SILENCE permeates nothing, a wall of no color which divides him from another & he is its creator. The very holder of own crooked solitude, the very loneliness that creeps through door’s crack when you say just enough, but it is not enough. DO NOT TROUBLE THEM – he thinks, they do not deserve it. Yet, who is he but a mortal man to claim these truths ? Not a hero, not a legend, but an average child who has suffered at the hands of fate & breaks beneath its weight when it becomes too much to hold.
There is no view but that of a dimly lantern which burns against the swallowing darkness, kept in tent’s corner as his father sleeps & as his mother has become preoccupied with own uncle’s nightly ventures. Fear tugs at the soles of his boots & climbs its way to his vision, it is dark. He is groggy.
Woken so suddenly, breath hitched & throat parched, heart beating at a tempo which only his worst fears recognize. A nightmare– how common place. Yet, still, how very, very frightening. The daunting dreams that drown him in a reality of which he knows, a reality in which he has LIVED & they grasp at him, giving sight only to which he has experienced & forcing him to see such tragedy befall him, befall them, over & over & over again. How cruel it is, the way the human mind works.
Still, he finds himself awoken, last dream deeming itself worse than the others… such events held only in his worst of nights & he craves the reassurance that his father still breathes beside him. That his heart still beats & that he has not left not once, but twice. Quiet, quiet, he hushes himself, controlling every movement as to not disturb the peace that greets own blood’s slumber. He wishes not to wake him, yet he cannot bear the isolation of his mind, so he would whisper so barely audible, laced with a sliver of hope that he would not hear him.
“ Father…”
it is in the dead of night that child remembers he is an adult , perhaps not fully , perhaps not enough to rip faux - innocence from hands or shatter childlike facade that he wears like armor , bouncing tragedy & trauma off laughter & smiles like arrows off tempered metal --- but it is something , it is enough , enough to get stomach churning , the blood on his hands so much more vivid than it is in the sunlight. ‘ do you relish in destruction , or in knowing you are not the one being destroyed ? ’ asks a voice in the back of his head & eyes shut , hands clenching loosely ; he’d rather not think about it , how monsters are both born & created and he , trauma - torn corpse of an individual , has become the latter.
‘ it’s alright , it’s alright ! it’s fun , right ? this is normal , right ? ’ & if you asked the general populace , they’d say no , of course not , there is no joy to be found in the way bodies fall , in the memories that flash o’er the backs of closed eyelids , a child pleading no , pleading please , whilst own blood drips from fresh wounds & onlookers stare with resigned indifference. but if you ask him . . . yes , why not , and he breathes a little easier , clinging onto forced , joyous belief with hands like a vice ---------- he misses lissa , just her presence something soothing , but he is submission incarnate , gentle & violent in the same vein and he gives himself to insomnia willingly , knowing full well she will know his closed eyes meant nothing , knowing full well his laughter carries with it fatigue.
soft spoken words break him away from crimson - tainted reverie , eyes fluttering open and still is he for but a moment ‘fore body is pushed upward , smile presented as it always is , false merriment flooding irises. how strange a word that is still , ‘ father ’ --- it is used to address him & there is a brief feeling of guilt in that ; how unfortunate a boy to share blood with something so ‘ strange ’ & ‘ deranged ’ ( yes --- he hears what he is called , to his face and behind his back )
❛ hmm ~ ? it’s pretty late , isn’t it ~ ? ❜ not a chastisement in any regard , but merely a statement disguised as inquiry ; how unfortunate that child should share the same wakefulness in the light of the moon. ❛ are you having trouble sleeping , owain ? ❜
A rather boringly peaceful day– a tactician gifted with talents for his position, being put in charge of tactical plans for an army that he could easily lead into its downfall if he so chose to. How pathetic it was to see a flock of sheep blindly be slaughtered by their own blindness– with the false security of the world’s peaceful state in this current second of time, when their enemy was right under their noses.
But unlike other days like these, fleeting by without a second thought before plunging into another battle clashing between forces, he had been called by someone. A young man from his own land and kingdom, peculiar with some darker humor covered up by the eerie smile that he seemed to wear constantly. Although nothing necessarily seemed to bother him, he wanted to know what Henry wanted him for– the least he could do with spare time he was sitting in his tent.
Quietly peeking through another tent set up in camp, where he had been called to, a rather dull voice slipped out of his throat, hints of confusion on why he was even called on in the first place. ‘ Um- ’ he spoke gently, clearing his voice before speaking properly.
