A / N : Challenge entry, for the quotes remix challenge on xoxLewrahxox's forum.
Quote : "You're a big boy of eight, nine almost, and Mother is dead." - from A Big Boy's Christmas, by BellaPur.
Well. This is a bit of a departure from my usual style . . .
"What was silent in the father speaks in the son" - Friedrich Nietzsche
You're a big boy of eight, nine almost, and Mother's dead. You don't remember her.
Your father does. He talks to her sometimes, as if she can hear. He smells sharp and sour when he does this, and he is unsteady on his feet, grasping at thin air, his eyes glazed over and unseeing. Sometimes he shouts. Once or twice he falls to the floor and stays there, shoulders shaking. He makes a choking sound. When he looks up his face is white and you think he might cry, if either of you knew how.
He calls you "son" and slurs his esses, and grips your shoulders uncomfortably tightly. He talks to you, then. He talks about family, about blood, about things you don't understand, but try to. Fidelity. He calls them "the things that are important", and so you carve them in stone, lock them up with pride and wealth, mortared into the wall you don't yet know you're building.
They're important.
"I still loved her," your father says, more to himself than to you. You stare blankly at him, and wonder what he means.
When he catches you staring he laughs, smacks your knees with his cane. He tells you you're like him, too much like him, and nothing at all like her.
Your knees hurt, and there is something hot and angry writhing in your chest.
Your father gets angry too though, and your father has a cane, and a wand. His anger overrides your own, and over time, it becomes all you remember.
You listen, stiff and solemn, a not-quite child, as he clasps your shoulder and tells you not to fall in love. "We're not made for it," he tells you. "We're cut from the same cloth, you and I. Not made for it."
Over time, you forget.
You're a man now, and you don't believe in love.
She falls into your lap and is gone again before you can get a hold on her. But she stays there, on the periphery, sugar-spun and sharp-tongued, and when she fades from view, you feel, for the first time in years, the space where someone else should be.
She believes in love, of course. She believes in any number of things, often without examining them too closely, and you find this oddly enticing. She blushes when you touch her, porcelain skin stained beneath your fingertips, and whether you should or not, you want her.
You're not in control any more, but how great a threat can she be?
"I love you," she gasps, a kick to the chest as you fall over the edge, and you understand, for the first time, how your father came undone.
She runs her fingers over the threads of the family tree, kisses the spot the child will take.
You talk about family, about blood, pride swelling in your chest as you tap the spot.
She leans into your chest, laughing, whispering to her own swollen stomach.
She talks about love, and as your son's heel kicks beneath your palm, you wonder what he's made for.