Beginning, Section II
Jump to new as of July 10, 2000
Jump to new as of July 12, 2000
Jump to new as of July 14, 2000
XI or All We Have is 'Yesterday'
"Felipe," she called as he reached the end of the hall still reeling from the blow. G-d he loved the way she said his name, her honeyed voice and the lilting English accent made his knees go weak. He had to leave to get out of here, she's MARRIED yet none of that mattered any longer, for her voice had transfixed him to this spot, he couldn't breathe let alone walk out the door, away from her...
"Felipe?" she called again, concern tingeing her voice.
"Yes, Aali?" he asked as he slowly regained use of his legs and managed to walk towards the kitchen. Oh, he loved being able to say her name once more, it veritably danced on the tip of his tongue. Aali...he'd dreamt about the day he'd be close enough to call her name again...
"I made some tea," she said with a small smile as he entered the kitchen, her hair pulled back in a loose chignon, some wet wisps still clinging to her face.
Somehow Felipe found his voice again, "I like milk and-"
"a teaspoon of sugar," she completed with a shy smile, then looking up and catching his eye, "I remember."
Felipe's heart skipped a beat, or several...he wasn't counting anymore.
"Could you put some music on?" she asked as he wandered towards the CD player. He took one from a case and slipped it into the drive. Aali immediately recognized the album, The Beatles CD they had listened to on the drive up to Bath so many years ago. Nostaligic tears stung her eyes, "I see you remembered as well" she couldn't resist saying. He looked at with a gaze that struck a cord deep within her.
"How could I forget." He almost whispered as he took the proffered tea. A pained look crossed his face, "I saw the pictures in the hall, is that your husband?" trying desperately not to look too anxious.
"Was. Was my husband, he and my daughter Maria died two years ago in a freak car-accident on the side of the mountain." As she spoke her face stiffened and turned to the detached mask that had covered her features all those years ago the night of their first date.
Felipe felt something inside of him crumble, he ached for Aali, shouldering that grief, alone in this very cottage. For all that he'd ever truly desired was her complete happiness, with or without him; he loved her that much; her pain was his as well.
"You must remember Charles," she said in a faraway voice as if retelling some story with no connection to her.
"You knew him before...before you met me?" he asked a little pained.
"Oh, I've known him since I was fifteen. Remember my sister Mary?" he nodded affirmatively, "she was two years older than me, the oldest of all my siblings. She went off to Columbia University when she was seventeen. Well the first night she was there, the people in the dorm room next to her decided to have a party...Mary was tired and wanted to sleep. Needless, to say there was some discordance between the two so Mary gets out of bed in her pajamas and pink bunny slippers marches next door, into the room and soundly scolds her neighbors for being so loud, in the process she knocks over this young man. Charles always said she knocked him head over heels in more than one way and they eventually hit it off."
"Charles, the same Charles who was Mary's fiance?" asked Felipe not a little bewildered.
"The one and the same." She nodded, "They were planning on getting married the summer after I got back from Africa...I was only in Algeria for a few days when I got a telegram from home telling me not to worry and come home immediately...as if one can do both of those at the same time." She said with the most sorrowful chuckle he'd ever heard.
Her detached mask was slowly melting away to bring back some of the Aali of old. He could see his beloved peek out from behind the sorrow occasionally as she became more and more lost in her memories.
"My sister had been diagnosed with end-stage Lymphoma and she was dying." She said it so simply that there was no need for tears, as if they had already been shed a hundred times over and now all that remained was the emptiness that her sister had left behind...
"My family and Charles, we took her to virtually every specialists...finally ending up at Sloan-Kettering in New York, I quit school and stayed with her while she was in the hospital. The prognosis was so bleak...we had almost given up hope but...but Mary would not go quietly into the night...she fought, she fought unlike anything anyone had seen before. The ironic thing was that before her diagnosis she had been a bit of a hypochondriac, but afterwards she didn't complain- not once."
Felipe was moved by the devotion and admiration that resonated in Aali's voice.
"The closest thing to a complaint I ever heard was when I was reading to her, for the chemo made her so weak she couldn't even sit up in bed to hold a book. I was asking if she was feeling sick and she said, 'you know the worst thing about sick...you treating me as if I were a china doll...come on Aali-paali, I'll be fine.' She said this with a feeding tube and an oxygen line through her nose; that was my sister. She was the eternal optimist until the day she died, she did it mostly for us, so that we wouldn't dwell on it more than was possible."
