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English
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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-05
Words:
300
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
16
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1,570

The Old Emperor's Ballroom

Summary:

Every good lie has a grain of truth

Work Text:

Title: The Old Emperor's Ballroom
Author: Buffy
Rating: G
Summary: Every good lie has a grain of truth.

Albert loved Ash as if he was a son, but he couldn't tell him the truth. Oh, the part about him being in England during the war was true enough, and he'd met several lovely English Roses that he could have fallen in love with, even the part about leaving and coming back only to find that girl getting married to someone else was true.

But she wasn't the one with blue eyes you could fall in to. She wasn't the one whose memory had walked up to dance with him at The Emperor's Ballroom. No, those blue eyes had come with short, silky blond hair, and he'd never seen their owner in a dress. For a moment in the dusty old club, Albert had been thrown back in time, before he'd been a grifter, before his name was Albert Stroller. Back to a time when he had worked with the best partner he'd ever known, been ready to kill or die for the other man. Been in love with him, too. They'd been to that ballroom several times, mostly for work, but once for pleasure. The girl in the silver dress had been on his lover's arm, but it hadn't mattered. They were pragmatic men and they took their love where and when they could.

But those times and that love were things that he couldn't talk about. It wasn't safe to whisper of such things, even after nearly forty years, because the people he'd worked for and the group he'd worked against both had very long memories. So he mixed his truths and took Ash's sympathy. After all, the best lies have a good dose of the truth in them.