#fate whatever

Most Favorite Blorbo(s) of 2023

Lord Glück and Macht of El Dorado (Sousou no Frieren) – Macht's was the arc that turned me around on Frieren's treatment of demons—he’s so interesting, and so tragic, totally set in his ways while also yearning to change them.  Glück, meanwhile, is so devoted to his word, blunt in his assessment of Macht’s character but wholly sincere about trying to give him the knowledge and environment he needs to change.  My BF asked me for the spoiler-free version of what I liked about them, and the best I can sum it up as is, “A mutual acceptance despite the parts of each other they can’t understand,” and, “They’ve made each other promises that go all the way to end, to the goddamn end.”  Thirty years of that!  I am once again begging on my hands and knees for Frieren to get a second season, and also, if the universe really loves me, to end the first season with a tease for the Golden City.[1]

(I cheated a bit here; the central square is intended for a single supreme fave, not center-mounting one's OTP. I am, however, entirely incapable of picking one of those two above the other. Also, putting them both there does bring the character count to a nice even 50.}

1: A second tease.  There’s actually been one already, a reference to Macht’s enchanted jewelry, squirreled away in some on-screen text—one of the anime’s many additions to the background detail compared to the manga.

12 Characters vs. 12 Months In A Year. Coincidence? Probably!

(Starting at the top left corner and moving clockwise.)

Shigaraki Tomura (BNHA) – 2023 was the year Shigaraki Tomura got his groove back, thank heavens.  While he didn’t get much material in which to speak his own mind—really just Chapters 379 and 411, a full year apart (the latter didn’t officially come out until just a few days ago; we just got the leaks a week early).  We’ll see how he holds up going forward, but even those few scenes effortlessly demonstrate just how profound a waste of time handing AFO the reins to the end game was.  Here’s to not letting Heroes off the hook in the new year!

Iguchi Shuuichi/Spinner (BNHA) – Spent a lot of 2023 worrying about this guy.  Still am worried about this guy.  But him turning the tides of the war at the end of 2022 shifted the whole course of the battle, and new we’ve got Shigaraki invoking The Horizon to finally give us incontrovertible evidence that Shigaraki and Spinner have talked about more than just video games!  2024 is shaping up Spinaraki!

Yotsubashi Rikiya/Re-Destro (BNHA) – I provide fanart for this man because, of course, he was in the actual canon not at all last year, absent a single flashback panel from Hose Face, not at all making up for what a caricature that character was otherwise.  All the good Re-Destro content I was getting last year was thanks to @nickfoo’s wonderful, wonderful fanart of him.  Thanks for continuing to give this guy love, foo! (full art here)

Geten (BNHA) – Himura backstory reveal!  And that revelation accounted for the only fanfic I posted last year at all, as well as being super satisfying in terms of largely clearing Todoroki Enji of the responsibility for the heteromorphobic microaggressions perpetrated by certain of his children, as well as giving us some more hints about Geten and Re-Destro’s relationship.  Exquisite. (Now just let him have something to say that isn’t mostly there to Contextualize Dabi.)

Vamirio/Anne from Management  (Helck) – I reread Helck last year in celebration of its anime, and just to reiterate this again, Vamirio and her determination lead her to make firm stands and fiery declarations about her combat role and priorities that Deku has never even fuckin’ thought about.  Vamirio a best; vote Vamirio for Head of Management.

Samuel Murphy +Hal and Nobu (Canis: The Speaker) – Sam’s my favorite of another inseparable trio, probably because, at least as an adult, he’s the most vulnerable—not simply because he lacks the firearms or goons that his partners’ positions allow them to call to hand, but also because of his struggles with insomnia.  Whip-smart, observant, and well-spoken, and I always have had a preference for the smart ones.

Jasper (Steven Universe) – I started reading @faelapis’s post-canon Jasper exploration fic Something Better last year and absolutely fell in love with it.  It reminded me all over again how much I love Jasper, and how much I wanted a story that gave her all the time she needed to change.

