He does not make legible words, but Rafe gathers ‘Why doesn’t he want me?’ ‘Why do I frighten him?’, and his eyes, pained yet beautiful scream ‘I gave him everything, and I lost everything, and I am still not enough’.

“Shh.” Rafe whispers into silence, his embrace upon the younger Cromwell tightening. He feels his strength beneath his shirt, the muscles that have marked his transition from boy to man, and yet all Rafe holds is a child. The child who ran to him at night during storms, the child whom he taught to read when his father and mother were away, the child that in some instances did not know whether to call him ‘Master Saddler’ or ‘Brother’.

Either suffices, but Rafe feels a different connection now. A father of his own making, he realizes that Gregory has lost his.

He holds him tighter and gently places a kiss on Gregory’s forehead as if he is a parent, chasing away the nightmares of a shaken toddler.

“It will pass,” Rafe says softly, cupping Gregory’s face in his hands. He sniffles and gasps, and tears pour down his cheeks, Rafe speaks. “My Master…your father he is…” He is not there, and his mind has perhaps gone to heaven. We do not know the man who lies in the bed in pain, who cries himself to sleep at night, who calls you Walter, who refers to Richard and me as his sons, who asks why the King was so cruel to him. But we can’t hold it against him, he wants to tell Gregory. We cannot hold him accountable for what the King did to him.

But Rafe knows that is true only for this moment. For Gregory’s life, the struggle for his father’s affection has been constant. 

Rafe would never presume to take the place of his master, but for now, perhaps, Gregory needs a tender father.

He still holds Gregory’s pale, child-like face in his hands and wipes the tears with his thumbs. He starts to see the timid boy once again, even beneath the facial hair and flushed cheeks.

“There you are, Gregory.” He smiles. “Helen may have prepared dinner, if you go down, I will meet you there.” He holds Gregory until the younger man nods and musters some form of smile. “And now no more. Hold your head high. It will be well.”

He releases him and prays that things will go well.

–

Richard comes the next day and as Rafe fears, things do not go well. 

It is not uncommon knowledge, that since the ill-timed reprieve and even before that, when first Thomas was arrested, Richard harbored some sort of resentment toward his cousin. 

“Why did he not come to visit his father, my uncle in the Tower?” Richard had once asked Rafe.

“Thomas told him not to. And before you say anything else, he also instructed Gregory and Bess to write that letter against him.” Rafe had responded.

“My uncle would not have wanted you to go, but still you went.”

You didn’t visit him in the tower either, Rafe had wanted to say, but he knew that would be fruitless. It was evident that if Richard stepped within a foot of the tower, he would’ve turned to violence, and would have had a place right next to his uncle. 

The truth, however, is that on that day, Gregory did not want to come. Rafe had repeatedly asked Gregory to join him in the tower, and Gregory refused. In fact, to a random wanderer, Gregory’s lack of reaction to hearing of his father’s execution would cause concern, or even a seed of doubt in the fact that Gregory was in fact, the son of Thomas Cromwell. He simply did not care, nor show any emotion. 

While it pained Rafe, Gregory’s reaction, or rather a lack of one, made sense to him. 

It is how the young Cromwell coped. How was one supposed to react to hearing of the oncoming execution of their father, wherein, the lack of a concrete relationship clouded any form of empathetic emotion? Thomas was Gregory’s father in name; he knew he had the man’s curly hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, he knew those around him would call him ‘Thomas’ if he passed them quickly, only to correct themselves. Most of the time it does not impact him. (Though when Call Me Risley, well rather Wriothesley, had made that mistake once, Gregory lashed out, and Rafe still does not know why that angered Gregory so much).

Back then Gregory prepared to mourn both his father and the unattainable relationship he yearned for with his father. Still, he refused to see him and he came to regret it. 

Now, since the reprieve, he makes up for it any way he can. Except, it hasn’t been easy. Thomas does not recognize him, and if he does, he hates him. He doesn’t call Gregory ‘son’, or even by his name, he calls him Walter. When Gregory tries to change his bandages and clean the wounds the ax men left on his back, he pushes away and calls for Rafe and Richard instead. Richard finds it hilarious, but it breaks Rafe to see Gregory so isolated.

Especially given how much Gregory has sacrificed to ensure his father’s survival. It was, in a surprising turn of events both Rafe and Wriothesely (filled with guilt and remorse) who moved the king to a reprieve, but Gregory as his son, had to shoulder Henry’s anger and ensure that his father never ended up on the scaffold again. 

Without a title and assets, Gregory had little to appease the financial appetite of Henry and Katherine Howard, but what he had, he gave it. That left him with nothing. Bess left him (for reasons not exactly tied to his drop in station - and Gregory did not begrudge her), and his home was taken from him, as was his title. The remaining fines to keep Thomas alive were paid by Wriothesley, Richard, and Rafe. Subsequently, Rafe more than offered to let Gregory and Thomas stay with him.

That was a few weeks ago, and things had been going as decent as possible. Gregory can somewhat accept his father’s poor actions toward him; he understands how the ax may have ruined his mind.

Richard’s taunting on the other hand...he does not take that well.