Work Text:
Dearest Terence,
I suspect that my communications were waylaid. The approach of the palace was flooded with carriages and their attendants, and only with much yelling of orders and spurring of chocobos was the entry cleared. Men in livery hurried to bow. The Bearers were on their knees, ready. Throughout the palace, sconces poured white light over servants as they flooded in and out of their corridors, bearing sauce-laden trays and napkins stained into new patterns.
I had interrupted dinner.
Several messages were then borne with greatest haste to father. A single instruction came: Prepare at once.
The attending servants spoke my apologies: the good Prince merely wished to return to His Imperial Majesty as soon as the Crystal permitted... Oriflamme was host to consulars, tributaries, esteemed lords and knights, and now a plate must be made set for Bahamut. Someone must need vacate their seat and 'twould not be the heir, though too young to eat the same fare of mutton and secrets.
Not one of the entourage which "prepared" me were familiar. My dissent mattered naught to them. They moved on orders from the emperor himself. No time was spared—or could be—to draw a bath, but they demanded that I be restored to purity. Bearers grimaced as they scraped brushes over my body, the bristles thick with soap, running over with water drawn from their veins. I had late known the blood and mire of the western province; I felt its clinging pestilence return under their gaze, as if their hands drew new wells of it from within me.
The grip of those ruined lands is insuperable. I left the dead where they lay to see my father, and yet is this the homecoming I must treasure? To arrive, forgotten and unexpected, washed like a dog returned from a maddened hunt, to be ushered into a usurped dinner seat? And there, to receive naught from my father but his scowl, colored by much drink, and his wife's entitlements to speak on his behalf: shall I not recall Bahamut's triumph in the conquest I am returned from? Must I play with smiles and falsities until the last person has inquired for the number of men who have died with my blade in their neck? I ask these questions less to you, and perhaps more to Greagor; holy in my mind.
The table rumbled with the fists of laughing nobility. If someone uttered a jest, I was not privy to it.
Only Olivier remained unaffected by the evening's jocularity. He slumped in his chair like a marionette, nodding in sleep at the right hand of the Emperor, hair flashing gold as the crown of his head hovered just visible over the tablecloth. Perhaps it is my mounting agitation that dyes my prejudice, but I fear the boy continues to exist in a state of unbreakable malaise. I pray—for all our sakes—that he improves.
When the dinner was ended, I witnessed a remnant of my father within the drunken man. We were led by servants through the grand doors and hall to the throne room, where each heavy curtain had been drawn apart to frame the glory of Drake's Head. I doubt I will ever tire of the sight. Father stepped readily to his place. The strike of his cane with each soft of his shoe was as I know it to be, and pride in his face as the room hushed to regard him. He has always been best in the dramatic.
Yet no matter his words, I wanted to hear his voice. I thought perhaps his gaze would hold me for a moment, or his chin would lift as he spoke of the incomparable might of our new Holy Order. Anabella and her son stood nearest the dais to face the assembly. Again I was superfluous; I was not meant to be in this evening, and 'twas Anabella's spiteful word that joined me temporarily to it. As I watched for their sign, a stranger at my back spoke. I swiftly reminded him of the decorum he lacked—
Terence, the man was Master Harpocrates. In his dear, slow hush, he suggested that I take position with my kin. How could I obey without an apology? There is much I cannot answer for. Even if he did not blame me—I see his patient face behind my eyelids as I write—I asked for his forgiveness at the same moment my father began his speech.
May the Goddess take me! There are suns where I cannot do a single right thing but to miss you. More coward than prince, I departed to the fore of the room and knelt to the ravings that would change our continent. And may Greagor grant Her ruth to me as well!
But you know what my father said. That speech doubled as my marching orders. You will be traversing the shorelands when I send this letter, but I will be nearer to you than shame when you read it.
For now I am between memory and sleep. Still, I beg you to know my regard for you. Like a song that returns to the mind in silence, your mirrored sympathy soothes my despair towards forgiveness—despite all else.
Be ready to receive me. I will not deign to speak war then.
Your Dion.