Somei Yoshino (Yakuza Fiancée) – Last year saw the anime announcement and Yoshino’s totally amazing bathtub fight with Azami, which I guess there are cowards out there who didn’t like?  RIP to them but I’m different, I guess!  I’ll watch Yoshino break her terrible suitors’ fingers any time!

Wolfgang Grimmer (Monster) – Reread the back half of Monster last year solely because I love Grimmer and wanted to read his material again.  A perennial favorite, manga and character alike.  I love a man held together with scotch tape, stitches and good intentions.

Boutarou the Pirate (Golden Kamuy) – Probably not my actual favorite character in the series, but I finally got to see him in anime form last year after a maddening wait thanks to the delay in 2022.  Shiraishi’s best ship and a feral merman (look at the way he uses his hair and tell me I'm wrong) that someone unaccountably let walk around on dry land. A+ character.

Sailor Cosmos (Sailor Moon) – Speaking of characters with a huge wait on seeing them in the anime..!  God, I’ve wanted anime Sailor Cosmos since high school, and I’m thrilled to finally get her (and the merch that would accompany her).

Mitaka Asa (Chainsaw Man) – I read the first half of Chainsaw Man a while back, largely on the basis of @robotlesbianjavert’s enthusiasm, and while I enjoyed it well enough, particularly Denji’s assorted travails, I never got super invested in it because, not having to wait week to week for releases, there was never really enough time to get attached to most characters before they got unceremoniously offed.  Whether it’s the week-to-week wait or just that I like Asa as a character more, she’s really done the job of getting me interested in the series.  I love this loser failgirl and I want only the best for her; while I doubt that’s what she’ll get, at least I can watch her torture logic to make sick weapons and have affecting scenes about her own crippling inadequacy issues in the meantime.

36 Others

(As before, starting on the top left and moving clockwise through the BNHA Zone.)

Scarecrow/Spinner’s Number 2 (BNHA) – Scarecrow’s big speechifying moments would have been back in autumn of 2022, but I still loved him more than enough in 2023 for him to make this grid.  He was reduced to a shallow caricature and still had to get knocked off a roof because no one could actually out-argue him, and through all of that unendurable authorial laziness, his potential still shines through for me.  Stan the MLA, MLA 5Evah.

Toga Himiko (BNHA) – The only Villain whose Hero foil plotline is working for me on any level, though a lot is hanging on whether or not she, y’know, lives.  She definitely should have gotten to stab the bejeezus out of Hawks, and Ochaco should definitely go on the run with her once Apple Cheeks realizes that the HeroAca justice system could not possibly be relied upon to do anything other than throw Toga in a hole for a few years before executing her.

Gentle Criminal (BNHA) – The only redeemed villain whose regard for Deku functions at all thematically.  Lady N’s return is hogswash on multiple levels, but I will defend Gentle’s without reservation.

Kunieda + Aoyama Yuuga (BNHA) – Consider these two to be a stand-in for all the thinking I did last year about Fix-It Fic scenarios for this whole final arc.  For example, Kunieda in the canon speaks far too knowledgeably both about and to Aoyama for them to be total strangers, so why not plant some seeds for their confrontations earlier?  I ask the reader to consider this:

In a version of the Edgy Deku arc that allowed the rest of 1-A to get out into the world to help out with relocation efforts, they one day come across a scene of dread: a neighborhood full of corpses and Kunieda’s flowers.  Aoyama has a noticeably shaken reaction, which he plays off as just horror to his similarly horrified classmates, but the truth is that he’s got prior history with Kunieda—AFO didn’t plop corpses in front of his parents to intimidate them (because that’s ham-handed and silly), but bodies were still involved.  They’d turn up buried in the family's fancy gardens sometimes, always heralded by those vivid red-black flowers…

Frieren (Sousou no Frieren) – I was relatively neutral on the title character until the anime came out and I had to suffer through The Discourse about her attitude towards demons (arguments on both sides tending to be poorly considered and ignorant, both of canonical details and real-world relevance).  That made me a bit more defensive of her, but even setting my contrarianism aside, I was also very pleased with how she navigated the manga’s most recent arc.[2]  She’s maybe the first character I can think of who I have actively wanted to write Asexual Representation fic for, if only because my answer to, “Does she Romantically Love Himmel?” is much more complex than just saying, “No, she only saw him as a friend,” or, “Yes, and now she’s going to be sad about her Tragically Lost Love for the rest of her life and we need to write all the fix-it fics about that.”

