There once was a boy who was born at the heart of a flower blossom. He remains soft and bright and delicate for many years, though the world tries to toughen him so many times that he bears scars only others see. The boy doesn't feel them himself. He is too busy with the joy, the fantasy, the love the world has to offer. He is a jester, and though they try to make him a fool, he remains cunning and wise instead. Refuses to be manipulated into anger.
The jester does not believe himself to be brave; he knows he is the foil to the knight. He knows his weakness well, does not face battle or challenge villainy. He acts in selfish ways, seeks revelry before revenge. He does not vanquish foes, but will, when the mood strikes him, turn them into friends.
As a Jester, Eddie often fails. As a knight, Steve literally never does. It has created an imbalance in their worlds. Eddie is, himself, the effigy he seeks to burn; Steve's target is the world.
And yet, somehow, they arrive at the same place.
Steve looks at Eddie and sees someone fearless. A man who says whatever he wants, wears whatever he wants, loves whatever he wants. Someone who walks into rooms already rejected by them and laughs before they can throw the first stone.
Eddie looks at Steve and sees someone invincible. A man who never hesitates. Who always knows what the right thing is. Who plants his feet and stands his ground even when monsters rise from beneath it.
They are both wrong.
Steve saves the world because he cannot imagine turning his back on it. Eddie survives it because he cannot imagine letting it make him cruel. Steve's courage is born from fear. Eddie's softness is born from strength. The knight charges because he cannot bear to lose. The jester forgives because he has already lost so much.
The knight and the jester are meant to move in opposite directions. One charges toward danger with a sword. The other dances away from it with a joke sharp enough to draw blood without anyone realizing they've been cut.
But Steve, as he wins every battle, becomes convinced that victory is his responsibility. The world places more and more weight into his hands, and because he can carry it, he does. Because he does, they give him more. The endless circle hurts.
Eddie fails spectacularly and often. He loses jobs. Loses opportunities. There are arguments he should have won and people he should have kept. He trips over his own feet, speaks before thinking, and trusts those who have not earned it.
But failure slides off him strangely. Not because it doesn't hurt. Because every time the world says, Become harder, Eddie says, No.
Every scar becomes another place where flowers grow. Every disappointment becomes another story. Every heartbreak becomes another song.
The knight wages war against dragons and comes back scarred and broken.
The jester invites them to sit beside the fire, and sometimes the dragons accept and tell their own tales.
That is why Steve cannot stop staring at him.
Because Steve has spent his entire life learning how to defeat monsters.
And Eddie?
Eddie has somehow learned how to love them.
Even the ones inside himself.
Especially those.
Perhaps that is why the knight keeps returning to the jester's side. Not because he needs saving. But because, after years spent trying to conquer the world, he meets a man who refuses to conquer anything at all.
A man born from a flower blossom.
A man who remains soft.
A man who remains bright.
A man who remains, despite every reasonable expectation, utterly impossible to destroy.
