Alfred could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest as he sat patiently in the darkened theater. The grandiose stage ahead of him was barely discernible, a faint outline against the blackness. He jumped slightly when his father's hand pressed firmly on his shoulder. Turning towards him, Alfred strained to see his father's expression.

"Are you excited?" 

Alfred smiles at his question and nods in response...1, 2, 3 times. Suddenly, the blare of the spotlights pierced the darkness. Alfred's attention snaps back to the stage and lands on his mother's face. His eyes widened and beamed just as brightly as the spotlights on her form. From his seat in the front row, the stage becomes a world unto itself, and his mother its ethereal queen. As the spotlight caresses her body, she transforms into a vision of grace and beauty, her movements a delicate symphony of elegance and precision. Her slender frame glides across the stage like a whisper of silk on a summer breeze, each pirouette a whirlwind of effortless poise. Her feet, clad in satin shoes that kiss the floor with every step, carry her with the lightness of a feather drifting on a gentle current. Her arms extend like wings of a swan in flight, gracefully telling stories only her body knows. The music, a tender melody that seems to emanate from her very being, wraps around her like a lover's embrace, guiding her every motion. In that fleeting moment, as Alfred watches her dance, he is captivated by her artistry, by the raw emotion she weaves into every movement, and by the sheer magic that she brings to life on that stage. 

1...2...3... He counts the beats to her steps with her. 

1...2...3... He counts his breaths

and opens his eyes to the reality before him.

He had long awaited for the moment his mother would wear her dancing shoes and dance for him again. When she finally did, Alfred felt like the entire world had stopped. Her feet, clad in her satin shoes, danced in the air as the gallows opened beneath her. Her arms flailed like a swan's one last time before dropping to her sides. With eyes just as wide, Alfred watched the glow leave his mother's face as her final performance to the crowd of spectators ends. He can feel his father's hand tugging on his shoulder, and he can hear his father screaming angrily at him. But Alfred couldn't care to look at his father's face, for his attention was glued to hers.

"Alfred, I told you not to look!"

Alfred's feet staggers and steps onto the others around him as his father drags him away.

"Alfred!"

His shoulder hurts from his father's unrelenting grip, his eyes sting from the tears, and his ears ring from the chatter and chaos around him. Alfred's voice cracks in his throat as his world dims. He looks up and sees not blue, but red. He sees the imposing red standard of the Votyasch Empire stained brighter by the blood of yet another soul, and the red burning bright inside the very core of his heart now overflowing to the peripherals of his vision. 

Before Alfred could fully process his mother's death, he finds himself back in the suffocating darkness of their apartment. Alfred's father threw him inside with such force that his elbow and ribs crashed onto the rotten wood floor. The invasion had stripped them of their home's comfort. What were once marble tiles are now the planks of a home not theirs. His father slams the door shut behind him, sealing them in this unfamiliar, oppressive space.

 "Alfred, how could you just run off like that?!"

His father was a gentle man. The uncharacteristic volume of his voice was enough to wake Alfred to his senses. He looks up at his father, whose face is contorted with a mixture of anger and horror, in disbelief.

"Do you just expect me to sit around while mother is being executed?!"

His father pulls his hair in frustration and paces around the living room in a simmering rage. Alfred steadied himself against the couch as he rose, his head is downturned but his eyes are blazing with an ire that matched his father's.

"They can't know that you are her son, my son. Why do you insist on disobeying and angering me every chance you get? Do you not understand the situation-"

Alfred cursed at his father under his breath, the words sharp and bitter.

"you have no right to be angry..."

The room fell into an uneasy silence. Alfred could feel his father's gaze bore into the top of his skull like a heated dagger.

"What did you just say?"

His father's voice was low, dangerous, a warning laced with restrained fury. Alfred grits his teeth, feeling the tension surge through his body as he clasps his fists until his knuckles turned white. 

"You have no right to be angry! You sold us out! You told them who was in The Resistance! You killed our neighbors, our friends, your own wife, my mother!"

Alfred's father stepped closer, his arms sprawled out as if he was pleading with his son. The horror on his face became more apparent than the anger.

"I did what I did to keep us alive! Your mother thought she was invincible just because she's a famous performer. I tried to talk her out of rallying the people, but she just wouldn't listen! None of you do!"

Alfred's father let out a pained scream and kicked a dining chair over, its clatter echoing in the silent room. He collapsed to his knees, his cries of anguish piercing the air as he wailed at the rotten floorboards. Through his sobs, he spoke to his now departed wife.

"...It was too soon Cecilia! Too soon..."

His voice cracked with grief, each word choked with sorrow and regret, echoing in the silence that followed. Alfred watched as his father cried out for his wife and their comrades. He pitied his father, unable to fully comprehend the scene unfolding before him. This was not the man Alfred knew as his father. His father was the epitome of strength and resilience, the unwavering symbol of The Resistance. But the man before him now was weak and broken.

"You told them you don't have a son, right?" Alfred spat, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and pain. "Well, you're right. You don't."

He storms out the front door, the sound of it slamming shut echoing like a final, irrevocable goodbye. His father's desperate pleas, muffled and heart-wrenching, faded behind Alfred as he walked away. Tears blurred Alfred's vision, and a hollow emptiness settled in his heart. In that moment, the realization that he had lost both his parents in a single day weighed heavily upon him, a burden too heavy to bear alone.