#tsk tsk boom

"What else could the answer be?" you plead, voice rising in distress, staring over his shoulder with wide, wide eyes.

What other explanation is there for the horror show playing out before you, not censored at all by the protective, shimmering golden veil of your evol's shield. Heavy wall hangings, like some medieval castle shit, bizarrely placed in some sort of underground hot spring. Who thought that was a good idea? The mold management with all that fabric would be a nightmare in such a humid space—

His nose brushes your cheek as he looks back over his shoulder at the... abomination behind him. "Well, you're not wrong about the fuck-ery." A beat, his breath soft, liquor sweet against your skin. You expect more jokes, with how amused he sounds. But he simply says, "But it looks like love, to me."

You turn your head, a slow pan to the criminal beside you, cradling you in his arms. The man who choked you, starved you, deprived you of water while falsely imprisoning you for three days. The man who called you weak and a disappointment. The man who has you on a leash by the Aether core in your heart and whose only reason for spending time with you is the debt you still have to repay, .

He's radiating... smugness? Happiness?

He's smug, spouting nonsense about love, when just on the other side of the veil, another you and another him are ... are...

You push away from him, eliciting a displeased little grunt from him, before blinking again. Rubbing your eyes, pressing hard this time.

"No need to blind yourself, sweetie. Or if you insist, you should use a proper instrument to do the job." He tilts his head, tapping a finger against his temple. "A screwdriver. Or an icepick."

Dropping your clenched fists to your sides, you scowl at him, flexing and unflexing your fingers. "Not helpful."

"What's there to help? Whether you're blind or not won't change what we're looking at." Dropping his hand, he brushes nonexistent lint from his pristine, tailored suit before returning to openly admiring the view. "And I see no problem with what we're seeing."

"No problem? No problem? You don't see any problem with—"

A deep, keening moan penetrates the shield.

His eyes flick to yours as if to ensure that you also just heard what he just heard.

Why isn't the shield soundproof as well as bulletproof?

"Problem? It looks like you're having the time of your life." Hand covering his mouth now, as if his big palm could cover the even bigger shit-eating grin currently on his face, he snickers. "Sounds like it, as well."

Much to your fury, you do sound like you're having the time of your life. You're making noises you've never made before, and expressions you've never, ever seen on your face before, all right there, a nightmarish, live-action shitshow only a few paces away, impossible to deny.

"Well, you look like an animal in rut, mounting me like—" you snarl, before stopping yourself. The worst thing you can do when Sylus is gloating is to feed him your reactions; they're just nuclear fuel to his reactor. And you don't even know why you're hurling this at him like an insult to begin with. As if fucking like an animal is a bad thing. As if the way his hips are thrusting, steady and rolling, gracefully lithe like he always is, the way he's fisting your hair in one big hand, pulling your head back, gently exposing your throat, his firm, tender grip bowing your back into a gentle curve a delicious contradiction to his mercilessly snapping hips—as if making love with that kind of passion is somehow offensive. As if you don't dream about having the kind of sex you're currently watching yourself have.

You stare at yourself, your face ecstatic, drunk with pleasure, until it becomes unbearable. Instead, you focus on him. He's looking at this other you, not with bored disdain, but with an expression you don't even have a name for-worship entwined with famine, adoration and triumph, as if he's attained everything his heart has ever wanted and now he's glorying in every single noise and choked breath he can pull from you with his body.

"Now now, no need to call names." He doesn't sound offended at all. "And aren't we all just animals in rut, when caught in the throes of passion?"

"I can't with you right now. Doesn't this bother you? To see yourself fucking the last person you'd ever want touching you?" To ensure that there is no confusion, you fling out your arm at the wild lovemaking occurring almost within that same arm's reach, as if showcasing the consolation prize of an already-cancelled game show, voice keening more loudly than the other you now screaming Sylus's name.

