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The gift is almost thoughtful.
Almost.
The toy sword is finely carved with such an exquisite level of detail that it is identifiable as a copy of the master Zoltan’s work even in the dim firelight. Felix tries not to crack a smile. Dimitri is almost thoughtful in his cliche.
It’s a gesture to the father as much as it's a gift to the son; their friendship is valued. Dimitri sends a birthday gift to Gerard harkening back to his and Felix’s teenage spats.
“Oh, Gerie, you will have to thank his Majesty quite profusely in your letter.” Annette’s beaming down at her lap, not looking up from the tight cursive notes she’s taking on each of the gifts. She’s already spilled ink on her skirts once.
Felix, on the other hand, watches his son try to school his face into something passably pleased.
“Of course, Mama.”
He’s placed the sword down on the side table, not giving the toy a second passing glance.
The great room in the Fraladarius hunting lodge is piled high with gifts for his eldest. Tributes. To friendship, books from Ashe and Ingrid. To fealty, a fine pair of leather gloves from one of his vassal houses.
All addressed to his son. All meant to be acknowledged by his father.
Gerard is nine, and Felix hopes he hasn’t yet figured out why he gets so many gifts. He’s been sullen all day, anxious about all the attention a birthday might bring.
So they nixed it. They have enough power for that, at least. The horribly short-tempered Duke Fraldarius not planning a feast for his son won’t look quite like an insult to the people, especially given the terrible weather this moon.
No sane person would travel in these conditions.
The trip is Annette’s idea. A surprise sojourn where they can all be together, the four of them, away from prying eyes, responsibilities, and politeness. Where he and Annette will need to try to cobble together a dinner without burning the place to the ground, unused to the mundane chores that haven’t plagued their days since the war a decade earlier.
Annette likes to cook but was banned from Fraldarius kitchens roughly two months into their marriage. The hunting lodge is relatively unscathed, and his son’s cake is only a little burnt.
Nothing more frosting can’t fix Annette laughed as she held back frustrated tears, and the flour on her face was so endearing he couldn’t help but kiss her.
They’re going to scar their children for life, as amorous as they insist on being. He’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame, still unable to leave her alone.
The trip is for their son.
It’s also a little bit for them.
“Do you recognize the sword, Gerard?” Felix asks.
Gerard’s wide blue eyes focus on the toy, and it’s as if he’s noticed it for the first time.
“It’s like yours,” he answers vaguely, twirling his fingers around one another as he always does in the presence of a question he’s unable to answer.
“Which one?” Felix pushes.
Cerise perks up from her place next to her mother on the couch. “I know!”
Gerard sinks in on himself as his sister skitters across the room on her clumsy seven-year-old feet. She’s petite where her brother is tall, loud where he is quiet.
Crested when he is not.
“I’m glad you know, Cerise,” Felix says, trying not to crush her spirits and passion for such things. He enjoys, genuinely, listening to her rattle off facts she’s gleaned from her governesses and pried off soldiers. But his son isn’t quite so interested. And never has been. And Felix can’t unpack in himself why that’s so unacceptable. “Now, Gerard, it’s similar to one of my swords. Which make?”
“Moralta?” Gerard says pathetically as if he already knows it’s wrong.
Felix pinches the bridge of his nose, hoping not to sound as annoyed as he feels. “Look at the hilt. Moralta has a much more elaborate guard. This is a quick sword.”
Cerise has already hefted her brother’s gift, running through forms across the hardwood floor. She’s lit by firelight, casting long shadows that distort her form from that of a child dressed in her nightwear.
In the shadows, Felix can see a glimmer of the warrior she’ll grow into, and can’t help but be equal parts proud and terrified.
“Cerise, maybe let your brother look at it? So he can gather up the information he needs?” Annette suggests gently, moving to sit beside Felix. She puts a comforting hand on the nape of Felix’s neck, pressing in to try to relieve the headache she seems to just know is coming on.
“But he doesn’t even like swords,” Cerise whines, without any intention to give up such a fine toy.
If there is one wonderful thing about the King and the Archbishop, it’s that they are consistent. Cerise will turn eight in a few months time, and a smaller, more appropriately sized sword will surely be counted amongst the gifts. Felix would bet on it.
This toy is oversized for her frame, she wobbles through her drill and Felix wants nothing more than to correct her. But this is play, and something in Annette’s gentle suggestion tells him he’s about to have two upset children if he approaches this wrong.
