#despina helena inteus

[redwayfarers]

ties that sever, ties that bind

Fandom: Wayfarer Ship: Intellis (implied) Characters: Cassander Inteus, Despina Helena Inteus Rating: Gen Words: 2375 Spoilers: Mild spoilers for ep2! Author's note: this is the final part of a series, though it can be read as a standalone. Read the rest over on ao3! divider credit

Find Zenaida, the agreement goes. Split up and find Zenaida. She has one of those faces you see in the crowd, full of other equally bright, decorated and artificial faces. Aeran whispered to me she seemed more honest than most, earlier, and maybe she is, on the Dareia. But here, in the crowds of nobles? She’s like everyone else. 

When you grow up around these things, it’s easy for one face to replace another. I vividly remember the few events I was invited to as a kid; I was told to not speak to people, to just nod along to whatever they’re saying and sit in the corner, a child-shaped statue. I wasn’t to embarrass the family, Aiantes said. 

So they got me all dressed up, in one of those child appropriate versions of adult serithans, and styled my hair out of the way. A curl or three would inevitably slip, even if the hands that had braided them were very skilled, and I remember Theokleia staring me down. We have the same hair, my mother and I. I knew her hair wasn’t as flawless as she’d pretended it was. 

She never forgave me for that. And for many other things, but the knowledge that the same trait that gave us both a sharp, prominent nose also gave us the same coarse curls was like a cherry on top of a cake of hatred. Her makeup was always well done, gold like her eyes. Her nails were long and pretty, painted to match her serithan. She always wore gold jewelry, rings, necklaces, earrings. 

And me? Gold dangled off of me in much the same way, mismatched and too grown up. The nails were a little too much, but I was allowed a dash of white every now and then. And so we’d pose, my mother and I, show the world my health is just fine for the moment, and I’d be carted off to a seat in the back, with my back ramrod straight, mindful for any movement, sound or word. 

Aiantes wore luxury more effortlessly than his wife. The simple styles of the Vestran elite suited him better than they did Theokleia; they made him look graceful, pristine. Yet he too was dissatisfied; he was rarely allowed to be an eyesore he wanted to be, in bright colors. Too Arathian, I heard him mumble under his breath. Too much, too foreign, too extreme. But he watched turquoise cloth with barely restrained yearning. 

And here I am, almost two decades later, in that same Arathia my father hated and envied at the same time. Mahanin Palace roars around me, proud and loud and unapologetic, and I’m walking amongst the crowds of nobles with my scars and tattoos, dressed in turquoise, with a Wayfarer pendant around my neck. The same curls Theokleia struggles to keep in line are now more defined than they've ever been and braided loosely on my shoulder. 

It’s freeing, in a way. As much as I’m filled with memories that were never mine to begin with, there’s this strange sense of exhilaration about it as well. I am not bound by the same social conventions as everyone else. My lack of magic made sure of that. Instead, I can walk around with the ink on my skin and not worry about jack shit. I can wear my hard-earned scars and not worry about how it may appear to some stuffy asshole who’s never seen any trouble in their fucking life. 

That, and I’m taller than most people I see. Aeran jokes that I’ll spot Zenaida for that alone, and that same Aeran didn’t tear his eyes off me before we joined the throng. That same Aeran kept touching my fingers ever so slightly, whose presence was the soothing balm for the weirdness that is dealing with the aristocracy like this again. 

When he’s gone, I feel plunged into deep, dark waters of my long-lost destiny or some poetic shit like that. People are watching, staring. The Cassander from years ago - the child in the corner, ramrod straight, watching like a hawk for any infraction - rears his little curly head and watches. I am not that kid anymore, I outgrew this! Yet my throat feels tight. My skin feels exposed, but I want them to look. I want their hungry stares and I want to be as unsightly as I can be, just so their worst fears can come to life. 

A Wayfarer, straight from Wayfaring Lands, in their fucking midst. An Inteus, from Vestra, the Red Wayfarer everyone kept whispering about during the civil war. A class traitor, almost. A cursed being. An eternal exile. 

