#heisted

26. “We’ll be alright, won’t we?”

T. Injury

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i redesigned xanthippi

doll makers are fun

It was an easy enough question to ask, yet it pierced through Arlo's heart like a spear, shocking them into a stiff sort of silence, bringing the day's soft, yellowy haze into sharp focus.

It'd only be fair to answer, their mind prompted gently. Since we know every dark thing of his own past, might as well share our own haunting memories...

Arlo drew in a breath, and then spoke.

They told him... everything. About how they used to be human. About the sickness that had been slowly killing them and quickly killing their family, how they'd often lay awake at night in unbearable pain and wish for an End, how their sister taught them magic to cheer them up, how she dropped out of university to care for them since their parents could hardly deal with one another, let alone a sickly child..

Arlo told Nesryn about the book they found among their sister's things, how it told of a special kind of devil that grants wishes, how to summon them, how the magic to do so works..

Nesryn's grip on Arlo's hand had been growing tighter and tighter with each secret revealed, his face falling into expressions like fear and pity and concern and sympathy, his sweet gaze never once looking away as Arlo spoke solemnly to the ground.

"What did you wish for?" Another question, a knife.

"Well.. at first I thought of wishing to be well, but I couldn't live with myself knowing how my very existence had torn into my family, ripping them apart. My mother and my father had gone poor caring for me, they'd fallen out of love due to the stress of it, they'd begun to resent one another and yet couldn't leave. Refused to, not while they had a sick child to tend to..

And my sister gave up her greatest dreams and wasted her talents on making her ill fated sibling feel less lonely. She was a prodigy in magic, gifted in a way that only natural arcanists can be, and she left the most prestigious school in the world- one she got into through scholarships alone- for the sake of me, her dying sibling who couldn't leave their bed without assistance, let alone cast any parlor trick level cantrips.."

Arlo laughed, though it was laced with bitterness. Even now, they could only cast any magic if they focused intensely and even then it was meekly.

"Arlo," Nesryn's voice held an urgency to it. "What did you wish for."

He's asking, they thought. But you can tell by the look in his face that he already knows the answer.

"I wished," Arlo began softly. "I wished... to have never been born."

A squeezing pressure in their hand intensified as Nesryn gasped in a small breath. He opened his mouth to speak again, to cry, but Arlo cut him off, continuing in an angry rush.

"And the devil did it. Erased me from their memories completely, scrubbed my existence and thus my burden on them away into nothing, freeing them from my shackled sickness and letting them live, truly live for the first time.

My father and my mother separated kindly, met new people and fell into new, real love.

My sister returned to school, quickly rose to the top of her class and I assume graduated with the highest possible marks, probably a professor of her own now.

And then-" And Arlo cracked a bit, paused to recover while Nesryn looked on encouragingly.

"And then the devil laughed at me. Said since I was so pleased with the results, he wanted to give me a wish of my own, free of charge...

He changed me. Turned me into this and- and threw me into the world blindly, he- he took my name, he took my name."

A warmth had spread across Arlo's chest, and a sweet smell caught them, and they blinked and realized that Nesryn was hugging them tightly to himself, his hair tickling Arlo's nose as it fell down his shoulders.

The sensation soothed them, though they realized too that they were shaking, crying, clinging to Nesryn like he was a light in the dark. Soft shushing helped their breathing to slow, their hiccups to lighten, and a gentle hand stroked up and down their back, tender and kind.

It ended when Nesryn took a small step away, still holding Arlo but looking into their eyes now, expression as fearless and fearlessly loving as Arlo had ever seen it.

"You're name is Arlo. You saved me from a life in the darkness, you freed me from a curse of isolation, and I love you immensely. You rescued me and taught me how to live again, and I can never thank you enough for climbing into my tower that night."

Arlo sniffed, though cracked a watery smile.

"I was trying to rob you."

"I remember."

They laughed then, and Nesryn tugged them back into an embrace; a welcoming, loving, warm embrace, one that spoke of promises and new days to come. New days and comfortable nights, a future to look forward to.

The two picked up their walk again, and after a moment passed, Nesryn said thoughtfully,

"Wow our pasts sucked, huh."

Arlo snorted, nodding. "Yea, real shitty." They turned to admire Nesryn's upturned face, smiling into the sun, a braided halo resting atop his head.

They sighed.

"Future is lookin pretty bright, though."

1. a trait they have too much of  (ex. too much pride = arrogance)

i guess i’ll do arlo bc its easy, they have too much self loathing like urs truly c; being a human child, arlo was terminally ill and couldnt so much as leave their bed. it strained their family financially to support them, it hurt their parents marriage, it hurt their sister’s dreams. so they really internalized all of that pain into being their fault, and even when they did something about it, expecting to die, and the end result being not death but to live cursed as a tiefling instead of human-- arlo feels like a failure at every turn, and doesn’t deserve to feel that way but its my oc and im self projecting so deal with it 

even after the transformation and the running away, arlo hit a lot of bad luck that sort of reinforced this idea that they are unworthy of love and attention.

they eventually fell under the wing of a master thief, joined a den, and stumbled into a heist that might just change how they see themself