A small tear had unconsciously slipped from Aali's eye and down her cheek. Felipe had the strongest urge to kiss away the tear and take her into his arm's and stave off her troubles for the rest of time. Years ago he had vowed to ensure nothing hurt her again, and he had failed for his Aali stood before him tottering on the edge of true despair.
"I transferred to Columbia in the mean time and soon after my whole family moved up North. It was just too difficult for them to stay in Houston where the memories seemed seeped in the very Earth. Poor Charles was an orphaned at a young age and didn't have any family in the states. So he took to spending large amounts of time with us. Not that my family would have had it any other way, they positively adored Charles."
Felipe felt envy seep through his veins, for the admiration with which Aali spoke Charles' name was like a clamp around his very heart.
"A few years passed in this stalemate, Charles and I had become rather close...we rather became each other's mutual consolation. He had become one of my closest friends and when my sister Lizzy wanted to get married...well, there's a custom that a younger sister should never marry before her older sister...and my parents were worried about Charles and I...so we just got married. He was transferred to the Bath, and I moved my practice here as well. In time we got used to one and another, and slowly he became my dearest friend on this Earth."
Felipe swallowed, half jealous, half angry at himself for being jealous of a dead man.
"I loved him, I never fell in love with him, but I loved him dearly. As for Charles, he felt very much the same...sometimes he would look at me with this look that made me realize that although he was consciously speaking to Aali, his heart told him he was with his Mary. I could never be to him what Mary had been; they where incredible together. They would argue for hours over some world issue and love each other all the more better for it. You have to understand that my sister was the most amazing person. She was all that is wonderful that I'm not: beautiful...and passionate...exciting...stubborn as a mule...vivacious...she could light up a room even when sick...she was incredible."
"Charles and I were relatively happy, I mean we had our friendship, and we soon became each other's mutual consolation. And then Maria was born...she was a treasure, I mean one cannot say enough about their first child. She was so much like her aunt, so inquisitive and curious, so happy and bright...she was our sunshine. For me she was a reason to get out of bed in the mornings and for Charles...she brought back his smile. The deadened exterior began to live once more. She was our everything."
She paused, realizing that Felipe was there. The empathy with which he looked at her tugged at her heart.
"Well, enough of me...tell me about you and how you met Louisa...and..." her voice was choking up for Felipe ignored her questions and went straight towards her, enveloping her in his arms.
The loniless and the longing that had encompassed her every breath since walking out on Felipe seven years ago, slowly faded away as she was held by him.
Felipe's whole world had seemed disordered, but now with his Aali in his arms, nothing could ever go wrong again.
And then a song came on that both of them knew...
Yesterday.
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as if they're here to stay.
Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Feeling the satiny smoothness of her skin Felipe's thoughts were drawn back to the day they first met. The first time she graced him with her touch. The first time he held her in his arm.
Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be.
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh Yesterday, came suddenly.
The man of old and the man of knew. Sure the 23-year-old Felipe had been brash, immature, and naieve but he had truly been Felipe. The man he was know was not Felipe, he was Crown Prince Felipe de la Guerva and Felipe detested him...
Why She,
Had to go, I don't know she wouldn't say
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for Yesterday.
The unspoken question hung in the air between them like a fog. The answer to the simplest questions, why, had haunted him for seven years.
Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh I believe in Yesterday.
He swallowed thickly, as he mumbled, barely audible, "and they say you can't fit a man's life into a single song."
Aali somehow managed to extract herself from his embrace. She closed her eyes as she spoke, trying to forget that all that she wanted, needed stood before her. Trying to forget that the only man she had ever loved was only a few inches away. Trying to forget his touch. Trying desperately to bring the words that would not come.
"It stopped raining." She said her eyes still closed.
"Aali...I wanted to."
"your people must be waiting for you."
"Listen to me, Aali."
"they must be worried, you should probably get going." She said still not looking at him.
Felipe looked down at the pained expression on her face, I won't allow her to be hurt anymore, especially not by me
"Yes, I suppose it's for the best...if I get going."
"Yes it probably is." She said as her lips betrayed her heart, she longed for him to stay...for him to refuse to go, but she knew he'd given up on her long ago.
"I guess I'll be going then," he said as he glanced down at the clothes.
