#listen i put my silver nui into a banana costume last night and I haven't been the same ever since

[irafuwas]

I've been ruminating all day today about why Lilia keeps such a distance from those he loves, and why he never refers to Silver as his son or to himself as Silver's father. And then I was suddenly struck by the thought that he might not think himself worthy of claiming Silver as his child, and now I need to lie down.

And you know what, why would he? He is the Great General Vanrouge of the Imperial Guard, after all. Feared by so many, and celebrated by so few. How much blood has been spilled by his hands over the centuries? How many long-forgotten nations has he wiped from the face of the planet? How many houses razed, lives ruined, families destroyed? His lot in life has always been to burn and to maim and to take, but never to keep.

Of course he wouldn't allow himself the privilege of claiming this unknowing, undoubting child as his son. Because he doesn't deserve it, and he doesn't deserve him. Not he, whose iridescent eyes pierce him deeper through his heart than any blade he's ever met; the shimmering antithesis to all the wrong he's done in this world.

No, he's simply there to watch over the child until the time comes for him return to his real family. Nothing more, nothing less. ("It's easier this way." Lilia murmurs to himself in the pitch black of their small cabin, careful to keep his voice low as the boy's small chest slowly rises and falls as he slumbers in the cot next to his. But every morning, when the pale sunlight that slips through the windows gently urges the child awake and he turns to face Lilia, his thin lips curling up into a toothy smile and his cheeks rosy from the cold, Lilia finds himself wondering more and more if he still believes that.)