Xerxes snorted. ‘A little advice? Save it for someone who deserves it.’

He crossed his arms and leaned against the side of Ciri’s van, shaking his head. ‘That man is in the position he’s in because he couldn’t overcome his damnable pride enough to trust or respect anyone less than his precious queen. Anyone else he encounters is too far beneath him.’

It was not hard for him to anticipate what Ciri would say next, so he raised a finger irritably. ‘And ah-- no-- before you start let me just remind you that it isn’t a harmless sin, either. He is a glorified watchman. He has responsibilities. When he fails to recognize the rights of his subjects those rights aren’t vindicated. When he elects disdain rather than mercy, someone feels the sting of either his blade or shackles.’

For a moment, Xerxes bristled. You could almost see impressions of the revolutionary propagandist he’d been in his glory days where the glow from the van’s windows caught on the sharp angles of his face. Then he crossed his arms and merely chuckled.

@cirocchio​

Xerxes sighed as he stared at the balance divided between the two halves of a banking app on his phone screen. The euro symbol was starting to take on the cast of an ill omen or a terrible demonic sigil for him these days. He couldn’t glance out it without a sinking feeling.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough to live on; there were six digits in the savings half of his app. It was that he had plans for that money, and nobody else needed to know about them.

As it was, Xerxes could feel depression closing around him like a net. Its ropes overshadowed his skies, dragged on his shoulders, and choked him with anxiety as they threatened to fish him up from his schemes. He’d developed a knack for ignoring the sensation, but being out of work was taking a worse toll on him than he’d anticipated. It didn’t help that for someone on the hunt for a missing person, this girl seemed to go out of her way to avoid other travelers and nomads. It wasn’t intentional sabotage; she only knew a fraction of The Plan. But still.

‘Oh Cirooooccchiooo,’ Xerxes called, weaving to the front of the van where she was driving as he tapped a few resumes against his lips. ‘I have a proposal for you. What do you say we stop for six weeks or so at the next town, hmm?’

He rapped the resume on her head. It didn’t have his civil service typed  anywhere on its face, and he intended to leave it that way. No questions, not from Ciri or anyone else, and he was less likely to get pegged as an “overqualified” applicant.’I hear they take seasonal workers here, but it takes a week to onboard and a week after that to see the first paycheck. If you don’t want to be feeding me as well as putting me up, well. We can’t all work from wherever we choose.’

Prompt: "The fires of rebellion must be lit and a new age must begin!"

'Silence,’ He snaps, loud and clear, his voice cutting through the man’s words. His irises cool where the others are such an uncanny, bright flame; as if Xerxes’ eye is a premonition of what he intends to bring upon his nation. He narrows his eyes, full of contempt and suspicion; his judgement comes swift.

‘Hold your tongue, traitor.’ Black or white. With or against. Xerxes has chosen to side against. ‘Even as a child you had foolish, dangerous dreams that would be this nation’s downfall. You are one of them, then.’ It is not a question. He must be involved in the plans to dethrone the queen. Allow her to succumb to her illness -- or, make it appear as if she has. ‘You come here only to sow discord and violence with your wicked tongue. Leave. A country you abandoned is a country you have no right to reclaim.’

‘Traitor?!’ Xerxes laughed, rolling his neck as he marked his distance from Camus, pacing his approach. He had a rolling, playful gait. It was hard to catch how he kept his feet spaced so that it would be easy to fall into a stable fencing pose.

‘My dearest brother, your Queen had every opportunity to take advantage of our need. We sent how many letters proposing that she head an elected government? We sent her how many entreaties that if only she would take our side against the nobles, we would take hers? I may have insane dreams, brother, but it is nothing to the collective royal fantasy that the Silk Palace may continue to ignore the workers outside and their suffering. It’s not a question of my reclamation of the kingdom, but the people’s.’

My entire character concept for this guy is that he’s a boy who grew up military style and is so jealous of the camaraderie he had to turn self-care for him and all of his little friends into a global secret society.

u asking her to survive on spite when she has so little of it??? rude~

@teniras

Xerxes swore the door was still vibrating. Each wave of sound rippled nauseous dread from where he’d rapped his bony knuckles against the frame. He flinched back instinctively from that din, touching his lips, murmuring. “Fucker me. What am I doing...?” Too late, Ciri said. Or, too many times, she might have accused. Too often, too many broken promises, too little truth in anything she bothered love. So now--.

I hate you, Xerxes. 

It terrified him, how relieved he was to hear her say it. When she finally barked at him that she didn’t want his new, garbled comforts and twisted fixes for a broken world there was a sick part of him that wanted to run then and there. This time she wouldn’t be able to find the strength or mercy to drag him up out of the snow, the ditch, the void. Ah, yet--. 

Her father opened the door. Xerxes turned up his full, bloody eye and managed a weak smile.

“We can’t just leave her with that, can we? He’s dead, none of it’s real? Don’t you have something else-- anything else? I--you can’t leave her with that.”

Lurching forward unsteadily, he invited himself in and rubbed his head. “No, there must be more...” 

I hate... 

The morning made strange play with the uneven landscape, belying the old proverb that the sun shone alike on the wicked and the just as it graced shriveled cliff-sides with a bath of orange and pink light and let shadows prey on the valleys below. Darkness liked best to open its maw where there was more to devour, after all. 

But there Genesis stood at the edge of the cliff, staring as though he’d like to devour it. A long while passed, Xerxes burying his chilled hands and feet in the earth as the light warmed it and he thought about how the shade of pink reminded him of innocence, blushing skin. It made him smile. Remembered gratitude. For once his sick head wasn’t tormenting him too bad for him to endure the pain of it.

Genesis, though… “the black abyss… the keenest form of fascination…”

Xerxes paused. Something like a chuckle wuffled up his throat, though it sounded suspiciously like a moan. “…you shouldn’t ruin a lovely morning like this with such disappointing musings.”

He had to explain, of course. Still, he let the admonishment sink in for effect, gathering his thoughts. Softening his heart.

Twisting, he faced Genesis with a weary smile. “Do you know, I don’t think there’s anything so banal, so commonplace, so easily understood as a corrupted heart? The cheaper and trashier the story the more it’s used to drive the plot. Every poet sells out and draws on its symbols the instant that their inspiration dies because they know if they make the barest mention of not being understood, of the meaninglessness of it all, of the worthlessness of other human beings, of life qua the most exquisite pain and the darkest desires… why if they do that then they’re certain to be cited ad nauseum if only by so-called artistic souls trying to make excuse for themselves. And in life– ha! It is always a good man who astonishes, who is persecuted. An abusive friend or lover need only add a splash of mystery to their cruelty and gesture at the yawning black that so fascinates you and suddenly their cruelty is profound, not petty and weak. As though what is hidden hides because it’s ever so much more precious and complex… but you and I, who dwell in the vale of the abyss, we should know better.”

Xerxes’ red eye was narrowed so tenderly it were as though the veined iris pulsed. He looked like someone else. Another self, so frail his lip seemed to spasm an inch from his usual self-lacerating grin. Yet he overcame by rising and focusing his whole attention on the man he’d been trailing these past weeks. He tried to dredge up the reasons he didn’t want to admit to himself, the reasons his coward’s feet hadn’t already given him cause to flee. Reasons other than his own commonplace yearning, to end it, to die… ah, but this was not a morning that would countenance submitting to the plunge. It was not.