"keep them," she said swallowing thickly, half willing him to be gone, half wishing him to never leave her again.
Felipe picked up his clothes, and slipped his feet into his shoes
Aali walked to the door, opening it in silence. Felipe took one long, lasting look at her before making his way out. There where no words spoken, there was no need; Felipe disappeared into the night...
XII or rather The Kiss
As Aali closed the door, her heart sank, and her knees gave way. She had only felt this way once before- the day she'd slipped the letter beneath the door- so this is what shooting yourself in the foot feels like she thought with an almost sardonic chuckle. She sat slumped on the floor, tears streaming forth like a river unleashed.
The door opened.
Aali rose, desperately wiping the tears from her face and fighting to keep the joy from her countenance.
There he was.
"I left my keys." He muttered lamely, brightening at her tears could it be that she cares for me
"No, you didn't I saw you slip them in your pocket," she said her blithe laugh breaking through the tears.
"Oh," he said momentarily disconcerted.
"Well,"
"I guess I just forgot this then." He said as he came towards and swept her into his arms, kissing her with all the force that laid dormant all these years. Her resistance and her resolve melted away and all that remained was the fact that she was kissing the only man she ever loved. The outside world and indeed Prince Felipe de la Guerva and the Widow fell away; and all that was left Aali and Felipe.
He kissed the nape of her neck and she let out a small gasp as her hands roved about his back, feeling the every contour of his muscle, soaking in the warmth of his skin beneath the t-shirt. She grabbed his shirt with both hands and pinned him gently against the wall. His one hand stroked her hair that had come undone from the chignon and now fell in a loose shining cape down her back. The other fingered her back, sending a pleasant tremor down Aali's spine.
She caressed the small wrinkle his mouth made as he smiled, the small cleft in his chin, his furrowed brow that had somehow become smooth once more.
They stood entwined in their embrace until Felipe brought his hand to her face, gently stroking her cheek with his finger, it was then that the coolness of metal gently brushed her skin. Aali pulled back, not a little hesitantly, "This won't work Felipe."
"What?" he asked disoriented as he fell from the dizzyingly happy heights the kiss had launched to.
"This," she said waving her hands between them, "us. I can't be your Mistress Felipe."
Felipe looked for the words to come.
"For that is all that I can be. I will not be your Camilla Parker-Bowles. I can't go from being the widow of a man I respected to someone's mistress. Even if that someone is a king, even if that someone is the man that I lo..." she said stopping abruptly.
"The man that you what Aali?" he asked pleadingly as he held her arms. She turned away from him.
"It doesn't matter what I want, what I desire...all that matters is what I know..."
"How could you think I would ask you to be my Mistress, if you recall seven years ago I asked you to become my WIFE."
"That was seven years ago, that was before Louisa. May I remind you that you're engaged."
"I wasn't engaged then. Yet, you broke it off, why?" he said his eyes brightening with unshed tears as he held tightly.
She took his hand and fingered the Signet ring with the Royal Crest, "this is why Felipe. This. You have no concept of the responsibilities your crown places upon you; especially the necessity of your alliance with someone of your own standing."
The words fell from Aali's mouth with ease. For this was her mantra, her entire belief system. Those few words strung together that had fallen from the Queen's mouth so many years ago had etched themselves into her mind.
That statement was the foundation upon what her entire life was built. More important it was not merely the justification for her actions, but it's impetuous. It reminded her that she had done what was best for Felipe. It reminded her that she had not broken her own heart in vain.
The words that fell from Aali's mouth were haunting...he'd heard them before, yet he couldn't seem to place them...Yet, this was not his primary concern at the moment. He was losing the most important battle of his life.
"So all that I can be to you is your Mistress. And that is something I cannot bring myself to do." She said as the tears that had threatened to flow began to slowly trickle down her cheeks. "So all I can ask you to do is to leave Felipe," her voice ragged from the sobs that welled at her throat, "please just leave."
Felipe opened his mouth to speak...
Conclusion : The Reunion
"I'm not going to let you walk out on me again." Said Felipe with resoluteness etched in his every feature. "I made that mistake seven years ago and I'm not going to make it again."
He took the signet ring from his finger, "is this all that keeps us apart...is this what has squelched my heart for seven years." He said throwing the ring across the room, "I can't understand why it is su..." he stopped as the fog seemingly lifted from his mind and everything become crystal clear...his mother's urgent trip...his being called to Barcelona...Aali's words....and then the puzzle came together and the picture it created made him sick.
