After all this time, and that was all it took? All those years as a child in which I held you as you expressed the sadness for the father you had, but never knew? After those several anniversaries of birth, in which I had to remind your father in which day it fell upon, that was all it took? Things had changed when your little raven reignette had taken to the seas, but they fell straight back into place not three years later. You and I, standing in the sidelines, watching your father dote upon the son he adored and the mistress in which he loved, watching the three of them be a proper, solid unity, whilst the two of us drifted like nameless ships on a blackened sea? When had those disappointed, disproved looks turned to the ones who held you in such a regard now?
Had I never noticed? Was I too cold to the ways of his words and his blackened eyes? Numbed to the actions of his hands and his heart? Had you? Were you too caught up in the loving gaze of your grown raven reignette to see the transition from judgement to almost complete adoration? When had it started? Would it ever stop?
When did you become the son of your father? Not his heir, as he had referred to you as your entire life? Nor your usurper, as he enjoyed stating as you grew into a man? When had the word 'son' gained the value it now had? When did the price of it shoot into the stars? When did it hold so much meaning?
When had he used it to describe you?
He looks at you with those blackened eyes, the look that he had always cast towards his most loved sons, Sebastian and Henry? That look that you had proclaimed so tearfully into my arms, into the heart of your little Queen? When had that look been cast into the body of my son, no other woman's? When did he speak to you in that tone, with that voice?
You and I both know when, my son. Never.
Although you change as you mature into the strong young man you are now, I forever know you. I know so earnestly, the wishes and the dreams you've had since a babe. How much you wonder what it would be like to have those proud, tearful, fatherly eyes locked upon you. I know you, don't I? Even now, you pine for your father to not look upon you with the disaprovement and disappointment he always has done. To look at you like you matter. Not just that, like you matter to him. I say nothing to disturb the moment that you have waited your entire life for, for your father to set those eyes upon you and stare with such pride and amazement as you hunch over his desk. Neither do you, you stare into the eyes that are both the same and so different. The darkened sea combines with the brightest sky in a bond that is unbreakable to any man.
You've always stood to the sidelines as he plays the doting father to Sebastian, and to Henry when his harlotten mother allows a visit. You watch in the sidelines as he throws a sword with them, or launches a bow at their sides. As a child, you watch as he throws them up into the air and catches them with a joyful, boisterous laugh, the envy and confusion evident in your eyes and in your face, so beautiful, sculpted by God and all his angels. My angel, how could I have made you understand years ago? Do you understand now? Have you ever?
You watched Sebastian smile that easy smile, attaining that same bright beam from the most powerful man in France. You've always tried so hard for even an entree of that smile. As you grew into an adolescent, not a boy, not a man, you watch as Sebastian inherits and masters many talents, skills and charms. You watch as you develop into you, standing firmly, bravely, strongly, receiving nothing but dagger eyes and glances that were enough to wither any nobleman. It ached my heart to see you suffer in such a way that I could not remedy, nor could I make your father understand. I pray you know I tried, my child. Whatever he may have wanted from me, a decade of baroness later, you were still and always were his son.
You stated to me, as a nine year old boy, freshly wounded from the departure of your little ravenette reignette that had meant so much to you, maybe your father would like you if you tried harder to be like Bash. Maybe if you stood up to him more, not let him get to you as he so often did. My heart had suffered many trials and tribulations, but none had ached my inner workings so much as that sentence leaving your small lips. You had asked if him taking the object of your deepest affections away from you was a test, or a punishment. I still, to this day, know not the answer, my child.
But now, your father looks upon you with those eyes. Dark, watery eyes. Dark, watery eyes that are full of pride, a breathless smile upon his lips as he opens them after several moments of silence. I know not what he may say, nor what he may do. You stare at him, you say nothing in response as he begins his own.
Henry speaks of how he had always dreamed of you, working side by side with him, for the benefit of your country that came second to none.
