#and the way his children bear the scars of his rage just as ishgard bears their own.

[tovaicas]

that always has been meme but it’s ‘wait nidhogg is your favourite heavensward character?’

[renzu-valra]

Mindless/Soulless  ;  Obsessive/Possessive (#12)

Characters: Nozaki/Nobushige  ♦  Region: Ishgard  ♦  Time: Present Hosted by: @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast​ Warnings: mind-break, blood, mild mention of body horror; non-canon compliant

I had a purpose. A reason for being here—now; drenched in sweat and cold frost. There had been a reason why I ran through the bitter storm and dark unfamiliar streets. Something I had been searching for. Something important.

But the moment I turned my gaze upwards into that second story window, my purpose had filtered away like treated water. My legs lost their balance and my knees hit the ground hard. All that rage and anger which led me here in the first place had been cleansed from my mind, and all that remained was a blank space. A vast, white void where my thoughts used to spiral out of control. I couldn’t think anymore—nor ration these turn of events. For in the closed window of what seemed to be a manse, I saw my entire life flash before my eyes.

And I could not bear it.

I saw my brother.

For years, I had thought about what I would do if I found him again; what it would be like. What I would do and say…how I’d run to greet him and with that one embrace, all the sins I had committed until that point would be expunged from my back. But now that it was finally happening, I couldn’t do anything at all but stare.

He was running a comb through his wetted hair…slowly and with care. Just as I would do for him when we were young. With him seated atop my lap as I wove a damaged comb through his hair gently so as to not tug on any knots. His hair had grown much longer since then. And the comb he used now was of far better quality. Every time he brushed his straight hair down, I felt more of my consciousness slip away.

My ambitions and fears, returning to dust. And then, his neatly tucked night-robe slackened over his collarbone as he set his comb down onto the vanity afore him and made to tie his hair up in a loose ponytail. The white of his silk gown nearly matched the tone of his skin—his smooth, unblemished skin. He appeared as if an angel. A winged goddess of the sky. Even when he rose to stand, his full frame now in view, I felt unworthy. I was but an ant, and he, the radiant sun.

Don’t go. Don’t go.

As he walked away from the window and my image of him began to wane, I pleaded silently for him to stay. My legs knew they could yet run—run to him and force a reunion—but it was as if my brain had willingly severed the connection binding my limbs to my will. I was kept hanging on a thread as he vanished from my sight. Hanging, and so desperately wanting. Wanting, for the noose to tighten.

Like a shotgun pushed against my head, the trigger seconds from being squeezed, he appeared before my eyes once again. A book held affectionately in his slender hands. Forgo the cold and my sub-temperature body. I was at peace. And soon, I would meet my end. As he reclaimed his seat by the window, his thumb making to turn the cover over…as his fingers trailed atop the paper inside…I heard it. The sound of a trigger popping. Bang.

His thin white gown clung tautly against his curved figure, soaking up the remnants of water post bath. The tails of his robe decorated with ornate lace befitting a queen. Nothing like the rags we had worn as children. Everything like what I envisioned him wearing whenever I laid eyes on him after a day riddled with strife and woe. He was beautiful, and I could stare forever at the way his untucked bangs curled and slid against his scaled cheeks. With each flip of the page, I found something new—something old—about him to admire. I had once protested against him wearing his hair up until I realized I could better see his smile. I had wanted him to stay wholly dependent a while longer, until I saw that the first thing he walked towards was me. I had urged against teaching him vocabulary, until I heard him call for me with his fragile, sincere voice. I had fought and fought and fought against his freedom—his separation from me—until this moment. When I was faced with how absolutely transcendent he had become.

Was I finally freed? Forgiven for all my grievances? Was it all worth it?

Bang.

 ----

 Of course I had known. For all my life…you have been a part of it. Though we have both went our own ways and been changed during the journey, I would never have been able to forget you. My dear, older brother.

I let you watch whilst I feigned innocent ignorance to your presence. I needn’t sight to know you were there—gazing through mine window entranced. For a moment longer, I thought. For this small moment more, let us enjoy a tranquil reprieve. Let us forget the truths of our damaged worlds and become sheltered in a temporary lie. For his sake. My brother’s—the one who gave up everything and more for me.

I would smile, as my fingers traced the braille of the page I dedicated to memory knowing that this too was a lie. I was not able to read with my eyes anymore, unlike when I was a child still in his care. My lips curving upwards in a sweet fashion only because I knew he was enjoying this time. That surely, he felt at peace in watching another one of my many acts for him. I wanted nothing more than for him to be happy. For him to know that he was safe…and that he would always feel this soothing bliss whenever he returned home to me.

However, this time…I was resolved to put an end to this fabricated fairy-tale. And I hoped that when I did…he would still be mine.

A voice rang out from below. One of the attendants serving at this manse. A woman’s voice, calling out into the front gardens. Demanding that the man laying half-prostrate with his head turned up leave at once. Nothing unreasonable, given the late hour…however…I lowered my head and closed my eyes in knowing farewell. It was time. Time to end this charade. To say goodbye to who I once was, once and for all. And to wish all the best to the me yet to come.

