So said the look in his eyes as he looks back at you, holds your gaze for a painful few seconds, and looks away. Less obviously sad this time, but still.
He understands. He really does. He'd just rather you... minded it. Maybe.
Because. Because so many people throw around the word "family" these days that it's kinda lost some of its meaning to him. He is, after all, fatherless, motherless, and currently siblingless. He remembers what it felt like, vaguely, to have had a biological family, and he remembers, scorchingly clear, how it felt like to lose them.
Except, when the bullets and the spells and the daggers start to fly and you start to bleed, sometimes, whoever bleeds beside you becomes your family too. Sometimes you share the same blood with someone the hard way. Spilled on the dirt by the same fell sword, churned into red mud by the same desperate dodge. Perhaps that is magic on its own. He wouldn't really know. He isn't the Bladian.
When a bullet whizzes past, you cringe, not for yourself, but for whoever it is you're fighting with, hoping that that bullet didn't have their name on it. You start, engagement by engagement, inching yourself closer to taking that bullet for them until one day, you do, and you're not even surprised.
Even if that someone is a ridiculously icy bitch like you. Although come to think of it, he stopped minding that maybe the first month after he first met you.
So he responds with the only thing he really can respond with: gratitude. He's not gonna say any of the things that crossed his mind. In the safety of his head, no one but the ones who live there can think of it as trite. And they wouldn't, anyway.
The Assassin. Lady Swallowtail. A Marquess of Hell. And a dragon who's lost his original soulmate.
Yeah. He's pretty sure they'd all understand.]
... Thanks. You really didn't have to do this. Any of you.
don't kill me <3
So said the look in his eyes as he looks back at you, holds your gaze for a painful few seconds, and looks away. Less obviously sad this time, but still.
He understands. He really does. He'd just rather you... minded it. Maybe.
Because. Because so many people throw around the word "family" these days that it's kinda lost some of its meaning to him. He is, after all, fatherless, motherless, and currently siblingless. He remembers what it felt like, vaguely, to have had a biological family, and he remembers, scorchingly clear, how it felt like to lose them.
Except, when the bullets and the spells and the daggers start to fly and you start to bleed, sometimes, whoever bleeds beside you becomes your family too. Sometimes you share the same blood with someone the hard way. Spilled on the dirt by the same fell sword, churned into red mud by the same desperate dodge. Perhaps that is magic on its own. He wouldn't really know. He isn't the Bladian.
When a bullet whizzes past, you cringe, not for yourself, but for whoever it is you're fighting with, hoping that that bullet didn't have their name on it. You start, engagement by engagement, inching yourself closer to taking that bullet for them until one day, you do, and you're not even surprised.
Even if that someone is a ridiculously icy bitch like you. Although come to think of it, he stopped minding that maybe the first month after he first met you.
So he responds with the only thing he really can respond with: gratitude. He's not gonna say any of the things that crossed his mind. In the safety of his head, no one but the ones who live there can think of it as trite. And they wouldn't, anyway.
The Assassin. Lady Swallowtail. A Marquess of Hell. And a dragon who's lost his original soulmate.
Yeah. He's pretty sure they'd all understand.]
... Thanks. You really didn't have to do this. Any of you.