kitchen_maid | Marian in Ambergeldar

Marian in Ambergeldar

Amy ran into Marian when she took Mal -- er, Captain Sir Malcolm Reynolds -- back to Milliways after his visit.

And, after hearing about the goings on there, had invited Marian back for a short visit to Ambergeldar. (She would have invited Marian for an extended visit, especially as Marian cannot get back to her own world, but Marian has security duties, and Amy respects that. Still, even security members need breaks.)

After what happened with Mal, Amy gives Marian a letter of introduction, just in case she winds up in Loddingtop or some such place. And she takes the very simple and practical precaution of holding carefully and tightly to Marian's hand as they step out of the bar and into Amy's wardrobe.

"It's not, I fear, the most exciting first view of the kingdom. Do mind the shoes."

It's not the most convenient thing, having a doorway in your wardrobe. Things will get in the way of coming and going.

Once they're safely into Amy's dressing room, she lets go of Marian's hand. "Welcome to Ambergeldar."

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Marian watched him go, looking back to Amy at his words. She gave the woman a fond smile. "I can see the appeal."

Beat. Faintly mischievous. "And the silliness, right at the edges." Marian would not actually fear a set of Councillors, if it came to it.

"Most people miss the silliness at the edges."

But then, most people don't get to see the King tease his wife.

"Right, ready to meet my tiny royal whirlwinds? Or re-meet, as the case may be?"

Marian smiled, and nodded, turning back toward the door, without much more looking at the room that surrounded them. This formal standing with it's softer, subtleties. "I would be unsurprised that they do miss it, but then most people are probably looking for Algernon in him."

Which if she was being honest, she looked for both. But then she grew up knowing the difference in her father face and tone and vocabulary between The Good Sheriff and Her Father. "My Father was surrounded by people very much like that when I was young."

Edited 2012-02-20 23:41 (UTC)

"People with silliness around the edges, or people who only looked for the position and not the person?" Amy asks, as they head back out into the hallway (where Sir Geoffrey is gone, as it's his day to follow the King).

"The latter," Marian clarified. "They spent their days looking for," Marian made a gracious sweep with her arm, palm up at the end, something slightly amused even at the edges of the seriously enacted gesture. "My Lord Sheriff."

Beat. "Though he was never was never My Lord, or even Sir Edward to me."
There's an unrepentantly fond, almost child-like, affection to those words.

Even if the thought is edged in an ache of sadness. It does not do to dwell, while she is powerless to the situation in being Bound, but her Father did not belong in a cell. Not for an hour even.

"Those people generally see what they're looking for, regardless of what they're presented with."

Unless, of course, what they are presented with is a princess with freckles and grey-brown eyes. But then, while those people don't see what they're looking for, they also fail to see what they've actually been presented with.

They're now practically back to her study. This is a change Amy and Perry made just after Susan was born -- they saw no reason the Royal Nurseries should be so far from their rooms. It makes it ever so much easier to spend time with the children when they're just down the hallway.

Amy opens the door ahead of them, and steps into the room. It's dim -- the curtains are drawn -- and there are two large cribs in the middle of it. The nursemaid sitting by the door hops to her feet as the Queen comes into the room.

"Asleep?" Amy asks, just barely at a whisper, and the nursemaid nods.

Amy smiles, and beckons for Marian to follow her over to the space at the foot of the cribs.

Completely oblivious to the arrival of their Royal Mama, the Princes Caspian and Laurence are fast asleep, thumbs in mouthes. They're not quite a year old, with fair hair (though not their older sister's golden hair).

"Caspian," Amy says, very quietly, to Marian, pointing to the twin on the left, "and Laurence."

Marian's steps became more silent, closer to as soundless as they could become with the smoothed, yet still there, rustle of skirts beyond them. Hands resting on the end of one, looking from one to the other, Marian smiled in spite of herself.

Tiny, and so peaceful looking. "They are beautiful, Amy," Marian whispered, back.

"Aren't they?" Amy says. "And they have Perry's eyes."

Amy touches her fingers to her lips and then very gently to her sons' foreheads.

She gestures to the door with a tilt of her head, mouths a thank you to the nursemaid, and steps back out into the hallway.

"This next room will likely not be so quiet."

Marian settled her shoulders, perhaps, like she was about to be made to stand on a scaffold again. Hands folding in front of her. As though readied for something arduous. Even as her blue-grey eyes sparkled with amusement.

"I am prepared." If her voice did not betray her amusement entirely.

"Or so you think," Amy says, Cheerfully.

"Hello, dears," she says, stepping into what would be, in a home other than a castle, probably called the Playroom.

"Mama!"

"Mama!"

This is followed by a great deal of running.

A second later, Amy (paying no mind at all to her dress) is down in the floor, and has half-disappeared under hugs from her two older children.

The squeals of joy, and the happiness that radiates from all three of them. Marian stayed back, leaving them to their first moments.

"Have you been good today?" Amy asks, and there's a great deal of nodding (emphatically, in Susan's case, and solemnly, in Merry's).

