“Not a pushover, he says, though naturally he submits under the pressure of a man with even some small modicum of confidence. It’s unkind to lie, Daniel, especially to yourself.” Azarel insisted with a slight shake of his head. He was, at one point in life, not unlike the human, eager to please, desperate for that one little shred of praise that would allow him to pretend he wasn’t a complete waste of the carbon that made him up. Malphas had changed that aspect of him rather resolutely, the pale beast made it clear upon the forging of their bond that he would serve no fool or whelp, and he had every intention to make a proper master from the young witch. Four centuries later, the pair had come to respect one another- and Azarel came to despise those who were happy under the fleece of their own desperation. “It’s cute that you think you’ve got some kind of fire in you, but that’s all it is, my boy- If I told you to make a hard choice here and now, you would still take a moment to look at me to try and sort out what you should do. Submission masquerading as humility, little more.”
The witch had a confidence that made even his opinions sound like fact, and as he snapped his fingers to light another cigarette, he examined the nail sunk into the ground near Daniel’s feet. “A fraction of an inch and I would have been able to figure out if the piercing charm works on human flesh without having to wake up a body from cold storage. And you would have soundly nailed yourself to the floor. It’s truly impressive, how close you came to grievous injury for your own clumsiness, Daniel.” He tutted, his own second poster already carefully hung in the corner as he motioned to a cabinet at the back of the room. “There’s a tool chest in there, the hammer is a normal hammer, yes. These are normal nails, simply with a spell that makes them drivable by hand, it stands to reason you’d use a normal hammer to remove them.” Malphas had slunk out of the rafters, form shrinking and shifting, eventually landing on Azarel’s shoulders in the form of a white weasel, curling around the back of the man’s neck absently.
A kinder version of X probably existed somewhere, someone who cared to assure those who made mistakes that everyone did, a confident, capable man who also respected someone’s boundaries- but it was not the version that came to the island. “You seem to spend a lot of time right on the precipice of crying.” He pointed out with the quirk of a brow from behind a cloud of pale white smoke. “Has no one here seen fit to take a singular step toward breaking you of this ridiculous cycle of self-sabotage that makes you behave like a scolded child when you make a mistake? And here I thought this place had more strong hands than my own. Perhaps this is a position I’ll hold for less time than I imagined.” He lamented to himself, shaking his head and reaching to stroke Malphas absently.
The toolbox in the cabinet was stored beside boxes of glass bottles and bones, potions and stacks of spelltags a strange set of companions next to a simple black and decker toolbox in the usual bright orange plastic, ‘AXB’ marked into the lid with a black sharpie marker, and a hammer tucked inside amongst what were hopefully still normal screws and nails.
“I’m not lying, not that I expect you believe me, but I have no reason to lie,” he said, voice betraying how frustrated he was feeling. Mostly because he couldn’t refute any of it. When he had walked into this room, Daniel had immediately ducked his head down and did as he was told, more than happy to hear the rude musings of the other until they started to turn on him. Quickly, he glanced behind him, wondering if he could get away with just leaving. There had been no command for him to stay, and even if there was, he could still try to walk away. To be able to tell himself that he wasn’t the kind of person that could say no even when it was difficult. But that wasn’t him. Daniel shook his head, choosing to believe that the other was wrong, that faced with the hard choice that he would stand on his own two feet. Still, he didn’t want to see that put to the test. Daniel bristled at the second use of my boy, but still held his tongue. “And I’m not masquerading anything as anything, I’m afraid you might be a bit off mark.
Daniel followed the witch’s eye of sight back to the nail by his shoe, glad to be looking anywhere else but Azarel. Maybe he should be thinking about what would’ve happened had if the nail had tragically punctured his foot, but all he could think about was the patronizing tone that drenched the professor’s words. If he had been stuck to the ground, who knows how long it would've been before he was unstuck, meaning he would have to stand here and listen to the other degrade him for who knows how long. Small miracles. He continued to look anywhere but Azarel as he moved to the cabinet. He carefully opened the cabinet, not wanting to make a further fool of himself if anything toppled out of it. That just furthered his frustration, as he was acting exactly as expected: submissive, aiming to please. Daniel took a deep breath: he had to keep his head on his shoulders.
"I'm not going to fucking cry," he said, turning to look at Azarel. Daniel was sensitive, there was no denying that, but he wouldn't call himself much of a crier, and he wanted to grasp onto the only thing he could accurately defend himself from. Clearly, he wasn't succeeding much in letting the words brush off him. He took another deep breath as he retrieved the hammer from the tool box, careful to not touch any of the nails in fear of them having the same enchantment as the rest. He closed the cabinet just as carefully as he opened it before coming back to the lodged nail.
"I'm sure the school will miss you when you're gone," he said, finally able to achieve the sarcasm that he attempted earlier. But it was just another deflection, because what could he say? That he wasn't self-sabotaging, or that he didn't shut down the second things went poorly? All he could think bitterly was that he had never exactly been given those skills when he was younger, and quite frankly, there had only been one person before who had tried to break him from that cycle, and they had stuck around for a little while. Coming here, to the school, was his own attempt on breaking some of that cycle by himself. Not that it had happened yet. “And what’s it to you anyway? Certainly, you can’t be so bothered when another person lacks your level of confidence.”