2: She wants to go home!  Her feelings for Himmel, whatever they are, are of less importance to her than going home!  Despite everything we know about how she perceives time, she still values her “now” more than her lost “then”!  My gloating aside, though, I was far more affected by the sword scene than I was the wedding attire or the near kiss.  Being trapped in a wedding illusion?  Trite, overplayed.  Being trapped in a wedding illusion yet still being able to wrap your hands around your partner’s arm and faithfully guide them into drawing the sword neither of you can perceive?  Now that’s intimacy!

Heiter (Sousou no Frieren) – While I had little overall use for the aforementioned most recent arc of Frieren, I did very much enjoy my favorite member of the Hero Party getting a moment to demonstrate what being The Priest Of The Party That Defeated The Demon King actually means in practice.  Grausam being unable to put him down with an illusion?  Being the only one who could defend his downed companions?  The sheer level of trust he has in Himmel?  A little bit of vulnerability where he’s bare seconds away from getting gibbed by Grausam?  Heiter is the member of the party that we get the least amount of in on: Sein didn’t stay with the party long enough to serve as a point of comparison, and despite Heiter raising Fern, she didn’t assume his role in the new group, like Stark did Eisen’s, nor do her reminiscences about him get anywhere near the amount of screentime that Frieren’s do of Himmel.  So for real, you guys, Chapter 118 was so good.

Edward (Shadows House) – *bangs fists on table*  WORST BOY WORST BOY WORST BOY!!  Anime Edward is pants, but Manga Edward is where it’s at, always keeping Kate scrambling, always coming out on top of his maneuverings against his peer group rivals, just flappable enough that his victories doesn’t look effortless, and engaging enough that his smugness feels earned rather than intended to turn the reader against him.  I have no idea how the story is going to deal with the adult shadows, who are after all still just as brainwashed and wronged by Grandfather’s workings as the kids are!  If anything, they’re worse off, having already been manipulated into losing the “faces” they must once have loved dearly.  Thus, while Kate and her allies certainly approach the conflict with a very Us vs. Them, Adults=The Enemy mentality, the screentime Edward’s own affairs get, fully independent of how they intersect with Kate’s, along with an avowed desire to improve the House that parallels Kate’s, make me hopeful that the authors have something a little more nuanced in mind than, “Free the current victims by wiping out all the previous ones.”

Melinda Desmond (Spy x Family) – The main cast are all perfectly fine, but Melinda is interesting.  Super curious to find out more about the Desmond family dynamics, and I love Melinda bouncing around with Yor. (I swear, though, judging by the collective response to the most recent chapter, the fandom is going to turn me into a Donovan Apologist yet. Only one member of that family has visible scars suggesting brain surgery, folks!!)

Anti/Knight/Gridknight (Gridman Universe) – Always my favorite single character from both Gridman and Dynazenon, and he was characteristically great in the movie as well.  His scene with Akane at the end was only my second favorite beat because, while it’s wonderful emotionally cathartic (more fanservice like this, please!), it’s also kind of muddled thanks to the idea of Gridman!Anti and Dynazenon!Knight being two separate entities. Churlish to hold that against it, though, when it's so heartfelt.

Minami Yume + Asanaka Yomogi (Gridman Universe) – Such a great pairing in their own show—I once saw someone call them forced, which has always struck me as just being too high on Bashing The Hets to see that Yomogi and Yume have a great arc towards getting together, actually.  Seeing them be unabashedly together and happy about it in the film was 100% delightful and deserved. Yume swooping down out of the sky on Dynarex to scoop up her wifeguy boyfriend is my actual favorite beat in the movie.