Find Zenaida, the deal goes. She has to eat, probably. Off to the Pavillions, then, as one very rude servant instructed me. His eyes were trained on my pendant. “I haven’t acquired the ability to not eat and survive yet,” I breathed with equal amounts of venom. The guy just turned his back to me and left. Find Zenaida. Zenaida will eat. 

The Pavillions look like a place where people’s marriages fall apart. Nobles mingle, laugh, at ease with each other, so different from the stiffness of the parties in pre-war Vestra. Some give me strange looks - an exotic animal walks in our midst, better drop my eyeballs to the ground from how hard I stare, right? Languages mix in my ears alongside accented Arathian. These people are educated, beautiful, carefree. I could’ve been one of them, in another life. I understand every word they’re saying. 

Suddenly, Vestran hits me like a knife to the gut. I turn my head and spot them, their simple serithans, their loose hairs, their sparse jewelry. They speak with the familiar lilt of Vodena, fast and flowing like the city itself; there are harsh, slow drags of northern dialects and the absolute, nigh incomprehensible mess that falls under the way southern Vestrans speak. They didn’t speak like this when I was a kid. They spoke like the nobility of Vodena. They are relaxed now, so they’re not forcing the fucking issue.

Amongst them is a round, short woman in white. My heart clenches in my chest. She moves her hands rapidly as she speaks, revealing details of pink here and there. Her nails are flashes of dark pink. Her hair is black, wavy and glossy. 

My sister Despina has always had a huge love for pink. She was allowed to wear darker pinks, more graceful pinks, but only in bits and pieces. Pink has always been her statement color. Her serithans reminded me of Theokleia’s, merely adjusted to the body of a developing teenager; she wore the weight of them as much as I did. What a small mercy, I think bitterly, to be allowed to wear a spot of color. To be allowed to express personal preferences. 

When she turns around in my direction, I dig my heels in the ground. She looks like Aiantes, now even more so as an adult. She may have the precocious balance between a curl and a strand of hair and the golden eyes that many elves have, but she’s her father’s daughter. The way she holds herself proves it. She doesn’t let the brief shock in her eyes show but joins her fingers before her instead. She watches me, judging, in the same way Aiantes did, as if her elven eyesight allows her to pierce souls as well as darkness. 

Despina lowers one hand to rest near a plate of sliced oranges. I blink. My legs refuse to stay still and move where they’re supposed to, so I’m slowly walking towards my sister and the oranges near her hand. I vaguely remember someone telling me she used to feed me oranges when I was a baby. I don’t believe it, personally. Sounds less plausible than me suddenly getting magic. 

I reach out to take one. My heart wants to leave my body to convulse and die through my throat. Neither of us are looking away. The chatter of the Vestran delegation dies down. 

Despina moves her hand. Not fast enough, though. One touch and she’s looking away. “Red Wayfarer?” she asks softly, in Vestran. 

“Despina Helena Inteus?” I reply just as quietly, in the same Vestran as her. Mine sounds tainted with Arathian. “I have a name, you know. I am not just a Wayfarer. There’s a person somewhere as well.” 

“Cassander,” she says. She says it differently, though. Kassandros. “Why are you here, Kassandros?”

“I am Zenaida Anaxas’ bodyguard,” I reply quietly. Her eyes blaze, assessing, before she takes one orange slice and bites into it. 

“Whatever happened to Lady Markal?” 

“Dangers are many,” I say cryptically. It almost makes me laugh. And I do, only more quietly than I would’ve normally. Despina watches me, playing with the delicate silks of her serithan. 

“Lady Anaxas has always been a rather odd woman, from what I hear,” she shrugs. “I did not expect her to hire a magianis bodyguard, though.” A pause. “I thought you had died, Wayfarer Inteus.”

She speaks so evenly, so formally, her words accented so precisely I could’ve been reading a grammar. Nobody speaks like that. Aiantes didn’t speak like that, Theokleia didn’t either - not when the eyes of the world were away, at the very least.  She’s barely blinking, her body is tense. What is she afraid of? 

“Fortunately for all of us, I am here to entertain yet again,” I say, more harshly than I intended. “Cockroaches are hard to kill.” 