Cerise likes critique. Gerard hates it.
His son needs to learn how to handle himself better.
“Cerise it’s fine. You can play with it,” Gerard says, curled into a ball on the floor. He’s grabbed a stuffed lion from Mercedes and Dedue. It’s large, and stuffed with dried lavender, and wholly inappropriate for a nine-year-old heir to a Dukedom.
It’s also clearly his son’s favorite gift of the whole lot.
His son is giving, and Felix tries to use that to his advantage. “She can play with it if you can tell me who it’s from.”
Gerard doesn’t look up from his toy. “His majesty and the archbishop.”
It’s downright glib and Felix bristles at the disrespect. It’s his son’s birthday. They need not fight.
This is an easy question. He just has to answer it and everything will be over.
“And what is it modeled on?” Felix asks.
“A sword. One of yours.”
“Gerard, which one?”
“Why does it matter?” Gerard cries, tears pooling in his blue eyes. “I’m going to be terrible with it anyway!”
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s fine,” Annette springs from the couch, rushing forward to console her crying son. She gathers him up in her arms, and he curls into her, long-limbed and awkward.
It occurs to Felix that Gerard will soon dwarf his mother and it hits him with a pang of something pre-nostalgic.
Annette’s glaring daggers at him over their son’s head. Fix it she mouths.
“It’s Zoltan,” Felix says, and he can tell from the fury on his wife’s face that it wasn’t the right thing to say, “And you’re not terrible.”
Gerard extricates himself from his mother and rushes out of the room in a blur of dark hair as he wipes tears and snot off of his face.
“Felix!” Annette cries out in frustration as she watches their son retreat.
“He’s not!” Felix says, useless. Gerard is a little cautious, but he’s not bad with a sword by most standards.
“That’s very much not the point!” Annette’s face is red and furious, and he can’t appreciate the way the firelight catches the turquoise stone in her necklace, a gift for her thirtieth that is small and far too unassuming for someone of her station. She only wears it in private, and he knows she loves it. He’s not a great gift-giver, not thoughtful in the way his wife is, but just that once he got it right without begging Mercedes for help.
“He isn’t terrible, Mama,” Cerise says, still swinging the sword around. “He’s just a crybaby.”
Felix frowns, hating the phrase and how casually his daughter levies it. “Cerise you’re gripping far too hard with your off-hand, if it’s too heavy find a more appropriate sword.”
Annette looks furious but Cerise stops, considers for a moment, and nods. “It won’t be too heavy forever, will it?”
Cerise is made of tougher stuff than her brother. She always has been. She’s wild and stubborn in her own way, but she hasn’t burst into tears on the training ground since she was practically a toddler. She is so eager to please but so good with disappointment that it is painful to imagine what will one day break her spirit.
Annette softens. “No. But the sword is appropriate for your brother, who is much bigger than you. Please, we don’t want you to get hurt.”
Cerise sighs, but acquiesces. “I’m going to go get my sword then!”
Neither of them has the heart to stop her, even if she should have asked to be excused, as she goes running down the hall in search of her own, smaller, favorite toy.
Annette approaches him, pulling him into a quiet corner of the main room as if there is anywhere for them to hide. She’s looking up at him, toe to toe, and he can tell he’s in for some name-calling at the very least.
“Felix,” her whisper is like knives, “fix it.”
“He’s…” Felix purses his lips, feeling the familiar headache coming back with full force. “He needs to calm down before I even try. I never know what to do with him. He’s so…”
Annette’s look is a warning.
“Soft,” Felix whispers back.
“You embarrassed him,” Annette explains, and Felix can’t help but dig his heels in.
“He should know the swords of his house.”
“But he doesn’t. You could teach him, but you decided to make him feel bad about it. I would, just personally, have chosen differently than you.”
Her advice is obvious, and he knows she’s right. Annette is almost always right when it comes to things like discipline and education. When it comes to feelings, and saying I love you, and making people feel safe and secure.
He’s useless. He’s been useless from the moment he held the son he wanted so desperately that he hid his tears, mumbling in wonder that Gerard would never feel alone.
Felix bristled from responsibility his whole life, but he never resented heirs. Children. He’d always wanted to be a father.
