I dedicate this to my a-level history teacher who'd cry with joy at this use of my education, and then with horror at the liberties i've taken with historical truth.
Soldier, Poet, King
Todd Anderson sleeps through his final days at Balincrest, his head bowed and his throat tight as he conjures up dreams to survive. Around him, the schoolboys recite medieval poems of hierarchy, of rigid destiny bound up in the sprawling boughs of family trees.
Mr. Mallon, the Headmaster, had called Todd to his office halfway through history class last week. The boy had risen above the stares and whispers, his limbs leaden as he hurried through the barren halls.
Waiting for him was a mirror; a twisted reflection in the form of his Father, standing as tall and grave as Todd sat hunched and melancholic.
"Your grades are up," his father had said in that booming voice to command a room, "it's time to take your place."
Now, Todd clings to his desk, his eyes squeezed shut until visions of golden kings and fearless knights burst behind his eyelids. He had never wanted adventure, only a secluded corner for himself and his books. But now his head spins with the looming move and the inheritance of brothers consumed by the old traditions of the heir and the spare.
It's odd, Todd thinks, how history repeats itself.
Ink-stained fingers trace the line from the heir, Edward IV, to the forgotten George, and down to the unlikely yet infamous Richard III. The Plantagenets had fallen yet Todd can almost glimpse at the unspoken lives pressed between crisp, academic pages.
One crown is not divisible by three, not without bloodshed, he thinks, or the shrapnel of well-meaning words.
His pen explodes over the remnants of dynastic history, a splattering blight over records of famed familial paths. His stomach burns. Glory is a power awarded to the few.
Blond, six feet and four inches.
Todd has to hold back a snort. Almost six hundred years later and younger brothers still haven't evolved to compete with the perfect, popular heir.
Handsome, Jeffrey Anderson. The crown prince sweeps into social events like battles, gathering accolades and admiration with nothing more than quick wit or a charming smile. He's the chosen one, the wanted one, the brother destined to bring honour to the Anderson line.
Todd holds no such illusions. He is the spare, an afterthought stuck in training for shoes he can never hope to fill.
His eyes flick back to the sprawling tree, a swirl of blotted names and predestined tales of fame. At seventeen, Todd is accruing the first black spots of his own.
He's no George, Duke of Clarence. No, he's not made for rebellion or war.
If he were medieval, his parents would send him into the Church. Todd can picture himself concealed in the folds of brown cloth, absconding to a labyrinthine library or practicing private devotions in a monastery fated for ruin.
It would be a comfort, a respite for an isolated soul.
Todd stares up at the vaulted ceiling of Welton's Chapel. It might be cheating, he acknowledges, to decide this in the pew of his new, Catholic School.
In the midst of this masculine clamour, the headmaster extends a wrinkled hand, his stare sharp and his mouth spilling praise for the eldest son.
Todd cringes.
His mother prods at his sides and his father is stoic in silence. Disappointment would be preferable to their coldness. Maybe he's George after all, ruining and rebelling not with ambition, but with shyness.
Two weeks at Welton are enough to convince Todd that he will never find sanctuary in the church.
He will begin to find it in Carpe Diem, in crumpled drafts, and strips of moonlight that lead to the deep, damp woods. But for now, that sanctuary is Neil, the sole heir to his father's dreams.
Neil begins as an oversized shadow at Todd's heels.
He's a nuisance at first, always asking and initiating. But ironically, it is Neil - the star of Welton's expectations - who is the first to expect nothing but authenticity from him.
His shadow grows and grows until Todd finds himself inviting it along. It chases the sun until it blazes up, warming Todd's frozen bones.
They've both been thrown to the wolves at Welton. Where Todd sinks, Neil swims with one hand dragging Todd up and out of the rolling tides until the water laps to the harmony of soft words and sighs.
'Forget how it works,' he chants.
"No," he says, determined not to let Todd rot alone in their dorm room. He smiles wide and straightens up, greatness clear in each line of his lithe, seventeen-year-old body.
