The boy sat quietly, thoughts of his deceased mother swirling at the front of his consciousness in painful clarity until the drop of the cup pulled him back to the present. Before he could even register thinking to pick it up, his shoulders were grasped tightly, eyes snapping forward in sudden alarm. Was Zijian… crying? But why? Bright blue held it’s opposites evenly, eyelids pulling wider at the tearful apology.
"Uncle…" but what could he say? Rui had no clue what he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Should he attempt to console the elder man in some way, or just hear him out? Thankfully he began speaking again, but the words were less than reassuring. "Please, don—" he was cut off by the sudden embrace, the desperation in the poet beyond evident at this point.
Gently, the fledgling wrapped his arms around the slender torso, trying to think of what his mother would have done. “Please,” he led in, tone warm and accepting, “dwelling on the past like that isn’t good for you. Even if you had… If you’d died in either of their places, who’s to say they wouldn’t have been killed for anything once you were gone? I don’t know anything about the late lady Cui, uncle, but I think that his highness had long been looking for an excuse to be rid of mother.” The prince swallowed thickly, breathing accelerating before he managed to will himself calm. “Even if you’d offered yourself, Empress Guo may have had her publicly executed, and then who would I have to rely on?”
It was no good. The affection, the lack of sleep, the subject at hand… warmth pricked at the corners of Rui’s eyes, tears rushing quickly down his face as he fought to keep his breath steady, Please… please don’t leave me too; you’re all I have left…! Thin digits clung to the rich fabric beneath his hands, and his face buried itself into the warm, familiar shoulder.
You are not the fruit of a monster, Rui.
The statement caught him off guard, breath hitching in his throat as he again suppressed a quiet sob. He knew that the eccentric writer held no love for his brother since the death of Lady Zhen, but to deny that Rui was his child..? What purpose did that serv—
Despite his desire to stop thinking, Cao Rui couldn’t help but do so, his brain drawing a reluctant map of intricate connections and coincidences those few words had dragged into the light. Hadn’t his mother often spoken of how his father’s writing was so full of emotion, how sincere he was, how supportive, even though Rui knew Zihuan to be none of those things?
Had his mother quietly been denying the emperor in another way, in the only way she thought she could, for sixteen years? Was this why no matter what he did, he was never enough for the tyrannical monarch?
