The Butler's Master

Understandings and Endings - Part 1

[Understandings and Endings – Part 1]

"I've been nagging this at you for years on end, Louise, but you have never listened to me." The words greeted Kyren in his drift back to reality as he slowly felt his sense returning to him one by one.

"If you have been nagging for years and nothing has changed, then maybe you should stop trying." Kyren recognized his mother's soft voice replying to his father's worried nag, even as he did his best to process all the information that his body was telling him.

He could feel tight material around his neck, arms and legs, and beneath those tight materials were warm semi-stinging pain on his skin. He quickly remembered that he had been burnt in the blaze of the explosions, and could only guess that he had been given the appropriate medical attention. He could feel softness behind his back –softness of a bed that he had not been able to experience for more than a month by now.

"You probably don't want me to stop nagging, Louise. You know I will force you out of business if I have too much time on my hands and cannot use them to nag at you." Brandon's response was confident, and despite the henpecked husband that he liked to present to the public, Kyren knew that his father was a really capable businessman himself. If Brandon was serious, there was a strong chance that even Louise would have a hard time pushing him back –not that there was really a need for husband and wife to be pushing against each other.

"Dear me, I do very much fear the wrath of the Head of the Greaves-Crawford Household." Louise's response was equally soft, paired with a gentle giggle that Kyren rarely heard.

As he grew up, his parents had flirted less with each other in front of him –in their attempts to portray themselves as the powerful Head and Mistress of the Greaves-Crawford Household –but Kyren always knew that it did not mean that their relationship was stale. No, in such moments when they thought their children were not paying attention (or asleep/unconscious in this case), the two of them tended to express their pure affection to each other to the embarrassed burning ears of their poor pretending-to-be-unconscious son.

"In all seriousness, Louise, you need to stop neglecting your health. You scared me half to death when you passed out like that." Brandon's response was affectionate, but serious.

Kyren pried open one eye towards where he could hear his parents in their gentle conversation, sneaking a look at his mother half-rested against an armchair nearby and his father standing by her side with an empty medicine bowl in his hands. His mother must have just drunk some medicine of sorts, and he did not appreciate how pale she appeared against the soft lighting of his room.

"Blame your son and his butlers." The soft reply came as Louise placed a gentle hand to her temple. "They scared me half to death."

"The three of them, plus Idiot Keyron who ran straight into the mess without a single look backward?" Brandon scoffed. "All four of them scared me straight to hell and back. I had just finished my round-trip, then you gave me a half-way ride there again when you fainted once Keyron brought them out."

"I don't know... When Keyron appeared with Kyren, all the worry and everything..." Louise looked up at her husband with a heavy sigh.

Kyren was stunned to see the tears dripping from his mother's eyes, rolling down her cheek.

"They are fine now, Louise." Brandon was quick to the rescue as he rested the medicine bowl on the low table in front of them, wrapping his wife into his embrace as she sobbed quietly against his chest as he knelt down in front of her. "They might be a bit beaten up, but they're all fine. In fact, Keyron probably still got the worst injuries out of everything that has happened the past week."