A/n: The following is a take on the "Five Times/One Time" genre, so expect four or five more parts of similar length. The theme, the times when Narcisse could have changed the direction Eduard was heading in (and didn't), and one time he couldn't. I guess. Feel free to interpret as thou wisheth. The title, inspired by Glaber, because I've also been catching up on Spartacus and I can't deny who's been my muse this season.
Grievances
I.
The day Eduard was born was the day he realized, this was what he had been made for. All his life had been leading up to this moment, everything he had done and made himself to be culminating in this single truth:
He had a son.
But the years flew by so quickly. And if he had known then how fleetingly happiness would appear in his life, he would have grabbed on to it as it passed. He would have wrestled it to the ground, and never let it go. He would have tried harder.
Within a single season he had lost them both. First Eduard's mother, fading away from him and their son while he watched, able to do nothing. Then his own father, to fever, and the cold.
"You have to talk to him, Stéphane," the old man said in the weeks before, when the cough that would kill him still seemed quite harmless.
"And tell him what? He's just a boy. What could he possibly know of death?"
"He deserves to know that he is loved. You do still love your son, do you not?"
But the love he had for Eduard was never the issue.
It was the love he should have had for the boy's mother that made him turn away in anger when he saw his son. She had been fair, too. She had stared at him with the same eyes, eyes that wondered why he kept his distance though he was so close by her side.
She had given him so much. She left him with so little.