A commission of Fae Nightmare, for a lovely commissioner who wishes to remain anonymoose. Something of a sequel/prequel to this previous piece. Time shenanigans, how exciting!
(On a side note, thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages during my ........ lengthy hiatus. Consider this my unofficial return to posting!!)
---
Nightmare stared into the fire.
The room around him was warm. Given the size of his bedroom’s ornate fireplace, it was perhaps one of the warmest rooms in the entire Winter castle. Every now and then a log would crackle and snap, a tongue of flame would rise higher than the rest - for a moment, firelight would glance back and forth off the glassy angles of the carved obsidian walls, orange and yellow light ricocheting around the room in a magnificent lightshow.
Nightmare paid it absolutely no mind. He was accustomed to it. His mind was elsewhere.
A book laid open, abandoned, in his lap. There were only two sounds in that room - the crackling of the fire, and just underneath, the howling blizzard winds beating against the castle walls outside.
...
He closed the book. He couldn’t bring himself to pretend to read it anymore. It wasn’t as if he’d been paying attention to it, anyway. He couldn’t even recall its title.
All he could think about was the person who had last read it.
Nightmare’s good eye twitched. The memory was fresh, and raw, and he couldn’t stand it. He stood swiftly out of his chair, crossing the room to the dark oak bookcase standing against the far wall. His dark cloak, as dark as the inky volcanic glass his castle was made of - and the bottoms of his grand wings - dragged along the carpeted stone floor.
He returned the book to the shelf, silver rings glinting in the firelight. His eye roamed over the other spines. Colours and embossed lettering he had long memorised and grown bored of... he didn’t need a good book, he didn’t even need a mediocre book. He just needed anything that would fill the silence.
The horrible, horrible silence.
...
He pulled one from lower on the shelf. It was faintly dusty - the two books on either side of it tipped against one another, filling the gap. It was written in a language he wasn’t fully adept at. He hoped that having to apply his mind would distract him until the moon rose and everyone else woke up.
Nightmare opened the book, and started to wander back to his chair again.
... The mantelpiece above the fire used to be bare. He glanced around the room - in fact, his chambers used to be all but bare. Aside from his bed, bookshelf, desk and armchair, there used to be nothing else in the room. Why would he have anything else? Why would he need decorations? He was the King of Winter, he had thought. Not a peacock like his brother.
Now? There was a tapestry on the far wall. A nice new carpet, woven from dark fibres, so the floor wasn’t quite so cold to tread on. There was a decorative blue quill in an ornate inkpot on his desk. A few trinkets had started gathering on the mantlepiece... a nice candle. A stack of half-finished books, separated from the main bookshelf for ease of reading. Some spare papers with scribbles on them. An interestingly gnarled branch, bare of leaves. A single acorn with a mottled green and hazel shell.
...
Nightmare stood in front of the fire, staring at the mantelpiece. The light bathed his chest and face, the back of his hand, he felt the warmth bleeding into the rings on his phalanges. His body cast great shadows across the room behind him, warped dark figures that shivered and danced as the fire did.
... A crease appeared between his brows. Like ripples appearing on the surface of calm water, betraying the turmoil below.
He hated the decorations.
“You really should add something, you know.” Your voice rang in his skull. Like you were right there.
His eye sharpened. He’d only decorated because you told him to. Because you wanted to.
“It’s so sad in here.”
“i allow you the great privilege of entering into my private chambers. and you... call it ‘sad’?”
“Oh, shush. You know I’m right. It wouldn’t kill you to put down a nice carpet.”
He was squeezing the book. He felt his claws dig into paper, he felt the spine bending too far.
“your flippant demeanour still irritates me.”
“Alright, alright. But I’m going to start putting nice things on the mantelpiece. You’ll thank me later.”
He felt so many things he couldn’t stand feeling. His vision was blurring. His sockets felt like they were going to burst. His chest was tight and heavy, his Soul was full of needles.
you made me happy. you changed me. and then you left me. how am i supposed to live like this?
He didn’t hate you. He couldn’t hate you.
But...
...
Rage reared up inside him. Just as powerful and instantaneous as ever. An old companion - a familiar warmth, far better than the cold loneliness and the stinging pain. He squeezed the poor book in his hand as hard as he could, feeling the leather tearing and the spine snapping; he tipped over the edge. His eye flared, cyan sparked, glimmering in the walls around him.
