any ideas for first assistant librarian x roland? possibly post ruina after the near betrayal and the (fun) (horrible) complex feelings that leaves?
doesn’t have to be requited 🙂
I’m working through requests. Slowly. Also heads up for angst but nothing so bad it makes you drop to your knees and stare into the sky.
First Assistant Librarian x Roland Headcanons (Post Ruina. Sort of????)
As the very first assistant to awake in the library you were likely a very confused, albeit not entirely surprised individual. Working at Lobotomy Corporation had sort of taught you that the end is very rarely ever truly the end, and though you weren’t wholly privy to all the personal lives of your superiors.. You could deduce whatever Angela was plotting may mean your final slumber was not yet in reach.
But when waking up you were at least expecting to come face to face with the sephirah you can grow accustomed to.. Who was this guy?? Not that it was disappointing just mildly confusing. Sure, as you’d come to realize the Sephirah were no longer confined to machines but.. Pretty sure ‘Roland’ wasn’t on the roster.
Though this will take place post-ruina I want to give some context to the kind of bond and experiences shared from the beginning of it all. That includes your first impression to this allegedly bumbling and inconspicuous.. Guy.
Either way when you ask Angela she simply gives the answer that he stumbled in here. Strange.. but you don’t get paid enough to question it. Actually, you don’t get paid at all.
He’s easy to get along with though and unfamiliar with the history and workings of the Library itself, so it’s only natural that you’d end up getting along. His casual sort of demeanor while he walked in on.. Whatever the Library happened to be entertaining and refreshing.
And as the first assistant to wake up in this place, you served as a guide. He was the patron librarian of the sector, but at least in the beginning, you seemed to take on more of the duty of that title.
You were reliable and someone he could turn to about questions for the other patron librarians that he didn’t quite want to ask Angela about.. Especially considering how some had a distaste towards her. You didn’t have all the answers in the world, but you had a deeper understanding of the situation than he could.
Roland’s fresh take as a person, someone whose life before all this didn’t revolve around Lobotomy Corporation.. It intrigued you. It was only fair that your interest grew deeper in him, whatever way that may have manifested.
To be completely truthful he did, even then, consider you someone he was close to, or hoped to be. He could sympathize with your position, your fate being sealed in this Library from the very beginning, and maybe that made his feelings towards Angela even more complex.
Though you had come to accept this long ago, he found it difficult to understand himself. How could you be happy like this? He never explicitly brought it up, but there were suggestions and questions of how you could be… so satisfied with how your life came to be. He wanted to know how you could cope with this tragedy when he himself could not cope with his own.
He had always left his own life story vague and out of the picture. Most people in the city have a reason for doing that, you didn’t pry. But you were no stranger, far from it. There was something more, something ulterior perhaps in motive, you could tell even then.
He was no Grade 9 fixer. Perhaps Angela, with her lack of knowledge of the city outside of L. Corp was fooled, or the other Sefirot (outside of Gebura) who hailed from Nests.. But as you had known him the longest you could tell he was omitting much.
Now as we know with the course of the Library he did grow to genuinely enjoy and in ways be friends with Angela, however there was still a resentment and animosity he hid away. One that you found yourself catching glimpses of (not aimed at you of course).
You may ask if he’s alright, check in with him, but he’ll quickly brush it off. Something about it being a ‘slight irritation with Angela’s stubbornness, you know how it is’. It’s more than that, you can tell.
Truth be told, you want to reach out to Roland. You want him to be able to confide in you the same way that he has allowed you to confide in him. But that just wasn’t ever plausible, and it was a bit bittersweet. He didn’t allow himself to have this vulnerability be reciprocated, no, not now. Now while there was so much he was dealing with. Not when he inevitably planned to bring ruin to this place.
The day of the betrayal there was an overall sense of gloom and dread. A foreboding, his behavior was different. Something was different. You hadn’t ever quite been given the cold shoulder like this.
It does sting quite a lot. To see him willing to throw away all his time in the Library, to face him like that, to at last learn why he was here in the first place. He is consumed by a despair that you could not have done anything about. You never would have really been able to offer a remedy. You never would have been able to be an influential figure like you hoped.
You were made to do many difficult things in your time. But to have to come to terms with the fact that Roland may be no more after such a fight. That you may be no more.
The aftermath of the fight was a heavy one. Ultimately, he chose to forgive Angela. There was a relief to that, but facing him was tense. He did carry a guilt, especially for you because of his dishonesty.
You understand why he did what he did. Learning it all, what was of Angelica, he had a life before the Library, and it was torn away. You did too long, long ago. It’s easy to forget, however, when so much time has passed.
Was it selfish to want to be someone important to his life? Maybe you were a bit angry, but it was hard to be when you had a feeling that this would happen.
He doesn’t expect your reaction to be a positive one. You were overall who he was closest to after all, and besides Angela the one most impacted. If you had a contempt for him.. Well he’d have to face up to it.
But you didn’t. Sorrow for what could have never been, or never was, yes.. But no hatred. That was almost worse.
He knows that you time and time again had tried to lend help to him, to help him unburden his troubles. And time and time again you were shut down, dismissed. It must’ve felt one-sided.
He couldn’t let that happen, to let you happen, not when he was in mourning and so stuck in his head.
It’s awkward facing you. He sways back and forth ever so slightly, hand in pocket. He’s the first to speak.. Sort of? It’s more of a not-so-subtle throat clear and “..so..”. Look confronting people was never his strong suit okay.
It’s so familiar though, that stupidly endearing inability to make conversation when things are tense. Before you know it you’re talking again. But now you’re talking to who you can be certain is him.
You are not Angelica, you acknowledge that, but at last he is being open. He is allowing you to be someone crucial to him– allowing himself to have someone else crucial. It might not quite be the same, but it’s progress, and you respect him deeply.
No more keeping things from you, that much is an agreement. You learn more about his own experiences, and his own (poorly) explained feelings on the matter. There is a level of transparency you’d never had before.
And hey, even if you did not have a place in Roland’s history, you certainly do at his side in the future. However that may be, you have all of eternity to figure it out.












