What We Can't Abide

By Laura Schiller

An Entwined Fanfiction

Copyright: Heather Dixon

Harold watched silently as his daughters danced by the grave of his wife. Their black skirts swirled like shadows; their boots kicked up sprays of snow that sparkled in the merciless winter sunlight. Their breath rose up as steam. Azalea led, as usual, keeping up a stream of instructions in her warm, bright voice, steadying the younger girls with her hands when they threatened to overbalance. Bramble was the most energetic, as always, bouncing on her feet, red hair escaping from its pins. Clover held the baby – Lily – in the crook of her arm, wrapped up warmly in a fourth- or was it fifth-hand? – wool blanket. Their little sisters swarmed about them like a flock of sparrows, chirping with laughter.

Laughter. At their mother's grave.

Harold was chilled to the bone, and not because of the weather. He was no fool; he knew that this was no sign of heartlessness on their part, quite the contrary. They had loved their mother – how could they not? – and they were dancing to honor her. It was this very fact that he could not endure.

They were echoes of their mother, all twelve of them, in their grace and warmth and beauty. But he didn't want echoes.

He wanted Kathryn, and she was gone, and it was his own damned fault.

"I would not advise you having any more children, Your Majesty," Sir John had said after Kale's birth, frowning through his monocle at Kathryn as she lay in bed.

"I appreciate your concern, Sir John, but really, shouldn't I be the judge of what to do with my own body?"

"He's right, madame," Harold had said, formal in the physician's presence, even as he brushed damp strands of hair from his wife's forehead. "If your condition doesn't improve … "

She had smiled up at him, pale and heavy-eyed and shining with confidence. "I promised you a Harold the Twelfth, my love, and I will give you one. I'm stronger than I look, remember? Trust me."

He hadn't cared about having a son for years. Azalea would be his heir, and an excellent one at that. As far as he was concerned, the name of Harold could fade into history if only he could keep his family together. He could have argued. He could have insisted. He could have refused to touch her for the rest of their lives, or at least until she passed her childbearing years. But he had done none of these things, damn him to hell, and Kathryn was dead.

Every step of his daughters' dancing feet, every chiming laugh, every glimmer of auburn hair in the sunlight taunted him with his loss.

He couldn't abide them. He had to put a stop to this.