For the second time in a month, Milly read the bloodstained letter. Unlike his other letters (which were stacked neatly in a drawer, sorted and out of sight) this one had been pried out of his cold hands. Now, she needed to seal it; she had red wax melting.

Screaming softly, Her voice harmonised with the screeching wind that tore through the trees outside the window. She clutched a letter opener to her chest as if it were a warm living thing—a comforter. It was only plain steel.

More tears. The room was swimming, and she was drowning within her own mind.

From the Desk of Lloyd Asplund

The Two Thousandth and twenty sixth year of our Lord

Wherever Rufus is at this moment in time

To my Son,

I hope this letter finds you well. This is not the mere pleasantry that is at the top of most letters, but something true. Because I do care, even if it seems I don't. Unlike every other letter, this one I give to Milly, so that she will know when the time will come for you to read it. You deserve to know why.

Why? I don't know if I can give a good answer. It's the sum total of everything, muscle memory, experience of what I think is my beating heart beating against an iron cage from which I cannot free it. And don't think what I did wasn't painful—it was (or will be, I haven't actually done it yet.)

Simply put, it was an act of gross cowardice. Treason not to any country or outside force: But treason to myself. I put myself on trial for a betrayal I committed years ago, and I was the only judge, jury, and executioner.

When I was small, I was raised by a pair of hypocrites, both of which were scions of a long line of hypocrites. Men (and women) that said one thing and did another, upholding doctrines of a dead age to justify the dead of this age. The very first object of their doctrine (one that you, having been raised by someone who calls themselves an atheist in public, instead of an atheist that only calls themselves such in private may be unfamiliar with the phrase) was "am I my brother's keeper." Did I have an obligation to my fellow man?

In those days, I dreamed of a world without horror. I cared. It's a funny thing caring—it's meant to be able to alleviate the pain of others and elevate this world to a greater plane of existence. In practice all it did was slowly tear at me, wearing me down. Betrayal, death, disease—they wore on me. Still, I cared.

Being spineless is not something that just happens. It isn't a passive decision. But I made it. Why? Because I didn't want to feel pain, the pain that came from caring. So, I reduced people to objects, and in my own mind, I annihilated my conscience.

In a moment of weakness, I gave up my dreams of greatness, of idealism, of a better world for all, and replaced them with a world where I was the center of everything.

Spineless? The man sold himself short. He was anything but spineless. Cold certainly—he had called their marriage love by contract—never spineless. For Lloyd, the ideals of love and romance held no meaning.

He hadn't been afraid to speak his mind. Raging against the illogicality of the human condition from the breakfast table had been a favourite pastime of his. Declaring human desire a sole result of "the most advanced pattern recognition device ever created," happened as often as Lloyd brewed tea, which was frequent.

At night his true self appeared. When the shadow of the FLEIJA stalked her dreams. In dreams she saw again the mothers wailing for sons, who would never return; and the sons staring at the stars with a challenge for war in their eyes, while the stars stared back without a care in the world. In her dreams corpses turned into a twisted ladder to the stars—the Gods above—and she was forced to walk it. When all she was able to feel was terror, when she was helpless and screaming, Lloyd would force himself out of his bed (he was a light sleeper) and rush into her room to wake her.

Lloyd cared. He cared when it was hard; he cared when he didn't have to. In the dark nights and when she didn't matter—when she couldn't fulfill her job as glorified advertising, planning (and attending) balls to sway investors for the company—he made the time for her. He hadn't called it love; there never was any such nonsense in his logical relationship.

His heart had been made of stone. It had fossilised a long time ago, so he had taken it into the workshop that he had called his mind and under a steady hand had chipped, ground, and buffed it into something resembling the real deal. A heart created of slow deliberate actions designed to fulfill a simple vow that should have been meaningless means to an end.

She loved him back, in the way that he never could love her. Their relationship had only ever been meant as a workable accord. He had the spine of steel required to be her constant companion, eventual friend, and lover.

Now, he was gone. She would miss him as she had missed no-one before.

Maybe that was what love was—love beyond infatuation—and now it was gone forever.

Milly looked through the window. No stars were out, and the moon could not be seen.

She needed a break. A break from her mouth that seemed to wail without a licence issued by her mind, a break from the ache within herself.

Why now, when everything had gone so right for once? Did she not have a right to a life with the living? She threw the letter opener at the picture of her and Lloyd on the desk. The glass smashed and it fell off the table to the carpet. The shattered glass seemed to lie like knives above smiling faces, ready to cut the paper effigy of their happiness. The letter opener pointed away from her, and it looked ashamed of the one who had handled it so violently.

The sadness turned to absolute hatred—of all the people, Lloyd—now? A hatred that had no object, no purpose and darted from target to target without purpose; a ball of dark energy held captive in a perfect game of tennis. She could feel the raw energy of destruction coursing through her veins, at a ghost she could not kill. The hatred flowed from her veins into her heart, and her heart asked her mind what to do. What to do with her violence of thought—and all she could answer was to keep reading Lloyd's damned letter to her damned son.

Her hands shook. She returned to reading.

I've always been a small man within. I couldn't bear to have myself torn away by the world. So I decided to stop caring. I stopped so I wouldn't be torn to shreds.

Instead of whole parts of me being stolen, I sacrificed just one. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I bled slowly, and I began to be drained. Life turned to ash in my mouth and my world became grey. It wasn't all at once, just as it took me a long time to truly stop caring.

But eventually I felt nothing.

I haven't felt anything that I didn't fake for nearly two decades.

Is it possible to love when you do not care for it? I had always loved science, knightmares, and research. But over the course of years I stopped being able to care for it. I more or less did everything by the dual commands of habit and society.

I offered my soul on the altars of logic and rationality and got exactly what I wanted. But I couldn't trade it back. Yet cold rationality still could not take away the guilt. Cold rationality sucked the happiness dry, and most of the guilt, but it was still within me, eating away. I cannot forgive myself—not for what I did—but for what I failed to do.

Not even for you my son.

I was afraid of life and I gave up on it a long time ago.

I'm returning home, Rufus. Not to a heaven, or a hell (I deserve that much at least given what I have done) but to the dust of this earth. We are all atoms aren't we? And we will still be atoms after we utter our last dying breath and the last of the blood leaves our veins?

Take care. I will miss you. Don't miss me, I wasn't worth it.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Asplund

The wax was molten now. Red, like his blood had been on the bed, staining the sheets and, well, everything. It dripped onto the parchment envelope—Lloyd really had no sense of budget—viscously. Time itself seemed to mock her, sending her swimming. It felt an hour—she counted a minute—and the watch told her it was three seconds.

Milly spent a moment waiting for the wax to cool. He had hardly said anything to Rufus in this letter—it wasn't necessarily meant to—that was the job of the hundred or so other letters that she had yet to read. Lloyd was made of self control. Self control to the very bitter end, and self control beyond the grave.

She was out of control. Her heart was screaming an endless song of violence, and her mind was in disarray. She could hear her father screaming, "Get control of your emotions otherwise other people will use them to control you."

She couldn't control her sadness, or the rage, or the grief, or the hatred; they were all bleeding into each other.

Perhaps it was time to seal her heart as well.


A/N

Written for the Father Son monthly prompt on The Fireside discord server. A special thanks to Aminta Defender for both organizing the prompt. and betaing this oneshot.