‘ Did you need me for something, Henry? ’
magic is a curious little thing , ever growing , ever able to be shaped , a lifetime lasting an eternity still lacking the time necessary to understand all of it ( & blessed is he who is not so unfortunate as to live that long , the prospect of eternal life for one such as he --- terrifying ) but in the fleeting time that individual possesses whilst ‘pon his planet , whilst existing , he learns what he can. there is always more , always , & while he dabbles not beyond hexes , curses , spells meant to destroy & to harm , there are always new ways to go about such things , as he has learned o’er the years --- & tonight ! tonight he has been learning such new spells , a hex wherein one’s body should combust from the inside out , then explode --- !
‘ that’s rather painful isn’t it ~ ? ’
that’s okay ; it doesn’t last long , he doesn’t think ; maybe they won’t feel it at all.
maybe it’s alright if it isn’t him. now you know that’s a lie
❛ i’ve been learning a new hex ; do you wanna see it ~ ? it’s a little messy ahaha , but maybe i can get the pieces smaller ? ❜ less clean up then , if someone could turn to particles no bigger than a spec of dust --- not that he really cares , of course , grotesqueries something he is quite accustomed to , near relishes in , in morbid familiarity , macabre comforts. ❛ i’ll need a test subject , of course ~ it’d be okay if i used one of our soldiers , right ~ ? ❜
it isn’t a crime to walk into the smudge
of forest asking, have you ever felt?
No.
The trees do not think you are crazy.
The trees do not consider you at all.
— Paige Ackerson-Kiely, from “Some Reasons for the Woods,” My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer
ok y’all remember how like two days ago i was cryin in the Least Formal manner abt henry’s coping mechanisms & childish nature well here’s a proper(TM) hc post abt it strap in m’dudes here we go i don’t promise it’ll make sense but y’know i will Try
first & foremost , i wanna point out specific traits that henry possesses and then i’ll like... go into depth abt them or whatever but alrighty :
01. finding jokes / amusement in everything , even if it is not appropriate to do so
02. a desire to please / obey based on a perceived reward system ,
even if that reward is simply an absence of punishment
03. a fear of pain despite desiring death ( & an exciting death at that )
04. the idea of ‘ power ’ vs ‘ weakness ’ / a closer look @ certain fears
k so here we go . . .
first off , if we look at henry’s childhood it was not a happy place. the closest thing they had to positive companionship was animals , the love of other human beings a foreign affair from their earliest memories. even prior to the institution , things were not good & i imagine , that like most children , henry tried very hard ( at first ) to gain their parents’ love & affections ( there’s some quote that goes like . . . ‘ mother / parents are god in the eyes of a child ’ & i think that held true for some length of time ?? they v much wanted to please these beings who brought them into the world bc they were , despite it all , very precious to henry ) via being a ‘ good child ’ i.e. trying to do as told , regardless of what it was. while i don’t believe their parents simply dumped them in the woods ( the translations from jpn supports seem to suggest they did ‘ raise ’ them ) i do believe they were heavily neglectful , most likely not people who wanted a child at all but got stuck with one nonetheless. there was nothing henry could have done to make their parents fond of them , but ?? that is not a concept they will recognize until later.
so with that said , from that henry started to learn this idea of ‘ people pleasing ’ that they address a few times ( the most prominent ones that come to mind are their comment about ‘ if you don’t trust me , you can just kill me ’ & some comment that is made to robin about how the only order they won’t obey is ‘ don’t fight ’ , but i’ll address that a bit later on ) and the concept that they didn’t matter particularly , just the whims of those around them , something that was further expanded upon in the institution they were sent to.
from what henry says , we can assume it was not just an orphanage or place to house ‘ unruly ’ children. they mention spikes being on the floor & in a conversation with olivia they state ‘ It was in this institution my parents put me in, right~ there were quite severe punishments for kids who didn't listen -- that kind of stuff happened~ Now that was painful~ ’ which i am positive instilled in them a sense of obedience , further than that which their parents began. if you acted out , if you failed to do as told , if you fucked up in any capacity , you were subjected to extreme pain & near death experiences ( & frankly , i’m sure henry did watch some kids die while they were there ; accidents happen & no one seemed to care very much for these kids ) and henry has , without a doubt , been subjected to such pain themselves. which is where this idea of pain = bad , death = good likely begins to stem from as well ; pain is a prolonged thing , a very bad thing , a sign that you had done something wrong & it could hurt for very long periods of time , whereas death , they began to see , was instant release. to some degree , they were likely jealous of the kids that died , because at least then those kids were no longer suffering , never having to feel pain again. from this whole experience a lot of shit stemmed , not just that.
