Author: Kiki (Hey-Diddle-Diddle)

Genre: General

Rating: PG

Summary: Luke comes home when he's eleven, cradled in his father's arms, and his eyes are a brighter green than Guy remembers. Pre-game.

It's sunny the day Luke comes home. Guy's heard the maids whispering in the hallways, about Luke being found in the old summer house, wrapped up in a dusty sheet. Guy waits behind the maids, head shorter and standing on his tiptoes to see, and he watches the Duke carry in his son.

Madame fon Fabre is pale and thin, but she bustles by the Duke's side, her hands fluttering near Luke's face. Her steps are quick and nervous, and she looks over the maids, catches Guy's eye. "Guy," she says, "Guy, come here."

He follows them to Luke's room, still musty and dark. The maids threw open the windows the day before, when a messenger came running into the manor, and the sunlight streams in weak. Guy stands out of the way, and watches as Madame fon Fabre pulls at pillows and blankets, wraps her son like he's an infant still. When Guy edges a little closer, leans so he can see over the Madame's shoulders, Luke is looking up at the ceiling with bright, blank eyes. He looks all manners of empty, like the summer house's windows when the family left years ago, and Guy wonders how much of Luke was left behind.

"You'll be his friend, won't you?" Madame asks, and she catches Guy's hand, presses it tight between her own. "For my son, won't you?"

x

Luke is helpless; he's limp, limbs arranged by the Madame, washed by Guy. When Guy washes Luke's face, Luke opens his mouth, croons like a toddler.

When Madame combs Luke's hair, first with a fine-toothed comb, then her fingers, Guy listens to Luke laugh, delighted. Luke laughs more and more as the days go by, and he reaches out, holds onto Madame's skirts and Guy's sleeves.

"Such a good boy," Madame says, lifting Luke's head. Guy lifts Luke's body, and together they set Luke up, leaning against the headboard of the bed like an oversized doll. A maid is standing with a bowl in her hands, and Madame feeds Luke as Luke grabs at the sheets, eyes blinking too quickly.

"He's getting stronger," Guy says, because something needs to be said to make the Madame's smile grow.

Luke screams when he doesn't have what he wants, when he's hungry or tired or upset, or hurting somewhere no one can find. He throws out his arms and legs, long for a child, and knocks away the lamps and baubles he had been so proud of years before. At night, when Madame is sleeping fitfully in the chair, her hands twisting in the apron borrowed from a maid, Guy reads to Luke, squinting in the light from the far lamp. He reads until his eyes burn, and when he can't see the words, he talks to Luke, tells him stories of all kinds. Luke looks at him with green, green eyes, brighter than Guy remembers, and when Guy moves, bumping Luke, Luke screams the manor awake.

x

"No," is the first word Luke learns. Guy's not sure who Luke learned it from, because Guy's never heard anyone say "no" in Luke's room before. But Luke says it, over and over, with obvious glee and satisfaction.

"No," Luke says when the maids wrestle him for a bath, and "no," when Guy is trying to feed him. No to the books read too many times, and no to the doctors who poke and prod Luke with needles and knives. "No."

Luke gets increasingly difficult, fighting harder and harder when he doesn't get his way. He screams at Guy, and the maids, and even Madame, and there are no more lamps in the room. Madame grows tired and sharp, and leaves more of Luke's caring to Guy. The maids grow bitter and scared, and wait in the hallway, watching Guy come and go. Guy grows angry, and frustrated, and wants to sit outside with Pere, and not stay in here, by the bedside of the Duke's only son.

"No," Luke says when Guy's trying to lift him for a bath. Guy grits his teeth, pulls harder, and rocks back on his heels when Luke shoves at him. "No."

They tussle, Guy trying to get Luke up without breaking Luke's arms, and Luke feeling no such qualms. When Luke's fingernails, untrimmed since Luke's newest word, scratch Guy's face, Guy snaps, furious, "Fine. Fine."

He comes back to Luke's room after the servants' dinner, when the sky is dark and the manor is quieting down. Luke's room is dark, and the light from the hallway cuts into the shadows sharply, creating a clean box on the floor, coming in from the door. Luke's halfway in the box of light, limbs tangled and face tear-streaked, red and angry.

"Luke," Guy says, and Luke turns his face away, arms lying limp on the floor. "Luke--"

"No," Luke says, and Guy grabs Luke's arms, pulls Luke up onto Luke's useless legs.

The next morning, when the Madame is combing Luke's hair, Luke is staring at Guy, and not laughing.

x

When Guy tries to teach Luke to walk, Luke screams until the Madame comes running, her skirts flooding the doorway. She coos at Luke, cradles his face in her hands, and lets him hide behind her skirts, staring at Guy with furious, untrusting eyes. Still, every morning Guy grabs Luke's hands, pulls Luke up and off the bed, and holds Luke steady on his feet as Luke tries to bite Guy.