Before he could think, he swept everything off the mantlepiece. A shower of books and papers and tiny trinkets clattered to the floor, some breaking, some scattering, some rolling away.
...
He stood there, chest rising and falling.
...
He didn’t feel any better.
Nightmare stared at his reflection in the wall. A bitter, dejected creature stared back at him. He didn’t hate you, but... he did feel a growing resentment within him.
how could you do this to me? how could you turn me into a... a lovesick fool?
Nightmare stumbled back, falling heavily onto his chair. The broken book, still in his hands to that point, finally fell from his claws and landed on the carpet with a pathetic thud. His expression had returned to its base - a lonely, low glower. His sockets still ached.
i feel worse.
...
He touched a claw to his cheekbone. When he examined his phalanges, he could see the tears on them, glinting in the fire.
Why hadn’t he cried while you were here? Why hadn’t he shown you there was someone underneath it all, something worth staying for? The resentment swirled, storm clouds he could never quite reign in. He looked at the trinkets cast over the floor, the snapped candlestick, the scattered papers. He wanted to strike something again.
... He had an ugly temper. There it was, all over the floor - his temper. He remembered the way you’d look at him when he was berating someone in his court. You wouldn’t say a word, you didn’t want to disrespect him before his subjects... but you would just look at him. And your eyes, the eyes he admired so much, would say everything.
that was what you had seen, wasn’t it? sure, you’d had some tender moments together. but more often than not you’d seen him angry. angry and proud.
He sank down into the chair. A wave of shame overtook him. He shouldn’t think that way about you. He knew you loved him, he knew you cared about him. You’d given him more love in the little time you’d been around than in all his life before. But the further away in time he got from you, the more you became a memory, the harder it was to keep ahold of what was real. The harder it was to detangle his own vivid insecurities from the truth.
...
He closed his socket, allowing the tears to drip down.
...
“I had no idea you were such a sulker.”
He could still hear you. Clear as day. He knew precisely what you’d say to him, at any given moment.
“i am not sulking,” he mumbled.
He still remembered the day he first met you. It had been such a mediocre day in all other aspects.
In the decades following the great war between Dream and Nightmare, the battle between twin Kings that cleaved the Fae lands in two, Nightmare should’ve been spending his days basking in his victory. He should’ve been content - he had mastered the Corruption, shed his feeble old life, and become a being that struck terror into the hearts of all creatures. He had inflicted irreparable wounds to the ones that had wronged him... he had proven such an insurmountable threat to his perfect brother that Dream had been forced to bend for the first time in his life and afford Nightmare his own realm. He had gotten dominion over all of Winter, all the ancient lands of infinite night and energy, where the very snow and stone beneath you imbued with unspeakable power. He had gotten everything he wanted.
Everything he wanted.
...
... Nightmare was not content. He wasn’t even happy.
In the shadow of all that rage and blood, the thrill of war, of getting to make his brother hurt, nothing felt exciting anymore. The days of peace strung together, one after the other, beads in a dull necklace. And Gods Nightmare was bored of his new realm. Summer had valleys, lakes, rivers, flower fields, swamps... eternal sunlight in which to bathe. He? Endless leagues of unmapped icy wasteland, and a blanket of night that never lifted. Trees and snow and trees and snow, as far as the eye could see, inhabited only by sparse populations of small animals, until in distance beyond mortal sight the land peeled upward into impassable mountains that scraped the sky.
The fae lands were certainly ancient. But the Winter forest was beyond that. In the cold, where everything slept, time flowed differently. It meandered, pooled, stilled. Trees and spells could rest encased in snow, and in a thousand years taste nothing but ice and the light footsteps of a single fleeting white hare.
... How boring.
Even within his only respite, the Winter palace, he had a cripplingly small court. It consisted only of those mad enough to abandon Summer and the dozen or so fae who shared enough of his hatred for Dream to choose eternal cold and darkness. But just because they’d followed him didn’t mean they wanted anything to do with him. The reputation Nightmare created during the war had made sure of that.
