#fred nightray

[sun-warmth]

BEHEADED.... Mochizuki might be fascinated by decapitation... 😳

[frederic-nightray]

Did any of your younger siblings seek comfort in your presence when they were faced with night terrors, Lord Frederic?

frederic-nightray:

[OOC: For Nightray Week, drop a character from the Nightray Dukedom in my Ask and Fred will answer them. Last one!]

***

My time in my childhood home has a significant disconnect with my siblings: Claude was not born until I was ten years old, and all of my subsequent brothers and sister came soon after. My years at Dodgson’s Point came soon after Claude’s birth, and then, came the finalization of my… particular training skills… and subsequent education in diplomatic politics and international affairs. I was twenty-five years old by the time Elly was brought into the world—old enough for my youngest brother to be my own son (and more than once together we had been mistaken as such).

As a result, for much of my life I have felt like an only child, and my younger siblings more like my peers at school, perhaps, or children of a close colleague to foster and observe, rather than knowing that they are of my blood as well. I maintained my own household and kept to my own affairs once I came of age, traveling as part of my duties both familial and national.

Perhaps because a majority of my life has been spent in this manner, my perspective of my siblings is unintimate or distant in ways that I think they do not share amongst themselves. I know, all in all, I am meandering around a simple question: whether I was there for Claude, Ernest, Vanessa, or Elliot when they needed some sort of… familial comfort. My father, I understand all too well, can be a cold and disciplined man, and Mother, while kinder and gentler, was a busy nobleman and wife of an esteemed and powerful man, which left her duties as a caretaker more in the hands of nannies and governesses—such is the ways of nobility, understand. I preface this all so you do not judge them, nor judge me.

I was not there for my brothers and sister in ways that smaller folk may be. I hold no memories of everyday playfighting or carousing. I did not take them to festivals or national celebrations. I was not there during childish arguments or squabbles.

I was present for all of their birthdays and name days and Coming of Age ceremonies (except Elly’s, which won’t be for another few years) — and with four siblings that is quite a lot. I was (or plan to be) there for every graduation ceremony from Lutwidge. I taught Vanessa how to ride and gave Elly his first wooden sword. I was by Claude’s side when he told Father he would not undergo the Raven’s Trial and I pulled Ernest out of that underground gambling ring before he had sunken too far.

But night terrors? As far as I can recollect, none of my siblings suffered them except Claude, after he was forced (he may have volunteered to go, but I will always think of it as coerced) to undergo his Trial. He suffered a great deal after he entered the Gate, and remained bedridden with his injuries for months. The psychological scars were worse and lasted much longer.

I was at home for the hunting season (grouse is always better in the north than the south where I resided), and hadn’t noticed trouble with Claude until my second week in, when I heard screaming from the west wing. Instinctually, I investigated to see the doctor emerge from his rooms.

"The demon bird haunts him," our old family physician explained with a shake of his head. "I’ve given him some laudanum to ease his mind."

I never approved those sort of drugs. The next day, I asked Nessa during our morning ride how long this has been happening.

"A long time, Fred," she replied, somewhat guilty, as if she had been to blame for his troubles. Nessa gazed off toward the hills with a contemplative air. "Father pretends he doesn’t have them," she said in a quiet tone. "And Ernest teases him. He thinks that it proves Claude’s coward nature. I don’t," she added with a sigh. "Claude believes him, though."

The next evening, I did what an older brother would do: show up at his suite with a bottle of cognac and a box of cigars. “I’m in need of good company,” I told him, “there has been a lack in decent society in my time away.”

Claude scoffed (he always had a reluctance to socialize with me, since I am the polar opposite of him in many respects), but I elbowed my way past his door and settled before the parlor fireplace. “Your studies in history going well?” I ventured, knowing that would pique his interest the most (oh, Claude, the squirrelly, diligent scholar!). Sure enough, he delved into the lore of the country and his investigation into the relationship between Sablier and the Abyss (“Father’s also asking about this lately,” he boasted), until late into the night. He excused himself to bed, but, oddly enough, allowed me to continue to read through his collection while he retired.

