#strongbaro

I'm a big mentor/protégé enjoyer. The bigger the age gap the better. My first ship in AA was Edgeworth/von Karma lol. so now my mind is percolating with Barok/Stronghart thoughts. The way Barok feels indebted to Stronghart after the Genshin trial... how Stronghart took him under his wing, how he prizes him for his skills but also because he can use him as "London's guardian angel"... how Stronghart put him under his thumb thanks to Barok's grief warping his perception...

Anyway. What if I added. Barok clinging onto Stronghart because he misses Klint so much. And he projected Klint's intense sense of justice onto Stronghart. The latter is not as warm, as affectionate, as his brother was, and how he misses those fleeing touches, but Barok would take anyone by his side, after being abandoned by everyone... something that, he doesn't know yet, is precisely Stronghart's fault.

now, if you want to make this sexual and have barok have fantasies about klint while having private encounters with stronghart, i wouldn't object at all...

This is so fine qhdhsjajaja !!! I'm cool with pretty much everything in fiction really!

You know what, this is so great, there are tears in my eyes haha

I can picture it really well, Barok latching onto Stronghart after the Professor trial because he lost everyone he loved, his brother, his sister-in-law, Genshin... but at least he still has Stronghart, who's very good at what he does, extremely shrewd and also puts a lot of faith in Barok when he probably has none left himself. And as you said he'd feel indebted to him too for letting him prosecute that fateful trial.

I agree with him seeing remnants of Klint in Stronghart, in the way he holds himself in court, his witty remarks and Barok is so heartbroken that he clings onto anything and anyone who even remotely could fill that gaping hole left inside his soul. You know I will absolutely take it there lol, Barok absolutely would fantasise about the way Klint used to touch him (or maybe he never even got to? rip) when Stronghart takes him, and Stronghart would absolutely realise this and play into it because he's an evil fucker. In the end this would only make Barok even sadder and make him miss Klint a whole lot more.

This would also make the reveal of everything—the unearthing of Stronghart's actions, of his betrayal and all the ways in which he used Barok to attain his own goals—hurt that much more. I genuinely can't even imagine how one would survive having your entire world view shattered like this, to realise that the entire past decade of your life was essentially one giant lie...big ouch.

I find their dynamic super interesting!! It's obviously in no way healthy but that's what makes it so compelling to me; Barok dancing in the palm of Stronghart's hand for ten entire years without even realising anything is untoward except for tiny moments of doubt that are gone as quickly as they came. Because accepting what Stronghart has been doing would also mean accepting the things Klint did, acknowledging the fact that Barok didn't know every single little thing about his beloved brother...and that would just be too much for his poor, shattered heart to take.