A Hint of Insanity

((Read more because long, and, well, angst. Also, expect foreshadowing. Vague and cryptic foreshadowing.))

Honesty. An interesting word, really. To tell the truth; to never say something false. To be clear and forward. To not hide malevolent intent behind a mask of fake… emotions. Too many to describe. I suppose to properly portray this, honest words will be required. For this, we have to go back. Way back. 352 years, to be exact. Now, you’re probably thinking, “that number isn’t right!”… One thing at a time, friend. We will get to that.

Three and a half centuries ago… long in the past, before Gensokyo existed, but instead a handful of hidden communities of youkai and spirits. Roughly 150 years after Flandre was born… and 145 after the gears of fate were set in motion for events yet to occur in our time. The vanishing of two important figures, one to another dimension to remain trapped for five centuries, and the other to the forests of what would later become Gensokyo. But that is not what we are here to discuss today; that subject will come in due time.

We are here for one particular event. One of two that eventually lead to one blonde vampire’s imprisonment, and the altering of her memories to hide these events from her until she was ready for them again. We are here to observe one particular location, and one particular couple, in time, and the events surrounding them.

Mountain Village. An unoriginal name, to be sure, but a non-suspicious one all the same. A small village located on what later became Youkai Mountain, home to youkai, a handful of tengu, and two vampire sisters, who you probably already know. The residents bickered, to be sure, but in the end they supported one another, resulting in a relatively healthy, if secluded, little village.

Among the other residents of the village were of course Flandre and Remilia Scarlet, the village’s resident vampire siblings. Remilia of course was an expert hunter, and helped with retrieving food for the village, usually in the form of humans, and Flandre maintained a little library in the middle of the village (which happens to be where some of Voile’s books came from). Yes, she was a bookworm even before the SDM.

Also of note is a rather peculiar resident of the village- a demon, similar to Eronon, by the name of Xenon. Calm, cool, devilishly handsome, and for the most part just a general “cool guy” type of person. An odd sight in a village full of odd and eccentric beings. He also happened to be a blade master, being especially good with wielding almost any kind of blade, including a couple silver knives he had. Remember that particular detail, it’s important.

Of course, Flan, being the dork she is, fell head over heels for him. He often visited the library to read up on artifact weapons, which he occasionally temporarily left the village to investigate in more detail; he was clearly a weapons nerd in general. Of course, Flandre was more than happy to help him to the best of her abilities (largely by way of directing him to exactly what book or scroll he probably wanted, as she’d read every single thing in that library at least once), and took the opportunity to… observe, and on occasion talk with him. It took him a while to catch on.

Upon being questioned about her odd behaviour, once by Remilia and once by Xenon himself, Flandre of course vehemently denied any allegations that were thrown at her. No, she has no romantic interest in him, they’re just friends!… of course, Remi knew better, but Xenon… at first he shrugged it off and continued with what he was doing. But suddenly, without any prior warning or even any prior signs, he decided “fuck it let’s date Flan”. Flandre of course was happy to oblige (after spending ten minutes silent and red-faced; that clearly hasn’t changed), but Remilia was suspicious. Even for someone like him, it didn’t make much sense for him to seemingly dismiss her feelings, and then suddenly reciprocate them. (When brought up to Flan, however, she was promptly ignored.)

Fast-forward two months. Flandre’s relationship with Xenon had of course advanced (though not quite to the point where I’d be required to mark this with #nsfw), and naturally, so had Remilia’s suspicion. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she felt something just wasn’t right, beyond what she’d already noticed. As such, over that two-month period she’d taken the opportunity to investigate into him in secret.

She was not impressed with what she found.

The information she had unearthed already made her quite suspicious. A lot of the weapons Xenon was interested in had one common trait- they were all made of some kind of anti-vampire alloy, usually made up to some extend of silver. It was too convenient to be a coincidence, but she chose not to jump to conclusions just yet.

And then she stumbled on something that legitimately scared her. A recently acquired paper in the library, which hadn’t been sorted yet, contained some very, very interesting information. Apparently she wasn’t the first one who had looked into Xenon, and the document she had found showed something very disturbing- a list of dates, corresponding to a list of different events- Xenon arriving in a village, a vampire being murdered by a then unknown killer, and then a while later, Xenon leaving. Repeatedly. For fourteen years. Each year, around the same time, he arrived in a village, after a couple months someone died, and he left.