“I do not find your existence entertaining,” Despina says. 

“Not even when I was a kid? Not even before you knew I was a magianis, not even when you supposedly fed me these fucking things? Do sisters not play with their brothers?” There, an accusation, right at her feet, because otherwise we’d be here talking in circles forever. Her tone does not allow for any acceleration, but for fuck’s sake, mine will. 

Despina purses her lips. Wind blows her hair to and fro, light and breezy, but the way her back straightens is anything but. She is now the ramrod straight, cornered child. Part of me feels horrified. Part of me wants to push, to prod, to ask all the questions that have been on my mind for decades. Where were you when I needed you? Where were you, o’ older sister, where were you when our own mother slapped me across the face and watched me beg and cry on the ground? Where were you when she threw all her rage on me, like a bag nobody wants, where were you? 

Oh right! By her side, laughing, watching, throwing insults as well, immaculate, coward, fucking weak! Anger boils in my very being. The oranges stare at us as a stark reminder of what we had, before nature fucked up. 

“Officially,” she starts cautiously, “that did not happen.”

“Officially? And that never lies!” 

“Truthfully,” she says, as if I never responded, “the line was drawn and I had to choose. So I made a choice.” 

Anger dissipates. She’s the first to acknowledge what’s happened - my parents refused, Aftonio had no idea, Nikias rejected the concept altogether - but Despina.. Said it. Here, in the same empire that loomed over our heads when we were kids, like a demanding mother. Theokleia isn’t here to judge us, though. She is away, she’s somewhere else. 

And in her wake she leaves her eldest children to admit to ancient wrongs. And do what with that exactly? What will I gain by confirmation? What happened can’t be undone. They took my peace years ago. What will I gain by this? It lingers in the air, a dagger to cut the knots of anger and shame or slit your own throat. 

“Do you even care what my opinion of that choice is?” I whisper bitterly. “Not like it’ll change shit.” 

“Not like it’ll change shit,” she echoes, now in a more normal, less proper accent. “I simply felt like you should know. Do with that what you will.”

I eat an orange. It is juicy, sweet and tastes entirely too much like ashes. “I am here on a job, Despina,” I say hoarsely. My eyes are weirdly dry. Maybe my heart soaked all the tears. “Tell me one more thing before I leave - are my orange groves safe and sound?” 

I used to escape there when life as an Inteus became too much. Too bad I didn’t chase that label away when I could, at inauguration. I loved those groves. There were no orange groves at the Spire to escape to, when life as a Wayfarer became too much at times. It’s the only thing I think of fondly when I think of that fucking estate. 

“They are,” she says softly, like a goodbye. I take a look at her one last time - her shiny waves, her made up, long eyelashes, her thinly lined, golden eyes, the curves of her shoulder and belly in her serithan, the dusk of her skin in firelight - and I feel my eyes prickling. 

“Thank you,” I whisper at the oranges. “I hope you treat your heirs better than our mother did hers.” 

We exchange glances one more time, for a mere moment a brother and sister again, and she turns to the rest of the delegation like nothing happened. And me? Rasimira’s talking to a group of nobles. They’re pestering the poor steward about something. There’s no sign of Zenaida, but maybe Rasimira knows where she is. 

My heart feels like a soggy cloth, but I am here on a job. I am a professional. Nothing else matters. Still, part of me hopes that Despina’s children don’t face the horrors I have. Part of me hopes one of them is magianis, so at least a part of me lives in that family. Maybe I will see them in a few decades or so. 

And maybe we can all sit around our parents’ graves and discuss what they’d done to us all. Maybe then we can bury our hatchets, or raise new ones, of our own make. A Wayfarer, Lady Inteus, a Guild mage, and whatever the fuck Nikias ends up as. 

I have a job to do. 

