saltwater tears - four ♛
18+ MINORS DNI
I do not give permission for my stories to be resposted on other platforms or translated in other languages. If you see my story anywhere, please be sure to contact me.
pairings: king!steve x female oc, peggy x steve
warnings: angst, pregnancy denial, mentions of poision, mentions of autopsy, implications of drugging, swearing, mentions of mysterious sickness, brief mentions and allusions to prostitution, mentions of alcohol consumption
previous - next
word count: 3.8K
please read the warnings carefully. you are responsible for the media you consume
all mistakes are my own!
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
Sobering up was not part of Lilli’s plan once the comfort of the floor crept from her bones.
Nor were the belligerent requests she threw in Dr. Banner’s direction. Dried tears and an unsettled nausea remained as she blabbered on about the impossibilities of the combination that was her and pregnancy.
It was unlikely. The many teas she’d gone through ensured that. As troubling as many of their tastes and consistencies were, it was worth not having to concern herself with this.
This paralyzing fear that sent a rake of chills down her spine. The kind that had her skull pounding with residual discomfort.
Her mother knew three months after, her sister nearing on four months. Queen Virginia mentioned not having realized she was with child around the same time. It seemed to be a common occurrence.
How could she be so sure after just a month? Four weeks was hasty. She barely had time to realize her menstrual was missing, even consider pregnancy as a factor in such things.
With madness making a home in the castle as of late, it was easy to brush off her symptoms. But being in denial was an easier task. The physician pushed his glasses higher on his nose, eyes lowered to the ground. The air was ripe with the sweet aroma of the flower and the sourness of her disdain.
Lilli shook her head, wiping at her cheeks. “It can’t be possible.” “This method is the most exact compared to cheaper methods,” Dr. Banner rationalized, nimble fingers itching to latch onto his leather bag. “If it bloomed, Your Majesty, you have your answer.”
“No,” she whimpered. Her hands came to her chest, the silent threat of shrinking in on herself looming the more she continued processing the illuminating sight before her. “Too soon. It’s too soon.”
The petals glimmered and shook, fluttering as if to flaunt her reality mercilessly before her tear-brimmed eyes.
She mumbled aloud to herself, trekking from wall to wall as she silently considered any options she had. The clouds blanketed the glimmering sun, a grim grey reflecting in the expansive chambers. The darkness mocked her, unrelenting in its quest for complete control over her domineering thoughts.
The physician remained silent, awkwardly pushing at his spectacles as he gathered his belongings. His brows were high on his forehead, furrowed as he pulled his lips tight. The unease rolled off him in unwavering currents. But Lili could hardly see past her own fear to notice.
“Please, Dr. Banner,” she came towards him, fingers twisting in the fabric of his velvety coat. He blinked at her owlishly, a flicker of pity making a home on her face and mounting the two in that spot. “I’ll pay you ten times the previous amount. Twenty times—”
“Your Majesty, please. I must get going. Queen May’s body examination is within the hour.”
The voice rang in Lilli’s ears, a distant miracle that sang the sweet song of release she was seeking out. It barely registered whose voice it was until she saw the nervous hand gestures come from a head of auburn.
“I can retrieve another solution within a fortnight,” Wanda offered, sincerity dripping in the depths of crystalline jade. “From Dr. Cho, the young physician who just traveled here.”
A hush fell in the room, burying itself in every nook and cranny that would disturb the white noise. Lilli’s grip fell from Dr. Banner’s clothes, resulting in the rumpled man haphazardly fixing at himself, glowering at Wanda as she melded with the silence.
“She’s the fastest source of herbs and remedies in town when Pietro and I can’t supply,” she started, moving towards the staring duo with furrowed brows. As if on cue, her fingers fumbled along her skirts. “And…keeping the Queen at ease is best, in the event she is with child. Don’t you think, Doctor?” Dr. Banner visibly gulped, lower lip trembling as he fought speaking against the contradictions she had to offer. They shared a knowing look. Keep the Queen at ease.
Lilli lumbered towards Wanda, pouty lips moving as she spoke a silent prayer. Please. Please.
Vulnerability reflected in her anxious gaze with abhorrent dread, silent pleas hanging in the dense air as the clouds rolled in murky waves. The usual softness of her cognac gaze darkened, a black sea of untold answers and ambiguities lurking behind the never-ending stream of tears.
“Doctor?” Lilli’s soft voice rang in the air, breathy and meek as she fiddled with her wedding band.