Gerard has been able to sense his anxiety from day one, always crying when Felix tried to hold him, staying up all night like his mother. Refusing to rest when appropriate, refusing to practice when necessary. Lacking interest in any of the things that Felix wants so badly to teach him.
Annette has barrelled through parenthood with the same sort of overprepared eagerness she approaches everything, and Felix is still equal parts impressed, grateful, and jealous.
The third rears its ugly head and he deflects. “You should talk to him, Annette. You used to cry over getting one question on a test wrong back at school. You understand him.”
“So do you, Felix,” Annette says with genuine honesty.
And he does. Still, almost twenty years of coldness to him, and he does. Felix had been that sort of soft, once.
But he’s stopped. Life gave him enough reminders to hide that part of him away. Felix’s softness is reserved for his wife. Relegated to stories Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain tell while drunk to skeptical courtiers who know Duke Fraldarius to be unkind and harsh. Never cruel.
But it lingers, still. In the pain he feels when he sees his son understand his inadequacy. He can write the tendency off to Annette, to a perfectionism they all share. But Gerard hurts deeper than Annette, lovely, optimistic, forgiving, Annette ever could.
Glenn quizzed Felix on swords when they were boys, and Felix always channeled his embarrassment into tears and the tears into work. Gerard shuts down, and Felix understands his son’s pain, but can’t help but bristle at the differences.
Why, in a world full of so much pain, did his son need to inherit the knack for being hurt with none of his father’s defenses?
Why did Felix inherit his own father’s complete inability to fix anything when the pain was raw?
Annette forces his face to hers, still angry but now in a more quiet, disappointed way. “You caused it, fix it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Apologize.”
As if it’s so simple. As if Felix could ever wield words to solve a problem.
As if this isn’t going to happen again and again because of who they both are, father and son.
Felix grits his teeth. “He’s a child. He needs to learn. People will push on him far harder than asking him about the make a of a sword.”
Annette laughs, disbelieving. “He’s a child. And what if he doesn’t?”
“Doesn't what?”
“Learn to be cold like you?”
What would it be like? To have a soft son? Forever? For Gerard to grow into someone who took critique too harshly? Who hated being wrong?
Who had no interest at all in swords or fighting?
Who didn’t need to?
“He can’t be defenseless in this world,” Felix bristles, trying to harness the coldness that he knows he needs to muster. “There are skirmishes. Borders. Fraldarius is a military house.”
Annette sees through the posturing. Through him. Because she always does. Because they have implicit trust and can see to the core of who the other is.
Because they both struggled with their parents and they vowed, nine years and nine months ago, that they wouldn’t ever let their children think they weren’t loved.
She hugs him, the touch dulling his anxiety almost instantly. “Do you resent him because he’s like you?” Annette asks into his chest.
“I don’t want him to be like me,” Felix mumbles, hands grasping Annette like a lifeline.
“Are you sure?”
They both know he’s lying. It’s clear as day in the challenge.
“He cares too deeply, and it will harm him. I need him to care less. For his own sake. I can’t let the world make him…”
“Like us?”
“Yeah,” Felix admits through gritted teeth.
Because he loves Gerard’s softness. Even if it scares him to no end. Because each passing year he treasures how gentle his son is, and snaps at all the tutors and instructors who insist on saying a word about his son.
He loves it. It terrifies him. And he’s babied his son for far too long to try to preserve just how good his boy is, and each passing year is another chime on a clock until it won’t be acceptable any longer.
Until the world forces Gerard to learn to care less.
And Felix wants, more than anything, to protect him from that sort of lesson in blood and pain.
Annette kisses his cheek, her wide blue eyes meeting his. “You outgrew your softness, but you never outgrew your care, Felix.”
He blushes but knows it’s a compliment. “I know.”
She, at last, smiles as they find their common ground. “So teach him how to navigate the world when you care too much.”
Felix feels woefully unprepared for the task.
“How can I? He’s attached at the hip to his friends. He loves animals. He’s far better at faith magic than he is at nearly anything else…” There’s something far off in every healer’s eyes and he can’t have his son have it too. “He’s going to fail. He’s going to lose people… Healers see more death than warriors. I don’t want that for him.”
He’s panicking, imagining a future where his lovely, soft son finds the thing he’s truly best at in the world- and it destroys him. When he’s never good enough. When he can’t keep everyone he cares about safe because sometimes the dagger is too fast and too deep and…
Annette’s hands find his scalp and she grounds him once again, the pressure bringing the focus back into the great room of the lodge. To the roaring fire. To his wife’s concerned smile.
