#AnYWAY im sorry if this doesnt reign true for c1 as much but it sure as hell feels like Something for kith and kin

[sparring-spirals]

So the set up for the twins is this- Vex, bow drawn and trained on a target, Vax, daggers drawn, covering her back.

Literally, narratively, metaphorically.

Vax falls in love with everyone he meets, and that's fine, because Vex won't, and will always be there to sigh and drag him out of the next mess his heart leads them into. Eyes on the prize. Keeping track of rations, coin, survival, herself and her brother and Trinket. Bow drawn, bow taut, arrow trained on a target.

Vax falls in love with everyone he meets, because that's part of how he approaches the world- eyes open, heart open. Vax looks at the world- really looks- and falls in love with shopkeepers and dashing adventurers and pockets their secrets and lives like little trinkets. He keeps his gaze broad and maybe a litttle wandering and wistful, and. That's how he watches his sisters back, covers her blindspots. He is meant to look at the smaller picture, the people, the details, the finer points, and find out where knives can slip in. Where to cover up. It is intensely personal. It has to be.

And Vex- Vex can't do that. Or she could. But she can't, because she functions best at a distance. Because kindness and approval and gestures always come with a price, and it is easiest when the price is coin, or barter, and not a betrayal, a loss, or an expectation she cannot deliver.

Vex can't afford those same, up close and personal fights- can't afford to lose them, and weather the hurt and keep going, not like how Vax can.

Vex will always be, on some level, the twin that kept fighting for the approval of a town that hated them, that fought tooth and nail to be good enough, to prove herself. That wore herself to the bone and was still found wanting, still cast aside.

Vax will always be (would always be) the twin that understood, intimately, how the town hated them and found things to love in its shadows- another thief, a beautiful bow, his sister smiling on a boat in the middle of a lake.

Vax bought them little joys, pockets of happiness in a dark place. Vex bought them time, and a small amount of grace, in a losing battle for the approval of a cruel town and a crueler father. But she did so in a way that opened up her own defenses too far, and had her heart snapped like a bow, for it.

Vex can't do the close, personal fights, can't give herself the luxury of charming strangers and meaning it, and that's okay, that's fine, because she'll always have Vax to cover her blind spots when she's honed in on a target. (She'll hold herself in check to make sure they both get what they need to get). Vax watches the world and falls in love and leaves bits of himself everywhere he goes and wanders, and its fine, he'll have Vex to pull him back on track. (He'll gladly open himself up and bleed a little, as long as he knows where the threats are, as long as Vex doesn't have to.)

The set up is: two broken twins facing a world with two weapons- one of their own, and another standing next to them.