In that moment, his anxiety crashed into the room with a bellowing roar as the persistent pressure continued its climb to glory with the queen’s nervousness. A sigh resounded as he rubbed along his forehead again before mumbling out, “I’ll send a letter to Dr. Cho.”
Lilli, I could not express enough my sincerest—
Stiff, Steve. Too stiff.
My dearest Lilli, My behavior during the Late Queen May’s—
That doesn’t sound right.
My Queen, Never have I considered the worst moment of my life would come seeing the pain I caused you. I could blame grief and clouded judgement. But the truth is…
Steve crumpled the parchment and flicked his wrist with ease as he tossed it with the others, his heart silently piling itself in the corner with a foggy solution in mind. Exhaustion settled in his bones as his eyes followed the continuous scrawl.
You have overtaken my thoughts in the mere weeks of our disagreement. Sleeping beside a stranger has its many difficulties, but especially when that stranger has shared your bed the past decade.
A searing pain shot to his temples, causing him to wince and set aside the feathered quill. His vision blurred, dark spots replacing the brightly lit space that made up his office.
It had been this way for an hour. He picked up the quill, large hand quivering as the words spilled from the ink in looping curves of guilt and sweeping vowels of regret. Then, the pain would come. It was irreversible, sharp and tactful in its mission to subdue him.
A minuscule idea of a thought brought him down. The draw of her plump lips, tight and reserved as her nature was. The glittering sadness in her cognac stare as she endured the monster before her.
Only the monster hadn’t consisted of the demons that weighed her down. No gossiping royals or bombarding courtiers in sight.
It was only him.
A sea of angry red, crashing into a delicate plethora of blue and tainting it with hues of bitter violet.
He’d wanted to help. Bring her down from the high of inescapable panic. And yet, another man replaced him in that moment. One that wore the thinly veiled likeness of himself under different pretenses.
He uttered a few expletives as he pushed himself back from the mahogany desk, leaning himself against the large hunk of wood as he lumbered towards the door. Another wave of pain washed over him, heavy and all-consuming. Steve grunted as he steadied himself, knees buckling and a sweat bead rolling down his throbbing temple.
Just make it to the foyer. Find Sam, he can help with the letter. Her face clouded his vision once again. Always a radiant sight of beauty melding into tear-stained cheeks and sand-soaked gowns. She echoed in his mind, reverberating throughout his skull.
Maybe you should rest then, my King.
The sardonic drip of disappointment and hurt mingled in a melodic tune reminiscent of her voice. A sweet sound that sent another throbbing pain up to his temples, swallowing his thoughts as pain overtook his senses.
A blinding white light had him hissing and exhaling with a trembling breath. Heavy footsteps echoed in his ears as a silhouette stood idly at the office’s entrance. A voice in his mind made sentiments about Margaret and her arrival, the likelihood of her coming to see about him with the delicious tea she offered.
“Steve?”
The footsteps approached as the voice grew louder, murmuring concerns.
“Sam,” he rasped out, going to collapse in his grandiose seat. His sweaty fingers splayed against the half-written parchment, strands of hair falling in his eyes as they met with the advisor’s concerned gaze. “I need you to finish this letter. Have a pageboy send it to the Queen.”
Sam responded with a deep frown, arms tight over his embellished chest.
“What’s going on?”
“Rather not get into the specifics but—”
“Not about Lilli,” Sam interrupted as he began rounding the desk to stand before the king. “You don’t look well. Haven’t been the past few weeks.”
Steve matched the advisor’s frown as he slumped himself further into the seat as he murmured, “It’s merely stress. Grief takes its toll in many ways, Sam.” Sam harrumphed quietly as he seated himself across from Steve, smoothly grabbing the discarded quill as he turned the parchment towards him and gave it a simple onceover.
The king narrowed his eyes at the noise, asking, “What’s that supposed to mean, Samuel?”
His glittering brown eyes held thousands of secrets. And Steve had always been hellbent on figuring them out in the years they had been companions. Even Bucky knew a few of them. Why didn’t he?
“Beg your pardon?”
Steve grimaced as he straightened in his seat, leaning forward, and glowering at Sam. “Are you insinuating I’m grieving wrong? That I’m not even grieving at all?”
Sam’s eyes shot up from the parchment, disregarding his elegant penmanship and blinking at the frustrated man before him. “I breathed, Your Majesty. I barely had time to consider thinking such atrocities. Grieve how you choose, I’m merely here for political advising.”
“Quit it with the fucking niceties, Sam.”
