Poor little Gepard… all alone once again. You spent all your time serving the people, protecting the people, but where are they now when you need someone to lean on the most? Nowhere in sight. But who could blame them after all? You followed Madam Cocolia even as she was ruining Belobog. How many innocents do you think starved to death in the underground? How many little children watches their parents be ripped apart by monsters? I heard the saddest story from Rivet town. A blind little girl whose sister would wear a bell so her sibling could find her when they were apart. One day she never came back after venturing out in search of food. Gradually, the blind girl believed her sister had abandoned her.
She died, hungry, alone and broken hearted, unable to fend for herself with her disability. She never found out that her beloved big sister was killed by Fragmentum monsters just a block from their home. The girl was brave though, she would have done anything for her younger sibling.
Just like Serval would do anything to protect you. I wonder how she sleeps at night, knowing the younger brother she loves more than life itself sided with the woman who destroyed her career, ruined her reputation and caused her own parents to throw her out into the streets with nowhere to turn. Do you think she cried when she came home from Qlipoth Fort and found the front door locked, and realized her own family had abandoned her at her lowest point? But even after that, she’s always been there when you needed someone to force you to take care of yourself. Where would you be without her? Probably dead.
You knew what the Guardian was doing was wrong, didn’t you? That’s why you let the outworlders go in the end, isn’t it? You know Madame Cocolia didn’t die a hero. They lied to protect the hearts of the city, including the Guards.
Cocolia was a coward who gave in to fear and turned her back on the world.
And you? You who has the gall to lead these people into battle? You can’t even stand up to your own father or be truthful about what you are. Maybe Leo is better off dead instead of wasting his life miserable, shackled to a weak, scared child that covers his eyes like that will conceal you from the monsters beneath your bed. You didn’t deserve him, you didn’t even have the courage to admit he loved him until it was too late.
Just admit it, you’ve always been pathetic.
Resentment had a tendency to fester & seethe when those in fault did not rectify their wrongs. He was not ignorant, suffering had proliferated through their people relentlessly, devastating the lives of those innocent with grief & loss. However, he understands it, weathers it because he recognises that the segregation of the Overworld & Underworld was unjust. Even if it were not his hand that laid down those stringent regulations he had enforced them, perpetuated them, only now with it amended could he see the world that had denied both of their people by adhering to those antiquated ideals.
He listens & his jaw clenches, the focus of his eyes is glacial & reserved, obscuring the emotions that permeated him, evoked by the emphatic anguish, their accusations framing it with righteous indignation. Death does not spare any of them, how many comrades in arms had he seen perish in the fragmentum, their last breaths & desperate pleas to tell those they loved that they were sorry they could not return home. He doesn’t balk before it, even as the story wreathes its way through him & leaves him raw. Gepard would hear them because he owes them that much, for all the cruelty they had endured, the injustice of being forced to carve lives for themselves from less than they deserved. It does not prevent the lucent flicker of his eyes, the corrugation of furrowed brows & the way his chest seizes as they relay his sister’s life to him, as if he wasn’t part of it, like he had relished in her suffering. But they don’t let him get a word in edgewise, expecting the revered captain to withstand the fusillade of insults, berating him for every mistake he had made, ones he was excruciatingly aware of. Each of them are like knives wedged between his ribs, an upward curve through sinew & flesh, enough to ascertain that the virtuous Captain Landau felt every single blunder he had ever made before he chokes on mouthfuls of acrid blood.
He does well to remain reticent until they’re done, lungs heaving with exertion, their blanched fist slamming into the desk, his eyes shifting from the jutting ridges of their knuckles to their frantic gaze. When he speaks his cadence is commanding, effortlessly mistaken as imperious, the reason why soldiers heeded his directions without complaint apparent. ❝ that is enough.❞ the tempestuous ire that submerges him has dwelled within him for years, a lambent fire extinguished over & over again. He does not bare his teeth despite every searing nerve calling for it, his composure is as hibernal as the white, barren snow plains. ❝ I will not allow you to speak in my sister’s stead, how she feels is for her to decide, no one else.❞ his cadence is sharp, his rebuttal terse. ❝ And you would do well not to speak Ill of the dead. Those who have laid down their lives for belobog will not be spoken about with such disrespect.❞ their eyes meet & the clashing of ice is dissonant, impregnating the room with suffocating tension. ❝ If you must find someone to hate, I will not hold you in contempt for it being me. I never claimed to be without fault.❞ the way his anger rose to breach the surface was evident still in his narrowed, flinty gaze & the taut line of his mouth. ❝ But we are doing all we can to amend the errors of our past, perpetuating such animosity will not resolve anything.❞ He was not free of guilt & perhaps he had been pathetic, confined between his loyalty to the Supreme Guardian & the knowledge that something egregiously amiss. ❝ The Guard alongside the Supreme Guardian are working tirelessly to rectify our past sins, to ascertain that Belobog can have a prosperous future, hatred will not save anyone.❞
