So near, yet so far.

The ceremony, I repeat.

For several moments, she blinks up at me in incomprehension.

The ceremony, she echoes, and I know else I have said before has been lost on her. I hold the sheet of parchment towards her. Her countenance hardens, almost imperceptibly. There is hurt, creeping into her eyes.

Guilty.

I am, because I already know. She belongs with me, but she is not mine.

Guilty.

She is, because her heart is elsewhere.

Her expression, when she looks up at me again, is wary. We are silent.

Why?

The question we both want to ask, it hangs in the air. Unspoken. Perhaps, we are both afraid. Perhaps, in giving form to those words, we might inadvertently bare ourselves. So we are silent, it is our shield. The space between us. We need it to protect ourselves from each other.

I watch her, my face schooled into a gentlemanly blankness.

It has already been too long by the time she finally regains herself. Her lips part. I will go, she says.

To the ceremony, to that place she would not have chosen to return to, to come before that person she cannot bear to look at. So near, and yet so far - for both of us.  I already know.

I cannot help but admire her strength.

I know she will be beautiful, on that day. She will brave the sea of rumors that will surely swirl unrelentingly around her, the sideways glances, the speculative whispers. She will grasp tightly the hand of her child, and stride with her head held high.

She will stand by the man she has always loved, a man who now belongs to her sister. She will look on, as they are enthroned together, Emperor and Empress of the realm.

She will be proud, strong and beautiful.

She will keep the tears inside.

I will look on.

There are always things we wish we did not know. If only we were truly ignorant of the extent of our ignorance.

If only I had known, how not to know.

...