...That's almost too bad. I'm not all that special.
[He says that without a trace of irony, then says nothing more for a while. Then:]
Did I tell you how my world works? How there wasn't any magic, and then one day, portals opened up to let monsters through, and people started awakening powers of their own to stop them?
In that world, the awakened are assigned ranks based on their stats and skills. They go from A to F, just like in school, with F being the worst--and then there's S-rank, a special tier even above A. Only the very best of the best are considered S-rank. There are only a handful in every country.
Yoohyun, my little brother, awoke as an S-ranker really early on. He was only seventeen. Still in high school.
As hard as I tried, I didn't get my awakening for another three years after that.
Hah, you can't tell? I'm a lousy F-ranker, lowest of the low. [He tilts his head back and shrugs expansively.] I'm so weak, I might as well not be awakened.
[Yoojin stretches his legs out more, unintentionally mirroring Leona's position by leaning back on his hands.]
With stats like mine, I'm a liability in even the least dangerous dungeons. Nobody decent wanted to bring me on raids, so I had to sign abusive, scammy contracts just to make enough money to live. And Yoohyun...
[This is the part Leona doesn't like. The part where he's too smart. The part where he can read others too well, where he can guess the next part before the page is turned.
The part where it's a little too familiar, from another side, but different enough to bring a certain feeling of dread to the back of his neck. He has a feeling that Yoojin has a burden to carry more like Idia Shroud's.
But Leona's face doesn't budge. He doesn't change positions. He just stares at the grass near the end of his tail. He doesn't really say anything at all, though he casts a look Yoojin's way and nods to demonstrate he's listening, and for Yoojin to go on.]
[It looks like Yoojin doesn't know how to go on from there. He fidgets, tugging at the back of one sneaker with the toe of the other, sinking into his own hunched shoulders.]
I didn't know then what he was up against. It was like the baby brother I'd raised with love just cut me out, completely, for no reason I could understand. For me, those years were...
[This time, it's less like trailing off and more like hitting a wall. A wall in his mouth. Yoojin stares into nothing, brow knit, then forces out a strained breath and glosses right over the key part of the story Leona asked for, eyes shut. His knee is bouncing.]
A-anyway, something happened in a dungeon, and I... flash back sometimes. When I'm sleeping, mostly. Especially if my fear resistance isn't working right. It isn't normally a problem.
[Leona can guess— but he can only guess. There's no guarantee they're the same kind of little brother, he and Yoohyun. And in any case, the ways that Yoojin reminds him of Falena... they're not entirely the same.
And right now, he doesn't want to think that Falena could have more in common with Yoojin than being stupid. He wants to believe that Falena's thoughtlessness isn't by choice, wants to believe that there's a difference between them in expectations altogether, when Yoojin isn't holding something that should have been Yoohyun's, when the two of them aren't separated by ten years.
He can't really say anything on the matter.
He pulls a leg up, rests an elbow on his knee, and watches Yoojin and his nervous energy fizzling beside him.
He doesn't need to be a master at puzzles to put the pieces together.]
...That's rough.
[Leona reaches out, claps Yoojin on the shoulder, looking away from him. His fingers give that shoulder a bit of a squeeze.]
[A gentle squeeze like that can break a man apart. Yoojin's overripe grief bursts like a grape.]
It was my fault.
[His hand shoots up to capture Leona's, tangling their fingers together and holding on with the desperate ferocity of the drowned. It's like that point of contact, that show of care, is the only thing anchoring him against a storm.]
[Eventually, Yoojin resumes breathing again, if slightly shakily. He relaxes his grip on Leona's hand, but doesn't let it go.]
I admit that there's a lot of crazy stuff I'll risk to get out of here and make sure he's okay. [His thumb brushes over one of Leona's knuckles.] But you should never have been one of them, Leona.
[It doesn't matter how Yoojin felt. His sense of abandonment, resentment, and the despair of eight years doesn't excuse how blind he was to Yoohyun's suffering. Neither does his desperation to get home (and everyone else, too, while he was at it) absolve him of Leona's death.
Just because they're both alive now doesn't mean those mistakes didn't happen.
Exhaling, Yoojin looks up, directly at Leona, with steady, if haunted eyes.]
