#what becoming desensitized to death does to a man 💀

[jaredthebc]

OKAY GAMERS Sorry for the delay I keep getting distracted (Undiagnosed ADHD moment) Tis time for me to infodump about my Three Houses N AU teehee. AKA me mashing hyperfixations together like dolls because I’m insane and love crossover bullshit. Stuff isn’t completely set in stone since I need to likely review the timeline and stuff but yee :D

I’m putting everything under a read more, both because of general spoilers for the game and because I won’t lie, Three Houses can be a *tad bit* bleak and I try to write any fandom stuff about it in a similar tone. Content warnings for N’s story include child experimentation, child death, general childhood abuse (mainly from a cult and a man acting like a father figure), a lot of talks about mortality and fantasy chronic illness, and some mentions of emeto/coughing up blood

If any of that would be triggering for you then please scroll past, remember the phrase “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”

If you want a link to what N looks like pre and post time skip, click here!

-For setup. N (Or “Natural” at the start) doesn’t remember his birth parents, and originally grew up in a small orphanage with his older sisters, Athena and Concordia, both of whom are biologically related to Natural in this AU, rather than adopted siblings. The orphanage itself wasn’t bad, maybe a bit underfunded but meant well, but Natural always felt isolated from his peers, not really understanding human connections well unless it was with his sisters. Due to his mostly solo and antisocial behavior, he spent a lot of his childhood feeling isolated and struggled to get himself and his sisters adopted

-However, things started to look up when an older man dawning a black cape and a cane started frequenting the orphanage, looking to adopt. Immediately, the “kind” older gentleman seemed attached to Natural, stating he had “great potential for the future” and was “A bright young man destined to be one of the greatest figures in Foldlan”. Natural, of course, wasn’t used to being directly treated so kindly despite his personality quirks, and within just a few days, papers were finalized for adoption. The only thing the two argued about during the adoption process was convincing the old man to adopt his siblings, but after some convincing, the old man would (reluctantly) allow Natural’s sisters to come with to live with him

-Of course, no one can have nice things. This man was Ghetsis, a powerful sage within The Cult lurking underneath the belly of Foldlan, regularly referred to as “Those Who Slither In The Dark”. What I neglected to mention, was that Natural has something valuable to The Cult. A Crest, AKA a token from The Goddess herself given to warriors generations ago, and have been passed down from heir to heir granting them various powers. Though Natural wasn’t even aware of his status, considering his lack of blood parents to inform him, he was the only one out of his siblings to gain The Crest of Beasts (though not the only one to possess it, I’ll get to that later). Ghetsis needed a child bearing any Crest, so one being so available for easy access was convenient for the man

-When indoctrinating Natural into The Cult, Ghetsis was very peculiar about specific things, making sure his health was always monitored, being selective as to how often he interacted with the fellow children The Cult had access to, and barely even letting Natural see his own sisters without permission. Most notably, however, is the name change. Ghetsis had it so Natural were to only be referred to the first letter of his name, simply referring to the child as N. N didn’t understand these changes, but his rose tinted glasses of finally having a “complete family” made him unaware of the horrors to come

-Eventually, like most children with Crests The Cult got their hands on, N eventually experienced a gruesome experimentation in his early teenage years, in which the goal was to artificially implant a second Crest into his body, making him a super human of sorts, with the goal of creating a perfect figure to be used to take down both The Kingdom of Fargus, and The Church of Serios, both of which controlled Foldlan, and with the two of them out of the way, The Cult could rule the region. Ghetsis in particular wanted his “son” to be the first true success, so he can use him to propel himself to the top of the food chain within The Cult

-While many died during this brutal process, N thankfully was one of the few to directly survive the process, gaining a second Crest. It seemed like a perfect success, that he looked completely the same and likely would hold the key’s to Ghetsis’s plans of domination. However, after only a few weeks, N’s fate was sealed for the worse

-N’s hair started whitening at the tips, already a clear indicator of Double Crests. Though that itself didn’t confirm anything, his fate came when chronic pain started flaring up through N’s body. It would feel like the nerves in his body were actively stabbing him through his limbs, and would sometimes be bad enough to either make it hard to move, or even cause him to randomly cough up blood. This was the key sign that the experiment was a failure, and that N wouldn’t be of any use to either Ghetsis or The Cult.

-Keeping a caring facade still, Ghetsis decides the best way to rid of his failure is to send N off with some other adults whom are apart of The Cult to The Church of Serios, neglecting to tell him that said members were being sent in an attempt to assassinate Lady Rhea. Ghetsis figures that this attempt wouldn’t be successful, so he’s using this to his own convince to cut his losses and not need to dirty his own hands with disposing his son himself

-Ghetsis is correct in the fact that this assassination attempt goes poorly, as every member apart of the coup is captured, including N. While most were executed by the Church for nearly killing its figure head, N receives a good amount of sympathy from the Church staff. Considering the fact he cannot be older than 13 by this point, Rhea and the others figure he didn’t have as much of a choice in this as an adult would. Plus, him bearing two Crests would make him worth keeping him alive so Professor Hanneman can get direct exposure studying

As such, N is allowed a choice for his fate. Either he lets himself be executed, or he is sent down to The Abyss under The Church and occasionally gets checked in on by Hanneman for research purposes. Obviously, a scared teenager like N in this situation would choose life over death, so he agrees

-From here, N fully intends to live out the rest of his days in the Church’s sewers with the rest of the outcasts, pretty much the same as where he started, but without access to grander society, his sisters likely assuming him dead, and grappling with the fact his “Father” likely sent him out on that mission to die. He also discovers from Hanneman that his double crests very likely do more than just give him chronic pain and slowly whitening hair. The double Crests experiment severely reduced his life expectancy, and he’d be likely to make it past his mid thirties at most. Sooooo yeah this kid is fucking going through it

-Despite everything, N is still a kind man who wants to make an impact on others lives. Even while his mental health goes through it during his years in The Abyss, he still manages to bond with the members of the Ashen Wolves, the unofficial forth house of the Church. He’s practically their fifth member, though I picture he’s likely to stray off and isn’t super loyal to the made up house (trust issues and all that). He *does* leave The Abyss by the time he’s around 17 but also around then is when the war begins so this poor guy can’t catch a damn bREAK-

I know this all sounds super depressing, but I love this take I made on N’s story to fit within one of my current hyperfixations, so he does get plenty of different endings that are happy and give him a chance to heal, even if his time on this world isn’t long. I didn’t even get to mention stuff like his comically large sweet tooth, his intense hyperfixation on ghosts and Wyverns, or the fact that Reshiram also exists in this universe as a fluffy Wyvern N bonds with and uses during the war. Maybe later I’ll make another post but this one is so comically long I’m sorry bout that, call me the yapper 💀