beyond just this concept of pain is bad , death is good , & a need to do as told , they were forced to normalize certain things at a very young age , those things being death , murder , blood , violence , pain , punishment . . . etc , etc. essentially , very bad things. being a kid , ‘ normalizing ’ them meant . . . not making them a ‘ comfort ’ per-se , but making them familiar in a way that wasn’t negative. to fear or hate them would have been too much for them to handle , so it had to become a game or an ‘ okay thing ’ & as such , henry’s fascination with war / blood / death became a coping mechanism , finding familiarity in such things as it was all they ever really knew and were unable to think of it was ‘ bad ’ ( on some level they are , of course , aware that it is not. a good thing. but to face that prospect is to face a lot of other shit that a child simply wasn’t prepared to do & that now , as an adult , henry is somewhat incapable of doing at present time bc their mind sort of ... stuck ??? them ??? in a child - like state because maturing was too difficult in the given environment ) and to a child if something isn’t bad then it must be good --- right ? thus comes the commentary of ‘ i love war ’ & a general chill attitude toward really morbid shit. but , beyond that , i think what they really appreciate is that they have this very familiar situation and where they are currently , they are not a victim of it. which brings me to point 04.
henry is not sadistic , in the sense that they do not find joy in the suffering of others & even go so far as to promise quick & painless deaths to people important to them b/c they understand that pain is a terrifying , awful thing. however. they do enjoy being in a position where they are ‘ powerful ’ i.e. in a position where they can inflict these situations vs. having to merely take them , though i think they vastly prefer like . . . giving quick deaths vs. painful ones , when they are on the battle field.
essentially henry is a scared child ( ‘ child ’ they’re an adult but y’know. childlike mentality. ) who doesn’t want to be hurt anymore but only recognizes carnage as a ‘ norm ’ & takes comfort in the fact that they now have a position in it wherein they may die , but they’re not a victim. they feel safer in this familiar environment , the way things are now. fear , i think , is a big motivator for them and they see a lot of things in a . . . not necessarily ‘ black and white ’ sort of sense , but a. ‘ if this is a thing then x isn’t ’ sort of ?? way ?? and there are exceptions and henry is capable of having in depth conversations abt it but like . . . they don’t want to lmao ?? not if ur gonna argue w/ them. so there’s that.
but that also brings me back to the ‘ don’t tell me not to fight ’ point from earlier. what i personally take that to mean is like . . . ‘ dont tell me to sit back and be hurt / let someone be hurt ’ bc that is , in a way , playing the victim again. being powerless in this sort of a situation. while henry is a very submissive person , they desperately don’t want to be hurt or put a helpless situation ever again. there’s a difference between people pleasing and letting yourself be put into a place where you’re actively suffering & can’t do anything about it.
oh yeah also henry is aware they’re coping lmao ,,, they know they use laughter and smiles and childlike behavior and the normalization of fucked up shit to get by , they know it’s not. actually ok. as seen in one of the convos they have w/ ... owain or inigo idr which rn but it’s one of them. so they’re capable of mature convos. abt this sort of shit but they : ) don’t like to have them : ) as much as they love oversharing that’s the sort of stuff u gotta like... fish out of them & they gotta be close to you before you get to the bottom of that can of worms so.
anyway i’m not sure this post had much of a point and it’s a bit all over the place and maybe unclear in some spots but this is how i chose 2 spend a solid hour of my life so here we are...
like ,, look ,, i’m js ,,
how fucked is it that henry’s response to the extreme emotional / physical trauma that they experienced as a child is basically 2 like . . . lock themselves in the mental state of a kid b/c they weren’t sure how else to deal w/ it lmao . . . they couldn’t grow , they had no room to do that ?? they couldn’t mature ‘ properly ’ in their given environment so their brain was like ‘ ok ’ & they just . . . behave / think like a child now , permanently. NOT 2 SAY THEY’RE NOT CAPABLE OF LIKE. mature decisions or adult concepts ofc bc they are not a child but their entire childlike facade is a coping mechanism built to endure the horrors they were exposed 2 at a young age and that’s so sad to me ???
like . . . they find violence & grotesqueries amusing in the same fashion that a child who was constantly exposed to that sort of thing would ? like they had to make it sort of . . . a ‘ game ’ of sorts , or a ‘ normalize ’ it , make it okay and familiar b/c otherwise how . . . would they have been able 2 ?? handle ?? all the shit they went thru ?? them and the ppl around them being abused to near the point of death & one day i’ll write a proper meta on how their charade of innocence and childlike behavior is a coping mechanism and how their love of war and whatnot plays into that but in the meantime //clenches fist.
❛ oh ... ? --- aha , is this just for me ? wow ~ i didn’t expect this at all ~ ❜ the mirthful laughter of a child bubbles out from base of throat as gift is accepted , ❛ thank you , robin. oh , but i bet you expect something from me too , right ~ ? hmmm . . . oh , i know ! what if i showed you a fun hex ~ ? ❜ ‘ fun ’ is objective , of course , but that’s not really the point.
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