The clue's in the title. Add-on to 'Dirty Laundry'. Done a million times, I know, but I hope this is something different!

Ruination

It's been a hell of a day. A hell of a night. I can't believe I—we—have managed to escape a very tricky situation more or less unscathed. In fact, we had the Archduke begging us to keep everything quiet when it could so easily have been the reverse. I laugh aloud at the memory and a passing page boy stares, but a kingly glower sends him scuttling. As it should. These people, this place, this court—they are all mine, body and soul, to do with as I desire. I am King, am I not?

Too many have forgotten that of late.

That haughty Bohemian archduchess, she deserved to fall to her death. She mocked me with those great dark eyes of hers—mocked and paid the price. Then there's Diane ... Ah, my incomparable Diane. She is soothing and soft and sweet but even she—even she—can occasionally scold, as if I were still the uncouth youth placed in her care so many years ago.

And Catherine ... Well, she at least has never left me in any doubt how deeply I disappoint her. When I tried to build bridges today—I'd forgotten how utterly magnificent my wife can be until she looked the Archduke in the eye and spun a preposterous series of tall tales with a straight face—even then, even as she admitted she found me 'charming', she dismissed me with a command not to 'ruin it'. Spoken briskly, as if to Charles or little Henry.

And in doing so she's reminded me how intriguing she can be. I can have any woman in this castle with a crook of the finger ... and I'm damned if my Medici wife thinks she can set herself apart. Especially as I know she's not as impervious to me as she likes to pretend. Last night it was her idea that we strip and lie together to give ourselves a convincing alibi once the news of the Archduchess's death broke. Who would dare question the King choosing to spend a night with his Queen?

(...Plenty, actually. Our mutual dislike and distrust has brought the court literally to its knees on more than one occasion.)

Catherine was equal to that, of course. At my expense. Also of course. She can be so sweetly scornful, dropping poisoned barbs about stamina and oh, you were serious as other women drop compliments.

But I digress.

It was, in fact, Catherine's idea for us to pretend to fulfil our connubial duties. We lay together in the half-light and there was a moment when we looked at each other and saw the ghosts of the children we once were ... a moment where we reached out, one to the other, and had a conversation in tender touches rather than words. I prefer it that way. My wife is is a wordsmith of no mean power. I ... am not. She has a trick of twisting even the most innocent of remarks into something ugly and my frustration turns the ugliness into a monstrosity and before we know it, we are once again hissing and swearing at each other like a pair of stable cats.

But when we touch ... There's a moment of magic. A moment where we forget everything that's been and said and done. And under those circumstances even Catherine de Medici cannot lie. She was hesitant and oddly gentle in that half-light and I found myself thinking that this is the real Catherine, this is the little Italian girl I married a quarter of a century ago and not the hardened Queen I've come to sometimes hate. That is simply a shell...

Or is it?

I'm a simple person at heart. My wife is anything but. Trying to find a way through the labyrinth of her truths and lies would drive cleverer men than I to madness indeed.

Usually, I'd let it go. Don't ruin it, Henry doesn't inspire a man to make an effort, particularly when he's besieged (besieged, I tell you) by willing young maidens. Such is the life of a King.

So what am I doing standing here before her chambers, a silk-wrapped item in one hand? The silk's old, some of the sheen is going, but what's inside is still fresh and lovely. I'd forgotten about it but our encounter last night reminded me and after we parted earlier I returned to my rooms and sought it out. I sat with it a long while, remembering.

I was in love with you ...

I never thought I'd present it. I thought that she'd find it at my death—because I've never had any doubt that my wife will outlive me; she's indestructible—find it, and perhaps shed a tear for what might have been. And then there's these headaches, moments where I am lost to myself.

When the darkness comes, the real Darkness, the darkness of the soul ... I will be lost in truth. And it's coming soon, I can feel it, nibbling at the edges of my sanity. I should tell someone but that's too much like confessing a weakness.

I am the King. I am France. L'etat, c'est moi.

The King-as-France cannot die. He cannot fail. He cannot weaken, or all is lost.

So in what may be a last moment of clarity, I've come to present my wife with a gift from a lifetime ago. Call it gratitude for not gaining revenge by airing my dirty laundry for all the world to see.

I lift a hand to the door; a sharp knock followed by two swift raps. My heart thuds in my chest; will she remember the old signal?

