Work Text:
Confession #1
There was a time in my life, after my father died, that I found myself truly aimless for the first time, wandering the world with no sense of direction whatsoever. The sudden lift in restrictions meant that I could do whatever I pleased— there were no rules set aside for me.
The presence of my father, which hung so heavily over my head since the day I was born; from his energy present in every room of our home, his piercing gaze so similar to mine, to his gravelly voice in my ear, reminding me that I was to be a good man, a pious man— it all disappeared when he died.
It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn't want to admit that, but it felt terribly nice. It felt so nice that for the first time in two years, I snuck out of the palace after my curfew and walked around in the snow for ten and a half minutes. I breathed in the cold air, kicked around the soil, and felt the snow melting in my palm— I wondered if my father felt this way after his own father died.
No, no, this wasn't normal, but at the time, I couldn't have cared less. I played in the snow until my body ached with pain and my fingers started to turn purple.
It felt so, so, liberating, yet the guilt— oh the guilt ate away at me so bad that I threw up on the hallway carpet when I snuck back inside using one of the many back doors. Atlas found me and cleaned me up. He said nothing to me, though I suspect he thinks that my little excursion outside was my way of coping with the grief. Even then I couldn't shake the memory of my father from my mind — he'd reprimanded me once by making me stay outside in the snow, kneeling on rocks; I still have the scars on my knees. They remind me to be good.
I slept little that night, forcing myself to look at a candle until the flame burnt out and all of the wax had dripped onto my skin. I slept with no blankets that night. I dreamt of my father and I wished he was still there, and I missed the way he loomed over us, strict but only because he cared. I miss my father very much.
The next day, I could tell that everyone was exhausted– Morven had bags under his eyes and I realized I wore my sash in the wrong direction. Little Danica kept asking where our father was, and it was my task to gently tell her he wasn't going to join us anymore— that he was going to the better place in the heavens. I could tell she couldn't quite comprehend it, and I felt sorry for her.
After several more of her questions, Matthias snapped and told me to just show her our father's corpse in the family morgue, and an intense family argument broke out. I left the dining room with my youngest siblings and handed them over to Atlas before I went back to mediate the situation.
Poor Atlas. I need to ask Ma to give him another raise.
After the argument had smoothed over, there was the job of purifying our father's remains in the morgue. It was a gruesome task to do, and I will not write explicitly about the process, but it took longer than expected, and by the time it was done, the scent of death lingered on our clothing. I almost threw up my breakfast, and Nikoletta's face was so sickly green that it almost matched her sash. I don't like being in the family morgue. I wouldn't like to see it in use ever again. I hope I die before anyone else does.
Mother was grieving heavily that night, and we silently made an agreement not to bother her. Even from our bedrooms, we could feel the faint magic emanating from our father's purification pendant— the one he gifted her for their third anniversary together. It was such a strange feeling, so different to the magic of our father we were so used to feeling.
The magic was so light, and so, so warm. It felt so comforting, and it reminded me of my father when he was in his nicer moods, when his sickness did not cloud his mind with excruciating pain. It reminded me of when he'd tuck me into bed and cast a warming spell on me, when I was eleven and newly suffering from the Empire's resentment of my being.
My father had loved my mother dearly, and she loved him back with the same intensity. The magic flowed throughout the night, lulling us all to sleep. I could feel my mother's sadness mingling in with the remnants of my father's magic– like the hushed whispers they'd share with each other, like when we'd catch them dancing in the parlor under the guise no one else was watching. It felt like he was still there, like he was just around the corner, just waiting for us to come around the bend.
I miss my father. Everyone else doesn't want to admit it, but they miss him, too.
Evander Knight