Hyura (Helck) – Firstly, the dry humor around Hyura is fantastic.  (“Something like an arm grows back simply enough.  That’s just common sense.”  “It doesn’t, right?”  “It does not.”)  Secondly, she’s the biggest badass in the secondary cast.  Thirdly, she and Edil have the designated rival ship dynamic (incredibly rare to see across gender lines in shounen manga), and Hyura holds her own all the way to the end.  Hyura is great.

Mikaros (Helck) – “Yes, we may have lost some assets and I personally shattered the mind of one of our strongest soldiers, removing him from the playing field.  But the important thing is that I personally overcame my trauma, so overall it’s a win.”  What a slimeball.  What a total heap.  And what an excellent example of the end-stage stakes driving the title character's choice in the epilogue! I love Mikaros unreservedly.

Harold Aldo Hughes and Iwaki Tadanobu + Sam (Canis: The Speaker) – Transformation, reinvention, the fierceness of devotion and the ruthlessness of rebirth—I don’t love them quite as much as I do Sam, but they’re also both great.

Hera (Lore Olympus) – Lore Olympus is one of those series I read more because it’s interesting enough while also being blisteringly gorgeous than because I’m deeply invested in the characters, but the plotline about Hera and Kronos really has pulled me all the way into active, character-specific interest.  Great, tense, painful stuff.  Can’t wait to see where she goes following recent events.

Redcloak (Order of the Stick) – His last really insightful and heartwrenching scene was in the year before last—that fantastic exchange with Oona!—but for as long as I’m reading OOTS, Redcloak is going to be a favorite.  God, the Law Elemental summoning is so funny.

Hyness (Kirby franchise) – This one’s entirely on my sis-in-law—like another character further down the list, I am not remotely “in” the Kirby fandom.  But what can I say—tell me about a warped cult leader who started in a bad place and only got worse who still managed to get saved by the Hero taking a leap of faith that paid off, and tell me the fandom calls him a horrible abuser?  Sorry, but I Have No Choice But To Stan. (full art here)

Lafcadio Boone (The Sexy Brutale) – Replayed this again last year, and it’s still great.  In a sense, despite its sizeable named cast, it really only has the one character, and his story is such that I want to make every single person on tumblr that gets hyperbolic about the forgiveness and redemption of fictional wrongdoers play this game.  “Time to move on, old man,” indeed.

Sissel (Ghost Trick) – Finally got the remaster of this and replayed it, and it’s also still great.  Knowing The Spoilers about Sissel seriously make replays such a scream, but also man is this game really sitting on some completely over-the-top darkness not at all far beneath its candy apple red and Matrix-text green surface.

Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India (Across the Spider-Verse) – Strictly in terms of character writing, he’s very fun, but I don’t think he’s as strong as Spider-Punk or Miguel O'Hara, but on the other hand, he’s so much fun, especially to simply watch in motion.  Most of the rest of the leads, however varied their artstyles might be, still feel like they move in basically the same ways, just with varying levels of grace vs. power, intent vs. controlled collapse, but because of the way Pavitr uses his thread, he moves completely differently, and it’s just a ton of fun to watch.  The first character I went hunting for fanart of when I got out of the movie theater.

Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Across the Spider-Verse) – I have outstanding affection for Spider-Gwen from reading her comics back when, but that opening Vulture fight, the fantastic look of her dimension, and all the trans signaling kept her right at the top, too.

Brutha (Discworld: Small Gods) – @codenamesazanka read this and a few of the Watch books last year, prompting me to do some rereads as well, and Brutha and Small Gods remain very dear to me.  I only wish more artists would draw versions of him that remotely resemble “fat, simple-looking young man from a desert country in fantasy!expy!Middle East” rather than “suspiciously trim and Benedictine.”

Sam Vimes (Discworld series) – Ditto on Nal’s read above, but also chatted with foo a lot about this guy, and he’s been my favorite single character in the series since high school.  It takes very little to prompt me to reread his books generally, but last year was the first time I’ve had it in me to reread Snuff, as it was previously a little too tied up in my feelings about the last few books prior to Pratchett’s death.  Regardless of anything else, though, Snuff is the book for Sam/Sybil.

