Can we hear about prem and Rama or is that still being developed 👉👈😶 prem has a personality that makes him so funny in romance with people like Rama or canach it's entertaining to read
ok sorrysorrysorry i have been sitting on this ask. i have so much to say about these two but didn’t wanna drop it as an unbroken word wall without any new doodle comics … PRAMA NATION LETS GO !!
prama nation lets pause to note prem & canach have been broken up since mid icebrood saga. F. but prama nation, thats another story. LETS GO !!!!!!!!!!
prem met rama in seitung while the commander was still unconscious in jail. since he’s visibly canthan & zephyrite, prem could walk freely around the province, getting the lay of the land and passing as more or less local. obviously people knew he wasn’t from seitung, but they figured he was from some close-ish island. the mystery of who he was, how he’d been scarred, whether more zephyrites would be coming soon with goods to trade, was local gossip but not something that tripped any minsec alarms. lacking gold, provisions, and information, prem spent a week or so sweet-talking local merchants and fishermen into telling him about the area and giving him free food.
he also batted his eyes at rama, bc a cop is a juicy source of intel, and bc rama’s handsome! their conversation turned into a really long, really nice skiff riding date, rama bought prem crab rangoons, ran his mouth a little more than he should’ve about working for minsec, and went back to his office blushing to the ears like
but of course prem wasn’t from a close-ish island. he was an outlander who’d been here under minsec’s nose. he’d let rama think he was canthan-born and only casually interested in minsec, lying big time by omission, and he’d used rama to find out where they were keeping gorrik and the comm. all of this was a sucker punch to rama when he found out, and he naturally assumed prem had faked his interest in rama and the whole date was a trick.
he was hurt, pissed off, betrayed, humiliated… but didn’t want any of that to come across, so settled on acting just kind of disgruntled and sticklery about government rules.
(the whole date wasn’t a trick. prem honestly liked him.)
when rama warned dragon’s watch that their unsecured comm channel was basically a public radio show, prem took it as encouragement instead of the “shut the hell up” rama intended. like what better way to win over ordinary canthans while kas handled the imperial court !
he started actually treating it like a podcast, taking canthan commoners’ questions live, talking about the guild’s exploits, and airing extended jokes and bits with his friends, and he’s funny, he’s fun to listen to, so every time he tuned in on his radio, rama would be taking torment damage trying to decide whether or not he likes prem despite it all, like
and the more prem talked on the comm about things he’d done like wrestling a mordrem axemaster in the shell of a wrecked pact airship, following a dead dragon’s memories to find the lost city of kesho, seducing a mummy on istan to break out of a mordant crescent prison, using glamours to infiltrate the moon palace of gandara, out-talking jormag… the smaller rama felt by comparison to prem’s stories, and the smaller prem’s betrayal of him seemed, and his temper cooled but it also sort of felt like shit.
in person, though, it’s different. when they’re out on the skiff in new kaineng’s canals, prem is interested in everything rama says, leaning forward, eyes meeting his squarely, laughing at his jokes, asking about how he ended up at minsec, making him feel large and deep and attractive again, like he’s one of the most important people prem’s met in all that traveling.
in person prem also feels so much less daunting. kinda washed up. rama hasn’t seen him fight, since the monastery is dedicated to dwayna and prem swore he’d never enter one of her places of worship again, so he wasn't at training. looking at him out of combat it’s easy to believe he exaggerated his past adventures, or at least that his grace has faded now.
so rama opens up about being kurzick, his childhood in the slums that drove him to become a cop. and prem surprises him again by really getting it! because he grew up zephyrite in kryta, he joined the shining blade in part to bring gold and honor to his mothers in the soon-to-collapse canthan district, he bought into the copaganda too ! and as they’re passing the grub lanes prem’s looking at the reflection of the buildings in the water, saying how much rama’s neighborhood looks like where prem grew up, and rama stops short and asks if he wants to get out of the boat and explore the place, but prem says no. he’d rather just look at the reflection. because the canthan district is gone forever and he doesn’t want his memory of it to get confused with new, similar streets.
and rama is possessed to tell him about the love tunnel.
when things get real, though, is after minister li comes out as a purist and gets his ass kicked. prem & rama see each other in action for the first time, and the only surprise that could follow up rama activating his gunsword is prem becoming a dash of colorful light as he uses zephyrite aspect crystals to navigate the rooftop battlefield and take apart li’s task force armed only with his hands, feet, and a single war fan. there’s no longer any doubt in rama’s mind that this dude is still one of tyria’s best martial artists, but whether or not prem’s out of his league is not really a concern as he reckons with finding out his mentor/second father figure is a career racist who always held rama’s background against him, and that the ministry he’s been working himself to death for at the cost of every other relationship is corrupted to the top. of course gorrik and the comm feel bad, but they’re too focused on ankka and soo-won to slow down and take care of him.
so prem does that, staying behind on the rooftop after min takes li away, to offer rama a distraction.
he catches a crab and makes it into a (small, and honestly just mid) dinner for the two of them at rama’s apartment. then they break into the soju. a tipsy prem lets a progressively drunker rama talk about li and pretends not to notice as he cries it out. and then,
prem finally talks about why he left the shining blade—the corruption, the bad orders, the impossible expectations, finding out anise was messing with his memories—and about dueling his own mentor for his freedom. he doesn’t like talking about it, but he wants rama to feel less alone. at this point rama hypothesizes—not correctly, but close enough—that anise gave prem his scars as punishment. out of it and overwhelmed, rama starts making out with him…
aaand cuts it short in a second as he’s SEIZED by paranoia that purists will find his apartment and kill him for what he knows about li and they shouldn’t have been drinking bc at any fucking minute the assassins could break in !!
prem reminds him that the fight happened on public rooftops, and there’s nothing rama knows about li that min, minsec, the pact commander, and half of new kaineng don't also know already. rama feels foolish, and freshly devastated bc he thought he did know li better than anyone else in cantha, and that’s been taken away from him and the memory ruined. he calls himself stupid. prem says he's not. rama says fine, he's confused, and he's calling it a night. he asks if prem needs money for a raptor cab. prem declines, and rama crashes into bed. dead asleep before prem can stand to go.
at 4 am rama wakes up needing to take a leak, and when he opens his bedroom door prem is asleep on the floor right outside it, stretched out across the doorway like a guard dog, hand loosely over his war fan. just in case.
rama doesn't forget that casual act of devotion, or how nice the kiss was before he freaked himself out, and after soo-won's death, min's promotion to security minister, and prem's decision to stay in cantha with the "friends' detective agency" until rama's ready to travel, there's a growing feeling between them of like, "you're half stuck on canach. i'm half waiting for min. in the meantime can't a couple of messed-up ex-cops enjoy each other's company?" they start flirting and sizing each other up and testing out how much they can joke about a relationship before it becomes real.
this is long enough so i'll leave off there at the end of core EoD, with the final thought that i think prem works with serious characters romantically because he doesn't always take them seriously, he thinks a straight face is funny and a sharp tongue is cute, and having their stoicism laughed at and their moments of silliness and vulnerability rewarded gives them a chance to act more rounded. the same way his insistence on treating people like braham very seriously when everyone else is laughing off their expertise as a joke lets them feel more whole.
