I've been dying to write this one for a while but I haven't had time... anyway, disclaimers and all. Squenix and them. Yeah.

I just looked over Albel's stats from Wikipedia...

Sex: Male - Age: 24 - Height: 6'1" - Weight: 141 lbs

The guy's as skinny as a rail! For his height - I hope his weight is without the gauntlet. --;;

Anyway, the first chapter is mostly to introduce Glou, who never gets enough screentime in fanfiction (I think). You'l get more of Albel in chapter two.

Blood Stigma

Chapter One: Kicking and Screaming

If Albel had been the kind of person who talked about his childhood, he would have said that he had come into the world the way he planned to leave it – kicking and screaming. His father liked to say that Albel had been a 'loud and ugly baby'.

Albel's mother had died due to complications during birth, leaving the baby to a portly wet-nurse while his father was absent most of the time. Her own child had died and she loved Albel like her own – until Glou Nox decided to take exception to her presence in his suite.

He was very blunt: "You're not needed anymore."

Her lip trembled, but she was a stubborn woman. "He's only a baby! You can't be here to take care of him with your duties."

"He's my son. I'll take care of him. He's long done breastfeeding, which was your only purpose here."

The nurse clutched young Albel in her lap, causing him to squirm uncomfortably in her grip. "He needs me!"

Glou strode over to her and firmly removed her grip from Albel's waist, letting him scramble from her lap to the floor. "You're not his mother, and you're not needed," he repeated. "Now get out."

Tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, she stormed out of the room, only stopping at the door to say the last word: "He'll be crying for me come nightfall, and I'll just be waiting for you to take me back."

That night – and every night that week - the nurse's prophecy came to fruition as Albel awoke at night, crying and demanding the presence of his nurse. After the first night of attempting to calm down Albel's hysterics, Glou began to regret his rather impulsive decision to raise the boy on his own. He began to sleep on the floor in Albel's room so as to minimize the number of toes he stubbed in the dark travelling to his toddler son's room. Glou learned through sticky experience the fine art of diaper changing and porridge-making, as well as how to clean said porridge off the walls after Albel threw the bowl across the room.

And there was also the fact that Albel's nurse had been quite right – Glou didn't have the time to raise a little boy. There was the war, and his duties as captain of the Dragon Brigade... eventually he came to the conclusion that he should just take the boy out on the field with him.

"You're insane," His young second-in-command, Vox, was only one of many to voice this sentiment.

"Watch your tongue, Vox," Glou' eyes narrowed. "I can't leave him at the castle alone. Why don't you think of a better solution?"

Vox thought that perhaps Glou ought to swallow his pride, call up the wet-nurse again and dump the baby on her, but he wasn't about to say that to his commanding officer. "Sorry for my impudence, sir."

"Hmph."

And so it was that little Albel spent the majority of his toddler years crawling around military tents, sitting under the table during strategy meetings, and being handled by awkward Dragon Brigade soldiers who had been threatened with graphic violence and death if anything happened to 'The Baby'.

More often than not, Albel ended up with Woltar, a good friend of his father's and captain of the Storm Brigade. As he was getting on in years, Woltar spent more time behind the strategy table than on the back of his steed and was often on baby duty. Woltar was also the only person beside Glou's own subordinates (who had to do whatever their Captain said) who could be pressured into babysitting.

After Albel reached four or so, Glou decided that he could re-direct some of Albel's seemingly exhaustive supply of energy into swordplay. Giving Albel a stick that was too small to be called a wooden sword, Glou showed his son three basic swings and told him to repeat them. Albel's response?

"I don't wanna."

Glou sighed, brow furrowing with the onset of what would quickly become maddening frustration. "Just do it."

"What do I get?" Albel stuck his fingers in his mouth.

Only four years old and already asking for bribes. "You don't get anything – you just do it before I take that stick to your backside."

"You can't do that. Uncle Woltar said it's bad."

Glou's eyebrow twitched. "Woltar is a mouldy old dragon fart. And since when did Woltar become 'Uncle'?"

Albel just gazed up with as innocent a glance as he could muster.

After much cajoling, threats, and the eventual bribe of a ride on his dragon, Glou got Albel to promise he'd practice every day.

More exhausted from his session with Albel than he usually was after a heated battle, Glou made sure Albel followed through with his training before leaving the practice grounds to go speak with Woltar.

oooo

Eventually Albel became old enough that Glou felt comfortable leaving him at Airyglyph castle for extended periods of time. He usually left his son with a group of other young boys – mostly children of other knights and some of the few remaining aristocrats – that were training under an old crippled soldier who worked at the castle.

Albel was the youngest of the group and didn't get along with the other children – to put it mildly. While knowing how to insult someone's mother five different ways was certainly a very interesting skill (growing up around soldiers did have its benefits), it wasn't necessarily the wisest thing to exercise while surrounded by a number of children who were all bigger than you (not to mention very fond of their mothers). Squabbles with other children typically ended up with him sporting more than a few bruises as badges of his inability to keep his mouth shut.

Albel's second weapon proved his most effective in the battle of 'Albel vs. Everybody Else' – 'My daddy is captain of the Dragon Brigade'. Besides impressing his peers, it also intimidated their parents into telling their children not to pick on the son of Glou Nox.

The result of all this was quite simple: By the time Albel was ten, nobody in the castle under the age of thirty could stand him.

xxxxxx

Junipertree did her research. I looked up all of my baby development information. Albel would have been nearly three when Glou gave the wet-nurse the boot. I could give scads of details on the stuff I looked up, but I'm quite sure that nobody's interested. :P

And no, I don't think four is too young to learn the sword – my violin teacher took students no younger than four, and violin requires more fine-motor skills than swordplay. That's my logic, anyway.