#zared forestlake

[elliottoftheart]

Art trade with @molath

[molath]

Hey guys!! So... Zared ❤️❤️ my god do I love this guy woo idk uhh, so warnings for abuse and murder and attempted murder and probably other stuff?

Zared grew up with an incredibly rich family and was pretty sheltered from the bad things in the world, his family was kinda overprotective and also raised him specifically to run whatever business they had ran before him that got them rich or smt. He was never particularly interested in that tho.

He is a huge fan of animals, and he has always loved learning about their anatomy and their behaviors in captivity and in the wild. His family isn't a huge fan of this but jokes in them, his books on what he studied in animal behaviour are famous and he gets like a lot of money from that. He's generally pretty known as an adult, he does end up running the business too, mostly on the side and he pays other people to do his work for him a lot but shush at least he pays well..

ANYWAYS so he had a sister and her name was Willow, she was the kindest person you might ever meet, and unlike Zared, she searched out the problems in the world and tried to help, she likely couldn't talk about it much because it's not really socially acceptable for someone as rich as her would care for the animal people. Zared hides from the problems in the world because he hates how hopeless it makes him feel. I think he often leaves civilisation to watch animals as a sort of coping mechanism to deal with everything he knows is happening.

There's a lot of like racism in this story, and while he's not someone who thinks animal people are worth less, the world does benefit him greatly, and he likely accidentally does and says racist things after he meets Edwin and then joins the rebellion that they then have to correct, but that happens later.

Okay so story again, Willow gets a girlfriend, Rosalinda, and boy is that going to change his life for the worse, but for now she seems kind and considerate. Maybe weird in some cases, like her constant avoiding looking people in the eye or how she almost never eats the food his family makes.

However, she's the daughter of the Rönnbär family, who seem more than happy to connect with the Forestlakes, he finds it a bit suspicious but like Rosalinda seems upset about them doing that and she gets along with Willow so he doesn't mind. The problem comes when their families decide to force Rosalinda and Zared to marry each other, neither of them have any interest in doing so and again, Willow x Rosalinda is a thing. The three of them make up some plans in order to make it work, after the marriage they would just "stay friends" and Rosalinda would be with Willow outside of it and Zared would also be free to date whoever, so they actually got along pretty well! That is until Willow dies.

Someone really tried to kill Zared by poisoning his soup, however the person who actually ate that meal was Willow. The murder was supposed to be some kind of act of rebellion, killing the son of one of the richest families in the whole city was going to cause a big panic, but Willow, who was known to be weird, didn't have as much of an effect, people got worried, of course, but they had failed to kill the person who was "actually important" and that meant they would probably fail again, and also Willow was barely missed by anyone who wasn't Zared or Rosalinda. The murderer was also never found, but things pointing to the real motive was, don't ask me what, I'm too lazy rn to think of things rn.

Not long after Willow dies Rosalinda and Zared get married, both are devastated because of their loss at the time and Zared likely cries throughout most of it, besides for when the actual ceremony happens. They end up both being married, yay! But here's something to add, Rosalinda blames half of Willows death on Zared, he was supposed to die, not her. The Rosalinda he once knew is almost gone the moment they're away from people again.

She is angry and upset and she yells at him and she cries and screams, he obviously tries to comfort her, knowing that it's likely because they both miss the same person, but the more he tries the angrier she gets and in the end he has to leave her alone.

After that the real issues start, Rosalinda starts to isolate him, any friends he had, his parents, no one is worth speaking to in her eyes, it's not like she immediately started doing it, it likely started with comments, or she portrayed it as being worried about him, but he also quickly had to learn to walk on eggshells around her, he thought it was just because of her grief at first but her sudden angry outbursts and general hostility became normal after a while. He would start basing his entire existence around her and what she wanted. In the end he lost his friends and his family and literally everyone because of her manipulation, he spent almost all of his time alone at home, and when he didn't do that he was alone in forests, watching the animals. Rosalinda allowed those trips without any issue, so they were his only escape.

During one of these trips he finds a idk baby lynx, lynx kitten? 😭 Whatever he finds one of those and its mom is likely dead, seeing as he found the baby almost dead, with only one sibling that wasn't at first, but Zared couldn't save the other one, he's very scared when he brings the baby home, bc Rosalinda might crash tf out, but she loves the little guy almost immediately and starts taking care of him more than Zared, training him to be able to walk with her and do what commands he gets. Zared honestly thinks it's kinda scary how good of a trainee she is, but he loves Lynxie as much as she does and won't complain.

