#† through constant pained disgrace the young boy learns their rules [ic]

[blottedaegis]

@phoenixbound -> "i won't apologize for wanting what i know i deserve."

His mouth worked, yet he said nothing for a moment. For years, he had always wondered what he might say given this perfect opportunity, planned out his questions, made demands, brought up memories that still hadn't lost their hot-wire edge, they yet remained so clear and vivid.

"Was that worth almost killing Joshua, then? So you could get what you feel you deserve?" he asked quietly, eyes downcast from what felt like muscle memory ingrained deeply into his being since childhood.

He had known a mother's love, once. Clive was merely unsure what would have been better- To have never received a caring word or glance from the woman at all, or the lingering attachment and desire for approval that yet remained despite how he was treated later in his youth.

"I accept that I was a failure in your eyes, I gladly braved the role of the family black sheep for his sake. I don't demand anything for my own sake, not from you. But you had our father killed and quite nearly took Joshua's life in the process- You truly have nothing else to say beyond you felt that you deserved more than what you had in Rosaria?"

[mtvatlas]

tag dump

answered / ic. starters / ic. open  / ic. headcanons / ooc. meta / ooc.

musings / a vow unto his own that never from this day his will they'll take away. ch. study / everything’s cool until the jaws music starts up. face / he looked like the metalheads at the mall or someone else famous. likes / well it’s not bullshit i guess. aesthetic / born of sorrow my cunning revives me and i took them with me enchained. ship inspo / you up? ;) wardrobe / lost boys lookin’ motherfucker.

new blood joins this earth and quickly he's subdued through constant pained disgrace the young boy learns their rules.

[blottedaegis]

"sometimes, you get so close to someone, you end up on the other side of them."

Clive stared down at the worn and calloused palm of his right hand, closing his eyes sharply as he recalled the savage fight between he and Garuda. When he became Ifrit, something... dark took over. Dark and rabid, seething with hatred and malice. The rage burned him from the inside out, fueling his infernal flames- As though his veins themselves pulsed with molten magma, screamed with an insatiable bloodlust.

When he'd dragged the harpy's face through the sharp edges of rocks and splintered fallen trees, he had enjoyed it. Rending her flesh into open weals, ripping her limbs from their sockets, savagely tearing off a wing with nothing but his teeth and snapping those hollow bones between his fangs. He had roared with cruel and hateful joy while incinerating her feathers down to the skin, rendering flesh and sinew into shriveled blackened ash.

Was that truly what lied deep inside of his heart? The desire to cause naught but pain and death?

He did not expect forgiveness for what he did, even if it 'had' to be done. Perhaps the twisted expression of anger and disgust the elder man had levelled him with while in his dark prison cell was all that he needed to know about Telamon's reaction. All that he deserved to know.

Out of the pair of them, Clive's anguish was openly expressed to the point of being pathetic. He'd remained despondent over the knowledge that he had murdered and mutilated his own brother. Depressed and listless as he was, he had felt small and ashamed when Cid ordered him to be 'of use', even a touch sullen of what was being demanded of him.

Thirteen long and brutal summers had passed and yet he still acted as a child might, thinking that the world's ills somehow circled in on only himself and no others. That suffering and misery were some exclusive badges he'd earned and had the right to flash in the face of anyone else's problems.

Perhaps this was a moment to help Cidolfus shoulder some of the crushing weight he yet carried upon his broad shoulders.

"What happened? Between you and Benedikta- She said you were once the Lord-Commander."