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Entry tags:
Fic: Secret for a Son (Legends of the Fall)
Title: Secret for a Son
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thefrogg
Recipient:gizmonic
Fandom: Legends of the Fall
Pairing: Tristan/Samuel
Warnings: Incest (nongraphic)
Word Count: 1082
Author's Note: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_haiti
Worn fingers eased a brick of parchment and paper, bound in fraying, dark-stained string, out of a leather bag, and passed it over the campfire. The old Indian, One Stab, spoke, voice weak with age and the smoke from the fire, words all but indistinguishable.
Still, the translator managed. "I have this - letters. Many letters. Read them. They are from all of them: Ludlow, Isabelle, Samuel. The whole family. The whole story. It is all written here."
The string was teased apart, letters spilling to the ground; hands rushed to catch them, to ease them back in their proper order as One Stab continued to speak.
Eyes strained to read faded script in the flickering half-light from the fire; ears perked, listening to the words first reciting the letters, then threading around and through, painting vivid the years past. One Stab's voice was monotonous, but the words…the words, they danced, as the flames danced, and sang with the wolves and the stream rushing beneath the cliffs.
The night grew long, the fire fed, and again with deadfall branches of pine and oak and cedar, dry sap sending up sparks of brilliant green, and still One Stab spoke: now of the boys growing strong in the edge of wilderness; now of Samuel and his Susannah, and the war that had forever separated them; now of Tristan and his relentless need for escape from civilization; now of Alfred and his career in politics. And always - always - of the ties of love that bound them together as surely as they were cut asunder.
By the time One Stab spoke of Isabel Two's untimely death, the gathered wood had run out; the last knot of pine glowed a cherry red amid cinders growing cold. Outside the tepee, the stars winked out, one by one by one, as the horizon turned black with coming dawn; inside, One Stab's words took on a life of their own, an energy borne of pride and respect and yes, even love as Tristan's days came to an end.
And then there was silence. A silence, it seemed, that would last forever, as One Stab sat, content in the telling of Tristan's tale, so intertwined with those of his family and those that he had loved.
In that silence, the looks of gratitude and awe and strange understanding, and the mumbled thank yous that spilled past weary lips after, One Stab bent his head and touched the flap of the bag that had held that brick of letters.
As much love, and as much loss, as he had told of that night, and into the wee hours of the morning and nearly to the coming dawn, had remained unspoken, trapped forever behind his lips - there was a letter missing.
One letter, one stained slip of parchment that had once graced his bedside table in the grand old Ludlow homestead, and had long been turned to ash in the hearth, its wispy, skeletal remnants floating up the chimney.
One Stab, old friend, the letter had read in shaky scrawl, ink bleeding through in places. The words sounded clear in One Stab's mind, but remained unspoken.
I cannot speak. I should not, but you, I owe an explanation.
I did not bury Samuel's heart alone. He was more than my brother. I thought you, of all people, might understand.
He belonged to Susannah, and I didn't give a damn about that, or anything else. Had he lived…Hell, who'm I kidding, the only way I would have given him back was to leave.
Like I'm leaving Susannah now.
I'm not what she thinks, and I'm not sorry.
Tristan
So few words, so much love, so much pain bound up in it, and none of it a surprise to One Stab, only a confirmation of what he'd already known, already seen with his own dark eyes.
Known in the return of Samuel's heart, in the odd inexplicable silences in Tristan's accompanying letter that no one else could hear, in the way Tristan fled to ever more peril. Seen in the tears only Tristan could cry, defying the stoic silence both his father and older brother projected even then, and in the hesitant smile he'd given Alfred on the day of his return, as if uncertain of his reception.
In the stiff, reluctant acceptance of Susannah's attentions. Acceptance One Stab knew to be only the desperate grasping at a link to Samuel, to the love he'd been unable to save. That letter, that one missing parchment One Stab had been so careful to destroy utterly, holding it unwaveringly in the flames of his own hearthfire until fingertips stung with heat, and the edges curled and turned black, then to faint cobwebs of ash, was the only evidence of that secret love.
There was no other, and there never would be. Not for those who had listened to the tale One Stab told, now moving about the tepee in preparation for sleep, clumsy and loud with stiff joints from sitting so long, held in rapt attention. Not for those who would read the letters passed to new and cherishing hands, who would never know any of the Ludlows, much less Tristan, the way One Stab had, despite the care and passion with which he'd told their story.
Even One Stab did not know the story, not all of it. He did not move, eyes lit with sparks of red and yellow from the coals. He simply sat in the waning light of the dying fire, and wondered if Tristan and Samuel had had more than shared glances, or if they'd been bold enough to steal what privacy they could, snatch a few kisses, if Samuel had ever managed to be with Tristan the way he'd wanted to with Susannah, or if Tristan had had his way and discovered just how good Samuel had been at fucking.
These things were not to be known, not by anyone, not even One Stab. If by some chance, someone read the letters and whatever tale was told about the Ludlows years after, and suspected, well, it could only be mild speculation. The Ludlows had been good people, hard working and generous; Samuel had been, as the Colonel had said more than once, the best of them. And for One Stab, Tristan had been as a son. One Stab could not let anything damage their memory. Any of them.
