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“You coddle him,” Kouha tells them with an annoyed look on his face as Alibaba and Kougyoku both race towards the small boy he'd been sparring with and accidentally knocked down with too much force.
Alibaba reaches his son first, scooping the stunned child into his arms before he can even open his mouth to cry. Kouyou has always been a sturdy little thing, strong and unflinching, but now his lower lip quivers, and Alibaba feels his blood begin to boil. He knew this was a bad idea, and he’d said as much, but as always, his brother-in-law had other ideas.
“He’s only four!” he snaps at Kouha, arms tightening protectively around the sniffling child. Beside him, Kougyoku jams her hand between their bodies, trying to undo the frog clasps at the shoulder of Kouyou’s tunic. It looked like it was the broad side of Kouha’s sword that caught him in the chest, knocking him clean off his feet, but nonetheless, Alibaba braces himself for the sight of blood.
When Kougyoku’s hand comes away clean, however, Kouha only shrugs, mouth twisting into an incredulous smile.
“C’mon, really?” he says with a huff. “I’m not gonna hurt a kid . ‘Specially not my own nephew.”
“It’s all right,” says Kougyoku, loudly and far too sweetly. “Just a little bump. No harm done.” She’s sweeping Kouyou’s hair out of his teary eyes, golden blond curls in desperate need of a trim. Alibaba can’t tell if she’s talking to her son or her brother. Probably both, knowing her.
“See? We’re good. Right, Kouyou?” Kouha’s smile eases into something more confident, the same grin that charmed Kougyoku into allowing their four-year-old to skip his reading lessons for his very first spar.
Kouyou would be of much more use to the Kou Empire as a soldier, Kouha had urged with that smile of his. What a waste it would be for the little prince to spend his childhood cowering behind a mountain of books in the governor of Balbadd’s estate. The son of two dungeon conquerors, two of Ren Kouen’s generals, was surely bound for greatness.
“Right!” Kouyou echos as Kougyoku fastens up his tunic again. She kisses his forehead, and Kouha retrieves his small sword from the ground, placing it back into his chubby fist.
“Ready to try again, soldier?” asks Kouha. Alibaba frowns, the notion of his scholar son being reshaped into a warrior right before his eyes becoming more distasteful by the second.
Just because he’s inherited his mother’s impressive pool of magoi, it doesn’t mean Kouyou should concern himself with the expansion of the Empire just yet. He is only four, after all.
“No, I think we’re done here,” Alibaba interjects rather loudly. Kouyou wiggles in his grip, wiping at his eyes and sniffling hard, trying desperately to prove to his father that he is, in fact, all right. But Alibaba merely hoists him a bit higher into his arms and turns to leave the training grounds, Kougyoku’s concurrence be damned.
As much as Alibaba loves her, he knows his wife will never stand up to her brothers, even to keep their only son from becoming a weapon of war. Stopping this is his responsibility.
“It’s okay, Papa,” comes a small voice in Alibaba’s ear, but he keeps going, heavy robes swishing as he marches away from the training grounds. Kouyou is staring back at his mother and his uncle, the setting sun glinting off the blade of his short sword. “I want to be a general.”
Alibaba pauses, recalling just for a moment the sight of the battlefield before him.
Horses and men, drowned and charred. Weapons melted and shattered, columns of white smoke reaching toward the sky. Rivulets of water running black with the dust of burned bodies. Kougyoku kneeling on the scorched earth by his side, weeping for the loss of their humanity, questioning Kouen’s ambitions too late.
No, Alibaba will do anything it takes to keep Kouyou from that, for as long as he possibly can.
“You can’t be a general unless you can read your battle plans, now can you?” he says, mustering the brightest smile he can for the boy in his arms. Kouyou glances over his shoulder one last time before his mouth curves into a matching grin, and he shakes his head, biting his lip as though his father has just let him in on some huge secret.
Alibaba gives the tiniest of sighs, thanking the powers that be that Kouyou turned out so suggestible and easygoing, and didn’t put up a fight. But he knows this can’t last forever, not with Kougyoku’s brothers pushing Kou’s youngest prince closer and closer to the battlefield, dangling promises of glory and honor over a boy too young to truly understand them.
End.