I stayed, sipping my drink and flipping through the latest chapters about a supposed bloody lapin from the mountains when the shouts were heard. I peered around the doorway to see him muttering in bed. Night terrors for a man of age would be shameful to admit, true, but very real nonetheless (I have known soldiers with these same experiences—they referred to this as “battle fatigue”).

In cases such as these, I have learnt it was best not to wake the subject suffering, but to wait until they wake themselves, and sat by the bed until, sure enough, Claude stood up and even then, his eyes darted about and his frame shuddered in ways that I knew he was still in the dream, though his eye remained open.

Some minutes passed with no sound but his gasped breathing and then, he leaned forward, the sweat profuse all over his body, and he made a sound much like retching. He pressed the heels of both hands to his eyes and then, turned and moaned, before I placed my hand upon his shoulder, whispering, “Claude, Claude…”

Wide dark eyes flickered and registered my presence. “Wha…”

"I’m Fred. Your brother," I assured him, feared that the demons were still in his view. "I am your brother. I’m here."

A moment passed, and he paled entirely before collapsing. I wondered if I did the right thing, having stayed and thought to ring the bell for the doctor or fetch the bottle of laudanum from the bedside table, until Claude’s thin hand clutched my sleeve.

A strange stirring in my heart overcame me, and let him grab hold of me, and grip the front of my jacket with both hands and in a burst of emotion, bury his dark head into my front. Shaking sobs came from him, and I remained for a long time in this way, holding my arms around my poor brother and feeling the rasping of his breath and his voice run through me.

Much of the night passed and the sky outside was slowly turning shades of gold and red before he spoke anything more. “I am…. a fool,” he croaked. “A fool and a coward and utterly weak and helpless.”

"Brother-"

"I shouldn’t have come back." A dead tone. "I should have let the Raven kill me. Then Father wouldn’t have been shamed to see me again."

My hold tightened. “None of us should have come back,” I replied. “But we did. I did. So what are you going to do about that?”

Claude didn’t reply. I smiled grimly, knowing how heavy the lie weighed in my chest (I didn’t care about the damned Raven anymore—I moved on. But would it be possible to tell Claude that and have him believe me? Or at that moment, had I unlocked a part of my schoolboy self who would always believe himself to be inadequate, no matter how much I have achieved since then?)

"A Nightray is never useless," I told him. Dawn had fully flushed out her rosy cheeks by that point and sleep was befalling my younger brother once more. I slowly disentangled myself from him and eased him back onto the bed. Tucking the sheets around him like a nursemaid, I told him, "We will always need you."

Later that day, well beyond noon, I saw Claude again in the library. He had his nose buried in a history book, as usual, but he did lower the volume to share a look, unspoken, as I entered.

I only pray he had taken my message to heart.

[tiniestdormouse]

[ Could you do something for Ernest, fic wise? ; v ; ]

For Nightray Week, drop a character from the Nightray Dukedom in my Ask and I will write a three-line fic about them.This ficlet is connected to Fred's recollection here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7785975/19/Life-and-Times-of-Lord-Frederic-Wolfgang-Nightray***The fifteen year-old youth was concealing a slim knife into his boot when he heard the footsteps behind him; Ernest knew that no weapons were allowed during the Raven's Trial, but after hearing stories of his eldest sibling's failure for years, he always thought it was because Frederic lacked his own line of defense; he quickly rolled down his trouser leg before the blade could be spotted. "Ernest." A firm hand on his shoulder that the blond shook off, but Fred continued, "Claude refused to enter, and you still have a choice--""Claude's a coward, Fred, and I won't let anyone else call me that," Ernest replied, snapping his head up to face his oldest brother and watched the storm-clouds roll over his brother's brow ("Fred knows that he's a failure too," thought Ernest bitterly, echoes of his school friends' laughter in his ears), and he left before Fred could convince him otherwise, assuring himself that the cold steel against his leg and the revolver at the small of his back would safeguard him (he would be wrong).