There's a pause. I measure five separate thuds, each with an eternal space between, before one of the double doors chinks open.

I catch a glimpse of raised eyebrows. 'Back again, Henry? This must be a record. People will talk.'

'Can I come in?' I whisper, ignoring the jibe.

The eyebrows go even higher, if that's possible. 'Are you asking?'

There's a pause. Our gazes meet and hold.

'Yes,' I say eventually. 'This time.' Well, she mustn't think this is going to become a habit. A King has a reputation to maintain.

She steps back, permitting me entry without comment. Her room is rich and warm; a sanctuary. She's dressed for bed, her hair in a soft coppery twist over one shoulder, her corsets and farthingales laid aside for a simple nightgown and an embroidered shawl. There's gold thread in that shawl; it shimmers in the candle light as she pulls it closer.

I want to laugh. Part of me wants to mock. I've seen her naked countless times—including only last night. There's no need for this modesty.

I can't. For this is Catherine, the woman I once loved, and not the Queen.

'What do you want?' she asks bluntly. She's always been blunt with me—mercilessly so, her tongue flaying like a cat-o-nine-tails.

I can't tell her what I'm thinking, or we'll be back to hissing and spitting in no time. I know my weaknesses—and I know hers.

I run a finger along a coppery curl, enjoying the play of light as it yields to my touch, revealing depths of gold and magenta and a hint of silver. Her breath catches and I know that for once I've caught her attention instead of simply her disapproval.

'Henry—' She's gentle again, the R in my name turning Italian as it has not ... for longer than I remember.

'Catherine,' I murmur. I'll show her I can be gentle too. 'There's no-one like you.'

'So you said, earlier.' She's bone-dry now. She tilts her head. 'Why are you here?' Her lips quirk. 'No lady-love to entertain you this evening, forcing you to the last resort of your wife?'

'You were never the last resort.'

She casts me a look that says, oh, really?

'I wanted to thank you properly,' I say gruffly. 'For your help today.' She's more likely to accept (and believe) my gratitude than anything else.

The quirk turns into a smirk. 'Yes, well. I like my crown and my head where they are and sadly I've learned I need you for those, so—' Her shrug is nonchalant, airily dismissive. 'Also, war just now would ruin us and as I bankroll France it goes without saying ... I have no wish to be impoverished in my old age.'

I find myself looking into her eyes and voicing a thought I haven't been able to suppress.

'And it gives you something over me. I've given you power over me at last.'

'H'mm.' She puts her head back and smiles the cat-smile that's so uniquely hers. 'There is that.'

'To your delight,' I say, intending a joke but it falls flat. Catherine straightens and stiffens and hardens before my very eyes.

'Believe me, Henry, when you've been made painfully aware that your very existence depends on a man who'd take your head on a whim ... I can assure you, you take every ounce of power where you can!' She whirls away, shoulders rigidly square.

I sigh. She'll never forgive me for that. The moment has passed. Perhaps I should just leave my silk-wrapped parcel and go. Perhaps when she sees—

'Why did you really come?' she asks, still turned away. Her head is bent and she sounds muffled. If it was anyone else—Kenna, say—I'd think she was crying but this is Catherine. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen her weep.

'I owe you for today,' I tell her back. 'And not just today. For more things than I can count.' My throat's getting dryer by the second, it feels like someone's got a stranglehold there. 'I need you, Catherine.'

'When it suits.'

'Always,' I insist.

'And Diane?' I can't see her, but I know from her tone that she's spat the name as she always does.

'I need her too.' It's the truth. I do need Diane; she's soft snow to Catherine's fire. Between them they keep me going. Keep me sane. Between them, I can almost believe they could hold back the dark. They're implacable, these two women I love.

My wife snorts. 'And I needed you. Just you.' She turns and her eyes are huge in the candlelight. 'But I learned long ago that wanting and needing doesn't make it so.' Her lips tighten. 'We went our separate ways years ago, Henry. Our paths are too divergent to ever rejoin now for anything more than ... more than a memory.'

Her words fall like stones, their splinters cutting deep. She's right, as she almost always is. Once we were two frightened children, naive children who found comfort in each other. But those children are many years gone and we killed them. We both killed them.

I move to her table and drop my package on it. 'I came to bring you this.'