One Stab would keep the secret for them. Tristan had counted on it.
Author:
thefrogg Recipient:
gizmonic Fandom: Legends of the Fall
Pairing: Tristan/Samuel
Warnings: Incest (nongraphic)
Word Count: 1082
Author's Note: Written for
help_haiti Worn fingers eased a brick of parchment and paper, bound in fraying, dark-stained string, out of a leather bag, and passed it over the campfire. The old Indian, One Stab, spoke, voice weak with age and the smoke from the fire, words all but indistinguishable.
Still, the translator managed. "I have this - letters. Many letters. Read them. They are from all of them: Ludlow, Isabelle, Samuel. The whole family. The whole story. It is all written here."
The string was teased apart, letters spilling to the ground; hands rushed to catch them, to ease them back in their proper order as One Stab continued to speak.
Eyes strained to read faded script in the flickering half-light from the fire; ears perked, listening to the words first reciting the letters, then threading around and through, painting vivid the years past. One Stab's voice was monotonous, but the words…the words, they danced, as the flames danced, and sang with the wolves and the stream rushing beneath the cliffs.
The night grew long, the fire fed, and again with deadfall branches of pine and oak and cedar, dry sap sending up sparks of brilliant green, and still One Stab spoke: now of the boys growing strong in the edge of wilderness; now of Samuel and his Susannah, and the war that had forever separated them; now of Tristan and his relentless need for escape from civilization; now of Alfred and his career in politics. And always - always - of the ties of love that bound them together as surely as they were cut asunder.
By the time One Stab spoke of Isabel Two's untimely death, the gathered wood had run out; the last knot of pine glowed a cherry red amid cinders growing cold. Outside the tepee, the stars winked out, one by one by one, as the horizon turned black with coming dawn; inside, One Stab's words took on a life of their own, an energy borne of pride and respect and yes, even love as Tristan's days came to an end.
And then there was silence. A silence, it seemed, that would last forever, as One Stab sat, content in the telling of Tristan's tale, so intertwined with those of his family and those that he had loved.
In that silence, the looks of gratitude and awe and strange understanding, and the mumbled thank yous that spilled past weary lips after, One Stab bent his head and touched the flap of the bag that had held that brick of letters.
As much love, and as much loss, as he had told of that night, and into the wee hours of the morning and nearly to the coming dawn, had remained unspoken, trapped forever behind his lips - there was a letter missing.
One letter, one stained slip of parchment that had once graced his bedside table in the grand old Ludlow homestead, and had long been turned to ash in the hearth, its wispy, skeletal remnants floating up the chimney.
One Stab, old friend, the letter had read in shaky scrawl, ink bleeding through in places. The words sounded clear in One Stab's mind, but remained unspoken.
I cannot speak. I should not, but you, I owe an explanation.
I did not bury Samuel's heart alone. He was more than my brother. I thought you, of all people, might understand.
He belonged to Susannah, and I didn't give a damn about that, or anything else. Had he lived…Hell, who'm I kidding, the only way I would have given him back was to leave.
Like I'm leaving Susannah now.
I'm not what she thinks, and I'm not sorry.
Tristan
So few words, so much love, so much pain bound up in it, and none of it a surprise to One Stab, only a confirmation of what he'd already known, already seen with his own dark eyes.
Known in the return of Samuel's heart, in the odd inexplicable silences in Tristan's accompanying letter that no one else could hear, in the way Tristan fled to ever more peril. Seen in the tears only Tristan could cry, defying the stoic silence both his father and older brother projected even then, and in the hesitant smile he'd given Alfred on the day of his return, as if uncertain of his reception.
In the stiff, reluctant acceptance of Susannah's attentions. Acceptance One Stab knew to be only the desperate grasping at a link to Samuel, to the love he'd been unable to save. That letter, that one missing parchment One Stab had been so careful to destroy utterly, holding it unwaveringly in the flames of his own hearthfire until fingertips stung with heat, and the edges curled and turned black, then to faint cobwebs of ash, was the only evidence of that secret love.
There was no other, and there never would be. Not for those who had listened to the tale One Stab told, now moving about the tepee in preparation for sleep, clumsy and loud with stiff joints from sitting so long, held in rapt attention. Not for those who would read the letters passed to new and cherishing hands, who would never know any of the Ludlows, much less Tristan, the way One Stab had, despite the care and passion with which he'd told their story.
Even One Stab did not know the story, not all of it. He did not move, eyes lit with sparks of red and yellow from the coals. He simply sat in the waning light of the dying fire, and wondered if Tristan and Samuel had had more than shared glances, or if they'd been bold enough to steal what privacy they could, snatch a few kisses, if Samuel had ever managed to be with Tristan the way he'd wanted to with Susannah, or if Tristan had had his way and discovered just how good Samuel had been at fucking.
These things were not to be known, not by anyone, not even One Stab. If by some chance, someone read the letters and whatever tale was told about the Ludlows years after, and suspected, well, it could only be mild speculation. The Ludlows had been good people, hard working and generous; Samuel had been, as the Colonel had said more than once, the best of them. And for One Stab, Tristan had been as a son. One Stab could not let anything damage their memory. Any of them.
One Stab would keep the secret for them. Tristan had counted on it.