought--" he says after a moment, then cuts that off. "Never mind what I thought."

Folly smiles and wraps her arms around him.

Martin turns toward her, unintentionally but unceremoniously dumping Thelonious out of his lap. His head is buried in her shoulder, muffling his voice slightly. "Queen of the universe is a hell of a lot to turn down."

Folly runs his fingers through his hair. "We didn't even get that far in the negotiations. Not that it matters. I wouldn't've wanted it even if it'd been offered. I mean, it's nothing compared to what I've already got, y'know?"

Her hand slides to his cheek, caressing him as if he were the most precious thing in the world.

There's a noise that might be a shaky chuckle from the intersection of Folly's shoulder and her neck.

"You know," he says, "my relationships always get into these weird shit things, places where people I love end up making these really hard choices. Me and something, someone else they love, something they can't live without."

He sits up and looks at Folly, his gaze almost frighteningly intense.

"You're the first person who's ever chosen me."

Folly's breath catches in her throat, and her eyes fill with tears of joy and pain. "You're the thing I can't live without," she says quietly. ""You're my other half. How could I give that up?"

Then she leans in very close and whispers, "I love you."

He leans the rest of the way in until their lips touch.

His touch sends electricity rippling from her core to her extremities, so strong he can practically feel her tingle. Folly gives herself over to kissing him, letting everything else fade around her.

Martin's arms slide around Folly, and his mouth against hers, at first tentative, grows passionate. He pulls Folly close against him, heedless of inconvenient elbows and complaining felines.

Folly melts into him, into his kiss, as if trying to blur the line between them. Her hands slide down his back to the hem of his shirt, and then up again, under the shirt, against his bare skin.

There's a fierce, hungry noise that it takes Folly a moment to process as her hand comes into contact with Martin's back. Then he pulls away, breathing hard.

"No," he says. "Not here, not like this."

He closes his eyes again. "But, Christ, I want you."

For a long moment, Folly is too breathless to respond. She presses her cheek to the wall, trying to cool down.

Martin releases her. After a moment, hesitantly, he touches her hair.

Folly smiles, looking giddy and overwhelmed and maybe a little embarrassed. "Yeah. Not here, not right now. 'Cos, y'know, I was supposed to come find you so I could go take the Pattern."

She takes his hand, kisses it, clasps it between hers. "Oh, Martin, I'm just so --" She blinks, and looks into his eyes.

"The two most important, beautiful things ever are both happening at the same time, y'know?"

Martin is smiling, too, a goofy, giddy grin of his own. "Yeah," he says. "I know.

"How long has it been since you ate?" he asks after a moment.

"Ummmm...." Folly's brow furrows and she chews her bottom lip as she thinks. "I ate breakfast, right? But that was a while ago."

"That's good," Martin says. "As long as you're not starving right now. Well, for food, anyway." His goofy grin grows even wider. "When I walked the Rebman Pattern, I didn't walk down the stairs, I swam them. Went down really fast, too soon after a meal. I threw up when I was done."

"Oh... my...." Folly smiles, part sympathy and part amusement as she considers whether throwing up underwater would be better or worse. Worse, she decides. "Right. Note to self. Try not to throw up on the Pattern."

"At least I didn't have witnesses."

Martin strokes Folly's hair again with his fingertips. "Have you thought about where you're gonna go?"

Folly looks thoughtful, then replies, "Somewhere here, I suppose. I mean, I'm gonna need to rest up after, right?"

Her face lights up suddenly. "There's a studio here," she says giddily, "and those couches are just begging to be broken in by having a sweaty musician crash on them."

"Studio? Yeah, this place has electricity--I noticed that in the kitchen. I should have known it would have a studio too. Of course Dad would." Martin lets his hand slide down to Folly's shoulder again.

"I need to go back to Amber pretty quickly. Do you want me to wait for you to have your nap or whatever to do that?"

Folly nods. "If you can. I don't know what my plans are after the Pattern, whether your father will need me here or what." She looks at Martin and grins wickedly. "Well, okay, I know what *one* of my plans is, but it's not yet fleshed out beyond 'not here, not now'...."

Martin meets her grin for grin. "Yeah, that's a key part of the plan. The other thing on my agenda is kicking Aisling's sorry ass, and ideally I need to do that before Dad gets back to Amber. I gotta get that done before he knights me publicly. I don't want my first official action as KC of Card to be a duel with one of the KCs of Ruby. You know?"

