title: valerian dreams

author: ivory muse

rating: t, with m-ish implications.

genre: romance/drama

characters: leah, jacob, laban, rachel

summary: rachel is a desert flower and leah is the dirt beneath her roots. she just wishes that inferiority didn't have to require so much sacrifice. jacob/leah/rachel

a/n: i'm not fully satisfied with this, but i'm never fully satisfied with anything i write.

Leah is ugly.

It's a fact of life, not something she's ever questioned. Her hair is thin and dust-brown, her hipbones protrude like angry mountain peaks, her posture is permanently hunched. Worst of all are her eyes- they're grey and weak as clouds.

Rachel, though, is beautiful, with her vivacious air and full figure and sparkling gaze. By the time she's thirteen, she's gotten a good dozen proposals from the men of the village. Father has to remind her suitors, time and time again, that the eldest daughter is the first to wed. Once Leah is paraded in front of them, in all of her scrawny, squinting glory, they're quick to desist.

Her parents don't think she'll ever be married- what man would want an unattractive, half-blind shrew for a wife, except an elderly widower? She doesn't argue. An obedient daughter shouldn't. Rachel is a desert flower, and she's cut from much plainer cloth- there's nothing that can be done, though she grieves bitterly.

A long-lost cousin, Jacob, arrives in Paddan Aram one day- he is looking for work, he says. Leah is ugly but she is not stupid; she knows what drives men, especially when they're exposed to her younger sister. So she is unsurprised when a month after his arrival he asks for Rachel's hand in exchange for seven years' labor. What does shock her is that Father consents to this without so much as mentioning custom. Perhaps he has given up hope once and for all, enough to abandon tradition for expedience.

Leah does not fall in love with him, though he should technically be hers. He is hardworking and honest, but she grows accustomed to viewing him through a sisterly lens, and soon it becomes unpalatable to imagine herself as his bride. Why would he wish for her in the first place? He has Rachel wants Rachel needs Rachel, not strange, clumsy Leah.

The eve of the marriage approaches, and her father takes her out behind the stables, where they can speak in confidence. "I have no intention of giving Jacob the prize he desires," he admits, the hazy twilight creating twisted shadows on his face. "You are four-and-twenty, Leah, the elder. Tomorrow you will take Rachel's place. Jacob will not discover the truth before he says his vows."

Leah vainly attempts to suppress a shudder. Jacob, she knows, will be livid with rage once he unearths her duplicity. But her father's command is not for her to question, and by sunrise she is outfitted in heavy robes and a thick veil, ready to enter matrimonial bliss.

She forces herself to keep from stammering when she answers the priest, forces herself to ignore Rachel's furious glare, forces herself to submit enthusiastically to Jacob's nocturnal advances once darkness covers them. But she cannot force the sickening feeling in her belly to dissipate when she lies awake, staring blankly at the canvas ceiling of her tent.

In the morning, Jacob remains stoically silent until they are all sitting at the breakfast table- that's when all hell breaks loose. "What is the meaning of this deception?" he demands. "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, did I not?"

"It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish this daughter's bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work," her father calmly replies, brushing errant manna crumbs from his fingers.

She wants to protest that this isn't fair, that after fulfilling Father's scheme she should at least be properly rewarded for it, that she might be ugly and clumsy and nearsighted but she has to be worth something, that, really, is a polygamous marriage with her sister and a man who cannot stand her the best she can hope for in this life?

Her defiant words shrivel on her tongue, and she reaches out to squeeze Jacob's hand, as a wife might.