#Look I have mommy AND daddy issues so now the war mages don't know how to feel about Luis

[crash-bump-bring-the-whump]

In the spirit of that reblog, could you tell me more about Luis? He's the primary whumper in lots of your writing and many of the war mages seem to sincerely loathe him, but then Mariano is shown to have a really trusting relationship with him and Luis clearly cares about the war mages at times. I haven't quite strung together the complexity of it all yet~

Ohhhh my god yeah this ask has activated my Cannot Shut The Fuck Up Disease so let's GO.

Luis is absolutely a complex whumper and hard to easily grasp. He has nothing but love and care in his heart for his mages. He's trained literally every single one since they were 18, and you can't not form a bond of some kind with someone in that time--and all of them know that he loves them. They know he would rather die before seriously, legitimately harming them on purpose without reason. They know he gets zero actual enjoyment out of hurting them.

Unfortunately, they're all special ops soldiers. People who, sometimes alone, are put in situations where they face capture and torture and unthinkable suffering. So Luis has to prepare them for these possibilities. He's seen what happens when you aren't prepared, back when he was one of the very first war mages on his own squad.

He's seen people give up and die, people he loved dearly. He's lost mages, Dimitri and Laredo's old squad, because there was an accident and (in his eyes) they didn't have training and clear guidance to fall back on (I will get to that in the stories though, it's something that informs the "you have to save yourself" standing order he has in place). Luis is someone who fears loss, especially loss of bright, young, talented mages. So he tortures them in a safe area with his own two hands, and teaches them how to read a torturer and captor, and how to mentally recover from the immediate aftermath, and how to escape even if it feels impossible.

He trusts his mages to follow his orders, and they trust that if they do what he wants, he'll treat them well. It's a basic sort of thing but it's necessary for their relationships, and generally he's very fair with not punishing them too harshly for silly stuff so he legitimately does build a good rapport with them all. If they get the training room, or are threatened with death, it's because to Luis what they did was just that serious.

Unfortunately, he does still butt heads with them, and he does still threaten their lives if they decide war crimes aren't something they want to do, all on top of punishing using their worst fears. Over time, no matter how much you love someone, that sort of abuse sours all the good feelings. The good feelings don't go away, bc when they're good they're good, but it makes things complicated.

Dimitri trusts Luis to not freeze him to death over simple disobedience, but he's afraid of him, and he hates him, and loves him, and if Luis approached him with an apology and changed behavior after prison? Dimitri would forgive him, because he was forgiven after making changes and working on himself.

All of the war mages feel similarly, really, because Luis' warmth and care isn't an act. They know that like them, he's also receiving orders that he can't just disregard. They may hate him sometimes, and they may disagree with him on fundamental stuff like "hey, perhaps stopping the war crime stuff could improve our lives in the long run", but they're all stuck with each other in a shitty, traumatic situation, so they make it work.

BASICALLY with Luis I'm exploring complex, complicated feelings about someone who has power over you, sincerely loves you, and who hurts you anyway bc I just think it's interesting! :)