Butterfly Reign

3. It's Shallow

It has been over a week since Ranboo first arrived at the palace, and Tommy isn’t doing really well in terms of befriending him.

Tommy is the pinnacle of kindness whenever they encounter each other by accident, but that’s about it. Ranboo had tried to make a conversation with him one time; Tommy listened to him stutter and apologize after almost every word for around five minutes before he got tired and left in a hurry under the excuse that he had to fill some paperwork.

He isn’t sure what annoys him more: the aura of awkwardness that turns every conversation with Ranboo into a torture, or his terrible lack of respect and manners. Tommy had to correct him a few more times before he stopped using first names, and showed him the section in the library where they had books on etiquette.

This had, unexpectedly, brought a whole new problem – Ranboo doesn’t know how to read. The literacy rates in the Antarctic empire were not nearly close to one hundred percent, and advanced academies were only affordable for children of wealthy merchants or with sponsorship from a noble family. Father of the current Emperor put an effort to make schools with basic education available both in cities and larger villages, but it was clearly not the case for whatever wretched hole Ranboo had crawled out of. 

Tommy tells this to the Emperor during one of their meetings – without the hole-crawling part, of course. He half-expects that he’ll be tasked with finding the boy a teacher, and feels almost happy that it never happens, and goes on with the reports. Once they are done, and the Emperor dismisses him for the day, he does what he hasn’t done in literal years – he lingers, nervously cramming a handkerchief in his fist.

“Do you have anything else to say, Theseus?” The Emperor asks.

Tommy straightens and forces himself to look into the man’s eyes. “Recently, I took an interest in learning Ender, and I’m having some troubles with the phonetics. I know very few people, even in the palace, who are fluent in speaking the language so I thought- that you could, perhaps, assist me.”

It feels as if the world stops as Tommy waits for an answer, and it crashes on him full-force when the Emperor throws him an incredulous look. It hurts. Tommy knows that he has no one but himself to blame. His request was ridiculous, and selfish, and over-demanding- and he still went forward with it.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to make any room for a break in my schedule,” the Emperor says. Tommy is already backing away mentally, and the only thing that’s left was to get to the doors and rush away.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he all but mutters. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Less than an hour later, Tommy finds himself passing near Ranboo’s room. He wouldn’t have stopped if there wasn’t a voice coming from inside, one that he recognizes as the Emperor’s, and if the doors weren’t left open just wide enough for somebody to peek in.

It brings back memories of the times when five-year-old Tommy would come to bother his father. Standing behind heavy wooden doors, he never knew who he would find inside: Dad, who will greet him with a happy exclamation, pick him up and press a kiss to his forehead, or Emperor Philza, who would only rub a thumb between the creased eyebrows and ask a governess to take the young prince away.

Last time Tommy had seen his Dad, he was eleven years old, and his mother was still alive. Where he didn't expect to meet him again would be next to Ranboo, sitting behind a desk, as the boy hunches over it with a quill in hand. What Ranboo writes on a piece of paper looks more like scribbled characters from one’s fuzzy nightmare than actual words.