i was going to send an icon for that memory prompt but honestly? please talk about ren's dad, i'm not on watts often to blithely reference him and his absolutely magnificent moustache, but anything you write knocks my socks off so please nine
memoriae.
ren’s complex concerning their conditional love for their father always made them wonder whether they were a bad son. no doubt they loved their father very much. he guided ren in nearly everything they did, from the way they spoke to the way they made their decisions. ren carried on his legacy by wielding his bow, and sometimes when they looked in the mirror they saw the shadow of his face. it unnerved them. for so long they had aspired to be exactly like their father, but it took them even longer than that to realise that they didn’t know very much about him. this hadn’t mattered when they were little, when they were so enamoured with the way he read them stories, and fought of anyone who tried to harm him, and protect him from the harsh words of their grandfather. li was gone for such long intervals at a time, and gone so early from ren’s life that he was more ghost than parent. and despite ren’s love for him, their desire to be like them, they’d realised a harsh reality they were only just coming to accept : ren didn’t know who li was.
he was six when overheard their mother and father in the kitchen, lingering in the hallway with a need for water. it was the closest thing he’d ever heard to them having an argument, even if li sounded level headed and an kept her voice down. there was a strain in her words ren rarely heard, and he hated it, hated hearing his most precious person in any kind of pain. “ i don’t deserve to be the one teaching him about right and wrong, not after what i’ve done. ” ren pressed further into the darkness of the corner, distressed. “ your family hates me, zhilan. no matter how much time i spend here, he will eventually realise i’m not a good person. ” an’s voice was soft enough that ren couldn’t hear her angry sobs, but he could see the way she gripped onto li’s shirt like a lifeline, furiously shaking her head and watching hair fall from her neat little bun. the next day ren’s father was gone.
ren was seven and on their annual fishing trip to the wind pass lakes when they started to see a shadow of who li had once was ( who he’d been still ? ) the life of dragon faunus was an incredibly dangerous one, with traits of incredible value on the black market. his father’s traits were subtle enough, but ren’s growing horns were not. bandits and poachers occupied the kuroyuri valley in excess, and it was one unfortunate ambush, one hunter daring to lay one hand on ren’s shoulder, that had li seeing red. ren thought the magnificent aim of their father had always been for animals, but as the arrow speared through the poacher’s throat, another’s heart, the back of a knee, mercilessly tearing through ligaments and sinew, ren realised game hadn’t been the only thing li had hunted before. when li ran out of arrows, the knives he carried on his person were thrown with a deadly ( practiced ) precision. li beckoned ren closer to inspect any injuries, and ren hesitated, scared.
ren’s father never talked about his past, at least not to ren. he had no relatives, no family to call his own. whenever ren tried to ask his mother, she would smile at him, and say “ ask your father when he comes back ” or try to distract him with something else, something more worthy of his attention. but the fact that she never answered, and her eyes got a little sad when he asked, was never lost on them, even as a child. when they moved out of the lie estate and into kuroyuri for that one year of bliss, ren romanticised it as they grew older, but it wasn’t without it’s faults. li’s paranoia about their safety spiked, and he was home far more often than he’d been before to keep a close eye on his family. still, he was guarded and distant, always waiting for a threat that seemed to loom in the distance. he taught ren tells about other people, taught them how to protect themselves in a way that made them cautious. their father had always, always been more wary of people, than of grimm.
as ren grew older, they realised with frustration that they got their secretive tendencies from li, that even unintentionally they shut people ( even their loved ones ) out in the same way he did. it gnawed on them that they would never understand the entirety of who their father was, and that they had little to no way of finding out.
@earthcapt.