You're a good guy, way too good for this. I hope you know you don't owe me anything. [He gives Leona's hand a little squeeze of his own and lets his gaze fall away.] If my nightmares are messing you up, I'll work something else out. I won't let a lack of sleep turn me useless on you.
[Leona is not— has never been— very comforting. He doesn't make any extra moves while Yoojin breaks, doesn't move his hand, doesn't say anything. The only thing he is, for that amount of time, is there.
So when Yoojin begins to speak his little explanations, All Leona can do is frown. He waits to hear all that Yoojin has to say, and then closes his eyes.]
...You make too many damn assumptions, Yoojin Han.
[His voice is calm, though, level and unscolding.]
You don't know me.
I'm not the 'good person' you think I am. And more than that;
I'm not your little brother.
I'm just another desperate schmuck who woulda put yours or anyone else's head on the chopping block to get out.
Saving me isn't gonna change a damn thing. Ain't gonna change what happened between you and Yoohyun, and it ain't gonna make me the person you've made up in your head.
[Actually, Yoojin's pretty sure he's right about Leona. There's still a hand on his shoulder, after all, fingers all caught up in his own. What the weak know is that there's no making the strong accept anything they wouldn't choose themselves. Leona could easily draw away if he wanted. He's letting Yoojin have this, when there's nothing in it for him; without his particular skills, Yoojin has little to offer a princely genius mage.
Unless, of course, he is a good guy, one who cares and needs comfort of his own. Someone who feels the need to atone when he's hurt someone else and does his best not to hurt them further. A young man who needs to assure himself he's not a monster even as he denies his decency out loud.
He curls his fingers a little further in.]
...True enough, [concedes Yoojin. Leona is definitely not Yoohyun, and nothing he does here will undo what happened to any of them.] But it'll make me feel better about the whole thing. What about you?
[If he didn't feel similarly, didn't want to rip their lives back out of the house's teeth, Leona wouldn't be trying so hard to save them all himself, would he?]
[Leona looks down at his hands, his ears flicking left and right.]
I am dangerous, Yoojin.
You wouldn't be the first person I've almost killed. And that time...
[He can't remember, clearly, harming Ruggie while he was overblotted. But he does remember the jagged lines through his skin, the dust, the physical reminder that he had almost turned the little hyena into nothing more than a handful of sand.]
I don't know why I bit you. I'm a better mage than that.
As if... the house wanted me to be its mouth, or something.
[He's just throwing out ideas, not particularly confident in that one. But he further elaborates;]
Yes, I did overblot. And I couldn't remember much of it, either.
But the power I used during that first overblot...
[Leona takes a breath, looks at Yoojin, reorients himself to explain;]
Unlike in your world, magic has existed alongside anything you could consider 'scientific' or 'natural' since the dawn of recorded time. Before that, likely.
And for a long time still, trained mages have excelled at tailoring what is called a signature spell, a unique magical skill. Sometimes it's completely unique, other times it's a refinement of a skill passed down in a family line. And most mages don't master their unique magic until young adulthood, at the earliest.
[Yoojin's just that delectable a snacc. Truly, a princely treat.
Anyway.]
...Master of sand...
[Mastery isn't a concept that's come up often for Yoojin since the dungeons opened. Awakening was sudden for everyone. Even eight years later, before he turned back the clock, he can't think of anyone he'd consider a master of their skills.
But there is one skill he knows now that fits the bill. Master of Water. A mythic-grade skill belonging to a transcendent being. Even an S-ranker borrowing it with permission had been completely unable to use it without his help.
He remembers how it felt. That deep, bottomless power.]
[Leona nods, quiet, hesitant to continue. But he'd told Yoojin the same things— it could be the end, they're in another universe... both of them were right about having no reason not to share with the other.
His hesitation comes from confronting himself.]
...They should have been happy.
"Crown Prince Falena is so bright, so cheerful. Why can't his brother be more like him? What a terrifying power he has."
Day in and day out, all it ever was.
If it had been me— Look how judicious Crown Prince Leona is. Look how he controls such strong magic! If only Falena would take things more seriously.
But no.
I've only ever existed as a pretext to praise my brother, and in the end all I'll be good for is compensating for his mistakes.
[he looks down at his hands, free of the leather gloves he usually wears.
