oh great angrytrout, will we ever get the giant oneshot aric character study🙏
fun fact i was ACTIVELY working on it as i got this ask lmao
it's been sitting untouched for months, but i've finally got the motivation to get back to it after having such a good time with the requests. i'm aiming to hit 25k words by the end of tomorrow!
a teaser for y'all finally since you've been waiting for so long. here's the beginning:
Love was for Evers.
Aric did not love his mother, and she did not love him. She had made him many false promises– that she would return, that someday he would see the world, that she cared about him, but she spared him that one lie, that false hope. She could not love him, she said, because love was for the weak. It was for moony-eyed princesses and bumbling princes, too blinded by romance to defend against the clever witches and mighty ogres who won in every tale she told him. He could not love her, nor anyone, because it was not in his nature. He was bound to be the greatest villain in his class; all the Everboys would tremble before him and the Evergirls would faint at a glance. His nature was Evil, the darkest kind. His soul was rotten, his heart black. He would strike fear into all who dared to cross him, would never show a weakness, would never have any to speak of, never let someone become one for him, and oh, how proud she was.
When he waited in the cave for a month, trapping lizards for food and etching snakes into the stone with his fingerglow, it was not because he loved her. It was not weakness that kept him in the dark, not daring to venture out in search of her, spending his days curled up with his back against the furthest walls. It was not weakness, because he did not love her, and it was not weakness, because he did not cry, he couldn’t, because that was not who he was. Not what he was. He could not love his mother, but he almost did. He almost let himself die, starving on a cave floor, waiting on his mother to come rescue him like a damsel in distress. How he hated her for leaving him now, how he hated her for not leaving him years ago, for making him think she would stay at all. He could not love her, he did not miss her, he was not weak. He was not looking for her when he stumbled out of the cave, blinded by the sunlight and the rush of wind on his face, he was hunting her. After two, maybe three, years in the Woods, alone, living like a wild beast, he had convinced himself.
Love was for the Mahut family, prissy and pristine, too pure of heart to resist fostering the poor orphan boy they found in the Woods. Father with a bright, crisp suit, brown hair slicked back, off to work for the King every day, home in the evening for a hearty dinner and for church on Sundays. Mother with a flour-covered apron, sweeping the kitchen floor, teaching him how to do his sums and help around the house and be a proper little gentleman. Son, soldier for the King of Foxwood, letting Aric have a turn with his bow when he came home for the holidays, telling him he was a good shot when he shot an apple clean off a tree. Daughter, dressed like a porcelain doll, hair in ringlets and fluffy white cat in her lap, storybook in her hands. The parents loved their children, the children loved their parents, they all loved the world and their neighbors and their little cat and their perfect home and perfect lives.
They made him sick, the way the mother would run to comfort her daughter over a scraped knee, the way they all held hands around the dinner table, the way the father would ruffle his hair and the cat would lie across his feet and the daughter would smile and ask him if he wanted to play. They repulsed him, he hated them, he didn’t dream about son or brother slipping from their lips. It was not in his nature to love, but it was in his nature to hate. He could hold a carving knife to their daughter’s throat, make her cry when she found the cat with its neck broken in the vegetable garden, watch as violet flames devoured their home. The rush that came from someone else’s tears, from someone begging him to stop, from flesh under his fists and blood under his nails, was better than the whisper of hope that came from the word family. He couldn’t love them, wouldn’t let himself try, wouldn’t let them see him bleed or cry or fall. They would not get the chance to abandon him, not like his mother did. They would not love him, they would fear him, he would watch them bleed and sob and beg like she would when he found her.