prompt: Enantiodromia: What’s the most extreme personality shift they’ve gone through in their life?
during his first few months in the badlands, mikhail had been a naive little boy, and thought that his parents would save him eventually, and accept him for who he was, as they always have. yet his hope had been quickly robbed from him, and it can be argued that he grew up too quickly -- at first with blue, then with isana. the downhill spiral began when he had taken part in his first murder (one among many), and continued quickly. at one point, after his separation from blue and before finding the mentor that would teach both him and isana, he began to think of his body as nothing more than a tool that needed to be sharpened by all the horrible experiences he could survive -- and survive them all he did, until his naivety and kindness were buried under hatred and anger, and the latter emotions had fuelled his desire for revenge against those he thought conspired against him as a child.
prompt: Gorgonize: What distracts them when they’re trying to get things done?
{ answered }
prompt: Jasper: What would they be like as a parent?
cero, already acting as a father figure for isana’s son, would be a good father, if not one prone to being a little over-protective at times. he would give his child(ren) freedom to do what they wished, but to the extent that they would not be hurt too badly. often, he is patient, and would care for them in ways that he believes his father should have cared for him.
prompt: Noegenesis: Are there any topics that they love to think about deeply?
he doesn’t like thinking about anything too deeply. it’s not that he doesn’t have the mental capacity to -- it’s simply because whatever he thinks about too deeply would turn from a simple concern into a troubling anxiety that will keep him from functioning effectively until it is resolved.
prompt: Yonderly: What kinds of things do they think about when they zone out?
when cero does find himself zoning out, his thoughts often revolve around his current concerns: are jun and isana alright, and when can he see them again? (he should prepare some gift or another for jun -- not that the boy will appreciate it if it’s too intricate.) will he be given the chance to fight in the war? (will he come back from it if he does? who will he get to kill?) will he be given another assignment? (will it finally be his parents who have a price on their heads?) is sojin happy? (can he make her happy?)
so on and so forth.
prompt: Zugzwang: What’s the trickiest problem they face in their life right now?
prompt: Zugzwang: What’s the trickiest problem they face in their life right now?
at the moment, being an objective soldier when it comes to matters of the heart. caring for people is his forte, but caring for them deeply is also his weakness. cero finds it challenging to keep an emotional distance for those who seem to genuinely care for him, although he is well aware that it can backfire at a moment’s notice. he is extremely paranoid, and where the people he cares about are involved, even more so. the problem, then, is to keep his emotions in check, and make sure they don’t keep him from doing his job.
prompt: Galena: What it’s like to be in a relationship with them?
since cero has never been any kind of romantic relationship, he has no idea what it is to be someone’s ‘special other’. he’s only ever seen what people in love do together in public, and is well aware how sex works. cero would probably be in love with someone way before he realises what his feelings are. to be in a relationship with him, then, would mean that he’d just be even more protective of them. he would prioritise their wellbeing and happiness above his own, and care for them as long as he thinks he doesn’t overstep his boundaries. he sometimes gets jealous, but is more passive about it, rather than taking on his usual angry disposition. to be in a relationship with him, however, requires patience -- he finds it hard to understand that he, too, could be loved as deeply as he loves others.
prompt: Gorgonize: What distracts them when they’re trying to get things done?
sojin’s smile. surprisingly, cero is able to juggle his anxieties pretty well without having one problem distract him from trying to find the solution to another. he doesn’t get lost in thought too often (although he is susceptible to it from time to time). his alertness is what makes him a good bodyguard and assassin, since he can keep an ear and an eye out for danger while holding a conversation.
“Is there a reason you’re naked in my bed?” (((( :
prompt: “Is there a reason you’re naked in my bed?”
[ AU ]
the question begged an answer that mikhail wasn’t really confident in. it was an awkward situation, for one, that robbed him of his usual wit and dulled his sharp grin. but there was a smirk nonetheless, and he sat casually upon her thick sheets as if he wasn’t left in his trousers, if having his chest covered in bandages was anything close to casual.
“this is hardly naked, seolhyun. clearly, you exaggerate.”
to be fair, she had called for him first. maybe she just wanted to talk. how could he know? his shirt and his jacket were folded hastily beside him, and could be worn quickly if she asked him to.
nevertheless she took her place in the empty space beside him, and made no such effort in hiding the concern evident in the slight pout of her lips, and the frown that had begun to form on her face.
“this is naked enough.” she touches the perforated cloth above his heart, made him itch to take it off. the way she looked at him was enough to say that talking wouldn’t be much of an option and, if it was, it wouldn’t last long at all. “what kind of trouble did you get into this time?”
