Work Text:
My father was dead. I had seen him for the very last time and I hadn’t even known it. He was dead and I was alive and I was left with so many questions unanswered.
I hadn’t wanted to ask anyone, I hadn’t wanted to speak at all. Each revelation felt like a betrayal, something others had that I didn’t. People tried to speak well of him to me, to share the moments they spent together, and I could not help but listen. I would learn to treasure what I was given, for nothing more would come. Everyone had known him longer than I ever would - I’d only seen the last decade of his life and barely begun to understand him. But there were others left, who knew a part of FitzChivalry Farseer, alike and unlike the father I knew, Queen Kettricken and King Dutiful. Thick, my newest friend. My sister and Riddle. And Beloved.
Beloved most of all.
He did not come to me pouring out memories of my father. After we returned to Buckkeep, he spoke less and less of my father and more of my dreams. He still read my journals, to my annoyance, and I made it very certain he knew it, but he did not ask me how I was feeling or make me speak of my lessons, even though I think he wanted to. He always kept his thoughts closed and his arms tight to his body. He never reached to touch me again.
I did not want to ask. No, that wasn’t quite true. I wanted to ask someone, but I did not want it to be Beloved. Beloved, who knew my father best, who held answers no one else could have. I had been jealous, I still was. I hated that he had so much of my father and I so little.
But all this time and I’d gained no more of him, and I realized I never would if I carried on. Unless I changed something.
I resolved that upon my next meeting with Lord Chance, I would make it so.
“Tell me about my father.” It was not a question. I sat down across from him at his small wooden table, my dream journal closed under my arm. I would not open it until he agreed, no more of the future without something of the past.
At the words, any shred of Lord Chance fell away, leaving only Beloved. He went very still for quite a time, before folding his gloved hand over his bare one.
I thought he would insist that we speak of my dreams, or that he’d dismiss me altogether, but I was determined not to let him slip away, to put on his mask and disappear again... He had knowledge I would never have, and I wanted anything of my father that I could find. Beloved was my chance to know him, the only one I had left.
He did not meet my eyes, but I was prepared to push him. Yell and scream if I had to, threaten to never write my dreams down again even if it made me sick.
When he spoke, his voice was so quiet I could hardly hear it, even though we were the only two in the room.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything you will tell me,” I said, pushing Skill into my words, even if it would have no effect.
Everything, anything. I was so tired of not knowing.
He let silence form around us, but I cut through it, demanding an answer. "Speak."
He nodded, a barely perceptible motion of his head. “It’s just that I don’t know where to begin.”
I frowned. ”At the beginning.”
And so he started to tell me of the boy in his dreams, who he had known immediately upon seeing him. His Catalyst and then his friend.
Quickly, I realized that he had more to tell than one day could hold. And so our meetings became split between discussing my dreams - which I was not so fond of, and him telling me of my father.
I came to our next appointment with my book and ink ready - he would not read these entries, but I would have them for myself - and found Beloved waiting for me.
Not Lord Chance, nor Amber, not even my Teacher. Beloved, in a simple robe, sat at his tiny wooden table. His uneven hair had grown longer since I’d first met him, now it stuck up at the ends, I realized, like mine did.
Beloved hummed, tapping his fingers once, twice.
He struggled at first, but a word or a place or a name would catch his attention and he’d be sent down a path talking. His stories went forward and back in time, but he told me first of the key moments, the cruxes for change - about the little boy trailing after the stable master, and about King Shrewd’s pin, and later, even about when my father asked if he could marry my mother. I thought then that I'd hear bitterness in his tone but could not find any. All I could glean was Beloved's surprise, that this boy would be so bold in front of his king, that he was so determined, so young.
I knew he left things out, but the little he gave me was already so much. I gave up trying to hide how much I hungered for it. I wrote down everything I could and made plans to put it all in order when he was done. I hoped that wouldn’t be soon.
He was a gifted storyteller, and though I knew him capable, he did not try to spin the tale as a minstrel would. There was no dramatic flair, no added weight or guiding words, certainly no hint of a resolution. So rarely did things go well and often, I realized, my father seemed rather stupid. He was on the brink of death far too often, again and again chance pulled him back. Or Beloved. Often Beloved.
There was even a time when The Fool had told him to avoid poison and he'd wound up, no surprise, poisoned!
Hardly the man I’d heard of in minstrel’s songs. Rather, Beloved rambled on about what seemed like nothing. He held onto details others might've found unimportant - the dog he kept hidden in his bedroom and the times he allowed the Fool to hide there himself. The gaping look on my father’s boyhood face, like a fish. The way the firelight fell on his reshaped nose, how many times he said sorry even though he’d already been forgiven.
He spoke of Regal, of the waning King Shrewd, and the King-in-Waiting Verity's departure. How my father tended to his wounds and how he'd seen my mother in passing. After that it became a haze, I gathered, because my father was no longer there. And then Beloved had found him, so far from Buckkeep, in the snow with an arrow through his back.
He told me of Wolf Father and the mountains, of a cranky old woman and a needling minstrel and songs by the fire and playing in a stream.
Partway through a story, Beloved’s breath would turn ragged and he’d stop in the midst of a sentence. Sometimes he would take in a breath and collect himself, and start where he left off. Others, he would diverge completely and I would make note to ask about whatever he’d left behind. I could never predict when, but on occasion, he would stop altogether and I knew he would continue no further for the day. Those times I quietly said I had stayed too long and had to go to my lessons, but we both knew it was more for him than for me.
Still, every day I went to meet him at our set time and every day he came. The stories jumped forward in time, now my father lived in a cottage with his wolf, Wolf Father, and what Hap had told me wound itself together with Beloved’s stories. He had an incredible memory, and I nearly forgot he could not see for so long a time with how vividly he painted places I’d never seen.
