Warnings for amputation, homelessness, prostitution and tbh its all really sad.
At first, they stay with Baileywicks brother, Baileywick still calls him sir and they act like it's only a temporary thing. Cedric doesn't know he's still here. It becomes dangerous because someone says he is and Cedric sends soldiers. They leave Balieywick behind because he will be safe.
They find a place to settle down in a mining village a long way away. Roland considers taking his friends for help, but none of them reply to him. So he and his children are left homeless. He supposes that Cedric is dangerous and they want to be safe. He can't fault them on that. He also wants his children to be safe.
They sleep in the market square, the corner between a bakery that smells like warm bread and makes his stomach curl in hunger, and a general type store. No one tells them to leave so they don't. He misses Miranda terribly.
The next day, he takes the children to trade out their fancy clothes for more two sets of plain clothes. Amber cries, and tells him that this is his fault. James looks sad and assures him it's not, that Amber is just sad. (It is, it is, it is)
He finds work in the mines, and it is hard. The dust gets into his lungs and into his eyes and hair. His fingernails become permanently stained, his eyes tired. He saves every coin he can, skips as many meals as he can, and never buys anything for himself until he has enough to purchase a small cottage. It has one bedroom, with one bed, and no plush loveseats or any harps to play, but it is a home. It is his home. His back thanks him for a bed rather than the alley wall, with a stick between his fingers, so he may beat anyone who hurts his children.
The children can still go to school during the day and he is grateful, why he may not have many prospects other than minor, the children will be able to lead happy and full lives. He hopes, at least. He is grateful that he doesn't have to feed them in the middle of the day, the school does that for him. He is so relieved. He cries. Amber comforts him. (She's a child. Only a child.)
Someone tells him Sofia is dead. He goes home in a daze. Amber and James find him drinking a glass of water in the kitchen, but the peace is shattered when he throws the glass at the wall, and it shatters into a thousand shards of glass that cut his face and his ankles. He overturns the table and he screams, trying to push all of the air out of his lungs. He breaks down sooner rather than later, unshed tears sparkle in his eyes and he wants to rip both eyeballs out o his head so he won't have to see what he's become.
What he is.
Amber hugs him quietly, James stays under the bed. Amber cries into his shoulder. He rubs her small back with his large hand. James joins him as well, after a while (Look at this anguish you've caused these children)
Sofia has a public funeral and he wonders why. He wonders what Cedric did to her. He wants to kill the man with his own bare hands until he can see the blood and the life drain from his face. He wants to hold him under water until he turns blue and still. He wants to rip him apart piece by piece and feed him to the wolves. He doesn't.
He can't. (Weak, weak weak)
He takes the children to Enchansia by spending money he would have used to feed himself. He doesn't cross the border. He leaves a handful of flowers there, for Sofia, hoping, praying that he knows he loved her. He can see the castle in the distance, and he wants to believe he can see Miranda there. He knows he can't but he misses her and it burns at his heart.
The children do attend the funeral, hidden under thick robes provided by Baileywick. They tell him every detail. He wants to break Cedric in half.
He returns to work the following weak, and then, to add to his suffering the mine collapses. He wonders if there is mercy and he will die rather then live his life in shame for not being able to provide for his children. His leg is trapped under the stone and he can't push it off. There is no way. He wonders if they will leave him here to die.
They don't. They dig him out, and dress his wounds and cut off the useless leg, the skin blackened with necrosis (Or is it gangrene? He can't recall), they seal the wound and they leave him alone He wonders where his children are. He wonders how Miranda is doing.
Infection sets in a few hours later, and he feverishly sees Miranda in the corner of the room with Sofia, and when he reaches for her, she comes forward. She kisses his forehead and tells him she loves him. He wants to cry and sob and scream and yell and plead and beg for her to stay, or to take him with her because he doesn't want to live this life anymore. He's tired of it he wants to go home.
He survives.
Life continues.
He returns home to Amber and James who kiss and hug him and promise that it will be okay and he wonders why they are telling this to him because he is the father and he should be telling this to them. (Horrible, horrible father) He wonders if he is like his own father now. He struggles to recall his face. He cries.
He needs to find work. The children cannot live off of one meal and he cannot stay home with the voices in his head anymore. He discovers that he can rent his body to people and they pay him more than the mines ever did.
He feels as though something important to him has died.
Life continues, and he pretends his hip bones aren't splattered with the brown and green of bruises, and he pretends that he is happy. (Fake it till you make it.)
He's scared when he hears that the king is coming to the village. Does he want Roland's other children as well? Was one not enough? He is glad that the parade is in the day and no children will be present. No one is buying on the day the king comes so he doesn't go to work. He nearly doesn't recognize himself in the mirror. His face is creased with lines and scars from the mine collapse and the broken glass. His hair is tinted gray, and no longer the lively red-y brown it had been. His eyes look sunken back in his head, thick smears of purple beneath them. From the long nights he spent wondering how awful slavery could possibly be and how much money it would leave James and Amber with.
Whatever beauty he'd once possessed had been sucked out of him by the apathy and worry and bone breaking sadness that filled him.
He stands as the king's carriage passes. Miranda is sitting in there. She doesn't recognize him. He thinks that perhaps it's better this way.
He works the next day, and he closes his eyes. He pretends that he's floating and that Sofia is there. And that Amber is here, and James and Miranda and Baileywick and he can hold them all in his arms.
He spends the night time holding the twins close and marvelling at how tall they are, and how Amber looks so much like him, from the square jaw to her fine blonde eyelashes that had faded from black. He sees James and how much he looks like their mother more than him. He misses her as well. He wonders again how bad slavery could be.
Amber and James graduate. He watches them proudly from the audience. His suffering has been sufficient. His children have been raised. James becomes a blacksmith. Amber a enchanted painter. They leave him, but he knew from the start that they were never his to keep. He goes to James wedding. He cries happy tears.
There is nothing left for him in this village. He leaves his cottage and he travels back to enchansia. He wants to be buried next to his mother. It only takes a minute of him being over the border for Cedric to come. He finds he's no longer angry with the man, and that apathy runs through his veins, and radiates off him.
Cedric tells him no and to leave if he doesn't want his head on a spike. He goes back home. He doesn't want to work again, but he needs to eat so he works. And he works. (Work for who? They are gone...Gone…)
And he works.
And he works.
And he works.
And he wonders what he could possibly have done to deserve such a fate.