“We don’t get to choose what hand he’s dealt. We can teach him so he knows what cards to play.”
He refuses to process the good advice, or anyone being reasonable. “Is that a damn gambling metaphor?”
Annette giggles, she sees his deflection for what it is. It softens them both, pulls them from the stress into the moment and the problem at hand. The way the professor had taught them on the battlefield all those years ago.
She swats his shoulder. “There’s lots of math in cards. I happen to enjoy games of chance. But I’ll bet on you.”
He pulls a face because she’s being damn corny, but they both know he likes it.
“Come on,” she encourages, “You know your son, where is he?”
Felix knows, because he does know his son, that Gerard has probably hidden in the warmth of the kitchen. That he likes the smell of herbs and the way the oven stove makes the whole room stifling hot.
He follows the muffled sobs, less urgent now, down the hallway. He can fix this. He can apologize.
He loves his son.
“Gerard?” Felix announces himself, hoping not to scare the boy.
His little voice calls out, “In here.”
Gerard is seated at the tremendous wooden work table, staring forlornly at the lopsided birthday cake that neither he nor Annette thought to hide. His face is streaked with tears that he makes no attempt to hide.
Felix shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Your cake won’t be much of a surprise, I guess.”
Gerard matches his melancholy. “It’s probably burnt.”
“It is,” Felix agrees. “Your mother is an imperfect baker.”
It’s meant as a tease, but Gerard’s lip blubbers and he wraps his arms around himself in something more protective than comforting.
“She’s perfect. Cerise is perfect. You’re perfect. It’s just me.”
It breaks his heart, and the correction comes easily. “None of us are perfect, Gerard.”
“You’re close.”
His son looks so hurt and Felix does what he does best and charges in. It’s his home, he can sit next to his son if he pleases. He can put an arm around Gerard’s shoulders and hide his relief when he’s not pushed away.
He’s embarrassed, up close, to see how red his son’s eyes are, and the tremble in his fingers.
“I used to think that, but I’m not. I don’t think I’m within leagues of perfect,” Felix admits.
Gerard doesn’t take it, and sparks of anger find his little voice. “That’s a lie.”
Felix tries to steel himself, he tries to look his son in the face and admit wrong, but old habits die hard and he speaks to the floor instead.
“If I were perfect I wouldn’t have asked you about something you had no interest in. I wouldn’t have upset you.”
Gerard’s brittle anger breaks under his own self-hatred. “I’m easy to upset. That’s what everyone says about me.”
Felix can’t deny it, and he won’t coddle his son with platitudes. Annette told him he could fix it, that he would know how, and Felix swallows his pride.
“They used to say that about me.”
Gerard sniffs. “Liar.”
In all the anxiety, in all the world at his son seeing Felix’s deep inadequacies, this was not the thing he thought he’d need to prove. “Ask the Margrave. Ask his Majesty, if you’re so certain you’re right.”
His son looks at him, wide blue eyes shining with tears and shock.
“Really?”
“Truly.” He has Gerard’s attention, thank all the saints. “I still get upset. I worry about you. I don’t want you to get hurt. Ever. And despite all that… I have hurt you, and I apologize.”
“My tutors say that apologizing is below our station and we should dole them out sparingly.”
“Your tutors are full of shit.”
“Father!”
Felix snorts through a laugh at how much like Annette his son looks when he’s shocked. The same wide-eyed look, the same bit of hidden humor.
It’s not fixed. None of it is fixed. But at the very least Gerard is hiding a smile, rather than tears.
“Nobody is perfect. Not one of us. So if you’re sorry, say it.”
“I’m sorry I’m bad at swords,” Gerard says under his breath. And he sounds truly sorry for it and Felix can see a wound forming deep in his soul.
He won’t let this be the schism between them. Let it be trade deals, or music, or him trying for a deeply inappropriate match.
It’s not about swords. It can’t be.
“You don’t have to care about it as long as you can defend yourself,” Felix finds himself saying. His arm is still wrapped around his son’s narrow shoulders.
“I care about other things.”
“I know.”
“I like magic.” Gerard’s found his voice, and he can’t stop the light in his eyes even at the simple declaration.
“You’ll be exceptionally skilled in it with some work.”
