Title: Like a Snake Shedding Skin
Author: Nettle (MaraJade7@aol.com)
Fandom: The Dark is Rising
Pairing: Blowden/John Rowlands
Rating: PG
Notes: Spoilers for Silver on the Tree and The Grey King

She did not want to hurt him.

She had not expected that. Blodwen Rowlands had been a Lord of the Dark for uncountable years now, and acts in the name of the Dark no longer gave her twinges of conscience - indeed, if they ever had done, she could not remember a time. She was more than mere servant to the Dark; she was the White Rider, and in all things she acted to aid in its rising.

Years ago she had placed herself here, cleverly in line to watch and influence the strange pale boy who would be Pendragon, to keep him from the Light's stretching grasp and turn him to the uses of her masters. Her marriage to John Rowlands, best friend of the boy's adoptive father, had been a thing of convenience, a comfortable place to wait and worm her way into the boy's confidence and trust. She had not meant it to mean anything more.

But to fulfill her role successfully, to capture and keep the love of a man like John Rowlands, she had no choice but to become, in part, human, with all that entailed. She did not fall in love with him; she had been a servant of the Dark for far too long to retain the capacity for love - but she became fond of him. Fond of him, in all those years of living together as man and wife, and in a deep buried part of her, Blodwen Rowlands knew that that fondness was the closest she could ever get to the emotion called love, and somewhere deep down, she wept at that loss. It was something she had abandoned long ago, yet only now for the first time did she feel the pain of its absence.

And so the White Rider bided her time, watched and waited, and as the boy Bran grew older, she grew more and more into Blodwen Rowlands, until the role was nearly indistinguishable to her from that of her true self.

And it a moment of unguardedness, she had let herself and her mortal husband board the Time Train of the Light, and while Blodwen Rowlands knit furiously on the surface, the White Rider seethed in a frenzy within. With both parts of herself, she knew with the inevitable surety that preceded each encounter between the Light and the Dark, what must happen, what was bound to happen, and she railed silently against it. It was not that she regretted giving up the role - it had served her well, and any influence she might have had on the boy was over and past - but she had not wanted to end it this way. Not like this, not so starkly before John. Part of her cried out silently against what was to come, and part of her was aghast that she cared at all, but both parts of her agreed that she would rather avoid this if she could have. She had no choice but if she had, she would not have chosen to end her masquerade like this.

She knew it was coming, knew, as Merriman stood to expose her, and, needles clacking anxiously, she retreated into the persona that was Blodwen Rowlands long enough to savor one last look of loving, determined devotion on her husband's face before the jig was up, and she was revealed at last as a servant of the Dark before them all.

She sloughed off the Blodwen persona like a snake shedding old skin. The White Rider sneered down at them all, superior and unashamed, while somewhere deep within, the last vestiges of Blodwen Rowlands saw the look on her husband's stricken, betrayed face, and wept.

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