"Don't," is the new word, said nearly every time Guy reaches out to touch Luke. "Don't, don't, don't," and Guy pulls Luke forward a step, then two. "Don't."

"Don't," Madame says, "give up on him. Please."

She's still sleeping in the chair when Luke has nightmares, her eyes red from too little sleep and too much crying. She confides in Guy during the late nights and early mornings, when Luke's sleeping fitfully in the bed.

"Don't give up," she says. "I couldn't do this without--"

So in the mornings, after Madame has been taken away by the maids and doctors, Guy grabs Luke's hands, grits his teeth, and pulls Luke's weight, until he's carrying Luke. And Luke bites and screams and says, "Don't," and learns to walk little by little.

x

Luke's third word is "mother," and Madame cries into his hair, her hands petting his cheeks.

"Luke," she weeps, "Luke," and Luke holds onto her tightly, his arms, long for only eleven years old, wrapped around her waist.

His fourth word is "stop," and his fifth is "voices." He doesn't scream as much, but he cries while he's sleeping, teeth grinding together. Madame rests her fingertips against Luke's temples, kissing him when he cries louder, and Guy stands back while the doctors try medicine after medicine.

Luke's words come faster and faster, stranger and stranger. He says words that break Madame's smile, dark and hurt and please, and when he says, "No, no, please," Madame holds him tighter, and Guy throws open the windows, until the room is drowning in light.

Guy drags Luke outside, Luke holding onto his hands tightly, and when they go through the door, into the sun, Luke blinks frantically.

"Mine," Luke says, and Guy points to the sun, says, "sun."

"Mine," and Guy says, "flower."

Grass

"Again," Luke says when Guy tries to lead him back inside, "again." Guy points at the sun, the ground, the clouds that are wisping overhead. Luke follows Guy's pointing, wide-eyed and curious, and too young and stupid to be afraid again.

He learns "outside," and says it morning, evening, and night, pestering Guy until they go outside into the bright sunlight, Luke blinking and wincing and laughing, Guy cupping his hand over Luke's eyes so the green, green eyes won't be burned.

He takes Luke out at night, when the moon is full and the stars closer than ever before, and Luke turns, stumbles, falls and stares and falls and stares, stares and falls and stares and falls. "Stars," Guy says, and Luke doesn't blink, his hands digging into the grass and dirt.

"No," Luke says, and Guy holds onto Luke's hands, the smell of crushed grass strong.

"No, no, stop."

Luke doesn't like the stars, can't look away and can't blink, becomes the strange, empty little doll he was when the Duke carried him home, and so Guy drags him inside, sets him on the bed, lights all the lamps he can sneak into the room. He reads until Luke falls asleep, a down-turned mouth and flickering eyelids.

x

Luke begins to smell like grass, like sweat and dirt and the sunlight. He runs better than he walks, and he runs from Guy when Guy tries to comb his hair or wash his hands. Luke’s arms are thin, but they’re strong, and sometimes, when Guy’s standing in the courtyard, looking up at the blue sky, Luke grabs him, and wraps his arms around Guy like Guy’s the center of some universe, with Luke spinning crazy around him. Guy doesn’t want to think that he likes this, because Luke is the Duke’s son, with the same hair and the same chin. But he likes it all the same, when Luke’s laughing in that choking, breathless way babies laugh before they learn laughing too much can make them cry. And days like this, when the sky is bright and the sun brighter, Luke’s eyes look three shades too green.

“His eyes,” Madame says, “are brighter than before.” Her eyes are the dull green of the late summer grass, and Luke is spread out on the grass, and Madame has knelt beside him, her skirts spread wide. She touches his face, smiles when Luke turns his face in towards her hand. “They’re clear, like when he was a baby.”

And that’s it, that’s what Guy hasn’t been able to fix in his head. Luke’s bright, spinning around Guy and Madame like they’re the centers of his world, and the feeling is delirious, makes Guy feel deliciously drunk, like he’s teetering on the edge of some kind of infinity. He kneels on the other side of Luke, lies his hands on the prickles of grass, and when Luke turns toward him, he says, “Master Luke.”

“Again,” Luke says, when Guy’s pulled him to his feet, and they’re spinning, and falling, and spinning again. Madame is laughing, her skirts spread across the ground like an island of gray in a sea of green, and the sky above is a blue that bleeds through the world. It’s a rush of sound and color in Guy’s eyes and ears, and Luke is saying, “again, Guy,” and they’re laughing like children who don’t know laughing turns to crying.

It’s a beautiful world the summer Luke comes home, laughing with his green, green eyes.