He remembers what he felt when he attacked Ruggie. He remembers that hatred surging within him again when he tries to recall harming Yoojin.
A hatred for himself that had become so strong, he'd lash out and harm anyone else to escape it.]
[...Yoojin would like to fight a magic beastman kingdom. The whole thing, mano a mano. He'll have his brother's top smart dude work out the logistics for him.
He doesn't care if the throne only seats one, or how heavy weighs the crown, or whatever royal excuse they come up with. The ins and outs of monarchy are well beyond Han Yoojin's pay grade.
You're not supposed to play favorites with kids. Sibling rivalry shouldn't make someone, especially not one as proud as Leona, sound like that. Even when things were worst for Yoojin, when the world spat at him while he limped around on shattered legs, cursing his brother's name, he'd had an adult's sense of self. He wasn't a child. No one who was supposed to take care of him made him feel like a pretext.
He manages to keep his voice reasonable, or at least neutral.]
Even if it isn't.. I'll never be king. I'll never be able to do anything, with what I've learned. All of my so-called 'wise advice' is turned over as bullshit.
And the thing I can do best is the thing people in the Savanna hate most. Dry it out into the desert, make them want for rain.
[He sighs, heavily, his shoulders falling. Yoojin may have cried in front of Leona— so it would be perfectly acceptable to cry in front of him. But Leona's are the eyes of a child who learned not to cry a long time ago.]
Here I am, proving twice they're right.
That I am something to be feared.
[If he really was king, would he just run the Sunset Savanna into the ground the way he's sure Falena will?]
...And that's what I wanted. For people to just realize that, and stay away from me.
But look at you, bein' a nosy bastard all the time...
[His hand lands right on top of Leona's head, heavier than usual, scruffling into his hair just a little. Insistent. It brings them shoulder to shoulder, and Yoojin doesn't back off.]
Sorry, I'm gonna keep being nosy, 'cause this really bothers me. Get used to it.
[He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a huff.]
They should have been happy. A little kid mastering power like that? That's awesome. I already knew you're smart as heck, but that's genius-level stuff. And it can't be easy to control! You only lost it twice in your whole life?
[Yoojin leans forward, determined to look Leona in the eye.]
Once was because of me! I used two skills on you, both of them S-rank or higher. All the other S-rankers I've tried those on, guys with just as much destructive potential as you and who work just as hard to tamp it down, also blew their tops the first time. Yoohyun turned a 5-star Hong Kong hotel into a melted beachfront crater!
If you've been reining in power like that all this time, and people still talked that kind of trash about you, then I'm sorry, but they're the stupid jerks who need to change.
[Yoojin is allowed to catch Leona's eyes— but only because he is staring so wide eyed, so still, when Yoojin speaks, like a deer in the headlights. Like a little boy who's just heard something he never expected anyone to say.
All his life, it has been Change, Leona. All his life, if he would just smile more, if he would just sing and dance and be carefree, if he would just be softer and less rigid, if he would just get off his ass and contribute, if he would just dedicate himself, if he would just, if he would just, if he would just.
But he's always known that he is under an unmoveable weight. That nothing he could change— because at some point, he had bothered trying— could move that weight, could change the fate he had resigned himself to. Changing himself, having hope that circumstances would change when he did, had just become a repeated exercise in futility.
No one had ever bothered to say anyone else should change toward him. No one had ever bothered to agree that it was unfair, or to apologize that it was unfair even if it couldn't be changed. No one had ever bothered to affirm the worries of a scared child who was being treated like a monster. It's a validation unlike Leona has ever heard in his life, and now that it's right in his lap, Leona doesn't know what to do with it.
So he doesn't immediately respond to Yoojin, his mouth stretching into a taut line, and instead, looks away from him, trying to duck out from under his hand.]
His dislodged hand drops to Leona's shoulder, giving it one firm squeeze, before Yoojin chooses to respect the unspoken request to leggo.]
One last thing and I'll have said my piece.
People call things "dangerous" when they want to say "harmful" or "bad," but that's not what the word means.
Sure you're dangerous. So's Yoohyun. So are the monsters I raise and most of the people I work with. Heck, even I'm dangerous, in the right conditions.