So they slip out of school and stumble through the woods.
Neil takes the lead, stomping, and dancing through the brush, his eyes wide and observant as Todd treads carefully behind.
"Come on!" Neil calls, seizing him by the hand. It's warm and steady, a grounding force that slams the door to Todd's anxieties, granting him permission for adventure at last.
His knees shake with something other than fear as he first climbs into the cave.
So this is living deliberately, Todd thinks as he surrounds himself in the murmur of adolescent hijinks and poetry.
He watches Charlie wield the centrefold. Whistles echo as the poets' clamour for a glimpse. His eyes connect with Neil's through the blaze, their cheeks dusted with pink. This is sucking out all the marrow of life.
It's when his desk set flies and his parents' letters flutter from the ledge like confetti that Todd knows he's lost the battle.
He's falling, his heart cracking open like his inkpot on the ground as he hurtles into love with a frightening intensity. Todd's read enough Shakespeare to know this is the kind of love that will break his heart.
So he screams a barbaric YAWP from the rooftops, tearing through page after page until his world is painted with the vivid language of dead poets, their ghosts whispering in his ears. Their colours begin to seep into his own, inherited, sepia tones. And poetry begins to spring beneath his feet.
Neil, as always, breathes life into Todd's compositions.
On those lakeside afternoons, they reclaim their spirits from Welton's soul-sucking gloom. Their bodies stretch out as they lay shoulder pressed to shoulder, hand brushing hand as they flip the pages of Neil's script. For once, Todd's hands are calm, comfortable with their splattering of ink.
He watches, mesmerised as Neil darts, and he laughs, and he melts into Puck, bedecked in flowers and sparring with sticks. Words flow like honey from Neil, from a tongue Todd thinks would taste just as sweet.
This is how Todd remembers Neil.
His eyes dark and glittering, and his face haloed by golden stage light.
Todd basks in the gaze of this God who belongs to the wild, rising up from the mist in a headdress of berries and sticks. Neil is not meant to be confined or controlled. He's a tempest, something dizzying and magical trapped behind glass.
But this world is scornful, and Todd forgets the sting of its bite amongst the midnight cave and the boldness of its dwellers.
Every cell in his body screams as Mr. Perry's car peels from the curb. It's long and black like a hearse, and all he can see is Neil's face twisted into an expression that chills him to the bone. Defeat.
Part of him isn't surprised when Charlie stumbles in. But that is something Todd will never admit, not even to himself.
So he bolts into the blankness, into the numbing caress of snow. Todd tries to reach for beauty, to grasp at the truth and arrange it into a pleasing refrain, but the well of imagination dried up with the only smile capable of melting their frozen, hideaway lake.
Todd is adrift. He is a poet without words. His lips can do nothing but stutter the fragments of pain.
In his nightmares, it blends together. The twigs in Neil's crown grow thorns and its berries drip scarlet with blood. Neil isn't immortal, he was just a boy. A broken boy whose shards made glitter from light.
Todd wants to kill Neil's father, wants to take up arms and throw himself into war.
He finally understands the fate of a second son. He is the spare but he's a choice. Neil chose him and Todd can choose to take up the role of avenger or peacemaker. Military or clergy.
He chooses both.
He chooses everything.
He chooses the legacy of Todd, of Neil, of NeilandTodd, and everything that meant.
And when he rises to stand upon his desk with a power unknown, he's a poet, not a king; but at this moment Todd is both.
This is my inheritance, he thinks, tracing letters etched in stone. "Love," he says softly, sowing wildflowers in the spring grass. His battered, old converse are light as he kneels on damp earth at the foot of Neil's grave. A sleek, printed book lays open on his lap.
"I'm being chased by Walt Whitman," Todd recites as he works, his words painting the portrait of a boy-king immortalised by his surviving, star-crossed bard.
I'm having the worst writer's block with my multi-chapter so this quick and imperfect short is my attempt at breaking through. This mental block is making me more unhinged than usual on tumblr so feel free to come shout at me to write chloe-octavia