"Marta, have they?" Amy asks, of the woman who has followed the children over to the Queen.

"As good as you were, at their age, Princess Amy," says Marta. (Who knew Amy at that age, and who has not bothered to adjust her form of address).

Which would make them good, but not that good.

Which Amy thinks is about right.

"Then," Amy says, drawing the word out, "I think we shall have picnic. And I want you both to meet my friend, Marian, who is going to come with us."

Two small heads turn from their mother to the New Person.

"Hello," Susan says. "I am Susan Marguerite Ingress Calpurnia Rosemary Katharine Anne. And this is Merry."

"You can just call her 'Susan,'" Merry says. "Everyone does."

Marian laughed softly, at the two of them, lowering down in a truly grand curtsey. The likes of which neither Rosalind nor Perry had received from her. Ending up rather near her knees, in a pile of skirts, eyes brightly lit up.

"I do remember. I met her once before when she was," Marian's smile grew fond, as she teased. "Far younger than she seems to be now, and much smaller. But you--" She looked to Merry, the smile unfading. "I do not believe I have met before."

Seen, at least the once. But not met.

"It is my pleasure, sir."

Merry bows. "The honor is mine, Marian," he says.

(He says it a bit like it's a phrase he has learned, rather than a phrase he completely understands, but then that's exactly what it is.)

"Are we going now, Mama?" Susan asks.

"Yes, I think we will," Amy says, getting up out of the floor. Marta, I'll have them back to you later this afternoon."

Amy sweeps Merry up into her arms. "Goodness, but you're getting big," she says.

Susan reaches for Marian's hand. "I will walk with Marian," she announces.

It's adorable is what it is. He is the smallest thing ever, and an aspiring little prince. There was no way she wouldn't be smiling. She probably couldn't make herself stop, evening watching, as Merry was swept up and loved upon by his mother.

Marian nodded to the young princess at her announcement, quite amused at the certainty of it and letting the small hand catch in her with no fight. She stood, slowly, giving her mostly undivided attention to Susan.

"Perhaps, you will show me the way, then? I have not yet seen this garden of yours, though I must assume it is gorgeous if it is to fit in with the rest of your beautiful castle."

"The garden is prettier than most of the castle," Susan says. "It has flowers. And there's a pond. With fish. I gave them all names, last summer, but . . . "

Susan looks around to see if anyone else is listening, and then confides to Marian, " . . . I cannot always tell them apart, and I think sometimes I get the names mixed up. Do you think they mind?"

Marian doing her level best, did not begin to laugh once, but walked along with the small girl. Letting her lead the way and speak of the fish.

"Perhaps, it simply means that every time they are getting a longer name. So they can be more like you and all of your family. I cannot speak fish, but they could even like receiving new names with each new summer. They have not seemed displeased with it, so far, have they?"

"Sometimes when they open their mouths a lot they don't look happy," Susan says. "Like this."

There is very earnest unhappy-fish-mouth demonstrating.

Up ahead, her mother collects is joined by a footman carrying a large basket and a blanket.

"That's the best picnic blanket," Susan says, abruptly breaking off her fish impression. "It's purple."

It saves Marian and makes it so she's able to smother out of a laugh beginning to escape, into her free hand. She is so sweet and earnest and flipping between things, childlike simplicity and importance to each new statement.

"Do you get to have picnics often?"

"It's a special thing," Susan says, shaking her head.

"With Mama. And sometimes Papa can come, too."

Susan pulls on Marian's hand and go skipping off to where Amy has stopped up ahead.

"Just here, I think, Charles," Amy says.

The footman spreads the blanket out in an open area near one of the formal gardens.

He sets the basket in one corner, bows, and goes.

Marian hurried up with her, ending up laughing this time. Starting to run, instead of skip, and instead, she scooped the little girl up in her arms. Stopping to turn in a circle short of the blanket.

And give her a sudden, very wide mockingly-afraid face, before falling down suddenly. Rather play-acted-ly, because she drops easily into sitting inside her skirts, and Susan never once even remotely is endangered toward falling on to the grass and not her lap of billowing skirts.

Edited 2012-02-21 03:30 (UTC)

Susan is completely delighted and laughing by the time she has landed.

You, Marian, will do.

Susan gets hugged, laughing, smiling. And without really pulling herself from it, Marian realizes its the first time she's felt unrestrainedly joyful even for a few seconds in a very, very long time.

And she smiles over the girls head, letting her arms loose, so she can crawl away if need by, as she looked to Amy. "Thank you, again."

"Of course, Marian," Amy says, handing lemonade across the blanket to Marian. "And you're always welcome. Whenever you like, for as long as you like."

Amy has a ridiculous number of guest rooms.

"I wish I, or Milliways, could take you up on that more readily right now," Marian said taking the Lemonade, and careful of the tiny child in her lap. "But I will be glad to keep it in mind for later, when things are calmer."

She would be glad to get to know Amy more.

For several reasons, laced into others and several all her own.

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