Change - A Queue56 Fic
Gilded is different. It hasn't noticed yet, it might never, and perhaps that's for the better. Perhaps that signifies a gradual change, and not a sudden, unnatural one.
Gilded is calm, peaceful, one could even say happy though he would never say so himself. Content. He's picked flowers, he's wandered aimlessly, he's spent his first day following his love across oceans and stretches of land and into the depths of the world. It's familiar — maybe flare hasn't changed so much — but it is different now.
They've travelled, experienced brief glimpses of places: fighting, fishing, parkour, a land he could live peacefully in the nether unharmed by its ever-burning flames, and a land he could rest in a field of flowers. Their drive for chaos and anarchy has subsided, though perhaps that's a result of the laws of this world changing, and it does still itch to kill.
That part is different.
Not the urge by itself, Gilded has always had that, but the nature of it. He tore a rabbit apart with his bare hands, did the very same to three horses. Sparrow had questioned gold on that one, glitch was unable to answer her unfiltered confusion. Maybe it was just for the thrill. Maybe it was just to feel the pixilated flesh give way under his claws. Claws? When he looks at his hands there are only blunt fingers, nails picked and jagged — too short to call claws.
The creature that is Gilded, has never been one of self reflection, so perhaps he will never realise any of this, perhaps their change will go unnoticed by all including themself, but that won't remove the fact that they have changed.
There is a beast inside of Gilded, a beast that wants to snarl and bite and bark and scratch and tear and sink its teeth and claws into anything and everything it can reach. It wants blood to stain the porcelain white of flare's mask. It wants to fight. It doesn't care for winning or losing, living or dying, as long as something perishes
It has been sleeping for so long, trapped between a mask and a face — it has always been a part of flare, since the very beginning, or more accurately, since the first time glitch witnessed spilled blood.
This is the first time it has been left hungry.
Gilded is different, but perhaps the change is small enough, perhaps they will never notice. Perhaps it is for the best that the beast is never acknowledged.
