Chapter Text
Throughout his childhood, Wille had caused numerous problems for his parents and had consequently found himself at the wrong end of his mother’s anger a lot. He could not, however, remember her ever being quite as angry as this.
He also didn’t care.
They were in the car. A driver he didn’t recognise had pulled up the second he could be excused from the school – probably sooner than was strictly polite – and Mama had bundled him into the vehicle and off the property before he could make any more of a scene.
He hadn’t seen Simon before he left.
He was being yelled at. Not in the traditional sense, certainly his mother would never actually raise her voice to a level that could be heard from outside the car and, heaven forbid, by the public, but she had long since perfected the art of turning language into ice. He allowed her wrath to wash over him, marvelling in the way it didn’t hurt him. He was used to it, used to the way it penetrated his defences and left him feeling flayed out and bloody, but now it didn’t touch him. It couldn’t.
Now, Wille was in charge of his future.
Kristina did not appear to agree, her voice getting more and more insistent but further and further away from Wille until she said something that brought him right back to the car they were in.
“What would Erik think of this spectacle?” She spat. “He would be mortified, Wilhelm. Mortified.”
“Shut up.” His voice was flat.
He became aware, suddenly, of the leather upholstery he was digging his fingers into. Well, he reasoned, it’s not like they couldn’t afford to replace it.
His mother looked incredibly affronted but also a little surprised, as if he had never cut her off before. Maybe he hadn’t, Wille wouldn’t recall. “What did you just say to me?” Her voice was artificially even.
The car rolled gently to a stop for a red light. Wille couldn’t see the driver’s face, but from the tense set of his shoulders he imagined the man wished for nothing more than for it to turn green again.
It was alright for him. He got to leave at the end of this journey. Wille was, as he had ever been, stuck with his mother.
“I do not belong to you,” Wille said, calmly. “Erik was raised for this, it’s true. I was not. But Erik isn’t here and I am what you have. Me and August.”
Kristina snapped her fingers. “Which is exactly why-”
“I’m not finished.” A part of Wille couldn’t believe his own daring. Where had this come from? If he thought about it too much he suspected he might lose his nerve, so instead he powered on.
Kristina opened her mouth once and closed it again.
“August betrayed me, Mama. He hurt me. Not my image, not our family, me. And I wish you could stop being queen long enough to care but you have demonstrated that you can’t,” or won’t. “So, you look after the country and I will look after myself, like Erik used to look after me. It’s okay, Mama. I can handle it.”
August’s betrayal had not hurt nearly as much as the realisation that he had been the last to know. Worse still, his family had decided without him that Wille was not worth the exposure that justice would bring.
The car started moving again. The driver’s shoulders, which had been raising higher and higher the longer they were stopped, sagged.
The world had detached itself from Wille slightly, and as the car gained speed he felt as though he was leaving something significant behind them lying on the road. “I can be the kronprins you want me to be,” he pledged, feeling exhaustion start to sink into him, “but only if you let me be the person I need to be.”
Kristina tilted her head, considering him, and Wille felt uncomfortable under her attention. It was odd to get this far in life and realise that you weren’t actually sure if your mother had ever looked at you before, he thought. He fought the urge to fidget under the weight of it.
“This has made things much harder, Wille,” she said eventually. “Surely you can see that.”
“It was always going to be hard, Mama,” he said softly, not giving an inch.
She raised a hand to briefly touch her forehead, the closest she would allow herself to showing fatigue in public. “Erik would never have-”
“Erik would have been on my side,” Wille insisted, interrupting her for the second time, ignoring the voice at the back of his head that whispered she was right. Erik had always been on Wille’s side. Always.
“He would have been ashamed,” she hissed. “Erik would never have approved of such an unpolished display of weakness.”
“Unpolished, maybe,” Wille allowed, “But giving that speech was the strongest I have felt since August did what he did. Erik would never have let you make me small, like I have let you make me small. If he would be ashamed of anything it would be of that. So not anymore.”
“All this for a boy,” she sneered disdainfully. “You are only sixteen, Wille.”
“I did not do it for Simon,” he denied, realising as he said it that it was true. “He might not ever forgive me, and he might be right not to. I did this for me.”
“What are you saying?” she said. “That you will do whatever you want, now? That you will spite our family? Spit on our institution?”
Wille rolled his eyes. “When did I say that?” he asked. “Don’t be ridiculous. Erik loves this country, and for as long as he is gone I will do everything I can to look after it. When he wakes up, he will know that everything has been taken care of. I can do that for him. But to let it kill me would be too far, I think.”
“‘Let it kill you’, do you even hear yourself?” Kristina cried.
“Do you?” Wille asked softly. “Do you even understand that you’re hurting me?”
“I am the queen, Wille. I do not have the luxury of thinking of my son’s feelings when I have an entire country to consider.”
Wille smiled sadly. “Exactly.”
“Then we agree,” Kristina said, as if the matter had been abruptly settled. “I do not understand what we are arguing about.”
Wille was struck by a sudden wave of loneliness. He had butted heads with his mother many times, but he had never stood his ground like this before. He had never had to. Without fail, Erik had placed himself between her and him, shielding him. Wille’s whole life, Erik had kept Wille from understanding her distance with his own proximity. Wille had never felt her coldness, because Erik had been full of warmth.
He imagined, for a moment, Erik in the car next to him. He would bump Wille’s shoulder with his own and smile at him. Don’t worry about her, he’d whisper. I’m with you, little brother.
But Erik was no longer next to him, or just around the corner, ready to leap to Wille’s defence. Wille was utterly and completely alone and if he did not fight for himself, no one would.
“We are not arguing,” he said, drawing his jacket around himself against a sudden chill. “We are both simply coming to terms with how it is.”