[frederic-nightray]

Any memories of when your sister was a baby, Frederic?

[OOC: For Nightray Week, I’m bringing Fred back and having him answer questions in his Ask Box]Many, oh I have many of my spitfire little sister. But to properly know her, I suppose we must delve into her origins.Nessa is what the old folklore calls the "moon angel's child" and Mother named her accordingly. The root of her name comes from Esther, meaning "star" in the ancient tongue, and the suffix "van" means "of" -- hence, Vanessa is, literally, the child of the stars, or the young offspring of the moon itself, according to ancient mythology. As we know, when the moon angels gave birth to the stars, they were called "wee vanessas", which is also how we come to the well-known lullaby "Good-night Nessa" (a song that my own wee Vanessa loved to hear over and over again).Before Vanessa was born, Mother weaved a spell for her birth. Now, Mother is a superstitious type. She believed in quaint rustic folk spells and old wives' tales linked to her childhood out in the the country estates, far from the sophistication that was brought upon her marriage into the Nightray family. Father always indulged her whimsical pendants and "bush witch" remedies. After Ernest, I recall as a youth how she started a regime that promised her next child would share her gender (after three boys, I suspected she wanted more docile progeny!) She drank the prescribed tonics and herbs and prayed to the proper gods; though I was at Dodgson's Point as a cadet at the time, during holidays I recalled her basking out on the veranda in the summer night's moonshine (for the angels of the moon were feminine, and she wanted their touch to bless her womb).During her pregnancy, Mother was bedridden with pains for several months. "The babe kicks like a stallion," pronounced the family physician, "I refrain from acting dismissive towards the natural arts, Lady Nightray, but I doubt the moon's heard your prayers."Mother snapped fiercely, "She kicks like a Nightray--damn you!" (Mother rarely swears or throws a fit, so I suspect that bit of the fiery pain caused during Nessa's gestation transplanted the seeds of her future self).Dear Nessa was a winter child, born on the longest night of the year. Like with Claude and Ernest, Father was there in the room next door, pacing and sweating, and I was there as well -- it is cowardly for a man to be driven off by the screams of his beloved woman when she is committed in doing a female's greatest duty toward her family.The midwife emerged after many hours, a satisfied smile on her face: "Angels bless her," she announced. "She's a star babe."And that describes Nessa perfectly: small and fierce and bright, she is, and she will burn and burn even during the darkest of hours.

[frederic-nightray]

Any thoughts and opinion on Duke Rufus Barma, Lord Frederic?

[OOC: For Nightray Week, I’m bringing Fred back and having him answer questions in his Ask Box]Barma, that bouncing buffoon? He is peevish, paranoid, and, worst of all, of foreign extraction. He runs Pandora with a closed fist. One department doesn't know what any of the others are doing and the establishment is filled with incompetence to the gills.

Speaking as a military man, the whole organization could use a straightening out from top to bottom. I suppose, being part of the... shadow division... I have my own biases at play and information that I do not have the freedom to elaborate upon. But, for the record, I disapprove of the limitations Barma places because of his own greedy preoccupation with keeping his little fiefdom inside the organization alive.

Plus, the man has dreadful fashion sense. 

[insaniae-amoris]

Duchess Nightray, what do you love about each of your children?

What an interesting question… Nonetheless, the elder Nightray was more than happy to be able to talk about her beloved children so willingly.