The day he met you was just another blank bead in that necklace of boredom. He had driven himself into the snow again, with nothing but his hunting knives, trying to kill time. And maybe kill something else too. His courtiers scattered like mice at his early emergence from his chambers, but he paid it no mind. He went out, deeper and further from the castle than he had ever travelled before - a trail of his footprints winding through the open wastelands and into the ancient maze-like forests beyond. Patches of dark clouds had gathered, obscuring most of the fine starry sky; he had hoped for a blizzard to at least make things more exciting, but alas, not a single breath of wind. Hours passed, the rhythmic sound of snow crunching underfoot his only company... as the clouds drifted past the moon, the world around him silently shifted back and forth, alternating between almost total darkness and the glow of the half moon.
He considered making his way to a portal and going into the human world to torment some half-wit mortals. His courtiers were becoming too adept at avoiding him and skirting around his rampages. Humans never learned. But alas, he couldn’t sense any areas where the veil between the two worlds was thin enough to pass through. He’d have to make do with something else today.
If he were any other being he was sure he’d be frightened. So much cold and dark. But he paid no mind to anything at all as he walked. Nothing could harm him here. Not ice, not wind, not beast nor curse. He kicked a few branches and snapped others clean in half, fired off some blasts of cyan-blue magic to frighten away flocks of small game birds, tried and failed to fling a blade at a weasel with senses far more fine-tuned than his own. He walked where the snow was thin, waded where it was thick, and simply did his best to entertain himself with whatever poor objects or creatures he came across.
i should get some dogs. some big hunting dogs, he thought. they could tear to shreds whatever beast i cannot catch myself. that would be fun - especially if we found a person.
... Out of nowhere, an instinctive feeling washed over him.
He stopped walking for the first time in hours. Without his footsteps to break the silence the quiet, empty cold air suddenly weighed down on him.
He was in a clearing. He had walked into an area where the trees peeled back, and the sky was clearly visible. But something was wrong, his bones were tingling. He felt like he was standing near the edge of a sheer cliff. As if a single step further would send him careening into the void.
He took two steps back. Clouds obscured the moon.
What was going on? He was so alert. His eye was tight with stress, but bright, cyan light was twinkling faintly off the snow around him. If he had ears like a wolf, they would’ve been pricked up. He reached for the largest blade at his hip, his midnight-black phalanges sealing around the hilt.
.... The clearing he had walked into had five large black stones. Oblong and smooth, taller than him, they stood perfectly straight up, grand obsidian-black icebergs rising up out of the snow in a circle. His footprints ended only a few steps away from where the circle began.
i don’t recognise this place. Five stones; he felt a natural nervousness around the number five, as all fae did. He was just glad he’d paid heed to his instincts, and stopped himself before he unthinkingly went into a ring he didn’t know the intention of. But the circle didn't explain the sensation in the air.
Something was in the atmosphere. He breathed slowly, sharply. Something old. No - not old. Something ageless. He squeezed the hilt of his dagger.
...
Magic prickled all over him. Magic far stronger than he. For a moment, he was a bonfire, and he was feeling the distant glow of the sun.
...
... A pop. A release of pressure.
And then a figure stumbled out of the circle.
You staggered like you’d been shoved, wide-eyed and clueless - and you staggered toward him. What? He instinctively let go of his blade, reaching out and catching you by the elbows with both hands before you fell forward and hit the ground.
...
eh?
He stood there, bewildered, all the tension and magic he’d been holding onto dissipating. A person. You - you were holding onto him. No one had ever done that. People didn’t dare touch him; even before he was a terrifying monster, his status as a prince ensured people kept their distance. There was little the fae valued more than politeness, and adhering to social rules and customs.
You were so close he could hear your heartbeat. He could smell you. it’s a nice smell. Nightmare was hyper-aware of the feeling of your warm hands gripping his forearms through his tunic sleeves.
His eye darted over you, taking in everything. You were wearing a wool dress and a cloak, the items appeared simple at a glance but revealed more quality the longer they were studied. Your dress had a smooth fitted waist and a long skirt, fashioned from large gores of continuous fabric, with stitching so delicate it was almost invisible to the light. Your cloak was dark and thick wool with nothing marring it but dotted snowflakes, wolf fur lining the neck and sleeves. The visible edges of the cloak were hand-decorated with silver and gold thread sewn together in a repeating pattern... the thread almost appeared to glow in the gloom.
Your cloak fastened at the neck with a silver crescent moon charm. Thread wasn’t the only thing that had been stitched into the fabric. Magic was sewn into it, the sigils of complex charms and powerful warding spells that even he didn’t understand. Whoever had made this cloak was very keen to protect its wearer.
it was all simple, but beautiful, hand made for precisely one person. fit for someone of high ranking. perhaps even royalty.