The once certain voice that resonated from the room underneath mine cried out again. This time in horror and desperation. Her screams broken and airy—begging for anyone to help her…until her voice called out no more. A pity, yes…but there would be no one person put to blame for her unfortunate suffering. She had simply been at the wrong place at the most inopportune of times. Mourning her would come later. For now, I had to prepare.

So that when he pushed through my door, he would be made to understand.

His footsteps were already roaring through the long corridors of this stone manor—climbing the stairs in rapid pace as if even gravity couldn’t halt his ascent. Mindlessly, he would barge through each door along the way, having forgotten which room he spied on from below…but fortunately enough, they were kept unoccupied.

When at last he reached the wooden door which served as meager barricade between him and I…

I…

----

 Failure. Failure. Failure. I failed him. I failed him. I’m a failure.

He was—he was; he was…

That fractured bliss which had been shot through my skull only mere moments prior had ricocheted in my brain and sent bits of metallic shells shooting through my synapses. Each one becoming a word—a phrase. A torrent of impossible guilt.

It’s not—it’s not. It can’t be. It’s not possible. It can’t be.

Hurt. Wounded. Sliced—wounded. His arm, his arm, his arm.

All that blind fury had instantly subsided; all my control surrendered.

His skin—white, white, pure white. Purple? Black? A purple-black—torn apart and nearly skinless.

An animal? Monster. Beast. Man. Claw marks. Who to blame? What hurt; hurt; had hurt my brother?

Me. I did. It was all me. I did this. I. Did. This. I did. I didn’t stop them. Couldn’t stop them. Hadn’t stopped them. My brother—my little brother—had the skin of his left arm from his wrist to his elbow peeled off and and and—his chest was marked by a horrible scar. I was a failure, I was, and I couldn’t deny it anymore. I failed, I failed, I failed—

 ----

 I…

I slowly pulled my robe back over my arms and tied it around my waist. Covering myself in beautiful white silks once more before I stepped towards my ailing brother.

I…realized that I too needed this. I needed to witness my brother’s collapse to know that…I had done the right thing.

Wrapping my arms around his shaking self, I was soon brought to my knees as his weight crumbled down atop of me.

“There, there…”

I lovingly caressed him as he squeezed me so tightly he might as well have broken my spine. But surely he came to that same realization too, as his grip waned into more incessant trembling. My fingers stroked through his short, unkempt hair as I held him against myself. His warm hands soaked with the fresh blood of the woman lying dead in the foyer. Staining my white gown in his black-red.

“Big brother…I’m here. You’re home...”

Our horns pressed up against each other, nuzzling in a reminiscent manner. This scene, although set in the present…was no different than it had been in our past. My dear brother…returning home to me after a traumatic affair which struck his very core. Falling onto me in the absence of his mind. Crying pathetically as he clung to me in desperate need of my pure, untarnished love. Whilst the latter was no longer true…what mattered was that he still saw me as such. I was not broken, so long as I viewed myself through his eyes. I was still his god.

And while I yet drew breath, I would never let him go.

[thatsadorbsyo]

Landon (Shifting Blame, #4)

(cw: brief descriptions of violent murder. art credit: morte di paolo e francesca (1887) by gaetano previati)

“Read to me a story, little knight.”

The prince makes a familiar request of Landon, an intimate joke uttered into the narrow space between them, where they lie with noses ilms apart on a rickety inn bed.

It surely must be a joke, because this humble inn doesn’t have the benefit of Priarch’s library, nor the shelves of tomes held within, from which Landon had once plucked faerie tales to read to this prince during the man’s long recovery. What it does have, strewn about the room in dizzying heaps as though tossed by a whirlwind of a man, are an array of alchemical components--herbs, metal powders, reagents, inks, reams of paper--and a stack of crates filled to bursting with twinkling crystals, all purchased in small quantities for “artisanal” purposes and billed to a business in Ul’dah named the Moonlight Cantata.

In the middle of this mess lies Landon, chaste over the bedclothes, bumping knees with his most unlikely of bedfellows. He drags his tongue along his bottom lip, dipping within himself to surface with a proper offering for this request. There are many tales that Landon knows by heart, but not just any old story will do; there is a specific tale he would tell.

“Well,” he begins, whispering into the quiet stillness as the whole room holds its breath. “Most of our countrymen know the faerie tales of Ser Lancelaux and his lover, Lady Genevieve. But fewer know that there’s a story about the stories, a tale of two great and ruinous lovers, Ser Paulecrain and the Lady Francette.”

Landon drops his eyes as he speaks, unable to carry the weight of his prince’s enraptured gaze. He tells the story, instead, to the man’s chest, delivering it from memory in long, meandering murmurs.

