Tu Es Ma Lumière

133 - Isolation

The Dauphin of France quickly slid around the wall, effectively hiding himself in a small, darkened alcove not too far away from the mediocre chambers of the Baron de Velay. The nine year old closed his eyes, hiding the azure orbs from the world, trying so hard to keep his feeling interlocked within his growing body. He didn't know why things like that continued to hurt, why scenes like that continued to cause uncertainty and anxiety through his veins. It's not like he's known a world in which the major cause of his conflict and the wobble in his parents' union was null and void, anyway. He has never known a world in which his bastard half brother hadn't been there, so why did he wish it so?

His body sagged onto the cold, slightly dampened stones. His dark head rested against them, a pointed chin looking up at the grandeur tiling of the ceiling. Bright blue eyes continued to remain closed, and he inhaled sharply, trying his best to evade the anxiety and the uncertainty and the isolation that continued to freeze his heart. Nine years of this, his entire life, why was this still an issue, when he had never known any different? Shouldn't he be used to the human by now? Sometimes it felt like it did, but other times, such as this, he felt so alone. It was hard, what other option did the future King of France and Scotland face?

It hadn't been that long since he saw it, and what he saw hadn't been all that long anyway. He had taken the Danish Princess Anne -his future Queen, his parents' adopted daughter- back to her chambers after an hour of chasing each other in the darkened grassiness of the French Court's gardens post dinner. After walking down the set of stairs en route to his own, he had glanced to his side and saw them. Them together, from the back looking so, so similar. His father had been holding his bastard brother, the man's own bastard son. Firstborn, James thought with scorn, glaring at the wall in front of him.

By the age of six and seven respectively, his father had thankfully realised that Jean-Philippe and James would not be as close as he and Sebastian were. Even as babies, the two had never gotten on. James had heard tales from Catherine -when his grandmother had thought her grandson hadn't been listening- that because Jean lay in Francis' old crib as a newborn, that Mary strictly forebode her own newborn son to lay within the grandeur gold. And when he did, as the Queen of France and Scots slept, the Dauphin and Duke of Rothsay wailed and wailed as if the small cotton sheets had burned his skin. As a result, the Dauphin had never, ever touched something that Jean-Philippe had done previous, even going so far as refusing to wear the Christening gown that the bastard had adorned a year previous. Family traditions be damned.

Wailing babes turned into flailing toddlers, flailing toddlers turned into fighting children and fighting children turned into what they were now, cold future adolescence. Many times throughout James' young life, he had cought Jean-Philippe's harsh glare, the hatred the two children felt never more present during the times they had been forced together for family luncheons or dinners. It didn't matter how much the King and Queen fought about it, either. No matter how much the Queen and heir hated the existence and presence of Lady Lola and her royal bastard, the King demanded they stay.

It had caused such a rift in their marriage, James was aware, that his mother wouldn't lay with his father for months. Her vengeance got the best of her, and Lola Fleming was given the most demeaning tasks to do for the Queen. Rubbing her swollen feet as she grew with child, fanning her on the hottest days, holding trains of her more grandeur gowns. Besides, it wasn't as though the King could really say anything against the Queen. He loved her, and Lola was and always had been her servent, after all.

James also knew, however, that another cause for rivalry between he and his half brother was because of the unspoken rivalry between their mothers. The Dauphin saw how much his half brother and his mother pained his mother, no matter how many legitimate children she bore or how indispensable she had became because of her blood claim to England, and Jean saw the same. Lola was regularly humiliated by her Queen, and by the two courts on the whole. Including the fact that Mary had never accepted the child into her home and into her countries, something Jean had wanted more than anything, also something James could admit he threw into the bastards' face in their worst fights.