Work Text:
He used to be afraid of ghosts. The castle was haunted, oh, of course it was haunted, but of all the things that lived there, temporary or permanent, he had been afraid of the ghosts.Their empty eyes never seemed to settle on anything real, the shimmers of the places behind their bodies where he could see right through them. The dances, through walls where his father said doors had once stood, or walls had not always been.
"Ghosts are just feelings." His mother told him, her fingers gentle in his pale hair when he couldn't sleep. "Just a lingering feeling that didn't quite die. Nothing to be frightened of."
Now, the ghosts were comforting. They were feelings, just feelings that didn't die, but those were feelings he couldn't let die. His father on the stairs. His mother in her library, working with the potions and lights and bubbling mechanical things he had grown up with. His own reckless childhood laughter, running through the halls, sliding on the banister. Mother and father danced, hazy and shimmery in his vision, they read together in the old study. Tucked him into bed in the twilight, a bed he couldn't bring himself to sleep in, with it's broken sharp edges, the burns in the carpet.
The ring on the floor he couldn't bring himself to touch.
He should have left this place to the ghosts. The old ones weren't here anymore, nothing still called this place home. Nothing except memories, feelings that couldn't die. Happiness, and love. Warmth and safety. A mother's voice as she read to her only child. A father's laughter as he chased the boy through the endless hallway, catching him only to wrap him in hugs and shower him in kisses.
Our boy, his father's voice sobbed in the darkest hours of the night, I'm killing our boy.
He never found the words to apologize for killing his father. For breaking the bed they had so painstakingly made to welcome their child, and using the shattered pieces to drive a stake through a grieving man's heart. Instead, he cried and cried, burrowed into corners and rafters, never daring to sleep in the bedrooms, where the memories were strong, the ghosts stronger. The emotions bleeding over with the impossible sadness of loss and love.
He was a shadow wandering the halls. He was a specter, silent, bringing the sadness with him like a cloak. Fading the ghosts of laughter, dimming the light of smiles and music. He was a ghost, made of light and sharp edges, wandering the halls, touching the spines of books and tracing fingertips over paintings. He couldn't let himself forget their faces, even when the ghosts lost theirs, smiles faded and only the loneliness remained.
Had he done the right thing?
Had all the death been for the best? Was his father really just a monster, twisted by grief and anger, or had there been a part of him that could have been redeemed? Had the man he had seen, in his childhood bedroom, been able to stay, if only if only he hadn't broken his heart with a wooden stake?
If only.
If only.
Ghosts were full of if only's.