I managed to be an evil little lad and hacked into the main frame and so I've got my privileges back!!!!!! Just have to make sure my dad doesn't notice
WAR IS OVER (war was for like 5 days Or so but it felt like so long(
sensei: write about a topic you like (concerning japan). i don't want to know the history or things you googled, i want you to tell me what you like about it.
me: cool i have a bunch of things i like this'll be easy
me: *writes about why it's important to be aware of your own biases while viewing history through a modern lens and also cools women with swords*
Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien, Sir Damien/Rilla, Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla
Characters: Sir Damien, Lord Arum, Rilla, Sir Absolon
Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, prisoner/guard dynamic, Dehumanization, (which feels like a weird word to use for a nonhuman person bUT. it’s what i got.), Despair, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, (EVENTUALLY!!!! it’ll take a while), Captivity, Suicidal Thoughts, (that will be a theme throughout. inescapable in this particular fic. alas.), Eventual Romance, (Yes the dynamics in this one are fucked. honestly i’m kinda Stretching my limits these days.), (having fun with it. fucking around. it’s fine.), Recovery, (eventually), Self-Reclamation
Chapter Summary: Ongoing attempts at kindness.
Chapter Notes: oh look we're back here again! in my head, rent free, et cetera. Chapter specific warnings for suggestions of torture, suicidal thoughts, ongoing themes of dehydration/malnutrition, arum's general state of mind.... and as usual, let me know if i missed anything i should warn for!
~
"Years," Damien says, and Rilla's heart twists at the way his voice shakes. "Years, Rilla, no one has fed him or given him water in years and still he would not accept- I could see it, in his eyes, how terribly he wanted- but-"
"Breathe."
Damien huffs, sucking in a perfunctory breath and hissing it out between his teeth, and then he shakes his head.
"I don't understand. I don't know what to do. What else to do, besides... you called it courtesy. Basic courtesy. Perhaps so, but- it isn't enough, is it? It is barely anything, and yet it is still, rather obviously, far more than he can believe."
Rilla exhales slowly, wishing that Damien had waited for her to be done with her mixing before he started in, but understanding why he couldn't keep from exploding about this. For now, she keeps whisking over the heat. As soon as the mixture thickens, she can set it aside, but until then-
"He just needs time, Damien," she says, trying to be soothing. "He has no reason to trust your motives, you know that. He's been in there for so, so long, and even before that, I'm sure he had his own part in the war, in some way. Why would he trust a human?"
"I don't understand," Damien hisses again. "Not trusting- not trusting a human, not trusting a knight, not trusting me- that is all well and good, that is to be expected. He would be well served to never trust one of our species for however long he lives, but- but what could I possibly do to him in such a state? How could anyone make that worse? Why deny himself an offering of kindness?"
"Pity," Rilla says, glancing sideways towards Damien to see him flinch again. "He called it pity, you said."
"He... he did," Damien admits, pressing his fist against his sternum and biting his lip for a moment. "He did. I did not mean it as such, truly. I only..."
"I know." She sighs, decides fuck it, and moves the mixture from above the boiling water to set wrong however it pleases so she can move to put her arms around Damien's shoulders instead, pressing her lips to his temple. "Look. He's been hurt . Neither of us know the full extent of it, but it's still pretty obvious. He's been hurt a lot. He's actively in pain. Of course he's going to expect more of the same."
"But water ," Damien says, or- half-whines, if she's being honest. "It was only water! What harm could I possibly do him by offering water? What harm could I even intend to do to him like that? It isn't as if I would poison him; he knows he isn't to be allowed to- to-" he hesitates, swallows awkwardly, and then shakes his head. "I don't see what he could possibly fear, from that. And- pride against perceived pity? Is that truly what kept him from accepting-"
"I'm not in his head, Damien," Rilla says, pulling back. "I don't know for sure what he might be thinking, what might be going on in there. But-" she pauses, worries her lip between her teeth for a moment. "But I think if I were in his shoes-" Damien flinches, badly, but she ignores that and persists, "I think that it would be... hard. To accept pity or kindness. What good would it do?"
"What- what good would it do?!" Damien echoes, incredulous, and then he steps back enough to start pacing, working off some of his keyed-up energy by wringing his hands. "Kindness- the good a kindness does is its own end, what other-"
"He's gone this long without any," she says, more firmly. "Water. Kindness. Whatever you might give him. If he takes it- then what? It's an admission that he's been broken down by this."
"But that isn't-"
"Would you give enemy captors the satisfaction of knowing that they'd made you desperate?" Rilla tries, not really liking this line of thinking any more than Damien does, judging by the way his stance goes stiff. "For anything they might offer you? Or- what if he did take it, and then he gets to-" keep it together, don't tear up about it, c'mon- "to taste fucking water for the first time in years, yeah? He gets that, you give it to him. Okay. And then it becomes just another thing that you could take away from him again afterwards."
