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I do not know when first I began to understand my own heart and its unfamiliar sense of yearning.
As a girl growing up in the hustle and bustle of Alexandria Castle, admiring the dashing uniforms, sharp blades and step-perfect drills that General Beatrix and her squad displayed to the royal family and to all the kingdom; wishing I could have more chances to speak to them about the distant places they were able to visit, more chances to practice in secret the drills I had witnessed; following Beatrix like a puppy called to heel at every opportunity … it had never occurred to me that she might ever act against me in any way, nor that we might have a chance to be anything other than soldier and royal charge.
That said … I should never have believed the former possible of my mother, either, before I witnessed her orders of alarming destruction; before the death of my father changed her; before she met Kuja.
Whatever else Beatrix may have been—so very, very many things to so many different people—the one thing she had always been, for all of my life, was Mother's. The Queen's oath-sworn general, leader of all but a dozen of the kingdom's forces in the name of Queen Brahne.
The queen's private judge, jury and executioner, too—if only I had known that.
I'm uncertain whether I wish that I had known it before I ran away. Whether I had known that if I ran away she might be ordered to find and to kill me.
I think, somewhere deep down inside, I had wanted her to chase after me, to follow me to the ends of the earth—I had wanted to be certain whether she would do it, if given the choice. Had wanted a chance to find out whether we could ever be more than we were then.
Had I dared, I might have asked her to come with me from the first. I confess that I have always wanted her attention—though not, perhaps, in the way in which I got it, under my mother’s orders.
I should have known she was never mine. Not truly, not then at least.
After all, whatever belongs to the girl who proves cuckoo, not canary?
Alexandria was the canary's nest. Queen Brahne was Garnet's mother, King Lorenzo Garnet's father—and my name is not even my own. Princess Garnet, I am not—nor ever should have been, had it not been for a madman's wilful destruction and a desperate escape through a storm-tossed sea. That little girl is long since dead.
A canary in a mineshaft, the first sign of danger, of something not quite as it ought to be. I cannot help but wonder how many people knew that little princess; who knew when she died, and who had the chance to mourn for her. My parents—her parents—could not even own to their own populace, let alone to the wider world, that their precious daughter had left them forever.
Where is she buried, that tiny Princess Garnet? Is there anyone left save dear old Dr Tot who remembers that she existed—that she and I were not the same child?
Even Beatrix, loyal almost to a fault and so determined, so willing to do almost anything for her frightening queen, and with a frightening reputation all of her own, was not yet such an integral part of the life of Alexandria Castle when all this began, so long ago. She would not have known.
In an odd way that warms my heart to her even further, to know for a certainty that she was not a part of this conspiracy a decade in the making, that hid my true identity from me at the same time it hid the ultimate fate of my almost-sister, the girl who might have been me had she lived.
Sometimes I think I am in the wrong place, that perhaps I should not stand forth as Queen of Alexandria … but there is no one of the royal line remaining alive who could rule in my place, if I did not. The people love me, thankfully, and have had ten years to know me as their princess and love me as the adult woman I have become (am still becoming). It will have to be enough that I know and love my country and am willing to serve it with the best of my heart, and that the leading general of the kingdom's army is willing to stand by me and serve me as her queen. (Perhaps in other ways, also.)
I'm not sure I could do this alone, with or without my voice.
I'm grateful to consider the idea that I may not be required to do so.
Beatrix has already done so much to help me, been so much to me. Her support (and that of my surviving friends) has been unfailing. I am grateful.
That doesn’t, however, mean we are all I wished we could be. But now, for the first time, I can almost bring myself to believe that I might not be alone in my feelings.
I cannot be the one to speak first: that she serves me formally would require her to do my will whether or not she felt as I feel. I have no choice: I must wait for her to come to me, if she wills it so.
That does not, however, mean I cannot try to coax her to talk. If our proximity affects me so strongly, I can't believe it has no effect on her.
Tell me, Beatrix ... would you offer to stay, if you knew that I wanted it of you? Will you? … I wish I could ask.
¤~¤~¤
I was barely older than my—our—new queen now is, when I attained the rank of general to the army of Alexandria. The whole world was bound to such dramatic change when that year arrived: to my eyes a change without warning, and one not wholly welcomed.
Plague took my mother and father, leaving me to throw my whole heart into the life of the sword, with little attention left for anything else. I had been talented before, to attain my rank at eighteen, but from then on it became an obsession. I could not even say goodbye to my family, kept close-confined with all other inhabitants in and visitors to the castle whilst the sickness ravaged our kingdom. I buried my pain in silence, instead.
Our king and queen behaved, if truth be told, rather strangely during those months; no one could question royalty, however, and many of us believed what we saw and heard to be fever dreams or their artefacts ... at the time.
I devoted myself entirely to the protection and guardianship of the royal family, thereafter—particularly Queen Brahne and Princess Garnet, who before many years had passed became the only surviving members of that family, with the death of their husband and father—and to training the soldiers of the Alexandrian royal guard to my own high standard with the blade, wherever I could.
I was drawn to young Garnet, who has always seemed so much older than her years in certain ways and in others so naïve ... but I could not close the distance between us, dared not do so. She was too young, and I there to watch over her, not to be her best friend … or to fall in love with her.
But how could I help it, in the end, watching her grow from a secretly terrified princess—how I wished she would have thought to come to me, to ask for my help, before she'd resorted to running away to get the help of her Uncle Cid, Regent of Lindblum, inadvertently offering her mother an excuse to arrest her—into the poised and outwardly so tranquil Queen she became?
I confess that I feared for her sanity when she lost her voice. I almost permitted my fear to rule my judgement, to hold me back from her side when she needed me most, to hold myself back and manage all the tasks in the castle that she could not handle without speech … almost.
I am so grateful I did not; that I remained with her when she needed me most. It gave me a glimpse of the woman she conceals beneath the mask of her crown—and a glimpse of her wishes, whether voiced or unvoiced.
I had not guessed that she might feel as I do. To see her dark eyes burning bright with how close we are when she steps toward me, watching my face, with her chin tilted up as though for a kiss, and her breath both quick and shallow, without exertion to offer another explanation—ah, my dear.
Do not worry, my girl. I won't leave you.
How could I even think to do so, knowing all that I know, with my heart leaning ever nearer hers and that tentative, shy affection in her beautiful face?
I keep her secrets; I always will. I hope that someday I'll be able to make her understand that I do not need to be one of them, hidden in her heart and in her eyes as a love she dare not acknowledge—that I desire a place at her side more than she has ever known, in private with Dagger just as willingly as in public with Queen Garnet.
I cannot imagine objecting to anything she might desire of me, however, even if she chose to ask me to remain as her own private secret. I would do it; just as I would have left Alexandria to find her after learning the truth of Brahne’s intentions, to protect her, believing I left for the sake of my country. Now I know better: that my Dagger, my Garnet, my queen, means more to me than even our country. We will rebuild together, day by day: her city, and her heart, both so damaged by all that has happened. I will hold her together as best I can, for as long as she needs it.
And I will stay. For you, dearest girl ... of course I will stay. How could I leave you?
~fin