Rosalinda has successfully become his only real connection..? Ig so uh, but then all of a sudden, after a few years tho, she gets a new job!! Or like a promotion maybe I'm not sure exactly what she did before but yes. She starts acting different, finally.. she seems.. happy? He isn't walking on eggshells in the same way, she's still acting horribly but it's giving him some sort of hope that things might get better again... And then she comes home covered in blood, and tells him about how she got attacked by some strange man, but Lynxie attacked and killed him. She had them gotten scared she would be caught (half true) and got rid of the body, and other evidence. Zared learns this and helps her, and Lynxie get clean, promising that she had done nothing wrong, though he was probably stressed about her hiding the evidence, he's desperate to keep her happy, to not let her fall into more anger or sadness or anything of the like. In some ways I think his reassurances also contributed to her ability to throw any blame of her future murders off herself and saying they deserved it. In a way Zared becomes an accomplice Hiding that she kindaaaa had some guy killed, even if he was in the wrong that time, they didn't have to get rid of evidence, not that anyone would gaf but Zared would feel very guilty about keeping a secret of someones death even though he never met him.

After this Rosalinda kinda gives him the silent treatment for weeks, but soon she says that she wants to divorce him, she'll move out to live at her workplace and he'll be all alone. He's absolutely devastated but he accepts it, knowing that there's nothing else that he CAN do. Once she's gone he has no one. He's entirely alone, his life seems to have no meaning at all anymore. After circling himself around her for so long he just... Had nothing to do. He sees no reason in living on. All he can do all day is lay in bed, wondering what he could've done to have Rosalinda stay, or everyone else, if his family would take him back in, they weren't good, but it's better than being alone, isn't it?

Then one night Zared wakes up, hearing steps in his house, not ones he's familiar with. There was a thief in his house. Everyone..... Welcome Edwin. A master of disguising himself as a rich human girl, while he is an animal person and also a man, he often does this to get into parties and steal valuables, which does make him pretty rich. For once he's actually just breaking into a house tho, because he thinks no one is there, Zared hasn't moved in ages and the whole divorce thing is pretty much known by everyone anyway, so the expectation was that Zared maybe left to go observe animals again.

Zared starts regularly staying up to watch or listen to Edwin stealing things, it becomes the only thing he looks forward to, his only sense of connection to another person. Edwin notices that he does this pretty quickly, but decides that if he can just come take a bunch of gold and other valuable shiny things whenever he can it's worth it to be watched by some creepy dude. One day he does overdo it tho, stealing something valuable from a shrine/altar thing dedicated to the god of laws, bc HE DOESN'T GAF HE'S NONCHALANT, and Zared is a huge worshiper of them, and not nonchalant so he immediately sets up some kind of trap, which works pretty easily bc Edwin wouldn't be expecting it at that point.

Zared pretty much begs for them to bring whatever thing it was back, and Edwin, who also felt some sort of connection to the weirdo watching him all the time, decides that.. okay he can do that. After he brought the thing back, they start talking to each other more often, and life becomes calmer, and as they become better friends Edwin kinda just moves into Zareds house. Life is chill for quite a while actually after all that, these two do fall in love after the next two big event I'll mention, or like they were in love before but they didn't get together until after.

So Rosalinda still visits sometimes unnanounced, mainly to drop off or pick up Lynxie, since they treat him more like a son than a pet, and one day when she does this, Edwin is the one at home. Zared had likely told Edwin that the best way to handle her was to just do everything that she says. That's what Edwin does but.. He's an animal person and she hates those, so she decides to attack him by boiling water, throwing it onto him and then using the shards of the teapot or whatever to cut him a ton and she also rips out one of his eyes bc she HATES his eyes, she doesn't like any eyes but these ones are the worst ever.

Zared comes home in the middle of this, causing Rosalinda to flee immediately, and Zared decides to help Edwin of course bc he loooooves him.... He takes Edwin to the hidden like place where the rebellion mainly lives, Edwin hd told him any the place in accident way back, and he remembered, knowing that it was the safest place to take an animal person to be helped with sickness or injury. They do help, but while they do Zared can't stay, after he finds out Edwin will probably survive he leaves to go see Rosalinda. Which is in the evening the next day.

Zared goes to see her, because he still has this strange attachment to her, and he wants her to change, and he tries to convince her that she CAN be a better person, he saw it back then with Willow, and in some of the moments in their life after he could've sworn she was truly kind. She is convinced he's secretly there to kill her tho, so she attacks him with a kitchen knife.

She manages to slash him once in the face, but the next hit she tries to get, she's distracted by all the blood, and he pulls the knife from her, and in a panic, he slashes her throat. He watches as she falls to the ground, bleeding out on the floor, and before he can see if she actually dies, he runs away, to go back and help the rebellion, and also not be probably executed or put in prison for killing the Priest's advisor.

Thaaat should be the most important stuff, thx for listening

[molath]

What the hell Zared what are you doing in my attempt at a more realistic style you're not supposed to be here