I learned more than I ever had before about Lord Golden and Tom Badgerlock, of my father’s irritation at his fine clothes and poor job of play-acting. Together, they made a mess of so many things. The man Beloved described was rarely subtle, oblivious, even harsh, he stumbled along with a young Dutiful and Hap. He quarreled with the Fool - even if Beloved only alluded to it. But then they were together again. I caught Beloved stopping himself - when he poked at my father’s foolishness or Beloved’s tone gave away how angry he’d been with him. But I did not want him to pretend my father was perfect. Each folly made my father more of a man to me, made me laugh to myself, even if I wanted to shake him. Beloved seemed to feel something similar, and each time he heaved an exasperated sigh his eyes shone with affection.
Then, Beloved's face would nearly glow, the shadows under his eyes would fall away and I thought, with a bit of a start, that he had once been beautiful. Still was, even now.
With all I learned, much of my father’s writings made more sense, but others only confused me more. They seemed skewed, not that the details did not match, for he was quite consistent - but that what he took from them was so different I would listen for a time before realizing they were telling the same story.
I wrote down everything he said as best I could, he was often conscious to keep to a pace I could manage but at times he’d become so swept up in his musings I’d have to write furiously to get it all down, but I never complained. I spoke very little altogether, save for an occasional question, for I found that leaving silence made one want to fill it. He reminded me of how I felt after waking from an important dream, with a desperate need to get it out, to tell someone even if it made no sense to them. I did not care if I'd already known a bit from my father, or if he repeated himself, or should his words wander and leave more questions than answers. Anything was more than I had, and it was all a part of my father.
I made a list of things to ask about later, or rather to hint about. Gaps remained, but I'd never assumed he'd tell me all. I understood little of what happened in Aslevjal and after, in the mountains, but resolved to keep asking, to wait long enough that he might tell me.
I do not know when, but somewhere through the weeks, somewhere in his stories, I realized that Beloved had loved my father for a very long time, perhaps longer than my father ever knew. Had he died not knowing that? I did not want to think of it. I could tell that they hurt each other, a few times on purpose, but so many without meaning to. Beloved still grieved, as I did, and I did not think he would ever stop. It had been a very long time indeed, this was a love that spanned more than my lifetime four times over, and it had run deeper than I’d ever thought possible.
I scribbled a note to myself to ask Beloved for more on it, but how to ask such a thing?
“Always writing,” he said, almost to himself. “Even if I rarely saw it, he was always writing. And I only read what he hadn’t already burned.” Beloved leaned back, taking a pause from flitting through stories and time.
My father had kept writing, long after what Beloved had ever read. I thought of the papers I’d taken without asking. The letters my father had written to him, without anywhere to send them. I was the only one who knew what those letters contained now. I did not say anything.
“You are so much like him…” he said with a sad smile, his golden eyes meeting mine as they so rarely did.
I faltered in writing and lifted my pen before the ink could ruin the page. He’d surprised me. All my life I’d been made aware of how different I was, from the other children, from my sister, my mother, and my father most of all. I know he desperately looked for himself in me and it hurt him to find so little. What was it that Beloved saw in me?
He peered at my journal, and for once I did not lurch to cover it with my hands. He only seemed to consider how much of it had been filled. He dropped his shoulders and spoke on.
“I know it has been said, and fear that each time only lessens its value, but I must say it.” He looked back up at me, and I saw tears rimming his eyes. “All these stories... I am so sorry that I am the one to tell them.” He couldn’t look any longer, and retreated behind the strands of hair falling over his face.
I did not know what to say. It had not been what I thought he’d apologize for, for he had apologized many times for many things. I couldn’t deny that I had been upset with him, but not for this.
Finally, my father made sense to me, or… he had begun to. I knew he was gone, I could never forget it, yet in Beloved’s hold my father came alive. I could see his face and hear his voice. All my life, much of my father had seemed like it was missing, and I realized now that it had been here.
It saddened me that this understanding came so late, but I do not think I had ever loved my father more than I did knowing how loved he was.
“I wish he could be the one to tell you, I wish it more than anything,” Beloved said, he had abandoned trying to conceal his tears, and now they ran down his fine cheekbones to his chin. “I am so sorry, Bee.”
“I-“ I had not meant to speak, and yet. “I do not wish it was him…” I set my quill down, took a breath, started again. “I do not wish it was him and not you.”
He looked up at me again, eyes wide. I knew as I said it that I spoke of more than the stories, I hoped he knew it too.
“If he were telling me, he’d leave even more things out,” I said, and heard Beloved let out a small, teary laugh. “Your stories of him are best told by you, and I am glad to hear them.”
Weeks, no months, we’d been doing this and I’d never told him that I enjoyed doing it. I liked our time spent together. I think I had grown to like Beloved.
He smiled, with a fondness that had infuriated me once. That he could look at me with so much love when he scarcely knew me. For if he knew me there was no way he could love me that much.
“If you would ever wish to tell your own stories of him… I know you’d tell them well, and I would be glad to hear them,” Beloved said, not quite a question.
Now it was my turn to stare with my mouth open like a fish. I blinked back at him, rarely had he asked anything of me beyond my dreams, I did not think he wondered about the rest of me. But of course he would, how had I not thought of that?
His eyes ventured to mine and I saw something in them. Hope? He would not force me, I knew, but I was not sure I needed forcing at all.
I tapped at the paper under my hands. So many thoughts I had regarding my father, so much I’d never shared with anyone, all bound up inside me. Anger, fear, confusion, sadness, and happiness, too. Love.
I could not tell it all, not yet, perhaps not ever, but someone wanted to listen. Beloved wanted to listen and I wanted to tell him. And so I did.