Mina Murray (#DRCL: Midnight Children) – Discovered this lush chonk of horror phantasmagoria last year and I’m kind of in love with it.  Its take on Mina anchors it well—she’s smart and fiery but up against ingrained sexism and classism in her setting, and not too Anachronistic Grrl Power to not be hurt by that sometimes; she’s stubborn, but vulnerable to the supernatural horrors in the way any child would be.  An unreliable but intriguing and sympathetic narrator.

Capone Bege (One Piece) – The other character I got onto largely without getting into the series he hails from, nickfoo—whose art I again use to illustrate—does great work with this guy, a once-jovial monster shocked back from that moral brink by marriage and fatherhood.  Still gets a bit Into It at work, but tries not to bring it home, at least as much as that can be avoided when carrying both family and crew around in the same heart/sub-dimensional space.  (Also, foo’s version of Bege is great, but her rendition of Chiffon is—speaking as someone who doesn’t read the series and can only gauge by image search or skimming the wiki—borderline miraculous, accurate to Oda’s lively caricature design, but so much more sensitive, expressive and human.)

Prince Kazu/Lady Chikako (Ooku: The Inner Chambers) – On the occasion of the Netflix anime, I finally tracked down and finished Ooku last year, and when I tell you that I laughed more and harder in the final arc than I did through the entire rest of the series combined…  The Kyoto cast members are a big part of why,[3] and none more delightful than the stuffy, prideful, possessive, and deeply impetuous Chikako, one of the most singularly human characters in the whole 19-volume melodrama.

3: Catty ex-male prostitute turned head of the Inner Chambers Takiyama is the other part of this equation, by the way.

Gao Shun (The Apothecary Diaries) – Long-suffering stoics are my absolute favorite type, and that holds true even though Gao Shun's stoicism has been largely a humorous beat thus far.  I want this guy to get more attention, but until then, I will continue to enjoy his weary exasperation every time he has to deal with Mao Mao’s eccentricities/Jinshi’s enthusiasm about same.

Mao Mao (The Apothecary Diaries) – Best female character of the season, for sure, but I’ve been reading one of the manga for a while now, and she’s a regular delight.  Eccentric and ruthless by turns, painfully aware of the limitations of her position and yet wholly willing to make her own decisions and exert her own agency within those limitations without ever concerning herself with whether she should ask permission from or report to someone above her rank.  Mao Mao’s mercy takes the form of knowing when to speak and when to demure, and every time I see some stuck-in-their-own-ethical-framework commenter complain about her moral compass, I appreciate it harder.

Accustomizer Stud/Tiffany (Angelic Acceptor Alouette) – Enthusiastically resourceful teenage girl who would probably be super into transhumanism if she hadn’t fallen in with angels (sic) instead, transforming into the gloriously nonbinary pile of muscles and amazing hair that is Accustomizer Stud, Tiffany’s ultimate expression of her inner self.  Stud is magnanimous, gracious, and well-spoken, and they are also VERY LOUD AND FIGHTY.  My absolute favorite character in a game wall-to-wall with great characters.

Yuunagi Tsubasa/Cure Wing (Hirogaru Sky PreCure) – The first Official Boy Cure with absolutely no provisos or qualifications or ways to wiggle out of it, and the show gets him just right by playing him basically completely straight.  Has a costume no one would look twice at in a magical girl line-up, wastes no time on masculine embarrassment at his frills, with the only nod he/the show make towards his gender at all being to frame his role as being a knight to a princess, rather than simply a guardian to one, but it’s not really what he’s about.  His actual character is driven by knowledge, studiousness, and a desire to overcome the limitations placed on him by being a human/pudgy flightless bird fairy.

Kei Miyama (Go With the Clouds, North By Northwest) – Something of a stand-in for his series generally, which I read the two most recent volumes of last year and fell in love with all over again—particularly the most recent one, which switches deftly between depictions of shattering, world-hollowing grief and the beguiling intimacy of the rhythms of life and nature.  But my love for the manga itself aside, Kei’s a great protagonist, full of little contradictions and snags that make him feel much more fleshed out and grounded than your average animanga male lead, even as he’s running around doing very Animanga Male Lead Things, like solving mysteries by using his Strange Power to get information a normal person could not.

