Drabble
Kiryll sat next to Varis on the bench in Ra La's domain. It was beautiful and warm, and nothing hurt, but it also simultaneously hurt all the time.
"I'm upset at you for the way you chose to treat your son."
"I am sorry. I also regret the way things went."
"I understand that you were manipulated, and that if things were better, if Mia were there, this might not have happened, but you just didn't rise to your station. You did every other thing you could have done but that one, and it became the black hole that destroyed you, and you deserved it!" Kiryll couldn't say it to his face, but he said it, his voice cracking as he sobbed into the lovely, sparkling grass.
Varis closed his eyes and let his tears fall silently, hoping Kiryll's keen eyes wouldn't notice them. "Yes, I know. I hear that a lot."
"I don't know what to do to fix this."
"You don't have to fix it. The damage is done."
"The fuck I don't! I'm one of the few people who can! Don't try that shit with me."
"I knew this moment would happen. I've dreaded it since I started feeling for you. Someone like you, who knows how to treat people correctly, would of course have the compassion to feel this way. I'm surprised we haven't talked about this sooner."
"I know some excuses, but not all of them. I don't want to know all of them, and for my part, I was turning a blind eye, too, because I've been engineered to be madly in love with you, and I still am, and probably always will be, but I need to tell you so it doesn't eat me up inside anymore."
"My regret is tempered by how much I was led by my advisors, who turned out to be the Ascians. I was told continuously by everyone around me that there was something wrong with him. That he was a threat, and a monster, not to coddle him or make him weak like how I allowed Mia to be, but not to have him killed. I was thinking about how Solus micromanaged my upbringing, and wanted him to have a life that was more free. I wasn't thinking about anything outside of long term plans. I was shut down emotionally from being so deeply attached to Mia. He unknowingly removed her from my life, and I stopped feeling joy for a very long time. I was appalled the first time I heard him laugh since she died, and at how angry I felt that he could laugh. I hid that one very deeply, but the resentment grew because I fed him snow, and starved him of warmth, and was surprised when he came out cold. At least that cold was the truth, and not the same terrified, desperate creature I was at his age. He is better and stronger than me in many ways, where I failed him. Some of it was intentional. I wanted him to be stronger than me, but I did too good of a job that when he quickly started to outclass or replace me, I stopped him or rebuked him in a way that manifested anger with the strength of a solar flare."
"Thank you for the context," Kiryll said, coldly. Beaufort had cut him down to stop him, too, and it was a lot. "I can't fix this. I'm going to wander for a while."
"You are always free to do as you wish with me. It is a privilege for someone of your mercy to have landed on my finger like a butterfly."
"Do whatever it is you want to do, too. You have infinite time. You should start using it a little better."
---
Ultima Thule was wildly outside Eitherys' connection to the lifestream, and there was a chance that he didn't linger, but Kiryll returned to the beautiful but somber stage that was the spacescape where he had smited Zenos.
He had been so beside himself, so angry at him. He forgot what he had witnessed in Gyr Abania, and focused on the removal of all of the stability he'd ever had. In his heart of hearts, Kiryll wanted Garlemald to heal, but there was so much of a cultural shift towards being awful towards each other, the shift that was needed was for it to be conquered utterly, or for a force of nature to wipe out the Galvuses.
And the force of nature we got was Anima. And the force of nature to take Anima out was Kiryll.
"This is my country, and I will take ownership of it and make it into what it should be," was a thought that always ran through his head. It happened after he attained a certain level of trust with Varis. He felt supported and whole and beautiful, with the anxiety that some kind of scandal or violence would end him, Varis, or both of them. It was an agony he felt like he deserved, but the agony he got was vastly different, and exponentially more painful to him. And this wasn't even his empathy for Varis speaking on top of this. He wanted a world where he could have gone back to his father's house and collected his aunt, and saved her from herself. A conquering army from Eorzea, sweeping northwards out of Radz-at-Han, buffeted by half the world uniting to stop the Empire would be a cyclical end to some of them, and satisfying to most of the Eorzeans he knew and was friends with. Zenos robbed them all of the satisfaction of ending them themselves, but those were violent thoughts heroes are probably better off not having, or at the very least, not indulging for long. Instead, every imperial fanatic in the world was tortured for a few months and died horrifically, along with anyone who was captured and sacrificed. It was not better. Anima was the Primal of Primals, the ultimate humiliation, and perhaps the most perfect punishment that could have been devised to punish Varis, with Fandaniel probably its main architect. Zenos's lack of motivation to care just lent Fandaniel his power, but that was enough.
Kiryll had moved to Garlemald for a little bit to help relief efforts, but awkwardness with Jullus and his intense displeasure with Mettius displayed his fangs, and it made him scared of himself.
He could attempt to seize what remained of Garlemald on his own, but he would have to give up being the Warrior of Light, and he didn't want to do that. Varis wouldn't have wanted that, and especially not Zenos or Emet-Selch. Like as not, he had complex feelings about all three of them, and heel-turning ferociously would not only be unsustainable for him, but lose him what little friends he had. He'd probably just lead people to a second Anima summoning event with himself in that emotional state, and the idea betrayed his true nature that people be free to be who they are and interact with the world as they wished.