His countenance softened as he came forward and took Aali's hand in his, "Aali...when did my mother come visit you?"
Aali started, amazed at his perception, "your mother...she never...I..."
"Aali, please just tell me." He said as he held out his hand to her.
"The night you proposed to me....she made me realize that we could never be...one." she said in a small whisper, "she told me if we married you would be forced to relinquish the crown and your people, and I realized that that would make you unhappy. I couldn't bear the thought of being the only thing standing in the way of your happiness, and though it tore at me, I removed myself from your path." She said this with such a look of sorrow that it ripped his heart in two.
He gathered her into his arms, "oh beautiful, wonderful woman...how could you believe that...oh I have been a fool." He looked down at her, his own eyes filling with tears, "how could you stand between me and happiness, YOU are my happiness, you are my entire life. Being without you is like being without air...the only thing that has kept me going these past seven years has been my memories of you. This," he motioned to where the ring once was, "is an occupation...choosing between you and it is like choosing between living and moving to a different company."
Her face radiated a look of pure joy.
"I can't believe that you put yourself through this, through all of this...for me," he said looking upon her with a reverence, "what in God's name did I do to deserve you?" He said as he stroked her cheek, "Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. Louisa was my mother's doing; If my mother insists that I give up the crown then so be it. I always thought Eduardo would make the better King" he said with a small smile.
"Then you would give it up, with no regrets...but your people, your family..." she was silenced with a finger to her lips.
"I have lived seven years with the monarchy and seven years without you. Rest assured that each moment was of the most acute agony. For the palace holds no grandeur without you by my side, the grounds no wonder without your hand in mine. Wherever you are, is Home for me."
"I love you Felipe, I never stopped, not for a moment. Every time I tried to tuck it away in some corner of my heart the memories of that blissful summer and the knowlege that I had been it's undoing came fresh to my mind." She said as she kissed his hand and brought it up to her face, holding it there.
"I have something here for you," he said as he drew the chain from beneath his shirt and produced a small velvet bag attached to its end. A bag small enough for only one thing...
Aali drew a sharp intake of breath, "you kept it all these years?" she said scarcely believing her eyes as he withdrew the Star of the Armada.
"Close to my heart and my memories of you," he said with a smile, "it was either that or keeping it taped to the inside of my pocket." To which he received the sound of his beloved's tinkling laughter. "Aaliyah will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife, if not the Queen of Spain." He said with a gleam in his eyes.
"do you even need to ask" she said as her eyes sparkled, and she nodded her head, and Felipe returned the ring to it's rightful place on her finger.
"Now all I have to do is keep you away from my mother" he said with a mock sigh, "I love you Aali."
"and I you Felipe, never doubt that." She said with a smile as she brought down his head for a long deep, kiss that sealed the pact their hearts had made.
It was an End. It was a beginning. More than anything it was a reunion, not simply of mind and body but of soul. Two souls that Fate herself had entwined and Circumstance had ripped apart, now stood together reunited by True love at last.
Epilogue
Yet, the situation was not so easily rectified, for the very people Aali had implored Felipe not to abandon, now showed their fierce loyalty to their Crown Prince. When the entirety of the affair was revealed (courtesy of our dear Eduardo via an anonymous call to the press) the people's romantic passions flared and soon school children wore t-shirts with "Viva Felipe" and the walls of every street corner were adorned with slogans extolling their former monarch. Civil unrest grew to the point where protests spilled into the street and the press lambasted the Queen daily. It only quieted as Felipe and Aali made a small statement thanking the people for their support and asking them for their patience.
Well what was the Queen to do? Public opinion was so decidedly in favor of the happy couple that she had no choice but to reinstate Felipe's title. After which Eduardo was only to happy to abdicate the throne and return it to his dearest elder brother. The wedding followed quickly on the heels of Felipe's coronation creating a celebration from which the Nation is still recovering.
Her beauty, quick conversion to Catholicism, vivacity, and not to mention proficient Spanish soon endeared our dear Aali to the hearts of the Spanish populace. It was said that she soon surpassed her shining husband in popularity and became a romantic and popular icon for her works of charity.
They had two children who grew basking in the glow of their parent's healthy love. As for Felipe and Aali their passion for one another never cooled and the love that was born of chance and divided by adversity only grew stronger with time...