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“Baba is… He’s not doing good. You should come home.”
Leona regretted picking up the phone. After the third consecutive call from Farena, he thought it might be more serious. “You said that last time,” he rebutted.
Farena made a noise of frustration. For a guy who stubbornly remained sickeningly jovial at all times, the bit of deviance clued Leona in more than any words that would leave his mouth. “Last time, he pulled through, thank the ancestors. But we have to remain vigilant each time, and this time…” He almost let the words hang, the confidence draining out of them. “It might already be too late.”
So what if it was? Leona didn’t say. Frankly, the last thing Leona wanted to do was willingly see his father, and there were plenty, plenty of things out there that Leona did not want to do. And yet… The permanence of death itched at him. He had thought that dear old Baba would have perished last time, but the same old bullshit medicine that failed their mother had sustained him for longer than anticipated. It was bound to fail eventually, and even past that, nothing and nobody lasted forever.
Leona sighed to himself and weighed the choice between regrets. To let his father get the last word in? Or to never see him again? One carried more of an unknown than the other.
“Fine. I’m coming.”
And so, with aggravatingly little resistance from Crowley, Leona crawled back home.
For once, Farena might have been right. The cancer finally sunk its icy claws in the rest of the way, and all of Baba’s organs started going to shit. For the King, and perhaps him alone, the traditional palace staff had the sense to set up real medical equipment in his hospice room. Yet still, it had been two days since the King woke up.
The palace occupants and the royal family fretted about, hoping for a miracle—or at least acting like there was enough room to hope. Leona haunted the halls, waiting for the inevitable verdict before he could return to Night Raven with half of a regret assuaged.
“Leona,” Farena called, because Leona made the mistake of staying on the balcony for too long and being mistaken as an accessible entity. Although Leona was a little surprised that Farena came himself, instead of Neji. Something about the incoming tragedy made Farena renew his efforts to pretend that they were closer than they really were. “There you are. You know, there’s the council meeting tonight.”
“I’m not going,” Leona bit out before the question would be asked. “I’m not even supposed to be here, in the middle of the semester.”
Surprisingly though, Farena accepted Leona’s refusal on the first try. “I know,” his older brother sighed, ears and tail drooped. He looked his age, this way—like a man with responsibilities and only two shoulders to carry them, instead of a prideful king who placed them on others, or out to the wind. “I came to ask if you would stay with Baba, while I was gone. Just… just for the duration of the meeting, at least.”
Leona almost would have rather he asked for Leona to sit like a pretty idiot for the council meeting. “Why should I? There’s nothing I can do about his condition.” And Leona, despite his grudges, had checked. But, expectedly, late-stage cancer wasn’t something that could be magicked away, no matter how hard people believed. If Baba had consented to any meaningful treatment at all earlier on, maybe it would be a different story.
But here they were now: the sum total of consequences.
“It’s not about that!” Farena hissed back with a single lash of his tail. Ah, sun-fire hair, a wide frame, and plenty of amicability for everyone except Leona: he was the spitting image of Baba, alright. Maybe he was finally growing into the role in Baba’s impending absence. “He’s our father. You should see him for more than two consecutive minutes. And more than that, he deserves the company.”
Deserves! Ha! As if. Maybe he earned it from someone else, but not Leona. Baba never wanted to see Leona when he was healthy; why would that change when he wasn’t even awake? “He’s unconscious. He’s not even going to notice.”
“He can still wake up,” Farena challenged. “If it does… he should not be alone. It would be better if it was family, and not just a nurse. It might be the last time.”
“Then let your kid sit in there with him. He actually likes his grandchild, doesn’t he?”
“Cheka is too young to be subjected to such a sight,” Farena argued. “And besides… Cheka hardly knows Baba. Not really.”
Leona grunted in irritation. He hated that Farena had a point. It still didn’t mean that it should be Leona there, his least favorite son, but at this rate, they were going to turn him into a fucking hypocrite, after Leona had the audacity to remark that their mother had been kept from visitors, citing her weak immune system, before she died on the thinly veiled hope that she would make it.
“Just for your meeting,” Leona allowed. He had better stay unconscious, then, because Leona had no idea how he would handle it otherwise. Leona could not recall a time when their interaction had been free of passive-aggressive tendencies and pointed remarks, and Leona wasn’t quite so cruel that he would wish that on a dying man’s last memory, should that be the case. Neither would Leona roll over, belly-up, just because Baba was frail now.
But Leona was not a blessed child, and thus, his luck was absolute dogshit.
Just being there was unnerving enough. For all of Leona’s issues, actually having to witness that frailty in his otherwise indomitable, larger than life father was… disconcerting. Karmic, maybe, but there was only so much pleasure to be taken in suffering. Leona performed his vigil with reluctance, looking anywhere but his father’s lax face.
Then, there was a deeper breath, and movement.
Leona thought about leaving. He really did. He pressed the call button for the nurse and planned out his escape upon her arrival in perfect detail. It wouldn’t even be hard. But the threads of familial duty held onto him no matter how much Leona tried to ignore them, and from the moment Baba cracked an amber eye open, he resigned himself to his fate.
“…Leona,” Baba spoke, half question and half accusation.
“That’s me.”