I see not your eyes, but I feel your trepidation at such a sentence. Do you look into his eyes and whisper the same thing? Do you speak through your eyes, tell him of the nights you spent awake as a child, in tears, wondering what you had to do, what puzzle you had to solve, to get your father to love you? I feel your confusion, I feel it in myself. If my husband, your father, our King, wishes for such a thing, why condemn us to a decade and a half of suffering and abandonment and loneliness? I have long given up upon his love, I understand why he no longer holds me in a high regard as he had done as we were wed, must he make my golden child suffer, for nothing more than his pride? He clearly knew how to be a good father, I know not why he refused to be one to you, to you and all of the others in which you eclipse in your goodness and empathy and strength and love.
I dream, too. I dream of a reality in which your father was as good a husband to me as he was to his mistress. I dream a reality in which he held you and your brothers and sisters in the highest regard. A reality in which you had not had to spend nights awake, hoping against God himself, that you'd awake and your father would love you and care for you in the way you had always wanted, more than almost anything?
You cannot tell him that. And neither can I.
You and I are alike in ways that your father cannot fathom. A hundredfold more than you and he. I remember the afternoons in which he had grabbed you in a grip so tight that I risked my neck to see you safe by my side. Those afternoons where he had found you tearfully moping for the young Queen you had loved and lost. He had told you to forget all emotion. You were not to feel emotions.
But how could you not feel such things that made you human? Hatred, hopelessness, desperation, acrimony, yearning, ambition, sightlessness, enmity, aspiration, desolation, desire. Remorse, anguish, compassion. Blindness, foolishness, an angry love, respect, admiration, appreciation, awe, alienation and a thousand other things that I cannot even begin to think of.
There will never, ever, be a time in which neither you, nor I, feel emotions. I can promise you that, my saviour in which he does not deserve.
He stares at you still, his eyes are deep. I do wonder if you find yourself lost in them, as I was as a fourteen year old child. I struggle to understand what emotions, what enmity, the old King feels now. Does he regret that he neglected you, I, and all six others? Does he wish -as I do- for another reality, in which he has another chance to do it all right? Does he find himself filled with the pride I feel each and every time I lay my eyes upon the one I love the most? Does it matter now, what the stubborn King thinks of you, or even I?
I know the answer before I speak it. I speak not, still. There would never, not once, be a time in which neither you, nor I, care not in what he thinks of you.
You lean up from the table, stand to your full, impressive height. I try and fail to make sense of this all. I am numb from the shock and the confusion, I know not what you feel, but do know that it's a hundredfold more than what I feel at this moment. All this time, I have begged my husband to love you in the ways that I do. But I have known that he feels less for you due to the fact that you hold my blood, nothing else. You are the personification of a union that has brought misery to the groom and the bride, and you are not at fault for it. My husband dreams of you, he dreams of the two of you, working together, side by side. Not as King and heir, but as father and son. I shake with the realisation.
I shudder at the stone cold whisper that raises the hairs upon the back of my neck, the one that haunts me. It tells me that it's all a lie, that he has changed not. He never will, people like King Henry Valois, second of his name, do not change or evolve or adapt. He is still the same stone cold man who allows you to linger in his shadow, the same stone cold husband who allows his hated wife to wallow in the ashes of all she has lost.
But you want it to be true, I can feel it. And, my son, so do I.
I want your fantasies to become reality. I pray they do. I want you to work with your father, side by side, setting and grooming the country that you both adore. I want you both, side by side on horseback, proud and regal, hunting your prey as two Princes of the blood should. You dream of a real, true father. One who would pick you up and throw you in the air with joy as a child, one who would cradle you in his arms so gently as a babe, one who would carry you to bed as a small human. One who would respect your view upon political matter and enjoy your company after private doors closed for the evening.
You make a sound, breaking this clasp between you. You turn to me, for confirmation, for advise, for guidance. I can give you none. I stare back at you, hoping to convey all I wish to say in wordless oblivion. You are your fathers son, you dream as he does. You dream as I do. I cannot give guidance this time, my child. I am under his spell as you are. No matter what you think, I always have been. I will walk into the fire with you, child. And we will emerge a complete trifecta of solid unity, or you and I will emerge unscathed, unbloodied and alive, tempered like steel.