And guess what time of year it was.

At this point it was clear to Remilia what Xenon really was- a vampire hunter. And it was very likely his next target was her sister. Oh. Shit. No, seriously, that’s basically what went through her mind. That very same day she brought it up with Flandre, only to get completely brushed off. The blonde, despite a nagging voice in the back of her head saying Remi was probably right, was thoroughly convinced that he would never do such that thing. You know what they say- love is blinding.

The next day was a very eventful one. We won’t be going into the specifics, and instead will be focusing on a very particular event. You might be able to field a guess what it is, and you’d probably be pretty close too.

Over the past month, a walk at noon through the wilderness around the village had become a daily ritual for Flandre and Xenon. Of course, the latter always brought his usual sword just in case (and he had needed it a few times), but this time he brought a different one. When Flan inevitably asked about it, he happily explained that he decided he wanted to try out a different sword, and casually remarked that this one had a bit of silver in the blade, though he made it out to be purely for a bit of shine, and nothing else. That nagging voice got louder.

Flandre then had the thought to question just how many swords he had that had silver in their blades, to which he casually responded, pretty much all of them, except his usual one. The nagging got even louder. And finally, she questioned why. At first he just gave the same reason the blade he currently had was made of silver, but after a borderline-sarcastic “really?” came from Flan, he admitted to it being in the event that he has a bad run-in with a vampire. It took Flandre all of ten seconds to put the pieces together- he wanted to test it out, it was to defense against a bad run-in with a vampire. And she hadn’t missed the fact that Remilia had elected to stealthily follow them the entire way, and was probably about to leap out of the shadows to try attacking Xenon; after all, that was enough information for anyone to want to do it.

Needless to say, the voice won. Flandre came to a dead halt, a quite volatile mix of emotions very quickly taking over. It took Xenon a couple seconds to realize she had fallen behind, and upon questioning what was wrong, he got exactly the response he didn’t want. She questioned what he really was after, considering all that she’d learned up to now, and before he could try and deny any allegations that he was a vampire hunter, he very quickly reconsidered based on the look on her face. A glare seen only once in her entire lifetime, one of such anger and hatred that seemed so much like it didn’t belong on the face of a girl as bright and cheery as her. The kind that could make even the biggest of villains shit their pants. Yes, even giant birds.

Xenon shrugged, finally giving up the innocent act, since it was clear she’d already put two and two together. He admitted to his previous actions; that list her sister had found? She was right in its purpose. Yeah, the sword was meant specifically for killing vampires. Yeah, he was aware they’d been followed the entire time. And yeah, he never loved her. He just used it as an excuse to get close to her so his job would be even easier.

Admitting that was his biggest, and his last mistake.

Before he even had the chance to complete his task and end her then and there, he noticed something just slightly mildly terrifying- an aura surrounding Flandre. One of rage, sadness, and more importantly, ludicrous quantities of power. In the end, though, she was livid. Not even two seconds later he found himself sailing backwards, having been barreled over at over a quarter of the speed of sound by one pissed off Flandre, before recovering and facing the now-floating, very, very mad vampire. Needless to say, the fight that followed was almost comical.

Xenon was, of course, hopelessly outmatched. Flandre didn’t even have to try. One swing of his sword was met with a blast of energy, and ultimately most of the fight was him trying to attack her and failing miserably. Flan barely did anything, and he fell to his knees before her, very quickly realizing he’d picked the wrong vampire to mess with. Taking it as an admission of defeat, the blonde raised her arm, holding out her hand towards him. She grasped on to something in midair, before crushing it in her hand, all with a simple “Kyuuun~”. And, true as you might expect, Xenon literally exploded. I’ll spare you the gorey details; you can probably visualize it without my help.

And after that, Flandre collapsed into a crying, sobbing mess, and remained that way for several days. She felt betrayed, heart broken, and just overall devastated. He had tried to kill her (and obviously failed). But more importantly, he’d lied to her.

And this was just the beginning of the poor girl’s downwards spiral into insanity.

((oh jesus christ I can’t believe I wrote all that in on go. I don’t think this is a drabble anymore, this is a freaking short novel. This took me TWO AND A HALF HOURS.