➸ - marquessa
my muse is panicking, and your muse must calm them down
AU: CORDOBA INVADES PORTUGAL
Rafael rushes up the steps, taking two at a time. It’s too late - the tide cannot be turned back. Soon, the Kingdom of Portugal will be naught but a memory. Giddiness belches into his brain, almost hilarity, almost horror, and he hastens forward, pushing it back, pushing it back, pushing it back. Now, it is only a matter of holding off their conquerors long enough to evacuate whoever they can. He makes for the palace.
The place is strangely empty, haunted by the figures who once peopled its corridors, yet he sees not a living soul, save only a stray cat who glowers with brilliant orange eyes. He hurries onward. It’s not till he comes to the throne room that he sees her silhouette: a young woman standing at the edge of a throne, laughing.
Rafael swallows hard, his pace slowly, and he narrows his eyes to identify the Princesa, herself.
“Your Grace,” he begins.
She turns quickly, shaking her head. “No, no. No, do not say it.”
He pauses, stepping onto the first step of the dais towards her. “Your Grace, its time-”
She shakes her head and he notes, for the first time, the tears that crowd her eyes. “No! I told you no. I will not stand aside while all that my father built is ravaged. I cannot! How can I lave them, the people? How can I leave this room? Where...where will we go?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Somewhere safe!” She laughs and turns away from him. “There is no safe place for those who have lost a kingdom! Ask my uncle, murdered at the bottom of the sea!” She shakes her head and turns suddenly. Tears drown her face and, impulsively, he stretches out a hand as if to dash them away, but she draws back. “Better it is, I have heard it said, to lose one’s head than to lose one’s crown.”
Rafael shakes his head and closes the gap between them, mounting the last two steps, till he stands beside her at the throne. He almost laughs at the small irony - at last he is here, now that it means nothing to stand upon this spot. Her brows crouch in snarling pain at the sound, and he shakes his head.
“Your Highness, listen to me. What is Portugal?”
“What?”
“Is it a place? Is it a people? Is is a concept?”
“I don’t understand you.”
He nods, clasps his hands together in front of him. “Portugal is dead only so long as there is not one person left to fight for it. Will you die and abandon it, Your Grace, or will you live, live and fight for it?”
Her eyes turn to his.
“You have a choice before you, now. You may either remain here to languish, or you may leave, taking whatever you might, and fight and fight and go on fighting. This battle is lost, Your Grace. Do you wish to cede the war, or do you wish to go on, and fight again tomorrow?” He touched her shoulder gently; found that this time she did not shy away.
Marquessa sucked in a deep breath, her Mediterranean eyes fixed upon his, studying him as if for some answer. “You do not think that this...this is abandoning my country?”
“No.”
“You do not think that this, in itself, is a surrender.”
“No.”
Marquessa stepped forward, closing the space between them, face turned up to his. “Then what is it, my lord? What is this?”
“Your Grace,” he said, softly. “It is survival.”