The air swarmed with a sickly irritation that dispersed mutually between the two. The quill sat discarded beside the parchment as Sam sat back against the cushioned leather seat. His blunt nails dug into the material, grounding himself to refrain from spewing filthy words at the man he used to call his friend. And yet…
“I don’t do well with niceties, Your Majesty,” Sam drawled. “And don’t forget, we share the same history. Fought on the same battlefields. Thrusted swords into the same men. Your place as king doesn’t change that. Nor does it excuse the shitty behavior you’re exuding as of late.”
Steve’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, eyes darkening as the advisor matched his stare. Blue and brown, two ends of the spectrum meeting in a dance of fury and betrayal. One slip of the tongue could change it all. One phrase in a lower pitch.
“Just—please finish the letter and leave me be,” he exhaled as he buried his face in his hands. “And send Peggy in, I’d like to see her.”
Her name alone had his head throbbing with the dull ache of recovery, nerve endings thrumming gently. My Summer Queen.
Sam glared, keeping his hands to himself. It was as if the desk would send him to a mindset he refused to engage with. One touch could taint his mind, allow him to play along. “Ask Peggy to finish the letter. I’ve suddenly become ill.”
The words that tumbled from Steve’s lips were not his own. They couldn’t have been. But as he spewed threats and filth towards his companion, full and true in his words, the ache in his heart from the absence of Peggy only grew.
Suddenly, the letter hadn’t mattered. Only the woman with the red-stained lips and alluring smile.
His Summer Queen.
Gravely roads and the musky scent of village taverns was all too familiar for Bucky.
It was all he had ever known before becoming a royal advisor. He was a menace then, Sam usually glowering in the corner while Steve followed his lead with much fervor.
That was much of their dynamic before Steve became king. Then, it was stalking the castle halls with expensive wines in oak pints suitable for ale reminiscent of piss-scented wood and large men brandishing comically small blades once the ale settled in their robust bellies.
Deep down, Bucky envied them. The freedom to come down and be unseen. Achieve a sense of blinding peace without civilians sprinting to his side with questions and concerns he had little control over. He knew he should have turned down the opportunity to sit for a portrait when Lilli brought it up.
It was his dilemma currently, as he nestled himself in the tavern’s darkest corner with the infamous pint he sought for most days in the stuffiness of court. The ale was shit, but there was something comforting about it. The memories and laughs that tied him to this place always had him coming back for more when he could.
Patrons stared down his party with much complication. Conflicting energies hung in the air as he kept his cloak’s hood over his wandering pools of azure, flickering to examine subtle movements from quieter patrons. A leathered glove obscured his metal hand as it grasped the oak pint, deep sights emitting deep from his chest as he thought over the little information had to build his investigative foundation.
Queen May murdered just at daybreak. Disintegrated to a pile of salt, coarse to the touch. Courtiers claimed her pallor complexion bordered on a nearly purple hue before disintegration.
“I can barely call that a pot to piss in. Let alone a legitimate lead,” he mumbled gruffly, busying himself with his ale. Another one will do. Maybe a few more until this night is merely a blur.
His shift in priorities were getting the best of him as he contemplated snatching a pint from someone else’s table when an unfamiliar voice called to him.
“Sir Barnes?”
Bucky looked beneath his hood to see a tall figure standing before him. Dressed in black, cloak matching his own. The fabric and its embellishments were too intricate for an ordinary patron. Someone of his station, perhaps?
His silence sparked another flood of dialogue from the stranger, prompting him to hunch over his empty pint with great anguish. He wasn’t as stealthy as he appeared. “Who’s asking?”
The person moved to sit before him, matching his posture and glancing around. A fight rung out near the bar, the scent of piss stronger than it had ever been as glasses shattered and ale slicked the ground beneath the fighting patrons’ feet.
Lowering their voice, the stranger rasped, “I heard you were investigating the death of Queen May.”
The low whisper had him assuming it was a small man. But the sight of painted lips and flushed cheeks told him otherwise. The cloak couldn’t hide everything.
Bucky stiffened, hand lowering to the sword secured at his belt. “Who—”
“Someone in your party doesn’t tend to secrets well,” she mused, a smile playing at her plump lips. Something fluttered in Bucky’s stomach at the sight, but he merely brushed it off. “Especially not with this in their system.”
She reached out to snag at his pint, nimble and dainty fingers on display. He instinctively pulled back, sinking himself further into the hardened seat.
His eyes studied the cleanliness of her hands. Hands that have hardly been worked for years with the common folk. She was no ordinary patron.
She had to be someone of high status. A noblewoman, perhaps.
