Return of the one long gone

Change the past (it's impossible I know)

As the early morning sun filtered over the mountains and the animals surrounding Rivendell began to stir, Scott was sat in his chair, working through 2 years' worth of paper work. His office was small and made of spruce with dark oak supports. His only light was a small, diamond shaped window and a candle Jimmy had bought him as a gift that he didn't get the chance to use.

He had been slumped in his chair for a few hours before sunrise, bordering on non-productive with the light being a hinderance. He didn't have much choice if he wanted to be able to make progress however. His advisors had drilled into his head that undone paperwork was a wall separating  him from productivity. He had to focus on the tasks he had been given and the problems that had already arose before he even thought about anything else.

And part of him agreed. The current him, drowned in trauma and grief for everything he had lost and missed out on whilst he was busy being a coward; running away from a brother who had never been more than a meak threat, something he could have overcome if he had believed in himself and his capabilities. He blamed his advisors for the issues he has with self-esteem. They had always lectured him and forced him to change each small aspect they saw as a flaw, including how he ruled his own kingdom, and it showed in his adult decisions and behaviour.

 However, the young part of him that still lived for the rush of youth and the light, princely duties he used to have, didn't. It fought with his mature self every day. It had done so the first day he was back in his own home, tightly holding onto Jimmy like he would slip away and die without the last living relative he was connected to in blood. 

He feared maybe he would suffer too. He took a life, his own brothers, and each time he went to sleep he saw the moment Xornoth died, before everything goes black and he wakes in white linen clothes and his antlers attached permanently to his head.

He had the urge to leave again and live in the wild again. Without the pressure of a Kingdom or the cruel, spite-filled words his advisors shot at him like bullets. Without the people he had never gotten along with and swear to take him down at every turn and wrong foot he places.

Sometimes he misses the freedom, the wind in his face and the natural beauty he used to see when Xornoth let him sit and unwind before the game would revive again. It was a cruel game, but it showed him a world that wasn't just brown, white and blue. It showed him vibrant green trees and flowers in every colour. It was rabbits and fireflies that surrounded him as he walked sometimes. 

Scott struggled to regain his grip on reality and not flee into the horizon, where he would start again as a nobody.

- - - -

Jimmy had woken to an empty bed. He had been for the past couple of days. He usually went to sleep alone too. He knew his fiancé had work to catch up on, lots of it. He had seen the pile. It had grown like a vine from a tree, reaching out to anyone who walked into the room, attempting to grasp them and make them sit and read it, complete it, anything but let it sit as a constant reminder that Scott was gone.

Scott had always been a workaholic, ever since Jimmy met him at the latters coronation years ago. He didn't remember much about Scott's parents. They are never featured in the history books, almost like they never existed. What little information was there had a vague, dismissive tone. 

From what he could gather they relied on staff to do their paperwork. He wondered if that's why Scott did his own, because he was taught to do so as his advisors could teach him whatever they pleased.

He wasn't happy about it. 

- - - -

It was around mid-day when Scott heard a knock on his office door. He had been finishing the last paper that was past the point of being due or due in the next few days, and was taking a break to drink some water and eat. 

He had built a secret passage from the room to the kitchen very early in his reign. It was something only a few people, Jimmy included, were told about. It was mainly for safety precautions, but also because his advisors had always been strict with his diet; Scott often disobeyed that. Today was an exception, sticking with a salad and water to keep him healthy.

"Come in."

"Scott?"

Jimmy was stood in the doorway, a letter in hand, silently asking if he could stay for a while to talk, most likely about the contents of said letter.

"Chair's where it always is petal." He smiled at Jimmy, hoping to calm whatever nerves he could see on the blonde's face.

"My sister has invited us to her wedding. She wants to know if they could use the Church of Aeor again."

"Of course they can petal. They'll be my family eventually. But I'm afaraid I'm too busy to attend myself."

His fiancé was visibly upset at that. Scott understood why. He had just referred to Lizzie and Joel as family more or less, and he couldn't even go to their wedding. It wasn't that he didn't want to, or that what occurred there scares or disturbs him. He really was too busy. He had large projects, that would usually have months to be completed, now on a week's deadline to be finished.

"I'll tell them that." Scott simply nodded. It hurt him to be the cause of Jimmy's bad mood, but he couldn't change the past. He couldn't, as much as he wanted to, turn back the clock and reverse running away and not having the space or freedom to finish the piles of paperwork he # had to sift through and do.

It broke his heart in ways he hadn't felt in a long time, maybe ever. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Next chapter done!