Lord El-Melloi II/Waver Velvet (Fate franchise) – Waver is possibly my favorite character of all time in any medium, so it takes very little to rekindle the love.  In last year's case, it took the Fate/strange Fake special!  Love to see my boy continue to wrest more narrative space for himself than he was originally allotted by virtue of being a run-away audience favorite of the Fate/Zero anime!

Ivan (Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still) – Got the remastered Blu-ray last year as a gift, and guess what?  I still love Ivan in all his cartoonish mini-boss villainy layered over the pathos of tragic loss and resentment.  Honestly, I can only assume he’s as well-adjusted as he is because Alberto is so inspiring to work in close quarters with (mood), because otherwise I’d think it pretty unfair that the sole surviving Bashtarle national in the story gets so little to say about/to the people who blew it up.

Isurugi Camice (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans) – I was a bit too preoccupied with BNHA meta last year to think much about my prior fandom phase, but I still made time to rotate Isurugi in my mind from time to time.  As one of my beloved long-suffering stoics, I can always make that kind of time for him.  (Image source is from the cover of a doujinshi I have, because melancholy BL doujinshi is definitely more the kind of tonal zone my mental rotations were occupying than they were canon’s!)

And, finally, the blank

Kariya dreams.

His life is a dream, an extended nightmare.  He shambles through liminal corridors—visions of the past mixed with aims on the future, his days hazed and indistinct, his nights black and endless.  His body swings between chewing misery and livewire agony.  He feels forever observed by figures with scornful eyes—everyday Fuyuki crowds, yes, Zouken and that bastard Tokiomi.  But sometimes stranger figures, too, armored men who whisper in a language Kariya knows is not Japanese, nor any language that’s been spoken outside of historical reenactment in centuries.  

He dreams of madness, of Berserker’s teeth buried in his neck, hot breath and trembling weakness, of existence always on the verge of collapse.  He dreams of grief, paralytic and enervating, of unshed tears as hot in his throat as fresh blood.  He dreams of helplessness, of Sakura’s empty eyes and Aoi’s empty smile and his own empty hands.

He dreams (once, only once, and that perhaps worse than never at all) of a lake, placid and still, but with an edge of something other in the air that raises the hair on the back of his neck.  In the gray half-light of dawn, it seems like a photograph he could only touch the surface of, or perhaps a projected image he could reach for only to fall through.  Beautiful, but apart from him.

He sighs—feels the sigh in his chest, a chest far too broad to be his own, a tension in muscles that move with a poised, practiced grace completely foreign to Kariya’s stumbling infirmity.  He looks down at the arms crossing over his chest and finds, rather than the sleeves of his stained and reeking hoodie, plate armor gauntlets that gleam the muted dove gray of clouds after a storm.

“Why did you dream me this way?” asks a voice.  Not his voice, and not his language, either.  It’s harsher, with more fricatives in the consonants, but intoned with a low resonance that belongs to the mist and the lakeshore as echoes belong to a sea cave.  Not his voice, but the words roll off of Kariya’s tongue all the same.

When no one answers him—Kariya tries to take control of that stately murmur to as much effect as trying to climb sheet glass—the man sighs again.  He moves towards the lake as within him Kariya fights back tears of purest envy for the man's even paces and sure movement, the sound of his armor a hushed, melodic rhythm.  Dark hair slides over his shoulders in loose, finely-combed waves as he looks down at the misty surface of the water and the indistinct shape reflected there.

He blinks once, twice, slow and considered.  Without even a sense of disorientation, Kariya is, suddenly, huddled beside him at the water’s edge, frail and bowed, and it takes only standing in the man’s presence to name him.

“Berserker.”  The title twists his lips—twists the other’s lips, too, a mirroring bitterness.