Gerard nods, unable to protest when his father is nothing but confident. “Cerise will need it. She gets hurt all the time and I…” His face darkens. “I hate seeing her hurt. She likes to show me all her bruises… it’s disgusting.”
Bruises are part of life. He’ll learn.
“You’re going to take care of her,” Felix says as a new image forms in the shadows of his mind.
Gerard snorts, because he's still a Fraldarius and he's got some fire in him, gentle or no. “I have to, she won’t take care of herself.”
“I do the same for your mother, you know.”
“I can take care of her too!” Gerard is proud, more sure than Felix has ever seen him.
The tears have dried up and he can see the first inklings of the man he might be. A kind one. A brave one who tries so hard to keep everyone around him safe. Who channels the fear, and the perfectionism into something magical and incredible. The thought is so overwhelming Felix sits on his own impulse towards tears.
“Good.” He squeezes his shoulder. “That’s good, Gerard.”
“And you,” his son says with a determination in his eyes that Felix can’t help but be proud of.
“I look forward to it.”
They eat slightly burnt birthday cake around the small wooden table in the kitchen. The fire roars in the background, and it starts to snow in the evening because Foldlan may change, but Faerghus never does.
Felix takes one bite, to demonstrate appreciation for his wife’s work, and then hands the rest of it to his daughter who will eat the whole cake if left to her own devices.
“I think we might get Cethleann’s lights tonight,” Annette says, peering out the window.
“Really?” Gerard lights up, rushing over with a mouthful of cake to try to see the night’s sky.
“Come on, let’s get bundled up and see.” Annette’s bouncing up and down like a child. “First ones of the season are always special.”
“For your birthday, Gerie!” Cerise says, spraying crumbs of cake through her stuffed full mouth.
The kids run off towards their room, where, for once, they will don their cloaks and scarves with no complaint.
“I’m proud of you, you villain,” Annette says, leaning over to kiss his cheek.
He appreciates the gesture but frowns. His son is off with his sister and sat through his birthday dinner joking around with her. Telling his mother that he was very grateful for the meal. He’d even turned a blind eye to his burnt cake. It’s been Gerard’s own sunshine that saved the day.
Not Felix’s awkward words.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I’ve never known you to be modest,” she teases.
Felix holds firm in his denial. “So, truly, I’ve done nothing.”
He hasn’t. He’s talked to his son, given him clumsy words. What Felix will need to do is much more difficult. He’ll need to stop imposing his values on Gerard. He’ll need to let his son figure out what kind of man he wants to be.
Annette smiles at him. “Sure…”
His wife’s face is so brilliant Felix can’t help but push his luck. “You haven’t sung the winter song for him yet.”
“Oh don’t you think he’s a little old for that?”
He kisses the crown of her fiery red hair. “I’m not, so he can’t be.”
Annette blushes so beautifully it makes his heart sing.
“Just once.”
They climb up the hill together in the darkness, Felix hefting a lantern to light their way through the star-speckled sky.
Cerise is easily lost in snowbanks, and Gerard is quick to scoop her up by the scruff of her cloak every time she faceplants. They’re both giggling so hard by the time they reach their destination that Felix realizes she’s doing it on purpose, getting both of them absolutely covered in snow so they’re red-cheeked and giddy and far too loud for trapping through a clearing like this.
Annette curls into his side, for balance. And a little bit because she knows how much he likes it when she leans on him. And because she likes it too.
She’s smiling up at him like she has a secret and Felix raises an eyebrow right before a gale of wind sends a sheet of fresh powder up into the air around them.
“Oops,” Annette laughs.
Gerard gasps through the sparkle of ice in the firelight, tucking his sister behind him.
“Two can play at that game!” Felix and Annette are met with their own gale of snow, a little slower and sloppier. He takes the brunt, wiping ice out of his hair. It burns cold, going down the front of his cloak in icy rivets.
He’s useless at this game. Even so, he reaches down to make a perfect little snowball, lobbing it perfectly over his son’s head to hear his daughter squeak.
“We’re under attack!” Cerise’s proud general voice is only slightly hampered by the snort laughs she’s letting out. Felix is hit square in the chest with a snowball, and takes a dramatic tumble just as another gust of snow coats him.
Laying on his back, listening to the urgent crunch of the snow battle around him, he refuses to hide his smile.
Just as he cracks his eye open, he catches the first glowing signs that Cethleann’s lights are indeed visiting that night.