A/N: I meant to post this yesterday, but yesterday was a very busy day that left me wrecked. So I'm posting it now instead and I may post something else later as well.
Written because wheel-of-fish sent me old!Raoul/monkey as a prompt.
He has named him Darius. He is not certain why. He has never known a Darius though he has a dim shadowy memory of once hearing about a king with that name when he was a child. Darius is simply a name that slips easily off his tongue, and it eases the ache in his heart to be able to call him that.
Gently, so as not to hurt him, he smooths his fingers over the soft hair on Darius' head. He is all that is left to him now. Christine is gone. She has been gone for so very long that sometimes it feels as if she was never truly here at all, as if he never held her, never kissed her, never twined his fingers in the soft curls of her hair. His fingers ache to trace the curve of her cheek, feel the warmth of her skin tingling in their very tips, but however they stretch out, however they reach, they never find her.
(If he closes his eyes, closes his eyes and steadies his breathing and slows his heart, he can feel the faint press of her lips to his. The dimmest press, almost as if he has imagined it and not conjured it from memory.)
Once, so very long ago, he had hoped for a child. Had prayed for one, craved for one, a tiny child to cradle close. But when Christine's "touch of bronchitis" became unshakable, became shivering in his arms at night even as her skin burned up, became blood-stained handkerchiefs and wide eyes, all such dreams of a child fled. The dreams abandoned him. And then Christine did.
But Darius will never abandon him. Darius will be here, always, to have, and to hold, and to whisper to. He sits on the side of the bed that Christine once occupied, and in the silence of the night, when the heaviness in Raoul's chest is more than he can bear, all he has to do is swallow, and clap, and Darius will play that soft, slow music that carries him back to Christine, brings her back into his arms again.
And he closes his eyes, and sighs, and twines his fingers with her hair once more.
A/N: Up next - Erik reflects on his old false names.