Work Text:
Your son hates you.
It takes you a little while to realize it. You know, the same way you know that grass is green and birds fly that it must have started when you drew that darned card; but you didn’t notice it then, maybe because you were preoccupied with the fight you just had with your father and whatever you’d used the Wish on.
When you finally realize it, when Lark glares at you coldly and you are, for the blink of an eye, terrified of your son, it is too late; it was always too late to do anything, from the moment you drew the cards, but nothing short of a Wish will fix this; and it still bugs you that you don’t know what your Wish did, and probably never will.
The flint that let the spark loose onto the kindling that the Rogue had laid in your son’s heart was you taking the gauntlets with you. Sometimes you convince yourself that if you could go back in time, if you could undo that moment, it would fix things. It would unwind the hatred your son holds for you.
You know, deep down, that things simply don’t work like that. Lark would have found something else, in time. Or he would have hated you in silence, and you’re not sure you could have withstood that spite if it had been under the surface. Out in the open, you can deal with it, no matter how much it hurts.
You don’t blame him, not any more than you blame the way your magic once stitched together your skin a little off and your elbow now aches all the time. Magic overwrites reality and powerful magics resist being overwritten; that is the way things are.
The earth is beautiful, you come from Oakvale, and your son hates you. That is the way things are.
So when your son stabs you, you don’t blame him. It’s not his fault you drew the card.
(THERE IS SOMETHING INSIDE YOU AND IT WANTS OUT, MORE THAN ANYTHING IT WANTS TO GET OUT. LET IT OUT)
It feels familiar. More familiar than you’d like. An old friend claws its way out of your veins and into your stomach and throat and out into the world.
As you lie on the floor of your own kitchen, retching up the last of the dark ooze you know to be the Doodler, you are angry at your son. Angry the way Oaks are angry, which is to say, hurting and burning and on the verge of doing something very, very bad.
But you do not blame your son.
He could have chosen to do something else; he could have ignored Willy’s message. You know your son is smart, both your sons are, but you also know what it’s like to be driven out of your reasonable mind by strong emotion.
And you know, oh you know so deeply that it threatens to cut you in two, that all you want to do is relieve this burden of pain and hatred from your son. And you know, even deeper, that that is something you cannot do.
It threatens to destroy you, that knowledge.
As soon as you find yourself able to move and talk—bile still spilling out of your mouth, the Doodler still not quite done making its escape—you check on your sons, your two beautiful boys, shaking them in turn, to make sure they’re okay.
You try to ignore the way Lark flinches away from your touch, withdrawing, shivering alone on the kitchen floor as the inky darkness moves with a life of its own to the nearest window, and then through the window, as if the glass wasn’t even there, and there are shouts from the other room, and your throat still stings in a way you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to forget. Your back hurts, too, and you’re pretty sure you’re bleeding from the wound.
Your son hates you. He released the Doodler.
You do not blame him.