She moves towards it, equal parts intrigued and wary. 'What is it?'

'Something I wanted to give you long ago.' I swallow. 'Something I should have given you long ago.'

'Amongst so many things,' she quips, flipping the silk away with a finger. It takes a second flip and my gift is revealed.

For once, words have deserted my ever-eloquent wife. She stares at it and at me and back at it and I find myself babbling an explanation.

'I commissioned this for you before my brother died. It was to be a surprise but then—'

'You killed Francis and everything changed,' she says flatly and my jaw drops.

'You thought I didn't know?' She scoffs. 'That poor cup-bearer ... The world was so quick to point the finger at me but I was struggling to keep myself afloat as Duchess of Orleans. I had no desire to be Dauphine when already the pressure for a child ...' She stops. Takes a breath. 'I knew I hadn't killed him and I knew you thought him a weak and useless fool. It was obvious.'

She's still matter-of-fact while I'm scrambling to put the pieces of my shattered world together.

'You knew,' I say, still breathless. 'You could have ruined me with a word in my father's ear, he adored Francis and I ... Catherine, why?'

'Because I loved you,' she says with utter simplicity. 'Because loving you had already become a part of me and I could not betray you ... or not until you'd already betrayed me and I had to know, I needed to know, Henry, if it was my fault that we did not have a child.'

I've given her a gift and now she's given me one: the reassurance that she did not love Richard. That betrayal still stings, my wife and my once best friend, but I find I believe her. I know better than any how desperate she was; I'd already proven myself with little Diane and Bash. But there's this, too: this time, I'm not threatening her. This time, she has the wherewithal to threaten me (has always had it, I realise; had it and refused to use it. At her core your wife is more selfless than you think she is, young Mary said, not so very long ago. How shameful that a girl of fifteen knows Catherine better than I).

Catherine sits, my gift in her hands. They're trembling. I move closer and she glances up.

'You may as well sit.' Another quirk. 'Waiting to see if this passes muster, are we?'

'I can always count on you to find any fault,' I snip. Then add: 'Catherine, the artist is long gone. If there are faults, you must live with them.'

She snorts and caresses the red Morocco leather with a reverent finger. She's always reverent towards books, I've noticed. She opens it and her free hand goes to her mouth.

I swallow. I know what's triggered that reaction, it had the same effect on me.

A joint portrait of us both, taken shortly after our marriage. It's similar to the wedding portrait we had done of Francis and Mary a few weeks ago, and it hurts to see our younger selves anew. Mary and Francis do not look at each other in theirs (it was important that neither the Scots or the French felt that one nation was subjugated to the other) but Catherine and I did. I'm looking straight at her and she's giving that answering half-smile I've come to know so well—only the years have layered that once-sweet smile with mockery.

The older Catherine strokes our painted faces with a finger tip. 'Hard to imagine we were ever that young.'

'Younger even than Francis and Mary,' I remind her, moving to sit beside her. 'We were fourteen.'

'I was so afraid,' she murmurs and I force myself to stillness. She so rarely shares anything personal with me. 'Even before I came I knew I was unwanted. Your father was kind—so kind!—but it wasn't his kindness I wanted.' She closes the book gently and raises her eyes to mine. 'Only yours.'

'And all I wanted was your trust,' I whisper, my voice as soft as hers.

Catherine lifts a hand to my cheek. 'We both failed, didn't we?'

I nod. There's no point in saying otherwise; the truth is in her eyes.

'We ruined it,' I agree, remembering her earlier command and I see a flicker of amusement. That's always been our single saving grace: our joint sense of the ridiculous.

'If we're ruined anyway—' Catherine begins and my pulse starts galloping as our gazes lock. She sounds closer to breathless than I've heard in many a long year.

'Ruination be damned,' I say, and pull her closer, my mouth crushing down on hers—and for a precious while, the darkness recedes.

I didn't set out to write this. I wanted to do some Cathry for Before the Prophecy and was humming and hahhing about voices. Then I was half-thinking of textualising 'Dirty Laundry' for the heck of it—a) because it's funny, and b) because it's one of the best ways to get inside a TV character but I realised that actually this was the scene I wanted to write.

So, there you have it. Actual honest-to-goodness Cathry from me, even if it's (still) lacking in the fluff department. Any and all feedback would be marvellous and very much appreciated!