✎ academia ✐

♖ ii ♖

    Hugo James Wilde has Mondays off by virtue of both nepotism and universal pity. He spends them reintroducing himself to a woman who will forget him come evening.

    She retains bits, sort of. She knows her name. She remembers how she likes her tea. She knows she has a son, though she doesn't always recognize him when he comes to trim her lawn or replace her bedsheets. Hugo does those things by hand, it makes him feel useful.

    He feels useful now, kneading cookie dough while her eyes are glued to the telly. Cable has to be on, otherwise she'll be undistracted and speak of him frequently. She'll say things like, "You know, my son looks like a movie star," or, "My son is top of his class." They're almost always lies, but he never bothers to correct them. Apart from the guilty heartstring-tug now and then, it's nice to know she thinks of him fondly, even when she hasn't a clue he's right there under her nose, the one she's speaking to.

    At school, they call him by her name—a nonmagical name. A persistent reminder that makes him uncomfortable, confused, because he is ashamed to be the first Wilde with a nonmagical parent, but also glad to be Renata Dubois's only son. It's like her blood levels out the generations of bad in him, like her name between his and the House's makes up for the fact that his father is a prick, as well as a prince.

    Hugo is a prince, too, technically. He really only remembers because nobody will shut up about it. Hugo James Wilde, they say - taking any opportunity to leave out Dubois since it acknowledges his lesser-half - the Lucky Bastard, the Viscount Aster, a Prince of Lions and, therefore, the Realms of Where. Generations ago, bastard would've meant he'd be cast out of the House. Forgotten. Nameless, and stripped of all his magic like the rest of the Demimagical children once sired by crazed Wilde princes.

    Times have changed, if only somewhat. Hugo is a bastard, but also a Wilde, and that's precisely the shit that tears him apart.

    Sometimes, Hugo wishes he were born after Beau. A measly four more months in the womb would have spared him the trouble of questions and comparisons and having to constantly explain the strange, ancient mess that is the Wilde monarchy. He has the monologue memorized in case another stranger decides to be an arse about it—Yeah, I know Beau's stronger and smarter and better than me and his dad is King, but I'm older and that means I'm s'posed to be next in line because Wildes are weird and the crown is passed down differently... Trust me, I don't get it either, the tradition's quite violent and no one's looking forward to it...Lots of blood...Etcetera, etcetera...

    Bullshit.

    Life could've been simpler. Kinder. Beau would've made, and still very well could make, the perfect heir apparent; a strong-willed, handsome, brilliant actor with Aura so concentrated it blinds like the sun. Sure, the racist extended family, the ones descended from Nazi sympathizers, could say a spiteful thing or two about how Beau is less than ideal, but in the end it wouldn't matter. He remains an excitable prospect, and would make an all the more excitable heir while Hugo would be no more than a spectator, watching from the sidelines, content, unbothered. Unaffected by those who think that the Crown Prince of the Realms of Where, heir to Arthur's Round Table and the MagiCourt and the world itself by no hyperbolic measure, should be at least a full Magical and not this, not what he is—an insufficient Demi hunched over a kitchen island, watching half a dozen mediocre chocolate-chip cookies burn themselves to a crisp.

    Ding, goes the oven.

    "Cookies?" Says his mother, like a child with that look in her eye.

    "Yes," Hugo smiles for her as he pulls the oven mitt on, "Your favorite ones."

    She clasps her hands together, "I love cookies."