Nightmare

Leo couldn't sleep that night. His Nightmare was upon him. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the red of his father's throat as the Harvestor tore it open. The sounds his father made a he slowly asphyxiated before the blood loss took him. He saw Grimm's face under his dark, shadowy hood. He saw dead skin and red lacerations deep into the muscle. He saw blood, so much blood. He saw the Rott that had taken so much of the man's face. 

None of that was what horrified him most. He saw sorrow in those black eyes. He saw no enjoyment or insanity, no. He saw only pain and sadness. 

The man who was Leo's nightmare was not the man who held the blade. The man who was Leo's nightmare was that who he cut. Duke Leonidas, Leo's father.

The Duke had tormented Leo since before Leo could remember. Leo had never not feared his father, both his hand and his tongue. Leo had hated himself. He believed he was a failure, as his father so often told him. 

Leo had thought long and hard about taking his life into his own hands. Making it such that his father could never hurt him again. It seemed at the time the only agency he had. But the more he thought and thought and planned, he knew he could not do it. He could not live with his sisters alone with his nightmare. 

Leo hated himself for not being strong enough to leave. Instead, he steeled himself. He would act how his father thought he should act, but inside, he would never ever be as his father. He would become a castle and let nothing out or in with his permission. Nothing out or in. Nothing. He would be like his lady mother, the Ice Queen. He would be a Steel Prince. A little Lion with no fear. No cowardice. He would be impenetrable. 

And so he was. His father bothered and berated and beat him less when he fenced and fenced and fenced all day long. But when he retired to his room, he would read and read and read some more. For he would never submit. Never let his father win. He would simply delay the battle until it was one he could win.

Leo had long thought about killing his father. He had thought about how he could do it. He had decided it could be done. That he could do it. He never worried about getting caught. Escape was never on his mind. He wanted to pay. He hated himself for wishing his father dead, but that never made him wish it any less. 

Sometimes Leo prayed that an accident would befall his father. That he would choke on his boar, or slip down the castle steps and snap his neck in the fall, or go hunting and fall his mount and be feasted upon by his retched hounds.

Those damn hounds. Leo remembered a memory he preferred he hadn't. Once, he had brought a stray kitten home. He showed his father his new friend. His father said that kittens were weak, another mouth to feed. Hounds feed themselves when they hunt. Leo tried to tell his father that kittens hunted just as well as hounds. His father would hear none of it. He took the kitten from Leo's arms and threw it to his hounds. The kitten ran and fought. The hounds chased and bit at it until it had no fight left. Leo would never forget the sounds it made as it died. His father had said that was how you hunt. He would never forget that day. He would never forgive it.

Leo's mother, the Queen, was no hero. She had not saved him. She never would. She froze herself and protected herself. Still, he was grateful to her. He loved her. She protected her daughters, at least from the Duke's hands if not his words. 

But when it came to the Prince Apparent, she deferred to his father. She never mistreated him directly, but she also never intervened either. She loved him, he thought, but she had never been warm. His birth had changed her many whispered. Perhaps it was the horror of his disfigurement that made her so cold to him. Perhaps it was that he was his father's son, and they looked so alike. Perhaps she simply had no love to give to her firstborn. 

She taught him much, however. She taught him how to regulate his emotions. She taught him how to control them and wield them as a weapon against his enemies. She taught him how to think, strategize, and outthink his enemies. Everything was a battle to his mother. Everything.

She didn't teach him knowingly. He learned by observing her. He mimicked her, listened to her speak, watched what she watched, paid attention to what she paid attention to. She was his only tutor who didn't know just how influential her behavior was on him. Leo would not be the steely warrior prince he is today if it were not for his mother. Perhaps he could say the same of his father, for better or worse. He would not be who he is without him. He wasn't sure exactly who he was. What he was sure of is what he had to do. He took no pride or joy in killing. He was grateful to Grimm, honestly. But by the end of day one of the two of them would be dead. Leo didn't much care which. Only he owed it to those he loved to make it Grimm, who would lie dead. He owed it to Sato, Bruno, his sisters, and even his mother. Who he did not owe it to was his father.

So when Leo closed his eyes, he saw all of these things at once. He was overwhelmed with so many different and contradicting emotions, but one stung most. He was jealous. He was jealous of the man who killed his nightmare.