Fears of the Son

[archiveofarethusa]

Cygnelius Corvo looks at his father and sees a dead man. Alcionus Corvo is dark and grave, and though he breathes and walks, Cygnelius knows better at twelve and three quarters than to consider these valid qualifiers of a living being. He sees the poltergeist that haunts Alcionus's eyes and makes him move in strange, illogical ways, has noticed and filed away the ways in which he stares at couples alternately as if clasped hands and soulful looks were unsolvable puzzles and incurable maladies. He's seen the old man longing for the hand of death in his father's stance, and it no longer scares him.

Cygnelius looks at his father and wonders if that will one day be him. When old women fuss over the familial resemblance, and his father's assistant tells him how much he looks like his father, he wants to protest. He nearly does, and it's only the thought of losing his father's respect that holds his tongue. The nightmare of being wrapped in his father's too-large funeral shroud as his paling father, masked in Cyg's face, continues his dwindling half-life keeps him up for months after.