"Zenos! Are you here? I know we've had very deep problems, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to return to Eitherys with me, if that is your wish."
There was silence for a time, but Zenos appeared as he had the first time they were here. Kiryll knew full well he was vanquished, but this space was as much made of dynamis as the stage where the Endsinger was defeated, and his shade could animate. "I've attempted to befriend the people out here. Some of them want to die, and that's the kind of pathetic you know I can't stand, but the ones with the bar, who still have spirit, they seem like they're going to get by."
"So you'd prefer to stay here?"
"I will make it known to you when I feel like coming home. It's a home I'm glad I saved, but its familiarity and expectations make me ill. I am unmistakable on that planet, and am more like to explode into a cloud of bats than suffer anyone's scolding about anything I've done."
"That does sound like you're still very unbalanced and need distance. You have done much to prompt a scolding."
"Even you came in to scold me with your might, which you have plenty of, but I've never seen you wield it with so much focus. You made a choice with that. I felt your blue-hot resentment. Your protective instincts didn't apply to me, someone who could have been considered your child by marriage if you weren't so cowardly as to openly acknowledge your feelings for my father, disgusting as I find them. You are not righteous."
"I am not."
"I have been resentful of your choices to carry on with that sentient slug since I heard about it, but I was foolish to hold out hope that your vaunted mercy could pour out into the rest of the palace and give it the light you shone for the strangers who beat you and insulted you, but you were just always only visiting. In shame and silence, not trying to change or build or repair. You are just as useless as my father, and you are therefore perfect for each other."
Anger rose in Kiryll's heart all over again. "You know very well, there was no way I could be open about it!"
"You had to hold onto your father's ideals and tried to push my father into something he could never do willingly. You failed because of your inconstance. You failed because your fear kept you from rising to the criticism you deserved! You shrank, and he followed suit, and you are both worms!"
"Can you say these words directly to him in the Aetherial Sea?"
Zenos glared at him. "I can and I will, but not now."
"I agreed to escape Garlemald as a child despite its familiarity because the culture required me to be a servant and expect bad treatment. My father could have been a worm and watched me get beaten down, but he refused. He taught me to aim for better, but I ended up a servant anyway, and I experienced more bad treatment in Eorzea. I should have broken, but every punch I took healed something in that other person's heart, as well as my own. I could not let that be for nothing!"
"That's an excuse that sounds like it's formulated to address an Alliance leader. You don't want to deal with me at all. I can see that very plainly, and I'm well within my rights to hate that. What good is wealth if comfort and serenity do not accompany it? You share the same aetheric frequency as my mother, but enacted no such joy. Your cowardice is not the singular catalyst for Garlemald's demise, but it's very much a part of it, and I need you to know that."
"I've heard enough. Contact me if you're interested in returning."
"I will, if I get to that point."
---
Kiryll teleported away, to the remainder of the room in the imperial palace Varis had given him. So secret that it was spared by the telophoroi's mad destruction. It was from this point that Kiryll had attempted to replace every floorboard with something holy, to cleanse the burned out tower, but the project exhausted him, and he was alone in it, not wishing for anyone else's help. Nero had found him out, but obeyed his request to be left alone.
Returning to this place after five years was painful, but he figured, while he was in pain, may as well feel all of it. He had begun starting to transport all the belongings he had that bore Varis's fingerprints to this room after he moved out of Ul'dah. If they were discovered here, they'd be much less out of place. But that too, was an act of cowardice and an attempt to avoid judgement.
He took a sketchbook that contained a bunch of drawings and ravings in it that had poured out of his head when he was at his most sensitive and teleported back to Tural with it. The moisture in the air would damage the pages, but not everything in the book was meant to be read by anyone but him anyway.
He flipped through it and half-read his ravings and looked at the drawings he did while all but tempered by him. He was earth-shatteringly attached, and even through he was angry, he didn't want to sever the connection completely, or even at all, but there was pain to deal with.
"No more attempts to fix anyone, at least for a while," he muttered to himself. He was burned out, but alive, and his destiny could have ended up so much darker, so he was grateful for the strength Hydaelyn had given him, and he resolved not to waste it.
A chittering came from the room and Sweet Brick wandered in, sniffing and hovering at the new book, but not fully comprehending what it was. Kiryll quickly shelved it out of its reach and shook his head. "Please let me have something private. Everything else of mine is so public."
Sweet Brick was, as his name implied, silent and sweet, even as a Demon Brick that had saved itself from being part of a Demon Wall by following Kiryll out of the keep. It was barely sentient, created to be part of a weapon, but refused its destiny to follow him. It could not speak, but understood Kiryll's emotional cues, and he came to learn that it could recognize and respond to dynamis, and often head-butted him when it saw him moping. Kiryll patted it on the head, grateful for the distraction.