[He says that neither boastfully nor as if reinterpreting "danger" to implicate himself, but as a fact. Yoojin's hurt people. Yoojin's done worse than hurt people, and not always by accident.]
That means people should listen and try to be more considerate when we say something's wrong, not less. Everybody's safer that way, them and us. It shouldn't just be on you to predict every possible way you could hurt someone. Everyone else can take a little responsibility for themselves, too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
monsterdaddy) wrote2025-04-29 12:06 pm
no subject
[He says that without a trace of irony, then says nothing more for a while. Then:]
Did I tell you how my world works? How there wasn't any magic, and then one day, portals opened up to let monsters through, and people started awakening powers of their own to stop them?
In that world, the awakened are assigned ranks based on their stats and skills. They go from A to F, just like in school, with F being the worst--and then there's S-rank, a special tier even above A. Only the very best of the best are considered S-rank. There are only a handful in every country.
Yoohyun, my little brother, awoke as an S-ranker really early on. He was only seventeen. Still in high school.
As hard as I tried, I didn't get my awakening for another three years after that.
no subject
But he wanted to know, asked to listen. So he sits up, after that, pushing his hand through his hair and scratching at the back of his neck.]
At a lower rank,
[he finishes.]
1/2
[Yoojin stretches his legs out more, unintentionally mirroring Leona's position by leaning back on his hands.]
With stats like mine, I'm a liability in even the least dangerous dungeons. Nobody decent wanted to bring me on raids, so I had to sign abusive, scammy contracts just to make enough money to live. And Yoohyun...
2/2
...Well... that kid took it upon himself to protect me, all on his own.
no subject
The part where it's a little too familiar, from another side, but different enough to bring a certain feeling of dread to the back of his neck. He has a feeling that Yoojin has a burden to carry more like Idia Shroud's.
But Leona's face doesn't budge. He doesn't change positions. He just stares at the grass near the end of his tail. He doesn't really say anything at all, though he casts a look Yoojin's way and nods to demonstrate he's listening, and for Yoojin to go on.]
no subject
I didn't know then what he was up against. It was like the baby brother I'd raised with love just cut me out, completely, for no reason I could understand. For me, those years were...
[This time, it's less like trailing off and more like hitting a wall. A wall in his mouth. Yoojin stares into nothing, brow knit, then forces out a strained breath and glosses right over the key part of the story Leona asked for, eyes shut. His knee is bouncing.]
A-anyway, something happened in a dungeon, and I... flash back sometimes. When I'm sleeping, mostly. Especially if my fear resistance isn't working right. It isn't normally a problem.
no subject
And right now, he doesn't want to think that Falena could have more in common with Yoojin than being stupid. He wants to believe that Falena's thoughtlessness isn't by choice, wants to believe that there's a difference between them in expectations altogether, when Yoojin isn't holding something that should have been Yoohyun's, when the two of them aren't separated by ten years.
He can't really say anything on the matter.
He pulls a leg up, rests an elbow on his knee, and watches Yoojin and his nervous energy fizzling beside him.
He doesn't need to be a master at puzzles to put the pieces together.]
...That's rough.
[Leona reaches out, claps Yoojin on the shoulder, looking away from him. His fingers give that shoulder a bit of a squeeze.]
1/2
It was my fault.
[His hand shoots up to capture Leona's, tangling their fingers together and holding on with the desperate ferocity of the drowned. It's like that point of contact, that show of care, is the only thing anchoring him against a storm.]
2/2
I admit that there's a lot of crazy stuff I'll risk to get out of here and make sure he's okay. [His thumb brushes over one of Leona's knuckles.] But you should never have been one of them, Leona.
[It doesn't matter how Yoojin felt. His sense of abandonment, resentment, and the despair of eight years doesn't excuse how blind he was to Yoohyun's suffering. Neither does his desperation to get home (and everyone else, too, while he was at it) absolve him of Leona's death.
Just because they're both alive now doesn't mean those mistakes didn't happen.
Exhaling, Yoojin looks up, directly at Leona, with steady, if haunted eyes.]
You're a good guy, way too good for this. I hope you know you don't owe me anything. [He gives Leona's hand a little squeeze of his own and lets his gaze fall away.] If my nightmares are messing you up, I'll work something else out. I won't let a lack of sleep turn me useless on you.
no subject
So when Yoojin begins to speak his little explanations, All Leona can do is frown. He waits to hear all that Yoojin has to say, and then closes his eyes.]