You coughed a few times. Then you looked up at him, blinking like a fawn.
Nightmare was still reeling from the physical contact. When was the last time someone had stood this close to him? He was accustomed to being looked at with all sorts of expressions. Usually, when someone was this physically close to him, the expression was fear. He half expected you to leap back like you’d been bitten.
But your face... lit up. You smiled.
... He felt his eye shimmer. Something stirred in his chest.
“Oh!” You spoke so sweetly. You spoke like you knew him. You spoke like you liked him. “You followed me?”
For a moment, he was so stunned he couldn’t talk. He just stared down at you. No one had ever spoken to him this way before. So casually, so happily. And especially not someone so lovely; you had a nice face, fine eyes, your mouth was especially pretty to look at when you smiled. No one so wonderful had ever looked at him with anything but disgust or fear.
He stared. He felt like a beautiful wild bird hand landed in his palm.
...
A crease appeared between your brows when he didn’t respond.
“... Something’s... different.” You let go of his arms, looking him up and down and stepping back somewhat. “Nightmare? What’s wrong?”
...
The distance let him regain some sense of thought. He blinked... then a little smile formed on on his face.
“'nightmare'. so you know who i am,” he said. “and you approached me this way regardless?”
“What?”
He hadn’t been this excited in a long time. Something new, something so interesting. A pretty thing that knew his name - a mystery. This was exactly what he’d been waiting for, this was exactly what he’d been missing. A new toy.
Emotions familiar to him finally appeared on your face. Trepidation, confusion, but for some reason or another you weren’t frightened yet and you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He liked it.
He stepped forward. You responded with a clumsy step back, keeping your distance.
“you are an interesting creature.” His voice was dangerously gentle. “are you from summer? you certainly aren’t from my court. i’d remember a face like that. what is your name? where did you come from?”
You looked him up and down a second time. This time, your gaze really lingered, taking everything in.
“... You’re... not my Nightmare,” you breathed. “Are you?
...
He twitched.
“your nightmare?”
“I-I didn’t - ” You started walking back more. He remained where he stood. “Uh. Oops. My apologies?”
His temper was as quick as ever. Blue fire, in his chest, licking up the sides of his ribcage. Were you mocking him? He wasn’t anyone’s Nightmare. He would never be second to anyone again. His teeth clenched.
“don’t walk away from me,” he said, a warning. The air around the two of you was becoming noticeably colder, noticeably sharper, Nightmare’s unruly magic interfering with the world and creating little fractals of frost across his cloak and boots. This was usually the part where people fell to their knees and began to beg for their lives.
But you didn’t. You stepped back again. You ignored his command.
Your voice was careful. “I think there’s been a misunder-”
Nightmare’s temper ignited. He strided forward, closing the distance in only a few paces - you gasped and tried to scurry back further but you just weren’t as fast as him.
He seized your arm in one hand, tight. There was ice on the back of his palm.
“i said don’t walk away from me.”
He couldn’t deny that he liked that you were suddenly scared. You seemed to have come to a realisation, and you’d lost all the brightness from your previous expression, staring up at him with big pretty frightened eyes like a deer. Did he like your other face? Yes. But he liked this one too; fear was an expression he was much more familiar with. He enjoyed the way this face made him feel.
“you have some nerve.” He spoke darkly. “self-assured little thing, aren’t you? you might know my name, but i don’t imagine you know exactly who you’re dealing with.”
“Wait. W-wait.” He barely registered the feeling of you uselessly pulling. Real terror was creeping into your voice. “Nightmare. Let me explain,”
His eye narrowed. “maybe i should teach you some manners,”
“Wait wait wait!”
He didn’t like that. He squeezed your arm. “don’t tell me what to do,”
You opened your mouth -
...
He saw your lips move. He was sure of it. But the world went entirely silent around him.
He felt his true name being spoken, before he actually heard the word. His body halted against his will, a dog waiting for a command, a deep and primal thing he could not see or fight. A true name. It felt like clear water was flowing between his bones, numbing everything. Or like someone had struck him around the skull with the flat side of a broadsword.
The moon emerged from behind the clouds, Winter around him shifting, the ground itself responding to the raw power contained in that single word - but he couldn’t look. The only thing he could see was your eyes, staring into his own.