Folly nods.

"After that, I believe I am owed a short vacation. Wanna take it with me?"

Folly smiles broadly; any somberness that had crept into her expression at the mention of Aisling is banished.

"I'll give you one guess," she says, giddy once again.

Martin slides his hand the rest of the way down Folly's arm and takes her hand. "Yeah," he says, with a quiet, happy intensity.

"We gotta go find Dad or he's gonna come looking for us."

He pauses, then, and looks uncertain. "How'd he take it?"

"Well, I'm sure it wasn't his top choice of things he wanted to hear from me, but it was mostly okay. Except...." Folly's fingers tighten around his, and she looks suddenly melancholy. "He said it would be bad -- like, metaphysically bad -- for me to have your child. That it's dangerous for the descendants of Oberon to breed. But...."

She squeezes his hand again, in what feels like a steadying gesture. "He also mentioned that you'd need an heir."

Martin sits back against the wall again without relinquishing Folly's hand. His brow furrows, and he gets a set to his jaw that Folly doesn't care for.

"He and I are going to have to talk about that."

Folly gently strokes the back of his hand with her thumb. "Yeah, I thought you might. But, hey, if you've gotta--- If I can't--- I mean, I'd love any child of yours, regardless of who its mother was, y'know?"

"I know you would. But that's not what this is about. State marriage, that's what he's talking about. I won't do that. I said I wouldn't and I won't." Martin fixes Folly with a gaze whose anger is directed somewhere past her. "It's one of the reasons I left Rebma. I wouldn't do it for Grandmother, and I won't do it for Dad. If he wants more heirs, he's gonna have to get them himself."

Folly nods slightly. She continues to stroke the back of his hand, soothingly.

"I have done everything for Amber, Folly. I've lied and cheated and stolen; I've killed for it and almost died for it. I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my immortal life about the things I've had done to me and the things I've done. This is the one thing I won't do, the one thing I can't do."

He stares off into the distance for a moment.

"You know that a state marriage for me would end up tearing us apart, don't you? How could I treat you that way, hide how I feel about you? How could I do that to some poor girl, show her up with you? I can't do that--not to you, not to me, not to her."

Martin turns back to Folly. "You said it would be metaphysically bad for us to have kids. How bad? What kind of bad? Did he say?"

Folly sighs. "I asked, but he said he couldn't explain it in a way that would make sense -- he just knows. That he has to forbid it to prevent tragedy, he said. But he doesn't really know the nature of the tragedy."

Martin looks skeptical.

What he says, after a moment, is: "Riddle me this, then. Grandfather had forgotten more about the universe than Dad ever knew. And he knew me, how I think, how I feel and react, what I'm likely to do, better than anybody else. And he threw Dara at me--you alluded to it yourself once--he threw Paige at me, and he threw you at me."

He looks Folly in the eye again. "He did."

He lets out a long breath that isn't quite a sigh. "If he didn't mean for us to be together, to have kids, if it was universally dangerous or something, why did he keep arranging for me to fall in love with my cousins?"

A stricken look crosses Folly's face. "I - I don't know, sweetie. Why did he marry his own great-granddaughter? I can't make sense of it all. He did forbid his kids to have kids with their siblings, though. Maybe the universe is different now. Maybe now there's too many of us. Maybe there's too many Patterns. Who knows? I don't -- but I want to find out."

She adds, "What I do know is that I trust your father."

"I won't ask you to do anything you don't want to do. If you don't want kids, we won't have them. That's between you and me, though. Your reasons are good enough for me--no matter what they are." His grip tightens on Folly's hand a little.

"The other thing is between me and him, and you don't have to be in the middle of it, okay?"

Folly frowns a little, but she nods.

"What?"

Her expression softens. "You know I want to help if there's any way I can."

Without relinquishing Folly's hand, Martin reaches up to touch Folly's cheek. "I know. But he and I have to figure out how to do whatever we're gonna do. You can't mediate between us. If my--" and he stops abruptly and shuts his mouth. "You can't always be in the middle of our fighting."

Folly tilts her cheek against his hand and nods again, this time with more acceptance.

Martin pulls her hand to his mouth and kisses it.

"I love you," he says, "always."

"And I love you," Folly replies with fierce conviction. She pulls him close in a warm embrace. "Always."