You're desperate. Desperate to distract yourself from how unbearably hot he looks like this, and from how much your heart hurts seeing yourself have everything you've caught yourself yearning for, as flashes of his kindness, his humor, his good heart flare and die out, snuffed out by his usual blank indifference, every time you've met him since the auction. You have never even dared imagine what you're now looking at because he has always been an impossible dream, even if you could admit to yourself that he has become a dream to you. The man you thought had killed your brother, the man most wanted by your employer, the man more likely to drop you into a lake with cement blocks strapped to your ankles once you're no longer useful than to drop a kiss on your nose.

His smug amusement fades abruptly as he asks, "Who said you're the last person I'd want touching me?"

"What?" You whip your head around, wondering if this is another mind game of his.

"What?" he echoes, lifting one curious silver brow. "Did I ever say that?"

You glare at him. "Actions speak louder than words."

He glances at the other version of you, as the other version of him flips you onto your back, slips back into you, and smothers your face and throat in kisses punctuated with long swipes of his tongue. "Do those look like the actions of a man who would rather be touching someone else?"

You throw up your hands, desperately clinging to exasperation instead of despair. "That's not really us!"

"Not yet," he shrugs. "Too bad."

Jaw dropping, you tilt your head. "Wait, what? You think that's us from the future?"

He smiles, with just a hint of sharp teeth. "Just say the word and it can be."

"Stop fucking around, Sylus!"

"Screaming my name in frustration is a start, but I like what I'm hearing over there more," he points at the other you, now mewling his name as the other Sylus gently swats your sweaty cheek, caresses your hair, and then proceeds to maul your mouth with his own, all while continuing to grind his hips against you.

That grinding of his hips-you know yourself well enough to know that that's exactly what you'd need to orgasm. And the other Sylus knows you well enough to know that too.

"This isn't funny anymore," you whisper, turning away from what you'll never have.

Until your Sylus's calloused fingertips slide along your jaw and guide your face up, up, until you have no choice but to look into his crimson eyes, softer than you've ever seen them.

"It was never funny. It was always serious. I'm," he pauses, voice softening to match his eyes. "Always serious, when it comes to you."

"But you despise me!" You swear to god, you will jab an icepick into your eyes if you start crying and he starts mocking you for taking him seriously when he's clearly fucking with you.

"I think you're projecting, Kitten," he murmurs, and for the first time since you've met him, his voice is a cocktail full of regret, with a shot of sorrow. "Aren't you the one who despises me?"

His thumb sweeps over your cheekbone, and you're afraid to move. Afraid he'll stop touching you like this, an echo of how the other Sylus is touching the other you, with such reverent affection. "I haven't despised you since I figured out you aren't... you aren't what I thought you were." Killer of your only family. A blight on the N109 zone. A threat to Linkon's citizens. A depraved demon, worthy only of a swift execution and quickly forgotten.

His red, red eyes search yours as if sifting through your soul for the truth, but his Aether core doesn't glow.

"And I've never once despised you, either. Not from the beginning." His eyes bore into yours as his other hand joins his first, cupping your face in their calloused strength. "Not ever."

A loud roar—the other Sylus shouting your name as he climaxes—shatters the moment.

Without turning to look, you grin up at your Sylus. "You sound like you're having the time of your life."

Your Sylus just laughs, soft and low, before leaning down, his lips a breath from yours. "I bet that we can have an even better time than those two. Shall we find out for ourselves?"

You gaze up at him, admiring the crow's feet at the edges of his smiling eyes, the long slope of his nose, his silky hair falling softly onto your own forehead. "You really don't despise me?"

He shakes his head, a little movement as he presses his forehead to yours. "I should be asking you that, beloved."

Then what else could the answer be? "Then that bet is on," you laugh, surging up, pressing your lips to his for the first time.

I'm sorry you asked a serious thoughtful question and I gave you a stupid (not even very proper) smut scene.

I think Sylus would feel encouraged, any discouragement fading back into the certainty that if he just keeps trying, he will find his way back into MC's arms, right where he belongs. I think how MC would react depends on the MC. Canon MC would probably refuse to believe it and flounce away or hand wave it away with excuses of metaflux abnormalities.

