#Jaejh

[endangered-liaison]

FFXIVWrite Prompt #29: Paternal

[Content warnings: physical abuse, misogyny, misgendering]

"Are you my father?"

Jaejh stops whittling. His knife hangs loose between his fingertips. In a bell or two, he'll have a whole quiver of arrows. Any would-be-Warder under his care who has carved less than he has (which will be all of them, like as not) will have to start again before they're permitted to go out hunting.

He brushes his hair from his face, eyes raking across the form of the girl who asked him that question. "Now, why would you ask that, my little terror?"

The girl-who-would-be-Fleur doesn't see the point in her whittling arrows. With only one arm it's not as if she'll ever be able to use a bow unless she wishes to learn some technique with her legs, but that sounds...inconvenient at best.

Still, she does see the point in eating, and so she whittles, and fletches, and does all that she needs to do to give ammunition to someone other than her. And as she works, her mind wanders. As she works, she thinks of the question - and cannot help but ask it.

It was foolish, in retrospect. Jaejh has beaten boys for speaking out of turn before, for asking him questions about his scars or their old homes or anything he has no interest in speaking about.

She flinches away even as she answers his question. She daren't stay silent or hesitate. "I just...I've never understood how the Warders decide who takes which children. Do you take your own? Or just...those of the right age?"

But today, he must be feeling generous. Or perhaps he simply holds a greater tolerance for inane questions when they come from the girl who is not yet Fleur? Whatever the case may be, he doesn't beat her. Instead, he laughs. His mirth fills the tree canopy, causing a number of other boys to flinch or look at him in alarm.

He places his knife down to slap the tree branch in amusement. He tilts his head back, exposing his throat as he laughs - deep and melodic. Fleur watches the movement with more focus than she should, and she swallows heavily.

"You know, it's a good question! It's one my charges ask far too little." Jaejh shrugs as his laughter dies down, looking at her in amusement. "They all obey me, as I am their Warder. But few question whether I am simply guardian, or if I am father."

Fleur nods, leaning forwards on her perch. Her knife is still, and she finds her focus shifted solely to her tutor.

"I'm afraid my answer will disappoint you, though, whatever you might be hoping it to be." Jaejh lifts his knife again and points it at her, then at the others in the treetops around him. "I don't have a clue."

Fleur blinks.

He...doesn't know?

"You...don't know? Do you not remember the mothers of those you sire?" Fleur can't help the incredulity which slips into her tone. The harshness. Doesn't he know his own children? What is this man playing at, training these boys when he has no idea if---

SLAP!

...

...

...

Fleur feels the sting of it before she realises what just happened.

She works her jaw, tasting the blood in her mouth and trying to get her ear to stop ringing.

It's not an unfamiliar sensation. But familiarity does not numb pain.

"Don't speak out of turn to me, boy," he says, and Fleur begins to wonder if he even knows the names of those he looks after or if he truly cares that little about them. "I don't remember every whinging doe I have bedded. When you have lived as many summers as I, you'll find they all blend together. You expect me to remember a thousand conquests?"

Fleur glares up at him, rage simmering in her eyes. And she swears, then and there, that she will never be like him.