“bandits seem to favour the area around the badlands a lot these days,” he explained, keeping his palms upon her bed and letting her fingers trace where they wished. “so we took an alternate route through the sea — and i’m not very good with sailing. and boats.” he saw the hint of a smile on seolhyun’s lips and continued: “and it wasn’t any better when pirates thought that it was a good idea to attack our ship.”
“did i not tell you to be more careful?” seolhyun’s question was accusatory. hurt, like this was his fault, like he wanted to be nearly sliced in half. but it didn’t bother mikhail too much — maybe just a little.
“my job isn’t exactly the safest one there is. protecting someone so high-profile has its downsides.”
seolhyun mumbled something he could not catch, but mikhail didn’t ask. there was a pause, heavy with time and space and everything else that kept mikhail’s hand on the sheets and not in her hair. she looked at him like she actually cared about him, and he let himself believe it.
but not for very long.
mikhail looked away before he could kiss her, and her hand stopped just above the edge of the trousers he wore, dark green against an even darker shade of red.
“so was there something you wanted me here for?” was his way of breaking the silence. her palm rested there, at his midsection, half of it bare skin and the other dressed in bandages to make sure that his would did not taint her bed. he already expected an answer — a command of some sort he was always willing to obey, because she knew he would even if she didn’t ask. because he was convenient. because he was here.
“i don’t want to open your wounds.” the words were sweet, underpinned by something genuine that made everything else taste like something of a bitter lie. “but yes, i…i just wanted to be with you.”
“well, now, i’m afraid i’ll have to disappoint you this time,” mikhail laughed, swallowing the hatred — not for her, but for himself, for what he was. “i’m not very good company when words come out of my mouth.”
“and who told you that?”
“no one.” mikhail was able to meet her gaze again. her hand found his own, and almost automatically, their fingers interlocked, finding something to fill in the gaps. “my mouth is only useful for getting me into trouble. why do you think i wear the mask so often?”
“mikhail —,”
“besides,” he continued, the grin softening into something somber, “i thought i was convenient for other thi —,”
“you are not.” seolhyun cut his statement short, squeezing the palm she held in her own. “you’re here because i want you here. with me.”
“then —?”
“not…necessarily in that way.”
it took a while to sink in — and would perhaps take even longer for him to understand.
“but —,” he closed his own mouth, lips forming into a straight line. “…i’m confused, i —,”
when it came to these things, to emotions, mikhail had difficulty in accepting that his presence — and it alone — could be enough. he needed to be useful, didn’t he? otherwise, why was he still alive, if he didn’t have some kind of purpose, if he couldn’t do something for someone? love was no more than a label, too simple a word to explain how much he wanted to see her happy and safe and —
and his thoughts were cut short by the soft but firmly-pressed lips upon his own. mikhail kissed her back, as naturally as one would breathe.
it felt like an apology than anything else.
a soft palm caressed a scarred cheek; a roughened hand curled above the side of her pulse that began to beat along the tune of his own. it, at least, worked to steal any more words from the tip of his tongue when she had stolen them with hers.
and when they slowed down to regain some semblance of oxygen in their lungs, she kissed him again — fleetingly, but enough — and mikhail looked at her and thought that, if things had been different, and if she wasn’t already someone else’s, then perhaps he had a chance, and they could have as many tomorrows as they wanted.
“i can’t stay long,” he told her regretfully, not wanting to move a single inch further away from her. they already had many miles between them on a regular basis.
seolhyun said nothing, and let go of his hand only to cradle his face in her palms. “you’ll come back, won’t you?”
“as long as you call for me,” he answered, before the cacophony outside became too much to bear. they were looking for him again, and if he was absent from the princess’ side too often, he might not be trusted to take his place there at all. mikhail leaned away; the separation was almost physically painful. “…will you?”
she nodded, and watched him dress himself again, and let him kiss her goodbye — and neither knew if it would be the last.
it had taken some time for mikhail to adjust to the scarring that he saw upon his body -- particularly his face. he had not realised how bad it was until he escaped from the badlands and chanced upon an inn that had a mirror. he had gotten tattoos over his legs and his arms in an attempt to cover up most of them, but he had never been able to stay too far away from trouble. nevertheless, the tattoos help him accept his marred skin. mikhail often gives the impression that he just doesn’t care, even though he is extremely self-conscious of the scar on his face that remains an active reminder of who he’d been and what kind of person he’s become.
prompt: Recumbentibus: What was their greatest victory?
