Vacancy of the Heart

Forgetting.

Forgetting.

Forgetting.

He knows there’s a head that crown is meant to rest on. A body meant to carry the weight of it. Metal and jewel, gold and garnet. Heavy. Responsibilities and duties and so many open mouths all with warring needs and wants and shouted beliefs. Even heavier. 

He knows that throne wasn’t made to sit empty dawn after day after dusk. The grand hall, collecting dust, should hold audiences. Smiles. The curtains should be swept back to let in the sun. 

He knows the rose, ever and eternal, that is kept pinned at his throat, his collar, was bestowed upon him by another hand. A gift, a show of gratitude. A promise of trust. A hope for his faith and loyalty. 

Deeper than it all, he knows that he’s forgetting. And no one else seems to notice. They’re all so dreadfully enraptured in traitorous sameness that no one questions the missing light, the missing life. 

This feels like a parade, a play, a party. Only he can’t hear the beat of the march. He’s caught fumbling without a script. He never learned what there was to celebrate. Out of the loop. But the loop, the spiral the world is caught in, the intricate web of silk they’ve spun themselves into, is missing someone so desperately vital. Blissfully unaware.

In the desolate dusk of the throne room, corners and edges swathed in shadow, he stands before the crown. The white silk it rests upon is creased from use it shouldn’t bear. Cold seeps in past his uniform, crawls notch by notch up his spine and saturates deep through the flesh to chill even soft marrow. 

He shivers. Rests bare fingertips, stripped of their guarding gloves, against the smooth metal. Runs them over spots of tarnish where polish should be. 

“I swear, I’ll fix this,” the Knight vows. Resolve is the only sunlight that can soften all his frost when hope has skittered off to hide. 

***

Missing.

Missing.

Missing. 

A starburst of constellations explode across the ink wash of a night sky, but he who hangs his head low doesn’t see a single star. 

He tries to keep from staring at his shoes, at the stained glass that paints the floor in intricate murals, most days. He tries to look up as the world passes by, only a tick off, most days. He tries to keep the haunting from bowing his head low under the pressure, most days.

But, well… 

In his chambers, there is one set of shoes, scuffed and worn, that stands guard by the door until he needs to step out. There is one set of silverware, of dishware, of glassware. There is one toothbrush by the sink and one book dogeared on the table. 

Absence dwells and settles in every nook and crack. It sweeps low like fog, curls around his ankles and laps at the walls. Quiet enough to go unnoticed, unless the strain of keeping his head high becomes too much. Unless he looks down from the stars and the sun and the stunning things in the sky to confront the dirt in the cracks between the floorboards. 

It’s the frames, all without pictures cradled within, that eat moth holes into his chest. The ache is pinprick sharp but minuscule. Tiny mouths, tiny holes. But the bleed doesn’t stop. And eventually, with a sideways glance here and a long, long night spent staring through the glass at the empty backing there, the holes grow together. Yawn into something big and consuming and bloody that leaves him stunned on his feet, staring hard at the phantoms of faces that should be in those frames. Clutching at his chest, clutching at his head. Aching and burning and longing and missing and trying so hard to remember. 

The heart regrows, because he has resolve, if not hope. The wounds stitch back together, still weeping and seeping. The hole in his chest refills, no longer a cavern of light, of dark. Just a solid, living thing. Beating heart and bleeding heart. 

He feels the flutter of wings, deep inside, when the stitching and fixing is through. The moths never stay gone for long, because still, he walks past those frames and tries not to stare. Tries not to miss someone swallowed up in the cracks of the world. 

He sits, perched, on the edge of his bed and blinks wearily at the empty frame gazing back at him. The moths feast, swallowing flesh and blood, and his whole body throbs with the ache of loss and wanting. 

With careful, reverent hands, he turns the frame down. He doesn’t want to look anymore until it’s filled again.

“I swear, I’ll fix this,” the Knight sighs into his hands, if only in a shallow attempt to convince himself. It’s tough to believe. 

His dreams are filled with a head holding a crown and a face smudged beyond recognition.

***

Remembering.

Remembering.

Remembering!

Panting, he clutches the rose in his fist, not caring how the thorns cut. Something in him shatters, glass tumbling in glinting shards down his ribs, evaporating into sparks of light. The wall, keeping him from what matters most, who matters most, comes apart with a key, with a breaking of the seal. 

And long before he knows what he’s done or how he’s done it, he sprints for the palace, breathless and burning but alight for the first time with a fire of hope. Because he can see the face he’s been aching for, coalescing back into his strangely vacant memories. Incomparably bright smiles, an arm slung heavily around his shoulders, bone crushing hugs, unquestionably sincere laughter, flower crowns set on his head, polished armor presented hopefully before him. And more and more and more until he’s dizzy from the flowing over of sunshine that wells up. 

A crown on a head. A boy on a throne. A rose gifted in unbreakable trust. 

He bolts up the grand stairway, taking the steps two and three at a time. He shoulders past the huge, heavy doors, unendingly thankful his uniform gets him free entry without any checks or questions. And through the open corridors and chambers he sprints until he breaks past the very last door. 

The throne room before him is still dusty. It’s still quiet. The throne still sits empty and the crown still waits, abandoned. 

But a single window, all the way down at the end of the hall, has its curtains parted. It breathes sunlight and warmth into such a lonely place. And illuminated in those spilling threads of gold, haloed in warmth, is the Prince. 

Heart stumbling and skipping in his chest, the Knight carefully tucks the rose he’s been clutching back into his collar. It takes one tentative step to turn the Prince’s head, inquisitive gaze searching. And it’s only an instant of connection, a split second of hearts twining together again, before they’re both running. Meeting in the middle. 

The Knight wraps his lost Prince in a desperate hug, and it’s returned just as fiercely. Light sparks and stars pop in his chest, melting off the frost and scattering the moths. His heart is full enough, with his world clutched tight to him, that there’s no room for beating wings and hungry mouths. 

Reunion has never felt sweeter. 

Honey in his veins, he presses forehead to forehead, eyes squinted closed and curved to crescents with how wide his smile reaches. For a long while, it's all he needs to breathe in the scent of roses, to feel the pulse thrumming under his fingertips, to run his hands over fluffy hair and know that this is real. 

And when he’s finally clung on long enough to assure himself and etch every minute detail fresh into his mind, he draws back. 

There are bloody fingerprints, he realizes in a jolt of panic, smeared across the Prince’s clothes, his face. For an instant, he scrambles to check for injuries, before he remembers his own hand. His rose. The thorns. Relief washes gentle over him, sure they’re safe and sound and together. Still, he fusses with the expensive fabric he’s stained.

“I swear, I’ll fix this,” the Knight murmurs, and he means it. 

But the Prince only laughs, his eyes soft around the edges and his smile unbearably fond and bright. “No need,” he says, and oh did the Knight miss hearing that voice. “You saved me; I think we can call it even.” 

The Knight laughs too, a little syrupy with emotion but genuine all the same. “We’re so not even. You owe me,” he says, like he wouldn’t fall to his knees in submission then and there, or journey to the ends of the world, if his Prince wished it. 

Eyes glinting, lips curling into something mischievous, the Prince laces their fingers together, blood and all. “Then let me make up the debt.”

Wreathed in golden light, the Prince kisses his Knight long into the sunset.