Title: Broken
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Arthur, Alfred
Rating: PG13
Warn: loopiness, no sense whatsoever, random reference to various fey properties…
Disclaimer: Do not own and will never own.
Note: I think I'm contradicting myself many times in this awfully short ficlet. LOL. I kept going back to fix the sentences.
---
Lying is a skill possessed only by mortals.
And sometimes, mortals can be far more dangerous than horde of unseelie fey coming out for the Hunt. Kelpie and Yallery Brown, or Nymph, or Demi-fey, they catch you with their glamours of beauty and preening enchantments, shrouded in dangers hanging behind them like ragged shadows. But not once have they lied. You may have known the dangers they could affix you, but you come to them still, unable to withhold the temptation.
Arthur wonders how it would be like if he finally succumbs. Surely, to perish while he is embraced by their enchantments is a temptation itself. To die in happiness, what more one can ask for?
He is old, but he certainly will never call himself an immortal. (Although, he is never quite a mortal. Caught in between, lasting longer than most to see those around him perish). And many fey he knows are far older than him.
When he took in Alfred and cared for him, Althur was glad for once. Glad that he is old. Glad that he is never quite mortal.
He found out that he loves the child. The one with a set of crystal clear eyes he would have called fey, if not for the color. (Sky, instead of the forest).
But the first lie came naturally to the child without guile. (Not quite an immortal, not quite a mortal. Like him).
"Alfred, do you like them?" Arthur asks the child lovingly. "More scones?"
The child lifts his face to meet the green eyes of his caretaker and smiles. "They are delicious!"
And a lie was followed by another lie.
"Alfred, are you fine? You look troubled?" Arthur asks the child. Evident concern laces his tone and expression.
The child, who is now as tall as Arthur, shakes his head and offers Arthur a small smile that not quite reaching his eyes. "I'm fine," he said.
A taut mars the crevice between Arthur's brows. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay with you long enough."
Arthur questions himself, if lying is a skill possessed only by mortals, then what it makes of them? Half mortals and half immortals, they are anomalies in form of countries.
They named those like him the broken fey; fey because they are never quite mortal, and broken because their bodies and souls are not of the fey.
Broken. The word echoes in him in more than one meaning.
He is broken. Broken by lies. Broken by love.
---
The gleaming tracks of unbidden tears stream freely down his cheeks. Arthur cries under the unrelenting beats of the raindrops.
"A-Arthur?" the child calls him by his name.
"Go," he whispers in between his sobs. "I grant you freedom. Go."
Know that my love is not a lie.
---
FIN
---
Comments will make my day.