until he is able to kill his parents -- those who have betrayed him the most -- with his bare hands. his greatest victory so far remains to be survival. at this point, he is glad to have survived the badlands and enter the army and find a greater purpose outside of killing. it has, at least, helped him in such a way that he no longer wants to end his own life in order to escape the hellish place he had escaped from (although the thought crosses his mind once or twice).
it was arguable that cero had more blood on his hands than the entire suryan nation combined. there could be none, surely, that could exceed something as the mass murder of thousands of citizens and warriors and everyone else in between. surya had years of what was arguably genocide under their belt; he began much earlier.
but here he was, finally captured after the assassination of many prominent figures in the damned country — including that of his own parents. and he had almost ended the war, almost killed the emperor himself, had it not been for the timely (and unexpected) interference of the crown prince which he abhorred.
daehyun was the symbol of everything cero could not have, everything that he could have been but was not. perhaps, once, it had been adoration; now it was nothing but envy, anger, jealousy.
and when the prince visited his cell, cero thought the blue blood lucky that they had chained him to the wall, and that it was his blood coagulating at their feet.
“come here to laugh at me, then?” he asked, sneering in the shadows cast by the lamp that daehyun hung outside the bars of his cell. the laugh he barked out himself was short, and rough. lifting his head becomes too much; he needs to save his energy for his next meal, which would come who-knows-when. his gaze fell to the floor, to the pristine boots that stood upon it. “bringing fire with you was a bad move, daehyun.”
“mikhail?” daehyun crouched down then, and cero wondered if this was yet another form of torture, to receive the pity of his moral enemy.
“i’m surprised you’d remember,” mikhail — the name tainted the moment the prince called him by it — gave yet another bitter laugh, face hidden by hair that had grown to his shoulders again. “i was always lower than you, anyway.”
to that the prince said nothing, and cero thought it a confirmation of a long-held belief.
“mi —,”
“stop calling me that.” it was a knee-jerk reaction than anything else. the following words come out as a murmur. “that’s not my name anymore. the kid you knew died a long time ago in that place.”
“…alright.”
the prince stood; cero lifted his gaze. there was nothing but pity, there, as if cero had made all the wrong choices himself, as if he had any choice in what he did.
“you know…” the somber tone gave the cuspian pause, although it shouldn’t. this was all a trick, wasn’t it? suryans hated his kind. they had broken his arm once they captured him, gave him cuts on the back of his legs deep enough that standing was a pain and he could only summon enough fire to close the wound. but here he was, in the shadows, the light reflecting off of eyes in the dark.
“i wish i could hate you.” came the following statement, making cero’s features contort into that of disgust. this was all a trick — why did the prince try so goddamn hard? “but i know that you just need guidance —,”
“i’ve had enough guidance from your people.” that much was clear; there were scars that could never, ever heal. “the only guidance i need from you is if you can point me in the direction of your father’s grave so i can bury him in it.”
and with that, daehyun heaved a sigh. there was no use speaking with people who only heard what they wanted to hear, and believed what they wanted to believe.
“then i’m sorry.” the prince finally turned his back on the prisoner that had once been his friend. “but it will be your grave that shall be prepared for you in the morning.”
this, they both knew, was a lie.
come tomorrow evening, cero would be nothing more than ash and bone, if he was spared; if not, his torture prolonged until he begged to be burned at the pyre.
neither mikhail nor cero had ever learned how to beg.
surya probably thought that people shouldn’t be able to survive in the badlands. what they didn’t seem to count on were the monsters who did — who crawled out of hell coated in liquid fire dancing in their throats, grit and grime and blood coated under their nails, the last vestiges of the burning earth smouldering their feet.
mikhail was never supposed to survive at all —it amazed him, even now, that he’d managed to live this long, and know so many who hadn’t.and it was with great pleasure that he recognised the face that greeted him upon a visit to tempestade — a place he had only ever heard about, and a place he had never known in its full glory — and for her he reserved a proud smile, despite it being hidden behind the thick cloth of his mask.
“i thought you were dead,” she told him, and to her he wanted to say the same.
“i thought i told you to stay out of trouble,” cero stated instead, hands in his pockets, refusing to extend any form of physical affection just yet. the badlands made them grow up too quickly. “what’s this i hear with you fighting in the war?”
“you’re one to talk.” helicity gave a pointed look at his uniform, to which he laughed again.
“point taken.” cero found himself crossing the distance between them, tugging the mask down and displaying the smug little grin that was so characteristic of him that without it he could not call himself ‘cero’ at all. finally, he spread his arms for a hug, ready to receive her in them — an overdue reunion.
“now, am i going to get a hug from you or not? i think this whole seeing-you-again thing deserves some kind of celebration -- don’t you?”
