@savanaclawed : " some of us aren't just play - actin' royalty, your majesty. " the words are derisive for good measure, leona's green eyes hard. " so you can quit actin' like you get it, vil. " // no you don't get context the dialogue popped into my head devoid of any background <3
You must believe that no one else could possibly understand.
It’s the most important piece of the puzzle; your belief that you are completely and utterly alone. If you accept that others could understand, that you are not singular, unique in your suffering, then you might then have to accept that you are not special. Or, worse, that your suffering might not be as horrific as you’ve convinced yourself it is at all.
Vil understands this; of course he does. His sickness rendered him monstrous, murderous, violent — worse, he tried to kill even before he broke. His sickness turned him horrible, his sickness that had felt all - isolating but that he can now see was not so unique at all.
Yet Vil is still Vil. She is still proud, and strict, and capable of great cruelty. But she is not evil. She wasn’t ever, really, just afraid, just aching — enough to do evil things. So afraid of acknowledging that his pain was not unique / so afraid to be alone / so afraid of being anything less than the best that might enable his suffering to matter — that he was willing to be ugly.
It had been a relief, almost : finally, a chance to be too hideous to love, to cease having to try to earn it.
Vil is still Vil. And so despite the clarity that has come for them ( but not for him, of course ) in the wake of their ugliness, they feel first haughty mockery — the empathy comes slow, and Vil nearly doesn’t recognize it. She looks at her fellow dormhead, expression showing very little.
“I see precious little that is royal in you, Leona.” And it’s an unkindness but not just that / it had been a relief, almost : finally, a chance to be something other than the limits i was born into / and it’s cruel but it’s not cutting like it might have been once. Quieter, “In that, we are alike.”
Other things, too — a pain that matters, it does, but hating the wrong people for it / a willingness to do anything to cease being second place, as if being seen is the same as being whole / an ache, bone - deep, that demands both believe that no one could possibly understand. Things that Vil couldn’t know, too — fathers that love them, an inability let that matter / a youth spent with other’s whispers at your back, seeking to make you into a villain even before there was a choice to be anything else.
They both became the story’s monster. Vil is trying to be something else.
Again, he says, “—— In that we are alike.” The words are whispered, eyes lowering, but she still catches sight of Leona’s stiffening shoulders. She needs not list off the similarities in the sufferings; he wouldn’t listen if she did.
Vil no longer believes that no one else could possible understand.
Vil is still Vil, and Leona is still Leona. Vil does not want to save Leona, and Leona does not want to be saved. But this Vil can finally understand : she’s disdained Leona, if one could call it that, because he was much like a mirror.
Their eyes raise, and theirs are — quiet. “Your royalty can’t shield you from being just like everyone else. Your pain isn’t unique. You’ve just convinced yourself it is.”