“Not here,” his Servant answers, “though I would have preferred it so.”  He lifts his head, exposing the white line of his throat, the noble line of his profile, and looks upon the lake with grief rippling somewhere deep beneath the surface of his eyes.  His lips part again, then close.  Purposefully, he turns away, as if he can’t bear to speak the words out over the waters.

“I came to you because you called me forth as a madman,” he says at last.  “So I ask you again—why must you now dream of me thus?”

Kariya swallows, feeling shrunken and resentful beneath that hard, cool gaze.  His own companions, the worms burrowing in his flesh and nesting in his sinew, feel distant here, but only that—a tugging at the far end of a tether that holds him bound and collared, though it has at present decided to let him wander afield.

“I can’t control what I dream about.”  He answers in a voice of sand and grit to Berserker’s polished iron.  “It’s just the Servant bond.  Normally I dream about you attacking me.”

Berserker absorbs the words, unmoving, unmoved.  “Your dreams are violent.  As are your needs.”

“What do you know about my needs?  All you do when we’re awake is try to murder whoever’s in front of you, including me!”  The anger kindles—stupid, stupid, it’s just a dream, it won’t make a difference when I wake back up.  But the remote, aloof sorrow in Berserker’s eyes reminds him too much of Sakura’s distant stare, of Tokiomi’s—of mage society’s—egotism that masquerades itself as wisdom.

“I know you seek vengeance,” the knight pronounces.  “Salvation—for yourself and for another.  I know your desire to tear down he whom you cannot be.”

“He who I,” Kariya stammers as the image looms behind his eyes, Tokiomi with his arm around Aoi’s shoulders, Aoi smiling up at him, serene and at peace.  “Shut up—”

“You called me with a relic of mine, but it would not be enough if I did not see a likeness of myself in you.  You—”

“Shut up!” Kariya snarls.  “You’re not here to lecture me about my wish!  Just—just concentrate on winning!”

“When I take the field, I think of nothing else,” Berserker responds, face solemn.  “You would do better to go mad as well, my Master.  You will find things much simpler.”

“I don’t need to be—to be divorced from reality like you!”  

“We are happier in separation, reality and I.”  The knight smiles, a rueful curve of his lips, though the melancholy still hangs on his eyes.

Without warning, he turns away on a wince.  He sighs—the sound of it rattles at the end, a sword in a scabbard begging to be released.  With a jolt of fear, Kariya sees the way his armor is darkening, ink spreading over the brushed silver, the cape pinned over his pauldrons aging and rotting and falling away.  The knight of the lake is once more becoming the black knight, the Mad Enhancement of his summoning reasserting itself.  

“You are waking,” he says.  His teeth grit, discoloring and sharpening into a jagged, inhuman line even as Kariya staggers back from him.  “Go.”

Pain winds back its grip on Kariya’s leash, choking him, driving him to his knees.  Berserker looks down on him, his lips drawn back, breath shuddering in his chest.  His violet eyes burn red, the flames within climbing higher by the second as the mist on the lake roils, smoke-dark.  

“Go. Forget this,” he growls.  He stoops down, wrapping his hand around the back of Kariya’s neck to draw him close.  Terror swells in Kariya’s throat, croaking, keening, but Berserker only presses a whisper to his forehead, sour and hot.  “I do not wish to be remembered.”

A beat, a thrumming silence, and Kariya’s heart hammers against his ribs as Berserker’s hair falls across him like a shroud.  The knight’s breath pants against his throat.  His teeth, his teeth—

“I am sorry for the ways I will hurt you,” he rasps, and then those hands coil taut in Kariya’s sleeves and hurl him sideways into the lake.

The waters close over him like a throat.  Black and cold, they swallow him down, and there at the bottom of the lake’s gullet, he finds his pain waiting.

—   —   —

This was written for the Banned Together Bingo square "Happy Divorce." It's a reach, I know, but it put me in mind of the Livejournal purges, where whole communities were banned for the terrible crime of having too many words in common with The Forbidden Topic, regardless of those communities' actual activities or purpose. I can imagine this fic being caught in a similar sweep for "anything that talks positively about divorce." Algorithms don't make good censors, kids!