What was a noblewoman doing at the gravest tavern this town had to offer? And why was she speaking with him or the men of his party with such interest?
“Damned bastards,” he grunted. His lashes fluttered as he swept his blue gaze over the woman again before sighing out as he went to finish off his drink, “The ale’s too strong for them, doll. They’re talking out their asses—”
“I may have some information to speed your investigation.”
Bucky stopped as he put down the half empty oak, eyes narrowing at her. Either this woman was a godsend or the personification of a grimmer path he would fight to avoid at all costs.
“Excuse me?”
The woman kept her chin down, though the smirk never left her lips. She repeated herself, clearer and more confident than before. “It’s clear your search is leading to many dead ends. I may just have the information you need.”
“Well, tell me.” He surged forward as he bared his weight against the creaking table. He smelled her perfume, fleeting and flowery like a summer blossom in the heat of the day. Sweet and overwhelming if he had gotten much closer. Her silence frustrated Bucky, causing him to frown and straighten himself before her.
“There’s a catch to this, isn’t there?”
She giggled, light and airy. As if she were mocking him. “Perhaps. But for a pretty boy like yourself, I may make an exception.”
Bucky flushed, the scruff on his face just barely obscuring his bright red cheeks. His cloak’s hood fluttered around his face as he gathered the fabric around his body, huddling himself into the depths of its comfort. The further he burrowed, the better.
“Make it quick, dove,” he murmured, eyeing his surroundings with much suspicion. “Before anyone else is aware of my presence here.”
The woman slinked herself into the seat more comfortably, pursing her lips before she spoke. “Remember the day fancy Duchess Margaret arrived?”
He gave an apprehensive nod.
“A few of my girls saw her—or someone like her—here, in these slums,” she hummed casually, glancing over her cuticles.
Bucky leaned forward, enraptured with the allure of her words. It seemed all he had to do was ask around, something he had been tired of doing from a day’s work. “Here? What business would Duchess Margaret have in the village?”
“How should I know, pretty boy?” The syllables curled at her tongue, the sultry noise settling in his bones like a honey-colored liquid unrelenting in its hold. “Merely saw the pretty thing come and go.”
All the years he knew Margaret. From childhood to now, she was never one to venture off into villages unless there was a political agenda at play. Garner the sympathies of the commonfolk to cement herself as a woman of the people.
Though, they hardly knew she was clutching her jewels tighter once their backs were turned.
“Come where, exactly?”
“A mage’s shop. Folks say she appeared confused, frightened even.”
Bucky nearly allowed his hood to fall as he neared his face to hers, the scent of her perfume mingling with the tanginess of his beer-scented tongue.
Folks. Who were folks?
He wasn’t one for speaking in riddles and petty squabbles. That was hardly the premise of his duties in this investigation. “Was she…alone?”
The woman gave a subtle shrug, sticking her tongue out to wet her painted lips. “A young girl accompanied her. Just as young as my working girls, in the way she carried herself. Stephania said her greedy fingers fumbled for every elixir she could find.”
His brows lowered into a deep frown. “Stephania?”
“My best girl, tends to work in the evenings and through the night.”
An evening mistress saw a duchess and a young girl entering a mage’s shop. What are the odds?
This was far more progress than what any of today’s events brought. He had a mere fortnight before he was to return for Queen Sarah’s funeral. Lilli never gave him an adequate estimate for when he was to arrive. But he could hardly miss the opportunity to bid Sarah a goodbye.
“Does…Stephania know anything about these elixirs?”
The woman’s attitude shifted in her body language, as she scoffed and lulled her head to the side. A stupid question.
“Hardly. At least, not that I’m aware.” She let out a deep sigh. It was solemn, exhausted perhaps. The conversation was boring her, as if he weren’t in an active interrogation with her. But then, her shoulders slumped as she lifted her head. “But Stephania did say…”
His brows raised a bit, lips twitching into a hopeful smile. He fought to brush it away. “Yes?”
“The girl’s belongings were glowing red. Nestled a bubbling liquid under her skirts. Stephania mentioned it reeked of rotten fruit. Called it…”
“That sounds like…”
The hoods could hardly obscure their gaze as their eyes met. Pools of salt met with an amber glimmer as they called out in unison:
“Wailing Widow.”
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
↢
after so much time, it is out! apologies for the disappearance honeys, there’s been so much happening. hope you like this new chapter, it’s a bit shorter than usual but the next chapter will likely be much longer. please leave a comment and reblog besties! it’s much appreciated!
taglist: @carrotfantasimp
