Part 3: Mourning
(finale refrain)
"This..." he clenched his teeth barely keeping his voice even. He soon failed. "This is how you honor your family! This is how you show your respect for me!" His son glared back at him, equally impassioned and equally furious.
"I intend to honor my family! My family! I don't care what you or our other 'respectable' relative think!"
The rest of their relations looked on, a mix of blank stares and cringes of discomfort. He barely noticed them. The various aunts and uncles and distant cousins who were attending his wife's wake, traditionally held immediately prior to the cremation. He knew he would have to address this matter soon, but not this soon. Not while his vision was clouded in red. Not as he was preparing himself to watch his wife's body reduced to ashes and a thin trial of smoke
He took a deep breath before he did something he would truly regret, and pulling his chair further out; reseated himself. He would not get anywhere with his son by shouting at him. "I am..." he chose his words as delicately as his current temper would allow, "uninformed as to what you might consider 'respectable', but know this: I will not, under any known circumstances, allow you to carry on the tradition of the Thief." His son opened his mouth to object, but he cut him off. "Be anything else! A soldier, a scholar, and goddamn groomsman for all it matters, but as long as I am alive, you will not take up that cursed title."
There was a long moment of silence as father and son remained locked in a hard glare. "Gods, you must have hated her." His son had to know that wasn't true, but neither of them was thinking about ramifications.
"What?" he responded, heatedly.
"You heard me." He should have more than vaguely noted that the boy's voice was cracking in grief. "You must be overjoyed that she's dead. No longer around to complicate your social circles and muddy your bloodline with more children like me!" With that he stormed off before anyone could retort.
His son did not return for the funeral. His father didn't blame him.
(bridge)
She died.
Alone. Her legs twisted and broken. Her neck bent at an unnatural angle. Blood pooling from were she'd cracked her head on the pavement. Eyes wide open. Staring vacantly.
He still didn't know why he hadn't seen her that night. Why he hadn't looked for her when he'd rolled over in their bed and noticed she wasn't there. He didn't understand why she fell that night of all nights. Under a clear summer sky with plenty of moonlight to guide her steps and no spots of ice on the ledges to upset her balance. The type of night she would spend dancing on the rooftop to a song only she could hear. The way she had lived her entire life.
He couldn't remembered why he hadn't listened more carefully to her about the fate of the Thieves - the manner in which she had always warned him she would die. He didn't know why he hadn't tried to stop her from being so reckless, doing whatever it took to ensure she lived to an old age. To guarantee she saw all her children reach adulthood, get married, and bear her grandchildren. He couldn't understand why his son, after seeing his mother's blood washed off the courtyard cobbles, would still insist upon following in her footsteps. Her footsteps that led right to the edge of a wall and ended in a pool of blood.
Honestly, there was only one thing he understood anymore. His son would not become the Thief. His son would not die from a fall. Eugenides would not steal anyone else from his family; to this he swore.
He swore it at her god's altar; he swore it upon her grave; he swore it to her father; he swore it at his son when he handed him his enrollment papers; and what he swore he meant.
Eugenides would learn that.