“I’m surprised you showed up,” he sighed. The venom did not quite make it through the weariness of his condition. It sounded strange to Leona’s ears.
“That goes for both of us.”
The nurse bustled in, frustratingly unobtrusive. She checked the machines, adjusted the bed, and then left to monitor from somewhere else at one meaningful side-glance from the king.
“You should let them do their job,” Leona grumbled. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not in good shape.”
Baba waved the concern away, but at least unlike Farena, he was pragmatic with it. “And do what? My time has come. I already know all there is to know about my condition.” He coughed a bit, although it came out as more of a wheeze. “Where’s Farena?”
Of course. “Busy. It’s the national council session.”
Instead of bemoaning that politics got in the way of family, Baba stayed ever dutiful. Because of course. “You should be there too, then,” he argued, and Leona let his irritation rise closer to the surface.
“And leave you alone? You just admitted you were dying. I was taking my turn, old man. Lucky us, right? You should have woken up three hours ago if you wanted things to go smoother.”
Leona was prepared for the comeback—the huff, or the remark on Leona’s behavior, or some other asinine detail that did not matter. It was the only song and dance he and Leona knew, since Leona was a kid and already growing up to be something that Baba did not want. He would tell Leona that he was wrong, or foolish, or some other disappointing thing, then Leona would dig his heels in and make their foul mood mutual, in lieu of being able to do anything else; rinse and repeat.
He saw it coming. He saw that instinctual irritation bloom in his father’s eyes… and then it passed, with a slow blink and a withering sigh.
“I heard you overblotted, Leona.”
Leona faltered. For all that he thought it was prepared, the almost toneless statement threw Leona off-kilter. He never expected this scenario to ever come up. Farena had been more or less easy to assuage, since he didn’t understand the gravity of what an overblot meant and he had seen Leona’s sorry state in the aftermath and determined he was fine; Neji had been harder to deal with, at first, but the old bird backed off at some point and seemed keen to politely ignore the subject, as per usual. He didn’t think either of them would tell the poor old ailing king, who famously disapproved of Leona’s magic proficiency, for fear of his weak heart, or something. Evidently Leona miscalculated.
He swallowed, suddenly losing too much of his hard-earned confidence. Baba should be downright pathetic, in that bed, and yet his steady gaze bore into Leona and turned him six again, small and overwhelmed. He fought to maintain his composure and probably failed somewhere along the way. “And? Going to use your last words to gloat? To tell me that my magic was every bit as dangerous as you always said?”
Baba grimaced, something sour in his throat, while unspoken things burned in Leona’s.
“I… am sorry, Leona. I failed you.”
More fool Leona, he did not think that this could possibly get worse. “What?” he breathed, the noise coming out more like a startled whisper. Leona’s grasp on this situation dissolved rapidly, as if his unique magic had backfired on himself.
“I should have tried harder to stop you,” Baba said, his tone full of regretful confession and his words ice directly to Leona’s veins. “Your magic… I always knew the greatest danger it posed was to yourself. That blot… It is poison in any dose.”
“Shut up,” Leona hissed. Of course. Of fucking course. It was this age-old argument again, made even worse by Baba and all of his righteous ignorance. “I overblotted on my own terms, and I survived it. It’s over, Baba. If you are going to use your last breath to say that some measly blot is going to make me sick and die like Mama, don’t. Magic didn’t kill her, just like it didn’t kill you.”
He couldn’t gauge his father’s reaction as well as usual, past the traitorous blur in his eyes. Leona was just… sick of it. It shouldn’t still hurt.
“…perhaps not,” Baba whispered, broken and weary. For the first time ever, he admitted Leona was right, and it was on his fucking deathbed. Leona was too caught up in the tumult to feel any satisfaction from it, if it was even true. “You… were always just like her. From her brains, her eyes, her magic… her health. It scared me. I lost her, and I could not bear to lose you too. Perhaps… I was rash with the cause. Because you’re right. I am here, and you are not.” He drew in a shuddering sigh. “Either way, I have failed you both.”
Leona half turned away, so that his father would not see the tears that escaped. It was the admission he always wanted, but it was too little, too late. Baba’s love for his wife meant he shunned his youngest son, and that couldn’t be undone. Yet… yet Leona, weak as he was, felt something inside of himself unravel with the words. He never thought Baba would ever say them. It meant nothing. It would change nothing. And yet…
“You’ll be with her soon, when you join her in the stars,” Leona managed, just as quiet and just as broken. The traditional comfort of parting, regardless of whether or not it was true that the ancestors gathered together in the sky, was the closest Leona could come to an appropriate response, especially to someone who held tradition in high regard. It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t quite a forgiveness. It was a truce, to be held from now until that inevitable end.
“I will,” he replied, accepting the truce for what it was.
The door burst open then, a harried Farena spilling in. “Baba!”
Leona left, slipping away at the first chance he got. He and his father said their piece. Whatever it was worth, it was said. Perhaps it could be considered a blessing, that Leona will not have to wonder whether or not his father truly hated him, but instead be assured that it was the fault of misplaced love all this time. It did not change the past, but at least Leona would know.
The king of the Sunset Savana passed away that night.
Leona looked to the stars, settled with a tired peace, and did not mourn.