#anyway...ya...caleb and lucien parallels still hurt me

[dent-de-leon]

@garnetgh0st Oh yes, definitely! They're facing the same trauma from polar opposite ends, but I think it's just tragic that they ultimately still feel the same--in the end, they both just want to bring their families back.

For Caleb, family is...everything. He tries so hard to protect the Nein and keep them all together because the family he had before is already gone. Because he can't bear to lose anyone else. And it pains him when someone is fortunate enough to still have a loving family, yet pushes them away."Young man, you do not take your mother's love for granted." He'd give anything to get that back.

And yet, even though Caleb believes so firmly in family and prioritizes his at every chance--he knows not everyone was raises by parents like his. He was there when Beau faced her father, when she was finally given a bit of the justice she deserved after years. More than that, Caleb knows what it's like to be a child that was taken advantage of; someone abused and tormented by his own mentor, betrayed and used, turned into weapon. He's still haunted by all the people he was coerced into torturing and killing under Trent's influence.

And Lucien was much the same. The only difference is, his parents weren't victims--they were complicit in all of it. His father giving him lists of names, targets to lure to a witch in the woods. Forcing his child to pay the price for his devil's bargain, staining his hands with the blood of countless victims.

And all the while, Lucien loathed and regretted every moment of it, always looking for an escape, a way out of this hell. Before he became another empty husk, the witch's next puppet:

"'We did owe her. Mum and Da did, I mean, but I was the one who paid that blood price.' I'm not surprised you remember the way. His stomach lurched. 'I'd…lure folk out to her cottage. Da would hand me a little paper slip, and whoever it said, I'd convince them to come along, get them near her cottage, and she would charm them. You saw what happens after that.'"

"'We were punished for seeing what they couldn't. After a while I couldn't let it go on, couldn't look at myself or live with myself, so I burned down the caravan with all three of them inside, took my sister, and that was that...No more little songs. No more farces.'"

And when Lucien is finally free of the witch who tormented him for so long? He just...doesn't know what to do. He's still shaken by the trauma of all the deaths he'd seen, all the faces that still haunt him. He doesn't believe she could just be dead, that he could ever really be free of this nightmare so easily. For a moment, was he gutted by the realization that she was gone so easily, and yet Lucien had already lost all his family? That she'd taken so much from him he'd never get back, and any taste of revenge left him terribly empty?

I think it's likely Caleb might have felt a bit similar, when he finally escaped Trent for good, and yet was still coping with his trauma in the aftermath. Grappling with everything he'd lost to get here, and trying so hard to believe that perhaps he and his loved ones would finally be free of this monster.

As for Lucien's parents--"After a while I couldn't let it go on, couldn't look at myself or live with myself"--when Lucien finally decides to end it all, his breaking point sounds a lot like Caleb's own breakdown when he realizes his parents are gone. "But it didn't exactly go according to plan, because as soon as I heard my mother and father screaming inside...I was so sure. I was so sure. Until I wasn't, and...I broke a bit..."

I don't think Caleb would be a stranger to Lucien's immense self-loathing and guilt, even though they both lost their families for very different reasons. I feel like Caleb would probably pity him; Lucien never even got the chance to have a happy family, to experience the childhood and memories that Caleb so treasured and lost. All Lucien has is empty promises from higher powers he can scarcely understand, otherworldly beings who are still just using him; the hollow comfort of a dream, a fantasy. And I think it's his desperation to bring them back, even if it means tearing reality apart at the seams, that Caleb would find so painfully familiar:

Lucien going all the way to Cognouza because he thinks it could give him the fantasy of a loving, happy family. Caleb following Lucien to Aeor and stumbling upon the one thing that could bring his parents back--they both find what they've always wanted, are both tempted by it more than anything. And when Lucien has that chance, he seizes it immediately--even as he destroys himself, spiraling beyond all recognition.

He's exactly what Caleb would've become if he never had the Mighty Nein, never had the chance to escape and heal. "Anybody can make lights. Anybody can send a message through a wire. I want to bend reality to my will." They're both so desperate for the same thing, the same impossible dream--willing to do anything to make it a reality. I think they'd understand each other on a level perhaps no one else in the Nein could; they both started the fire, but then they spent years still consumed by those flames.

I think Lucien and Caleb mirror each other in a lot of ways. And it makes me happy that, through Molly, they were able to help each other heal in some way. And I really love how Molly/King gets to have the family now that Lucien always wanted--Caleb telling Kingsley to stick with them, admitting that he Nein have a fondness for "strays." I like to think he and King are still close, and maybe one day, Caleb will be there to help Kingsley reach out to the last of his family in Rexxentrum--