"Well, for Fred, it would be his devoted side to the family. He was always too worked up in studies or busy to really settle down and have children, an inspiration to some, whilst a simple workaholic for others.    As for Claude.. he seems to keep himself to himself. I know he fears his Father greatly, yet with every scolding, he was always stayed so strong and stern, took every harsh word and simply brushed it off like dirt from his shoes all during these scoldings, though I knew he would silently look over his mistakes in his chambers shortly after. No man can stay well built forever, and that’s what being human means. I can honestly see him with a beautiful wife one day, and a lovely family.   Ernest. The boy can be charming, which is one way to go about life. I think the most honest thing about him is the way he keeps himself maintained. He loves Elliot dearly, that I’m certain of, and it keeps me at peace to know if something ever happened to me, or my husband, Ernest would always take care of his little brother. No matter what the deatils may entail.  Gilbert and Vincent, although they are not my own, I would have liked to know them better. Gilbert in particular seemed to bring something of a spark of honour when he became contracted to Raven. Yet, with everything we’ve accomplished, nothing was ever really taken seriously until then. But Vincent… He was in a world of his own, and it is a large regret of mine that I was never there as a Mother figure for them. Maybe if I had done something sooner, they wouldn’t have left.  Vanessa, dearest Vanessa. She is a strong woman, so striking and bright. Somedays I see my younger self in her: the freedom she possesses, the need for equality. Then other days I see her Father in her, the bitterness she holds towards the Vessalius is great indeed, it’s saddening to me. She’s like a flower which slowly wilts away whenever she becomes enraged. And just like every flower, she would soon bud again. Powerful and beautiful.    And finally, my beloved Elliot. We all thought he’d be the one to obtain Raven in the end, but we never really gave him the chance. There are many things my son does which both thrills me and upsets me. But if I’m speaking honestly; I admire his motive. He does not walk the same path as us, no, he walks his own. He knows what he wants, he doesn’t need to be held back, but I, as a foolish Mother, I am holding him back— we all are. Burdened with being the heir to the household. Yes, there are many things he could have become, and I would have been so proud of him no matter what the outcome. But I didn’t let such things happen… and he grew up too fast before I even realised my mistakes.

They all grew up too fast…”

[frederic-nightray]

((ooc: I wanted to say hellow to all of the new followers here the last few weeks! I'm especially pleased that people have taken to Fred. A brief note that this is a writing blog only -- no RPing -- but people are welcome to submit an Ask. I started this as a side project for my fanfiction, and all of Fred's memoirs are collected here.) This tumblr has been on haitus for awhile as life had gotten the best of me, but I'll try and pick this up again. ^^ ))

[tiniestdormouse]

Vanessa

OTP: Hmmm, I don’t really ship her with anyone, maybe because she isn’t seen much in the manga interacting with other characters as much.BrOTP: Vanessa & Elliot, when they were kids. They had the type of sibling relationship that was full of playful one-upmanship. Once Fred died, and Ernest and Claude left to find the Headhunter, though, Vanessa was the one who had to act more like a “mistress of the household” and Bernice started saddling her with obligations she never wanted nor cared for once she graduated from Latowidge. In turn, she became more resentful of her brothers — one, for not being allowed to go with Ernest and Claude on the search, and two, with Elliot who seemed to be prioritizing his friendship with Leo and his other obligations as a nobleman that excluded her.When Ernest and Claude were killed, Bernice became emotionally crippled in her grief, and with Barnard  away with his own secret Chain studies and Pandora duties, Vanessa had to both balance maintaining the household and taking care of her mother. The fact that Elliot wasn’t expected to help, being trained to be the next “heir” only increased her resentment more. At the same time, both of them realized this emotional distance and tried to overcome it, but the emotional wounds they both suffered ended up dividing them further. It was easier for Elliot to focus on his studies and his swordsmanship than to recognize how broken his home life was becoming. It was easier for Vanessa (out of both need and self-sufficient pride) to bury her feelings about the unfairness of her situation, which only resulted in her lashing out in stress-related tantrums, usually whenever Elliot came home for “not being there.” This only ended up making the rift grow. Only in their final moments together did they start to mend the breaks in their friendship… but this proved to be too little, too late.

Damn, I made myself sad writing all of that.

I also think that Vanessa and Fred were especially close to each other too, but all of that is my head canon. 

I can see Vanessa & Sharon getting along, but then again, we never see them together at all in the manga.

OT3: None, really. NOTP: Yura/Vanesa. He may creep on her, but she’s totally boot him in the face for it.