@albrich sent: Will you defend yourself? From me, I mean.
Will you defend yourself? From me, I mean.
Expression twists in the shortest lifespan of simple hurt and most ironic of worries ( but it, as things often tended to do in self-preservation, swiftly disintegrated into vaguely annoyed aloofness, even as a jaw still clenched in horrible tautness, as knuckles whitened in his own unhelpful grip ). ❛❛ Good morning to you as well, ❜❜ he greets rather dryly, tongue sour without anything sweet to wash the bite down, as words were already not set out to be kind.
One could only fathom the origins of this anxiety seldom voiced by a once-brother, for proximity was scarce in its generosity despite the surmounting care that still ordained the softest of painful pangs in his stomach. Mouth purses as he lightly shifts his head, arms crossing in both habit and uncertain restlessness ( are you all right ? / you sound tired / father wouldn’t like seeing you this way ).
❛❛ You’ve always been very selfish, ❜❜ he murmurs under his breath, crimsons finally meeting azures ( are you seeking comfort, too ? / we aren’t children anymore ). Sentiment swells in a hitching breath as he attempts to meter the beast down, suffocating the self-inflicting poison that threatened to bubble out. The most curious guilt.
Reds gravitate to the vision.
It’s a nauseating sight, and the young man is immediately forced to look away, a reaction that could be attributed to the earlier forgoing breakfast to venture into the day were he to be asked about it later ( he wouldn’t be, he knows, they both do ). Why ask the obvious.
❛❛ Could you promise me the same in return ? ❜❜
how so very morbid, or would you rather cause it morose? shall we simply refer to this conversation, or to the whole of the tale of these two so—called brothers? both are widely applicable to the ruin that lies between them, after all, this battlefield that stinks of death and decay and other unspoken things left to fester and rot. seeing diluc makes kaeya’s skin prickle, nerves alight, teeth on edge, otherwise unpleasant things ———
( but there’s that betrayer, that sense of far—off relief : are you okay? have you been sleeping enough? are you working yourself to death and beyond? but then there’s this : don’t look at me with that disdain in your eyes. )
❝ are we in the market for pleasantries, now? ❞ the humor if it all is that diluc is not the aggressor, not truly. no, it’s kaeya who seeks out fights with his dear brother, who appears and riles him up and feels poisonous flashes of amusement and despair and fury in regards to diluc.
sentimentality will be kaeya’s killer.
❝ oh? ❞ this is said with a laugh, their tone genially warm, but their gaze mere shades away from mocking. ❝ i seem to remember otherwise from our youth, ❞ it pains, to mention it, even obliquely. even barely. even hardly brushing upon it / the child soldier who followed behind his false brother, who was his shadow, who followed every last beck and call. what else could they do? ( bratty and petulant in his own right / boy prince stripped of their crown and all, but always deferential to their dear brother. )
his chest aches. heart and body ache. looking at diluc hurts more than it doesn’t / kaeya’s scars itch. isn’t it funny, what a mess we’ve made of things? yes, yes : you and i, the pair of us, together. ❝ i think i’ve proven myself rather well in that area, ❞ a macabre joke that only diluc may understand / for kaeya hardly defended himself at all that night. or, at least, not half as well as he could have. he’s cold, frozen to the bone / smiling still. ❝ but... what would you say if i did make such a vow? ❞
