A letter, never sent (tm prompt)
Dearest Nelian,
I never spoke your name again, nor did I write it, since last I saw your face. If I referred to you in the many years since, it was to "my first wife, the dancer" or some variation thereof. It was not often that I mentioned you at all, but if I did, I coated the reference in an amusing anecdote, as I have done for my good friend, Mr. Garibaldi. He was in a gloomy mood, which alas was not a rare thing with him in those days, and I presented a picture designed to make him smile: young Londo Mollari, wandering in a tavern, belabouring his fate, being comforted by a pretty dancing girl whom he fell for at once and married, only to discover she was a harridan he divorced again, having been married hardly long enough for the marriage to count.
It was only the latest of my many betrayals. Divorcing you, my dear, was the first.
Oddly enough, two other women were the only ones who knew, or guessed the truth; Timov, whom I married directly after you as my father demanded, and who despised me as much for that as for leaving you, and a young lady named Adira Tyree, who was a dancer like yourself. Adira's face did not resemble yours in the slightest, and yet in some ways, it seemed to me fate had given me another chance, and I was determined not to fail Adira as I had failed you.
Sometimes, I tell myself we only would have made each other unhappy. We were so very young, after all, and had not known each other very long. Your life as a dancer had accustomed you to hardship, true, but I had never lived in anything but luxury through my entire existence, and had never been anyone but Londo Mollari of the House Mollari. A year or so after my family had disowned me and we had been forced to live in one or two crammed rooms in the capital, with my pride demanding that I support us with some task I was completely unfit for, I would have started to blame you, you, who had a temper as befitting a passionate Centauri, would not have stood for this injustice, and we would have made each other profoundly miserable.
And then again, none of this might have happened. Maybe my writing skills, and I do possess them, would have florourished under pressure, and I would have found patrons. Maybe we would have only discovered more about each other that we loved, and would have become friends as well as lovers, as it happened with my dear friend Urza and his wife. Why, nobody would have predicted any affection between Timov and myself when we were married, and yet, which I confess only to you, it does exist. In a universe that allows the person destined to kill me to become closer to me than any other, save one, nothing is impossible.
But my darling, my long lost love, this did not happen. My father put his ultimatum to me, and for the first time, but not the last, I sold my soul. I put family honor, the title, the status and the income before love. Decades have passed, and the sale has been ongoing. Sometimes I marvel there is still something of my soul left.
I do hope you found happiness after we parted. I never could bear to enquire, not even now, when I have any number of spies at my disposal that I want. I do not know what I do not wish to hear: that you died in poverty and misery long ago, or that you are now the proud matriarch of a happy family, the wife of a better man than I was. In either case, a letter from me would be of no use to you, so it shall go unsent, yes?
And thus I feel free to declare one thing that has always been true: I loved you. You, Nelian, were the first woman to capture my hearts, and despite the many, many that were kind enough to grace me with their company later, your image is still there, as vivid as it was when the young fool who married you told you the marriage was over, and died the first time when you looked at him.
Yours in the past, even if he could not be in the present,
Londo
I never spoke your name again, nor did I write it, since last I saw your face. If I referred to you in the many years since, it was to "my first wife, the dancer" or some variation thereof. It was not often that I mentioned you at all, but if I did, I coated the reference in an amusing anecdote, as I have done for my good friend, Mr. Garibaldi. He was in a gloomy mood, which alas was not a rare thing with him in those days, and I presented a picture designed to make him smile: young Londo Mollari, wandering in a tavern, belabouring his fate, being comforted by a pretty dancing girl whom he fell for at once and married, only to discover she was a harridan he divorced again, having been married hardly long enough for the marriage to count.
It was only the latest of my many betrayals. Divorcing you, my dear, was the first.
Oddly enough, two other women were the only ones who knew, or guessed the truth; Timov, whom I married directly after you as my father demanded, and who despised me as much for that as for leaving you, and a young lady named Adira Tyree, who was a dancer like yourself. Adira's face did not resemble yours in the slightest, and yet in some ways, it seemed to me fate had given me another chance, and I was determined not to fail Adira as I had failed you.
Sometimes, I tell myself we only would have made each other unhappy. We were so very young, after all, and had not known each other very long. Your life as a dancer had accustomed you to hardship, true, but I had never lived in anything but luxury through my entire existence, and had never been anyone but Londo Mollari of the House Mollari. A year or so after my family had disowned me and we had been forced to live in one or two crammed rooms in the capital, with my pride demanding that I support us with some task I was completely unfit for, I would have started to blame you, you, who had a temper as befitting a passionate Centauri, would not have stood for this injustice, and we would have made each other profoundly miserable.
And then again, none of this might have happened. Maybe my writing skills, and I do possess them, would have florourished under pressure, and I would have found patrons. Maybe we would have only discovered more about each other that we loved, and would have become friends as well as lovers, as it happened with my dear friend Urza and his wife. Why, nobody would have predicted any affection between Timov and myself when we were married, and yet, which I confess only to you, it does exist. In a universe that allows the person destined to kill me to become closer to me than any other, save one, nothing is impossible.
But my darling, my long lost love, this did not happen. My father put his ultimatum to me, and for the first time, but not the last, I sold my soul. I put family honor, the title, the status and the income before love. Decades have passed, and the sale has been ongoing. Sometimes I marvel there is still something of my soul left.
I do hope you found happiness after we parted. I never could bear to enquire, not even now, when I have any number of spies at my disposal that I want. I do not know what I do not wish to hear: that you died in poverty and misery long ago, or that you are now the proud matriarch of a happy family, the wife of a better man than I was. In either case, a letter from me would be of no use to you, so it shall go unsent, yes?
And thus I feel free to declare one thing that has always been true: I loved you. You, Nelian, were the first woman to capture my hearts, and despite the many, many that were kind enough to grace me with their company later, your image is still there, as vivid as it was when the young fool who married you told you the marriage was over, and died the first time when you looked at him.
Yours in the past, even if he could not be in the present,
Londo