[redwayfarers]

listen it's high time i mentioned something more abt cass' family on here. like we know he's mommy issues central, but all four inteus kids are, in their own ways. the parents, theokleia and aiantes, aren't really.. good parents. they're good spouses, but not good parents, but kept having kids bc familial expectation of their social status (aka not wanting a side line of the inteus fam to inherit after theokleia's death, and she is an only child)

despina helena, oldest sibling & heir to the title, has been reliant on her mother's approval all her life, to the point of bullying her baby brother cassander when she realized dear old mom did so as well. she may present a strong front, as is required of her, but if theo simply looked at her wrong, she'd evaluate her entire life choices. besides, she's always been held to a higher standard than, say, her youngest sibling aftonio, which she's been holding seething resentment for.

nikias, second youngest & the remaining son, failed to get into the guild of mages. as a result, theo doesn't really pay him any mind, nothing he does concerns her unless he's actively ruining the family name at which level god help him, and he would've been worse if he wasn't spoiled rotten by aiantes, who covers his ass every time. nikias isn't really used to holding himself accountable to what he says or does, and any attempt to do so feels like injustice to him.

aftonio, the baby of the fam, is theokleia's second chance at a 'magical child that looks like me' after cass because, well, red hair. and they are incredibly gifted, but they were put on such a pedestal that they can do no wrong, nikias situation but for theokleia. they're barely out of their teens now and hold a grudge against cass for basically scarring their face.

despina is secretly envious of nikias and aftonio. nikias wants the levels of time and care theokleia afford aftonio. aftonio wants to feel as free to do whatever they want as nikias does. and all of them greatly dislike cassander, because they were either given boogeyman stories of him on the basis of him being magianis, or wanted to feel accepted by theokleia and aiantes.

and to be fair, cass himself has complex feelings for each of them himself, but he doesn't particularly like any of them, even if he feels bad for scarring aftonio.

inteus family sure is fun to be around, amirite

[redwayfarers]

hi nero!! how'd you come up with the names for cass' family? i'm trying (and currently failing) to figure out names for sora's biological family but i haven't gotten anywhere all day :')

Hi! First off, I’m very honored you’re going to me for advice hh naming characters (and their families by extension) is very hard sometimes but in the case of Cass’ family, it was fairly simple. I chose an already existing, irl name for Cassander, which is Greek in origin, so it naturally led to all of the family members having Greek-inspired names. I went for ancient Greek personally, but they’re greek-themed! I went to a random ancient greek names list and chose the ones that appealed to me the most.

Do forgive a little rambling about the name choices for the main fam!

His mother’s name’s Theokleia, which sounded kinda ironic given how strict and domineering she is. Lots of vowels makes for a more melodic and softer-sounding name, after all. Turns out upon research it’s a variation of the name Thekla or Themistoclea :)

Aiantes is his father, whose name I quite literally took from the Iliad.Once more ironic, given that iirc Ajaxes/Aiantes (I read the Iliad ages ago, I don’t remember the details well) were heroes, let’s say, and Aiantes Inteus/Lascaris is would rather hide (and does, behind his much scarier wife. In truth, he’s a diplomat and Cass got his way with words from his dad.)

Despina-Helena, his older sister, is my mish-mash of Helena/Helen and Despina, which means ‘lady,’ but is also a bit of an homage to a very influential woman in Serbian history, Olivera Lazarević, also known as Olivera Despina Lazarević. (While an homage, I like Olivera Despina much more than I like Despina-Helena and they are not comparable in the slightest lmao)

Nikias, his younger brother, has an actual ancient Greek name. There’s an Athenian politician of the the antiquity that has the same name.

Aftonio, his youngest sibling, I can’t be sure of entirely but it’s Greek-sounding enough, I’ve seen that it is unisex (which is cool since Aftonio is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns!) Now they have a god-awful history with Cass that I’m not gonna get into here, it know just involves Vestran civil war, Alassar swords and scars :’)

Current project is giving names to my melusine Wayfarer’s giant family, all Byzantine inspired, and so far I have Honoria (her name), Justinian (her father, also Justinian the Great is like an actual emperor) and Galla (her mother; part of the name of an actual roman empress Aelia Galla Placidia.) So historical figures are also a thing you can look into.

Sorry if this was a little all over the place, I hope there’s a part that’s actual advice hidden in there :’)))))