...You make too many damn assumptions, Yoojin Han.
[His voice is calm, though, level and unscolding.]
You don't know me.
I'm not the 'good person' you think I am. And more than that;
I'm not your little brother.
I'm just another desperate schmuck who woulda put yours or anyone else's head on the chopping block to get out.
Saving me isn't gonna change a damn thing. Ain't gonna change what happened between you and Yoohyun, and it ain't gonna make me the person you've made up in your head.
no subject
[Actually, Yoojin's pretty sure he's right about Leona. There's still a hand on his shoulder, after all, fingers all caught up in his own. What the weak know is that there's no making the strong accept anything they wouldn't choose themselves. Leona could easily draw away if he wanted. He's letting Yoojin have this, when there's nothing in it for him; without his particular skills, Yoojin has little to offer a princely genius mage.
Unless, of course, he is a good guy, one who cares and needs comfort of his own. Someone who feels the need to atone when he's hurt someone else and does his best not to hurt them further. A young man who needs to assure himself he's not a monster even as he denies his decency out loud.
He curls his fingers a little further in.]
...True enough, [concedes Yoojin. Leona is definitely not Yoohyun, and nothing he does here will undo what happened to any of them.] But it'll make me feel better about the whole thing. What about you?
[If he didn't feel similarly, didn't want to rip their lives back out of the house's teeth, Leona wouldn't be trying so hard to save them all himself, would he?]
no subject
[But would, he, though?]
...Besides. Surviving this... it won't change anything. Saving you wouldn't change what I am, what I'm not...
[No, that's too much.]
I just can't stand losing the game.
That's all.
no subject
...Why would that need to change?
no subject
[Which... isn't a direct answer, but he's still a bit trapped in a thought process, considering things he has been avoiding considering.]
no subject
[He gently nudges Leona's side with his elbow.]
My ears might not be as good as yours, but I can still listen.
no subject
I am dangerous, Yoojin.
You wouldn't be the first person I've almost killed. And that time...
[He can't remember, clearly, harming Ruggie while he was overblotted. But he does remember the jagged lines through his skin, the dust, the physical reminder that he had almost turned the little hyena into nothing more than a handful of sand.]
...It was someone I knew. Someone loyal to me.
And it should have been something I expected.
Something I could have stopped.
no subject
[Dangerous is a funny word. In Yoojin's experience, it doesn't actually mean what people think it does.
He shifts to sit cross-legged, holding his ankles, quiet and unflinching.]
Was it like what happened with me?
no subject
I don't know why I bit you. I'm a better mage than that.
As if... the house wanted me to be its mouth, or something.
[He's just throwing out ideas, not particularly confident in that one. But he further elaborates;]
Yes, I did overblot. And I couldn't remember much of it, either.
But the power I used during that first overblot...
[Leona takes a breath, looks at Yoojin, reorients himself to explain;]
Unlike in your world, magic has existed alongside anything you could consider 'scientific' or 'natural' since the dawn of recorded time. Before that, likely.
And for a long time still, trained mages have excelled at tailoring what is called a signature spell, a unique magical skill. Sometimes it's completely unique, other times it's a refinement of a skill passed down in a family line. And most mages don't master their unique magic until young adulthood, at the earliest.
I mastered my unique magic as a child.
The ability to turn everything around me to sand.
no subject
Anyway.]
...Master of sand...
[Mastery isn't a concept that's come up often for Yoojin since the dungeons opened. Awakening was sudden for everyone. Even eight years later, before he turned back the clock, he can't think of anyone he'd consider a master of their skills.
But there is one skill he knows now that fits the bill. Master of Water. A mythic-grade skill belonging to a transcendent being. Even an S-ranker borrowing it with permission had been completely unable to use it without his help.
He remembers how it felt. That deep, bottomless power.]
You could control it that young?
no subject
His hesitation comes from confronting himself.]
...They should have been happy.
"Crown Prince Falena is so bright, so cheerful. Why can't his brother be more like him? What a terrifying power he has."
Day in and day out, all it ever was.
If it had been me— Look how judicious Crown Prince Leona is. Look how he controls such strong magic! If only Falena would take things more seriously.