I think Countess MC would turn to Sylus, lift an eyebrow, and say, "Incredible, I was sure I'd kill you first," and Archfiend would just laugh, seemingly taking it in stride before insisting he was very 'thirsty' and it was time to retreat to the coffin while interrogating his own feelings about why it made him so happy to see how loving their future selves were, unless they had already gone through their ordeal and they were seeing their main story future selves, in which case he'd just think, 'Of course,' because he'll find her in every lifetime, and will always make his way back to her.

And I think Staryus and Sorceress MC would be so relieved—he didn't go insane and destroy his beloved after all, and she wasn't doomed to wander alone after her dragon was gone.

I think that Caleb is characterized as a complicated, nuanced character who has undergone incredible trauma, and exhibits many of the signs of someone with ASPD. In acknowledging this, it's important to center the idea that any behavioral problems he exhibits are a result of the trauma, and no matter how anti-socially he behaves towards others, he was initially and continues to be an abused person himself. When I talk about him being a sociopath, it's with empathy and sorrow, which is the same I feel towards all real life little kids who, if only given empathy and love themselves at crucial development stages, never would have grown up to inflict the harm they do on others. It's easy for me to talk about Caleb though, because he's not real, so I have no moral qualms about vivisecting him and how he's portrayed in the game.

So, when we talk about sociopathy (outdated, offensive term which won't prevent me from using it entirely because I'm old and Caleb's feelings can't be hurt), or ASPD (current medically accepted term), we're talking about 'someone who can be witty, charming, and fun to be around -- but they can also lie and exploit others. People with ASPD appear uncaring and don’t show remorse for their actions. Someone with the disorder may act rashly, destructively, and unsafely without feeling guilty when their actions hurt other people.'

People with ASPD often exhibit many of the following behaviors:

Lying, conning, and exploiting- often for personal gain

Using intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate others

Acting rashly

Being irritable and aggressive

Showing a tendency toward physical violence and fights

Generally superficial relationships

Breaking the law and accepted social norms

Not caring about the safety of others or themselves

Not showing signs of remorse after hurting someone else

Failure to meet money, work, or social duties

There is no exact known cause of ASPD, but 'both nature and nurture seem to be involved': someone is more likely to have ASPD if they have a family history of the disorder or they experienced something traumatic while growing up.

So obviously, we don't find Caleb in all of these descriptions (he never fails to meet his duties or fulfill responsibilities, and even takes on responsibility for things that he should never have had to shoulder in the first place; he does not (usually) act rashly, he rarely breaks the law outside of the evil shit that Ever and the Farspace Fleet make him do, he does not lie for personal gain or go out of his way to exploit others for his own gain). However, when you look at the rest of the list, he exhibits many of the characteristics of ASPD. And to be honest, if you replaced 'for personal gain' with 'for MC's gain', then he exhibits most of the signs on the typical lists of ASPD behavior. Unlike typical ASPD sufferers, his sense of self centers solely on someone else; namely, MC, so instead of acting so anti-socially for himself, he does so on MC's behalf. So he's pretty much the whole ASPD package, bless him.

He uses his intelligence, charm and charisma to manipulate others, including MC. He wears the sunshine poster boy mask to get people to like him and and move easily through life in attaining his goals of getting into the DAA and having a good job, but he doesn't wear it all the time, as he appears not to have bothered to mask while undergoing his (failed) DAA psychological exam. During his childhood with MC he wears the sunshine mask constantly around her so that she thinks he's cheerful, bright, sunny Caleb, all the while feeling like the gloomy Caleb is the real him, the one he has been all along underneath his mask, in order to keep her liking him. He lies to MC, consistently, with the justification that it's to protect her, but it's manipulation all the same. Now!! This is a point of discussion. I've talked about this with @the-cows-came-home, a medically educated smart person, and she pointed out that the often the "sociopath wearing a mask vs an abusee hiding beneath charm as a mechanism for survival" can be hard to distinguish. In a comment on her Mechanism of Injury fic, she describes sociopathy as 'behavioral responses to trauma,' and how 'Often the classic psychopath/sociopath is self-serving, whereas Caleb is so wholeheartedly devoted to keeping MC safe (and hopefully but not necessarily surviving himself) that it's pathological (RIP) and I'd argue that this shoves him more into the abusee who is testing the waters and seeing if he can function safely in the real world (before he is dumped straight back into not being safe actually) category vs somebody who is a perfectly cold and calculating mastermind.' And I think this is one of the things I have had a hard time articulating and that is a very important nuance for anyone who is just trying to fling mud at him or paint him as a villain when he is at his most problematic. After this discussion, the foregoing is the way I interpret his manipulative habits.