His will, his power, his pride.
Gone.
my name. you said my name.
...
And then,
“Let go of me.”
...
He came to. He was standing in the same spot, his hand was open, frozen in the air. And you were standing a few feet away. Perfectly silhouetted against the snow.
...
His true name. His true name. He stared, he could feel his eye tight with shock and confusion and... well, fear. Magic shifted across his dark bones.
He had stolen many a true name, in his time. Was this how it felt?
“... how...” he breathed. His voice had never been so quiet. He was scarcely able to cover up the tremble in his tone. “how do you...?”
Your chest was rising and falling quickly. You were holding onto your wrist, where he had grabbed you.
“I-I...” You seemed almost as scared as he felt. It was written all over your face. “I think you wouldn’t believe me.”
Words jammed in his throat. who are you? why are you here? did dream send you?
“who told you?” He managed to choke out.
You looked at him. For the second time that night, you looked at him like no one else ever had. So many emotions, on your face; pity, confusion, fear, something he didn’t understand yet. You were looking at him like he reminded you of someone you loved.
He felt... he felt like the forest was closing in on him. He felt small.
He felt so small.
“... You did,” you said. “You told me.”
...
“what?”
“Look, I... there’s a lot I’m still figuring out myself, right now. I need to think. I... need to collect my thoughts.” You pointed ahead. “The castle is still south, right? South of here.”
...
He didn’t know what to do. He just stared, a thousand thoughts racing through his mind. It was as if his feet had melted and sealed into the snow. His whole life was a fight to remain at the highest place on the pyramid; the top of the power dynamic. Whether he was battling his brother for control of the realms, bullying his courtiers for the sheer delight of it, or venturing temporarily into the human world purely to bring chaos and misery and blood... if he wasn’t the most powerful entity in the room he was damn near close.
And yet here he was. Standing in the forest, with a stranger who knew his true name. Someone who had tipped the scales completely with one word. He felt sick. Not even Dream knew his true name. When was the last time he’d been powerless against someone? Against anyone?
“... yes,” he said, numb. “the castle is that way.”
You turned, starting to walk.
What? You were leaving? He blinked, suddenly snapping out of his stupor. You were going, just like that? But that wasn’t how this worked. When someone had a fae’s true name, they used it for all kinds of terrible things. They made them slaves, they humiliated them, they broke their spirits. You had a King’s true name, you - you had his name - and you were just walking away?
He couldn’t help himself. “what are you going to do with my name?” he blurted.
You stopped again. Your cloak swished pleasantly against the snow with the leftover momentum. You glanced over your shoulder at him.
... Your eyes. So many feelings rushed through him at once. If he had a stomach, it would be flipping.
...
You smiled at him again.
It wasn’t the same as the first smile you’d given him. Nowhere near as open or soft, as if... some part of you had sealed over. Some gentleness and vulnerability buried away from him after what he’d just done. But it was a smile nonetheless.
His Soul was moving in his ribcage. He felt like a child.
“I... I guess will defend myself if I have to,” you said. “But only if I have to. True names are horrible things.”
His head was swimming. His eye was pulsing in his socket, he could feel it. This couldn’t be real... none of this made sense.
why do you still smile at me?
will you do it again?
“Look, I’m... going to head to the castle.” Your breath was escaping you in little cloud-like puffs. Why hadn't he noticed that before? How nice it was to watch. “You’re welcome to walk with me, if you want.”
You started walking. Walking ahead of him. He didn’t usually allow that to happen; he would usually get angry, demand that he went first.
...
“... wait,” he said, following behind you. “wait. don’t go without me.”
~~~
Nightmare woke up.
... He was still in his chair. He wasn't sure how many hours had passed, but his bedroom was dim now. The fire, once high enough for the flames to lick the edges of the fireplace, was low and sleepy. Only a few coals remained. Warmth had seeped into the obsidian walls, but it was gradually fading, becoming more and more faint with every feeble final crackle an ember let out.
He stared at the fire. He often dreamt about the day he met you. It felt like a lifetime ago. It was a day he replayed in his mind, over and over, when he was awake he thought endlessly about how differently he would’ve acted if he could do it all again. But when he dreamt, he didn’t dream of things going differently. He dreamt of things happening exactly as they did.