Damien pales. "Saint Damien grant me your Tranquility," he murmurs in a breath, and then, "Do you think that's why he... truly, do you think-"
"I'm not in his head, Damien," she says again, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm just... extrapolating. Making educated guesses. Thinking about how I'd feel. Do you think anyone else- anyone else at all has offered him anything close to kindness in the entire time he's been stuck down there?"
Damien pauses, and then his mouth twitches, not quite a smile. "Well. You, I suppose," he murmurs, and Rilla startles into a laugh.
"Fine, fine. I don't feel like I did that much, but... fine."
Damien gives her a look, but doesn't say anything else about it, his expression shifting quickly back to uncertainty and worry.
"I... I don't know what to do," he says, squeezing his eyes closed. "I don't know what's right, anymore. I don't know what to do."
Rilla reaches to brush her fingers against his thumb, and Damien obliges and takes her hand, still frowning, still not looking. She squeezes, then.
"Keep trying?" she says, an odd note of pleading in her own voice. Damien's eyes flutter back open at the sound of it, clearly surprised to hear her uncertain. It isn't something that happens all that often, to be fair. "If it's all we can do for now, to try to be kind... keep trying? Will you?"
His expression softens. "Of course I will. Of course. I... I am rather more stubborn that that, I think you know." He breathes a little more easily, his brow furrowing for a moment with thought. "If he cannot yet see a kindness and believe it... I will simply need to provide him with more examples. Proof, that I will not offer something only to pull it away in cruelty. Such things take time; of course they do. The painful lessons took their own time, I am sure, to bury their claws within him. I will give him the time, the space to see that this will not be the same."
Relief rinses through her, oddly. She hadn't realized that she'd been so worried that this stumbling block would be more that Damien was willing to deal with, that he'd take the opportunity to backtrack to how things used to be. Maybe that wasn't fair of her, but- it's not like she controls the feelings. "I'll keep trying, too." she says. "I don't want to... to draw attention, or anything, that'd be too dangerous, jeopardize anything else we might want to try down the line, but..."
"You can give him things that I cannot," Damien murmurs, looking away. "And perhaps... perhaps it will be easier, for him. To accept that you will not hurt him. You aren't another knight." He pauses, eyes going distant and troubled. "It was a knight that put him there, after all."
Rilla thinks-
Again, she thinks fuck it, and she gives a cautious smile as she says, "Yeah. But- but maybe, someday- maybe someday a knight will get him out of there, too."
Damien shoots her a look, vaguely alarmed- if not terrified, ah- maybe that was too much too early to say, even if she was thinking it, but-
He drops his eyes, brow furrowing thoughtfully, and he doesn't reject the thought.
Maybe, she thinks again. Someday.
~
Arum thought-
(Hoped? Worried? Sat awake thinking about and had at least two dreams about?)
Arum thought, perhaps, that the knight (Sir Damien) might not return, after the last incident. He doesn't know what the creature wants from him, but- if Arum was not going to make it easy, whatever it is, he thought that perhaps he might disappear. Find an easier target.
He returns the next day, however, as if nothing has happened. Or- not quite as if nothing happened. He greets Arum the same as is his current habit, but with a different set to his jaw, a different glint in his eyes. He seems...
Arum is not certain. He doesn't know if he wants to devote the energy to trying to figure it out, either. What does it matter, what Sir Damien intends? The worst he could do is kill Arum, and that would solve the majority of Arum's problems, regardless. There is very little else he could do to hurt Arum in any way he cares about.
(And- perhaps Arum is stupid to think so, but... Damien does not seem the type for torture, either way. Unless he is a remarkably superb actor. In which case, Arum has far more worries than physical pain.)
Near the end of Damien's shift, he approaches again.
"Before I leave," he says in his lilting feather-soft voice. "I thought I should offer, again. Here."
He-
Idiot creature. He lifts out his flask again, offering precisely the same as he had done the day before.
Arum- takes a half second simply to feel baffled. Has this knight been thwacked around the helmet a few too many times? Does he not remember how this went the last time? But- Damien stands steady, hand out, offering. Arum-
Arum glares again, trying to project the feeling of we have been over this with just his eyes and the line of his sneer, and after a few heartbeats wherein Arum decidedly does not lift his hand to take the flask from the knight, Damien exhales. He drops his hand, and he- he shrugs, as if unbothered, and tucks the flask back against his side.
"Very well," he says, and then he nods. "Good evening, then. Until tomorrow."
And he walks away. Finds the door and trades with the next waiting guard. Disappears into the outer world again, leaving Arum alone with some other faceless, uncaring armor-bound oaf.
Which is... fine. Perfectly expected. He returns to the usual, then. Resting and thinking.
When he wakes from a dream of water on his tongue and a warm hand on his face, he does not even cry out.
