[ He feels a chill as Claude snuggles closer. Not from the temperature this time, but fear. He suddenly squeezes Claude's hand, trying to hold him, but something in him revolts at the nearness of him too, nearly jerking away when Claude taps his forehead against his. There's no time to react once it happens.
You are thirteen, and you have lost everything.
But your smoke-scorched lungs and wounds are tended to by the Kingdom's finest healers, and they are on the mend. After all, you are the crown prince, the only son of the now-late king, and the whole of Fhirdiad would lay down their lives to save you, seeing to your care day and night. You are the hope of thousands. The last miraculous star in their sky.
It is no wonder you survived, despite having no interest in doing so.
No, all you've cared to do is this: cry your strength away in great, pathetic sobs. Sleep in brief fits before newly minted nightmares startle you awake. Then, when your energy finally flatlines, you force down food that tastes like nothing, stare deeply into nothing. You think that in exhaustion you can wait for the feelings to crust over like a wound, something that aches in a lingering scar rather than sharp, luminous pain, but it never has the chance, because your childhood home is suddenly empty and yet still so very full of memories, teeming with opportunities to remind you of everyone that you'll never see again, and their faces and voices never leave you, not even for a moment.
Yes, you've decided. It would have been better if you had died. The thought visits you often, sometimes in whispers, met with dim acceptance rather than fear. But herein lies the problem: you cannot die. To fall on your own sword would disgrace you as knight—to waste away would bring dishonor on your father's strength. And even here you know that to die meant opening a rift of power that would fill itself in any way it could, no matter how unsavory; it is already impossible to hear news from outside the castle walls while you recover, and the reins to your country have slipped out of your burnt fingers, with more chaos bound to follow.
And to die now meant leaving your father's last wish unfulfilled. It plays over and over and over in your ears, a hoarse and haunting scream, and by the time you sit up and your nurse scrambles over to your bedside, your mind is made up, the grief-wrought expression you've worn replaced with something else entirely.
It is not your own resolve that heals you. It is not about what you want. When you cry your last and bottom out on sorrow, you reach for what's left, and it is a borrowed determination, a stubborn drive to make right the grievous wrong of your survival. At the nurse's worried face, you pause, and you think. A smile would be best. You arrange your face into your best approximation of one, and she looks relieved, and you realize that a ruler is nothing but a pillar, a foundation for others to build greatness upon. ...A prince. A pillar. A king. An avenger. There is so much left that only you can be. Your voice rattles from disuse, but you grip her hands firmly, a facsimile of strength that you're sure will speak volumes anyway.
no subject
You are thirteen, and you have lost everything.
But your smoke-scorched lungs and wounds are tended to by the Kingdom's finest healers, and they are on the mend. After all, you are the crown prince, the only son of the now-late king, and the whole of Fhirdiad would lay down their lives to save you, seeing to your care day and night. You are the hope of thousands. The last miraculous star in their sky.
It is no wonder you survived, despite having no interest in doing so.
No, all you've cared to do is this: cry your strength away in great, pathetic sobs. Sleep in brief fits before newly minted nightmares startle you awake. Then, when your energy finally flatlines, you force down food that tastes like nothing, stare deeply into nothing. You think that in exhaustion you can wait for the feelings to crust over like a wound, something that aches in a lingering scar rather than sharp, luminous pain, but it never has the chance, because your childhood home is suddenly empty and yet still so very full of memories, teeming with opportunities to remind you of everyone that you'll never see again, and their faces and voices never leave you, not even for a moment.
Yes, you've decided. It would have been better if you had died. The thought visits you often, sometimes in whispers, met with dim acceptance rather than fear. But herein lies the problem: you cannot die. To fall on your own sword would disgrace you as knight—to waste away would bring dishonor on your father's strength. And even here you know that to die meant opening a rift of power that would fill itself in any way it could, no matter how unsavory; it is already impossible to hear news from outside the castle walls while you recover, and the reins to your country have slipped out of your burnt fingers, with more chaos bound to follow.
And to die now meant leaving your father's last wish unfulfilled. It plays over and over and over in your ears, a hoarse and haunting scream, and by the time you sit up and your nurse scrambles over to your bedside, your mind is made up, the grief-wrought expression you've worn replaced with something else entirely.
It is not your own resolve that heals you. It is not about what you want. When you cry your last and bottom out on sorrow, you reach for what's left, and it is a borrowed determination, a stubborn drive to make right the grievous wrong of your survival. At the nurse's worried face, you pause, and you think. A smile would be best. You arrange your face into your best approximation of one, and she looks relieved, and you realize that a ruler is nothing but a pillar, a foundation for others to build greatness upon. ...A prince. A pillar. A king. An avenger. There is so much left that only you can be. Your voice rattles from disuse, but you grip her hands firmly, a facsimile of strength that you're sure will speak volumes anyway.
"I'm all right." ]