He looked at all the mantelpiece decorations still scattered over the floor. His eye was drawn, particularly, to the acorn with the mottled shell... the dim firelight was warping along its surface, painting its outline with a warm red glow.
...
He wasn’t sure what spurred him. But Nightmare got up, out of his chair. He crossed the room, crouching down... picking the acorn up off the floor with the tips of his claws. He held it up to the waning light.
He hadn’t been all that impressed when you found an acorn buried in the snow. But you’d seemed so excited to show it to him, so he’d let you talk about it. What was it that you’d said?
“I love finding seeds here. It’s literally the middle of the Winter lands. But it doesn’t matter how cold or bad things get. Everything still wants to grow.”
“sometimes you say things i truly do not understand.”
“You’ll get it eventually.”
...
He still didn’t get it, now. He placed the acorn carefully back onto the mantelpiece. Was that something future him understood? It was a strange feeling, to be so deeply jealous of himself.
When you were here, he'd acted like a child. Desperate for your attention, desperate to impress you in any way possible, unable to use his usual tricks thanks to a power dynamic he was completely unaccustomed to.
It had been so easy to fall for you. And so hard to get back up.
...
You were right. The room did look better with decorations. The mantelpiece was better for the visual interest.
Quietly, he started picking up the other objects that he had scattered to the ground. The things he had smashed in his rage. He had the magic to lift it all instantly, but for some reason, it felt better to pick the pieces up by hand. It felt better to take his time. The half-finished books, the gnarled branch, the old yellowing papers. The two halves of the snapped candle. Holding each of them, looking at each of them, it felt good to set them down one by one in their proper place.
...
He looked at the trinkets on the shelf.
He had... cleaned up his own mess. When had he done that before? That was never something he concerned himself with. He broke things wherever he went. When was the last time he had put the pieces back together as best he could?
You had teased him for being childish. Quite frequently, actually. Whether you were only playing around with him, or you were actually angry at something he’d done, his childishness was a frequent topic. He always denied it, obviously - sometimes he denied it with a little too much intensity, a little too much anger and fervour. And you’d just tease him even more.
...
You were right. He was childish. His temper completely ruled him. He picked up new people and things to torment, new ‘toys’ to play with, then dumped them the moment they no longer interested him. He split the fae realms in half because he was too bitter to let his brother remain in the spotlight. He dreaded to think what might’ve happened to you if you hadn’t arrived in the forest already armed with his true name.
He stared at the acorn. Then he glanced up, to his own reflection in the wall.
... He had cleaned up his mess.
He could be better. Couldn’t he?
His eye widened. He was Nightmare. He was the King of Winter, there was nothing beyond his power. He had unseated his brother from his throne and forged his own kingdom. If he could walk through a raging blizzard unmarred he could learn to steady his hand. If he could cut the Fae lands in two, he could learn to control his temper. He didn’t need to be ruled by anything - especially not his own emotions.
It wouldn't be easy to be better. Of course it wouldn't. There was no one that understood more than him how easy it was to get swept up in his own fury. Even when you were right there by his side, and he could feel your eyes burning into his skull when he flew into a rage, it wasn’t easy to calm himself.
But if there was one thing he did not lack, it was time.
He was so jealous of his future self. So painfully, bitterly jealous. But that man, that ‘him’... wasn’t he just proof that no matter how impossible it felt, it could be done? No matter how far the road ahead of him seemed to stretch... one day, he would be the kind of person you’d talk about so lovingly?
...
“You know you’ll see me again.”
“but you don’t have to leave.”
“... I’m not from this time, Nightmare. At some point I have to go back.”
“you don’t. you could stay here, with me.”
“You’re the one who told me I have to go back. Well... you WILL tell me I have to go back, I suppose.”
“the future version of me told you so? he’s the one who gets to keep you. of course he would say so.”
“... I don’t know why you’re saying ‘he’.”
“you don’t have to go.”
He could still feel your arms around him on the day you left. There were so many things he had wanted to say. don’t leave me, i love you, stay with me. So many words that he was still too young and foolish to string together. He couldn’t even say them now. Not aloud.
“You’ll find me again.”
“but i don’t know where. or when,”
“I know. You have to be patient.”
“i’m not patient.”
“I know.”
He needed to be better. The kind of person who could say those words. He needed to be a King.
... He needed to be someone you’d be proud to come back to.
