You Are My Light Part II

206 - Lifetime *Modern*

Side Note - This was posted as it's own entity, but it didn't get a lot of recognition or readers, so here ya go! It's on the oneshot books instead.

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"You know, they say that souls are made of physical matter. We as humans just cannot comprehend the matter in our own ways. The soul lives within a body, and when the heart stops, the soul leaves the body and roams in whatever way comes after life. Does it find its way into another shell? Does it roam within the phantom world, just a few echoes behind the land of the living? Or does it float up and up and up until they float on clouds with small harps and wings? Does it go to after-earthly heaven that we have yet undiscovered? Do these things really matter? All I can say is, for sure, that whatever souls are made of. He and mine are the same."

"It all started with us when we were children. Our families were always close, even, at one point, our fathers were brothers in law. But Henry's sister Madeline, she died, leaving my father without his wife and his children from other relationships. He met my mother, a distant cousin on their paternal cousin's side, and they had my two brothers, then me. I'm the elder of the two of us, our mothers pregnant at the same time. I was born in the December, his mother carrying late until January. We were always close as babies, often spending the summer months in vacation homes that were next to each other on the three thousand plus acre of land that my father had owned for a time. Taking trips to see each other in Scotland and in France. Our childhoods were impeccable for the first few years, we loved each other so much, always so close. Our mothers had more children almost immediately after us. My three younger brothers and my sister, while Catherine gave birth to two girls and a boy. Everything was so disgustingly perfect, belonging in some cheesy ass rom-com. I was so happy, my brothers and my sisters, we were so happy. All of us, blended into one enormous family. We had wealth, love, family, fame. We had it all."

"But then my father died when I was five. Two months later, a second sister born still at seven months. I skyrocketed to the top of the highest mountain in the world, while my beloved Francis, he fell to the bottom of the ocean."

"Any other child would be delighted to live between to enormous, twelve bedded mansions. And, it's true, some of us did. My brothers, Adam, Jacob, William, Henry, Alexander, Arthur, James, and my full blooded brothers, Nathaniel and Nicholas, my sisters, Grace, Violet and Amelia, we were delighted for a time. But then Daddy died, and then our sister, Madison. Eric, Olivier and Edward, and little Amelia, they were too little to realise what was happening until it was too late. Our mother spiralled out of control, taking so many pills to numb the pain of Daddy's death in that plane crash, and then Maddie's death in the womb. Things changed, they were never the same.

"Some of my brothers were older than me, Adam and William and Henry, they were teenagers when Nathaniel came along. They could see the world for what it was and what it was not, they saw what was happening to their step mother, but what could three teenage boys do about it? Nothing, they were plunged into work in our fathers' business empire at not even post-college age. Bring in money, that's what she always said, when the addiction began to take over. Painkillers, opioids, so many things that I don't understand even now. We were all thrust into the world of work at such tender ages, but when though I was one of the younger ones, nobody was pushed more than me."

"It started when I was a baby, believe it or not. Ads for baby products on the side when the de Guise's hit a little snag in their own empire in France. It wasn't often, in those first five years. Daddy wasn't keen on his little girl being plastered all over the media, he was hounded enough as it was. But when he died? I was my mothers' cash cow, even though she had significant shares in her families' businesses in France, and was the main owner of our fathers' businesses when he died, and would be until the rest of us became of age to take over. I remember my fist audition eight months after Daddy's death. I wasn't even six years old, but I already had an agent and a profile out there. A publicist and a stylist, who has these things at age six? I got the part, obviously, and then my life was over. It wasn't my life anymore. I remember realising it when I had to put pen to paper on a suicide contract when I was six years old. My life wasn't mine anymore, but it didn't matter at that point."