But no.
I've only ever existed as a pretext to praise my brother, and in the end all I'll be good for is compensating for his mistakes.
[he looks down at his hands, free of the leather gloves he usually wears.
He remembers what he felt when he attacked Ruggie. He remembers that hatred surging within him again when he tries to recall harming Yoojin.
A hatred for himself that had become so strong, he'd lash out and harm anyone else to escape it.]
no subject
He doesn't care if the throne only seats one, or how heavy weighs the crown, or whatever royal excuse they come up with. The ins and outs of monarchy are well beyond Han Yoojin's pay grade.
You're not supposed to play favorites with kids. Sibling rivalry shouldn't make someone, especially not one as proud as Leona, sound like that. Even when things were worst for Yoojin, when the world spat at him while he limped around on shattered legs, cursing his brother's name, he'd had an adult's sense of self. He wasn't a child. No one who was supposed to take care of him made him feel like a pretext.
He manages to keep his voice reasonable, or at least neutral.]
I don't think that's true.
no subject
And the thing I can do best is the thing people in the Savanna hate most. Dry it out into the desert, make them want for rain.
[He sighs, heavily, his shoulders falling. Yoojin may have cried in front of Leona— so it would be perfectly acceptable to cry in front of him. But Leona's are the eyes of a child who learned not to cry a long time ago.]
Here I am, proving twice they're right.
That I am something to be feared.
[If he really was king, would he just run the Sunset Savanna into the ground the way he's sure Falena will?]
...And that's what I wanted. For people to just realize that, and stay away from me.
But look at you, bein' a nosy bastard all the time...
no subject
Sorry, I'm gonna keep being nosy, 'cause this really bothers me. Get used to it.
[He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a huff.]
They should have been happy. A little kid mastering power like that? That's awesome. I already knew you're smart as heck, but that's genius-level stuff. And it can't be easy to control! You only lost it twice in your whole life?
[Yoojin leans forward, determined to look Leona in the eye.]
Once was because of me! I used two skills on you, both of them S-rank or higher. All the other S-rankers I've tried those on, guys with just as much destructive potential as you and who work just as hard to tamp it down, also blew their tops the first time. Yoohyun turned a 5-star Hong Kong hotel into a melted beachfront crater!
If you've been reining in power like that all this time, and people still talked that kind of trash about you, then I'm sorry, but they're the stupid jerks who need to change.
no subject
All his life, it has been Change, Leona. All his life, if he would just smile more, if he would just sing and dance and be carefree, if he would just be softer and less rigid, if he would just get off his ass and contribute, if he would just dedicate himself, if he would just, if he would just, if he would just.
But he's always known that he is under an unmoveable weight. That nothing he could change— because at some point, he had bothered trying— could move that weight, could change the fate he had resigned himself to. Changing himself, having hope that circumstances would change when he did, had just become a repeated exercise in futility.
No one had ever bothered to say anyone else should change toward him. No one had ever bothered to agree that it was unfair, or to apologize that it was unfair even if it couldn't be changed. No one had ever bothered to affirm the worries of a scared child who was being treated like a monster. It's a validation unlike Leona has ever heard in his life, and now that it's right in his lap, Leona doesn't know what to do with it.
So he doesn't immediately respond to Yoojin, his mouth stretching into a taut line, and instead, looks away from him, trying to duck out from under his hand.]
no subject
His dislodged hand drops to Leona's shoulder, giving it one firm squeeze, before Yoojin chooses to respect the unspoken request to leggo.]
One last thing and I'll have said my piece.
People call things "dangerous" when they want to say "harmful" or "bad," but that's not what the word means.
Sure you're dangerous. So's Yoohyun. So are the monsters I raise and most of the people I work with. Heck, even I'm dangerous, in the right conditions.
[He says that neither boastfully nor as if reinterpreting "danger" to implicate himself, but as a fact. Yoojin's hurt people. Yoojin's done worse than hurt people, and not always by accident.]
That means people should listen and try to be more considerate when we say something's wrong, not less. Everybody's safer that way, them and us. It shouldn't just be on you to predict every possible way you could hurt someone. Everyone else can take a little responsibility for themselves, too.
just. just trust me just trust me
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)