Rewind

part two

A/N: the first part of this was written before i read One True King anyway all my peeps hate j*ric

i hate this but i am putting wattpad behind me so here, have this hastily finished part

-🥀-

XI.

He has never been in this room. It's next to his. He wonders why.

Aric looks around. It's sparse, really. There's a table. Chairs. Doors to the other rooms.

There's a box against the wall, untouched. It's marked with a silver swan. Shelves of books, and a desk. Her desk.

There's not much on it. Just papers, and ink, and a quill sharpener and two quills. One of them, strangely, is grey and brown and white, unusually light against the standard raven feathers.

And a little orange thing. A pumpkin. Wait. Isn't that the Good Dean's paperweight?

A box with a silver swan.

The Good Dean-

The quill.

Grey and brown and white. A mourning dove feather, it seems.

It seems his mother has been keeping a lot of secrets.

She picks it off the desk as she sits, poised and deadly as ever, on one of the chairs. The mask is on again. He takes another. And for a moment they look at each other and it's quite touching to him, really.

The only person who looks at him like that is Japeth. And Japeth is far away, somewhere.

He'll take this if he has to.

"So." Lady Lesso speaks first. "You have them."

There's just a hint of hate and fear and pain beneath the steel.

"I've never seen these letters before in my life and you'd better have an explanation," Aric growls back.

And the mask shatters.

"What?"

"You heard me," he says. "I've never seen them before."

She stares at him again.

Aric leans towards her, menacing.

"Tell me the truth!"

"I thought that you hated me," she finally whispers.

"And I thought that you abandoned me," he replies.

"No. No! I never wanted to abandon you," she hisses. "You were my son, Aric. You were my world. I couldn't reach you- I tried, so hard-"

"I'm sorry for hating you," Aric says. He can feel a tear start to well in his eye. He hasn't cried for so long now.

We were so wrong.

"You are my son," she tells him, voice breaking. "You will always be my son. You can come back to me, always."

"I think I would like that, Mother."

It's not an insult anymore.

And then it's just them, mother and son. Pasiphae and the Minotaur.

A Lady and her monstrous son.

XII.

There's a pause.

Then he looks up.

She's staring away from him now, to the box. The box that is still untouched.