Title:
Like Patience, Smiling at Grief
Rating: PG
Notes: Twelfth
Night: Olivia/Viola, unrequited. Written for
blackbird on LJ, as a Christmas gift a year ago. Title and
dialogue from the Shakespeare, except for the last section.
Olivia lifts her veil, and sees clearly now the fair and rosy cheeked youth before her, gazing at her with dark eyes sparkling with vivacity. The smoothness of his cheeks, his slim throat, his slight figure beneath the shrouding clothes – it is gentle to the eyes, like a breath of fresh air.
What a pity, that such a youth should serve Orsino, but what luck that he should be sent on an errand to her! Even still, he must not be admitted past her gates again, not if he still bears the task of Orsino's wooing.
"Excellently done, if God did all," speaks the messenger upon finally viewing the lady's face. Olivia tosses a stale retort, paying mind not to her own words but to those of the youth, her eyes lighting on his lips which seem as rose petals. She deems him exceeding fair.
-----
"If I did love you in my master's flame, with such a suffering, such a deadly life, in your denial I would find no sense, I would not understand it." The messenger does not accept Olivia's refusal, and so he would persuade her otherwise.
"Why, what would you?"
"Make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house; write loyal cantons of contemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; Halloo your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'Olivia!' O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me!"
The lady takes these words to heart, and does not care to remember that they are of Orsino's love, and not this youth's very own. His speech is beautiful, and brings to mind the blue mist over the grey-green moors, the light-edged clouds of a fiery sunset, the wake of a boat on a still blue lake; his words are full of subtle glory and a profound beauty. Never has Olivia met anyone whose words enchant her as this messenger's do, and for every phrase his mouth utters her heart is driven further and further away from Orsino and closer to the youth before her.
Still she replies in clear enough mind so as not to present herself as utterly besotted, but her heart is taken.
-----
At the crossroads Olivia meets the youth, Cesario, again, intending to bring him back to her house, hoping to make him love her as she loves him, and though at first glance he appears to be the youth she fell in love with, there is something different. The way he holds his shoulders seems stronger, or perhaps his neck is less slender than she remembered; his skin may be a shade less smooth, his words, a shade less fair.
But it is still Cesario, so it is close enough for her, lovestruck and longing. To her, this youth is the same as he first appeared before her, revealed with the lifting of her veil.
-----
In the end, those shades of difference were key. Cesario was not Cesario; Cesario was Viola, and then Cesario was Sebastian, and Sebastian-as-Cesario was the one to accept her invitation to her house, and he was the one who loved her in return. And so her Cesario ended up as Sebastian, and Sebastian was the one who made proposal of marriage to her, and so Sebastion was who she married.
But now it has been two years, and Sebastian has grown a beard, his voice has deepened more, and he does not recite poetry to her anymore. Olivia does not like to kiss him, because his face is too rough; she does not like to lie abed with him because he is grown too much larger than she; she does not like to make love to him because his body is too hard in some places. What an ideal she began with, and what a tragedy that it should fade so!
Viola thrives and lives happily with the Duke Orsino; Olivia sees them regularly as Sebastian and his sister are dear to each other. When she sees their smiles and laughter, their contentedness, envy stirs within her breast. She wonders exactly what it is she covets, and what she finds is a strange confused complication.
-----
One evening, just as the sky is turning dark, she finds herself directing the coachman to bring her to the palace of the Duke Orsino and his Duchess the Lady Viola.
"What is it that may bring thee here, and at this hour?" Viola sits by the light of but a single candle in the room where they would usually entertain guests. Olivia sits across from her as directed, but on the edge of her seat, and clasps her hands as though nervous. "What is thy trouble? Is it Sebastian?" It is clear that the answer is 'yes'; Viola can see this in the way Olivia stiffens to an even greater degree and looks down at her own hands.
"It is, then? How goes my brother? Is he well?" Concern tints Viola's voice.
"He is well, well enough; he is in good health," Olivia replies, and looks up anew with a strange sad glint in her eye. "Well enough, but still no more than Sebastian."
"What more wouldst thou have Sebastian be, if not himself?"
Olivia is silent. In her eyes, Viola glows softly in the candlelight. Alike he is to thee, and even moreso to Cesario as he was, and even yet not enough so.
"Speak, fair lady, release what troubles your thoughts so, that you have such difficulty giving them voice. Speak! and I will see what aid I can give, whatever it may be."
Olivia shivers; the maid speaks somewhat as she did years ago, and at the task of wooing for Orsino.
Meeting Viola's eyes, Olivia parts her lips in preparation of speech, and it seems to Viola that the sad glint in her eye is changed to a fey one. "I put it simply: that from the beginning I loved Cesario, and no other; now, at the end, I find there is no substitute. I am not worthy of thy brother, my duchess, nor am I worthy of thee."
With these words she stands and moves toward the door. Behind her, Viola begins to speak, but Olivia interrupts her with a harsh voice, sounding of the very pain that grips her heart. "I ask naught of you, your grace. I will return to my house and the house of my lord."
Before Viola has a chance to speak, Olivia has exited and shut the door behind her. She pretends not to see the lady at the gate as her carriage moves away, and pretends that her eyes are not damp with tears.