#in an unhealthy and alarming bit of codependency his ideal death is along with Lerziak (whatever that may look like)

[outeremissary]

7 and 38 for Balthazar, 23 and 34 for Caina?

A fun fact about me is that I often check my asks by looking at previews of my email notifications so for the past several days I did not know about the Caina asks!!! These are a good time. As always, thank you for the patience as I vastly overestimated my ability to accomplish literally anything while stuck with my family, prompt from here.

Balthazar

7. Do they have any unusual fears?

Balthazar's most unusual fear is probably of being a "good" person. He associates a certain kind of virtue with conformity he's desperate to avoid. Becoming so sweet and helpful is like the death of himself. He doesn't want to disappear. He doesn't want to be turned into someone else, replaced with a toy for others to use. He'd rather die. And the worst thing of all would be becoming self-sacrificing. Giving himself up for others, letting the value of his life turn into nothing but sustaining the lives of people who matter more than one used-up aasimar... there's no terror greater than that.

More benignly, he's had an irrational fear since childhood that somehow, something would stain his hair a strange color.

38. What are their dreams like? Do they have any recurring dreams/nightmares?

Balthazar's dreams tend to be indistinct and hard to remember. When he wakes they're usually more like impressions than distinct scenes. Color, sensation, and emotion can be very strong even if they don't resolve into anything specific though- they make space for something that feels very vivid despite being impossible to pin down. His dreams from Nyrissa are easy to distinguish from ordinary dreams simply for the difference in clarity.

Balthazar doesn't have many recurring dreams, but he has a few. All throughout his life he has sometimes had a dream he feels is the same every time, but when he wakes all he remembers is the sense of warmth and belonging he had in it and the aching pang of separation when it ends. It's a dream full of light. He tries not to think about it too hard, but when he was young its meaning tormented him. Since around 4707 he's begun to have vivid, disorienting dreams of his childhood home. They always start in the kitchen. Sometimes he waits there the whole time, sometimes he rises and wanders an apartment that extends impossibly beyond the simple two rooms of his memory. It varies whether he's a child, an adolescent, an adult; whether he's left Absalom or is as he was; who he believes he's waiting for- his father or a figure far more sinister from his past. Anxiety permeates the dream. It's absolutely miserable. It usually ends before he can meet anyone else- waking in a panic as the doorknob turns to allow in his father at the end of the workday or someone else who's been searching for him. On the worst nights, however, it ends when he opens a door into the bedroom he kept during his apprenticeship. He feels sick all morning after seeing it no matter if he was alone or not.

Caina

23. How would they want to die?

He's though a lot about this. It often feels like he'll die soon in some circumstances far beyond his control, so thoughts of how else he could have gone are always close at hand. He would want to die in his homeland, passing away in his bed peacefully without any fear or regret, surrounded by loved ones. He's so afraid of dying alone. He wishes that he could go somewhere people know him, where his body would receive the rites of his gods after his death instead of being buried in an unmarked grave or left for the carrion eaters. Gently from life, gently to the next life... It's something someone like him could never hope for.

But sometimes in darker moments he wishes that he had died when he was younger, before he ever had the chance to cause anyone pain. He remembers every childhood close call and fear and they blur together in his mind in a montage of possible deaths to save his innocence and save the world from him. Sometimes he imagines that he died that morning he killed Avel- that his friend killed him in rage, or that he slipped away in an accident to be mourned by his beloved friend, or that he simply followed Avel down rather than living out the consequences of his wretched actions. But it's too late for all of that now. It's been too late a long, long time.

34. How well do they deal with grief?

Not well at all!! Terribly, some might say. Caina's reaction to grief is to try to shove it down and ignore it. People die all the time, he reasons. It has nothing to do with him. It was inevitable. And people die around him all the time. He's cursed in the eyes of his god, doomed to bring only misery to those around him. It's his own fault for being in someone's life and he just has to move on. But the fact is that he has a sensitive heart. He fixates on people who have suffered around him, doubly so if he thinks they suffered or died because of him. The memories of them will haunt him for weeks, months, years. His nights are restless with the weight of the misery he's seen and caused. And it bleeds into his everyday life, making him ever more distant from those around him as he shoulders more grief he refuses to release. Every sin makes him more afraid to reach out to others, to smile for them and make small talk, to look them in the eyes, to touch them. He sees himself as a blight. He's afraid to bring to the living what he's done to the now dead.

Slowly but surely, he has begun to go numb to it all the way he wanted to. He doesn't feel much but a dull ache when people die despite the guilt. He can tell himself that his traveling companions never mattered that much, that he kept the right distance to stay strangers. Anyone who gets past those emotional barriers though... their death or pain would push him to the breaking point.