“Ser Paulecrain was a noble and chivalrous knight in service to one of Ishgard’s oldest houses, though the story is a bit different depending on who tells it. Most tellings speak of Ser Paulecrain, the raven-haired and virtuous knight of House Dzemael, though others say he was a towering man pledged to House Haillenarte, and others still to House Durendaire. The truth, I guess, is lost to time and warped by memory, but all accounts are steadfast in the telling of his gallantry. Paulecrain is said to have been a poor man of common birth who rose through the ranks of the Knights Most Heavenly, eventually putting hundreds, even thousands of Dravanians to the spear in defense of his city-state and her people.”

“At the zenith of his career, he was in high demand for private sponsorship by the noble houses, but he refused them all in turn until he was given a bid that tugged not on his zest for battle but rather on his heartstrings. The family’s eldest son was about to be wed, you see, and they required the service of a trustworthy escort to ensure that his bride-to-be maintained her virtue until the wedding, which was still some months away.”

“Paulecrain traveled across the entire breath of Coerthas, to the distant home of Lady Francette. She was a young noblewoman just past the cusp of adulthood, bright and sweet but far too trusting and naive about the way of the world. He stayed with her family for two moons and defended her from rival suitors who came to call, from the threats of hysteria when she felt loneliness take her, and some accounts even say he once slew a chimera that she had stumbled upon while picking wild berries too close to its cave. Serving Francette proved to be a healing balm to Paulecrain’s soul, for he got to spend every day watching a young mind blossom rather than trading in ruin and blood.”

“They grew close.” Landon’s low tones sound fit for a confessional and the shameful airing of weakness and sin. He closes his eyes, lashes fit against freckled cheeks, and flexes his hands until his fingers stretch across the sheet toward the prince who lies only a fulm away. “They built a foundation of trust with co-dependence as the bricks and time as the mortar. He bared to her the scars that war had left on his mind and body, and she revealed to him her innermost fears about what the future may hold. What if her betrothed is cruel to her? What if he is ugly, what if she can bear him no children, what if he doesn’t love her?”

Here, Landon pauses. Francette’s questions have room to breathe in the quiet that follows, growing to fill the void in the absence of Landon’s rambling voice.

His own breaths come so slowly that one might think, mayhap, that Landon has fallen asleep. He is given away only the subtle flexing of his fingers, too scared to cross the pittance of a distance, not quite bold enough to bridge their allowance to propriety.

“The night before her wedding, Paulecrain stayed in Francette’s chambers. She would have none other, not even her maids, as she had been swept up in such a torrential vortex of anxiety that none could quell the lady’s restless heaving. None other than her most faithful knight. ‘Read to me a story,’ she asked of him.”

With a shuddering inhale, Landon opens his eyes to look up at his prince, to bathe in how exultation glitters like stars in the shining, silvery green of his eyes, and how the pale, mossy white hair frames his high cheekbones over the bow of his smug smile.

“And what tale did the knight choose to tell?” his charge asks of him in a voice crisp and clear with naked delight.

“Paulecrain pulled a book from Francette’s shelf, and wouldn’t you know, it was a love story about Ser Lancelaux and the Lady Genevieve.” Landon’s rueful smile twists his words into a playful singsong, just as it gives his face a brief reprieve from his usual solemnity.

“They sat on her bed, where she curled up next to him and listened to him read about a secret tryst between lovers, stolen affection between a knight and his charge. As the words flowed from the story to fill the room like heat from a roaring hearth, so too did passion grow between them, filling their minds and bodies with an overwhelming lust stoked by the sinful fire of the book’s pages.”

“After a time, the words ceased, for they were so enraptured by the love story’s spell that they could stare only at each other. They read no further that night.”

Landon hisses through his teeth, the mournful sigh of one who knows what comes next in the tale.

“But morning came, as mornings often do, and with it came Francette’s bridegroom. He found the pair of them in her bed, a tangle of satisfied sheets and limbs, and in his all-consuming rage over this betrayal, he pulled an iron from the fireplace. The red hot point of it went through Francette’s throat just the once, and through Ser Paulecrain’s bowels roughly a dozen times, for he was derelict in his duty, having allowed his desires to cloud his attentiveness, and was caught too unawares to defend either of them from this wicked end.”

“They met once again in Halone’s halls for judgement, where She swiftly and decisively found them guilty of the sin of lust. But in Her infinite mercy, She asked them if they would care to speak in defense of their immortal souls.”

“‘It was the books,’ Francette pleaded. ‘Had the story not been so lustful, this may never have come to pass.’ She was blind to her own fault, and Paulecrain was too loyal to contradict her, even in the face of the Fury. Mayhap he even believed it himself.”

Another pitifully warbling breath escapes Landon as he takes in the ethereal view in front of him, this otherworldly being with delicate braids splayed across the pillow, a married man with pert, insolent lips held so deliberately within kissing distance for the duration of this tale.

“So desirous were they of each other, so willfully ignorant of the part they played in their own damnation, that they now spend all of eternity buffeted by the icy winds of the hells, abandoned by the gods, without the warmth of love but still clinging to each other, hand in hand, as they scream and beg for the mercy She decided they did not deserve.”