Continuing down the list: Caleb's relationships with people from school, the DAA, and now the Farspace Fleet are superficial; no one knows who he really is (again, this could be a part of his self-protection mechanism as he doesn't feel safe to expose his true self). However, he also indicates on multiple occasions throughout the game that the only real people to him, the only person who really exists, is MC. It's like he can only recognize her personhood--the world can end in a supernova tomorrow, and it doesn't matter, because the world can just be made anew. He doesn't care about anyone else.

He disregards societal norms, including fake dating his little sister, stalking her outside in the rain when she's out with friends, threatening to lock her up in a maze and faking her death so no one will come looking for her, murdering to protect her (which, incidentally, also law breaking), etc etc.

He shows a tendency for physical aggression and fighting as illustrated by his bond story where he's telling MC about the gang who came to their house, who he beat the shit out of and became the leader of, only to be sucked into yet another conflict of beating the rival game, all while MC was locked (safely, in his mind) in the attic.

Once he's out of the DAA and has given himself over fully to sacrificing himself for MC, he is more prone to dropping the manipulative mask and exhibits irritable and aggressive behavior towards everyone who is not MC: subordinates in the Farspace Fleet (both aggression and irritability), and Gideon on occasion (just irritability? more on that below). In AUs, he exhibits similar irritability and aggression towards side characters: in Ghost's Final March, to the little ghosts when they interfere with MC's hunger accidentally, etc.

He has an alarming disregard for his own safety, but also for the safety of anyone who is not MC, as well as an indifference to the pain/remorse he inflicts on others. He takes incredible (suicidal) risks while in the DAA and in the Deepspace Tunnel, and usually he is not alone when he does so. He shows no remorse in letting the little girl die so that Ever could take her brother, all in the name of protecting MC, even though it is clear that the siblings from Homecoming Wings are a mirror of what happened to MC/Caleb. You'd think he'd sympathize with their situation, but since he doesn't, his callousness is that much more remarkable. He is incredibly cruel and callous to Yvette, Liam's wife, in the World Underneath story 'Sketches'--his utter disregard for the chip's disastrous effect on Liam's wife and children, and disdainful responses to them, is frankly shocking. The writers mean it when they describe Caleb as, 'Big Brother is the best, but Caleb Xia is a bastard.'

Now, having said all of that, I'll repeat that I don't think that Caleb was born with ASPD (I doubt many people are), but the trauma he underwent in the lab, being experimented on himself, being forced to kill with his own evol as a child, watching his one consistent attachment figure (MC) die over and over again, having no stable, adult attachment figure who could teach him empathy by treating him with empathy: all of this would have rewritten the kind, soft, boy who was intended to be the embodiment of 'creatio' into the destructive, light-swallowing black hole that he imagines himself to be at his lowest moments. As mentioned above, children who are abused like he was often end up with the signature lack of empathy that is the hallmark of ASPD.

However, I don't think Caleb has full on ASPD. Growing up after escaping the lab, I think that despite everything, he probably did enjoy being with friends and having a good time like any normal teenage boy while still having self-imposed responsibilities... but no normal teenage boy obsessively, single-mindedly writes his sister's name over and over and over again on the wishing wall where she can't read it. No normal teenage boy speaks with such dead-eyed, unremorseful satisfaction as he describes beating the shit out of bullies and then going on the conquer the entire neighborhood while his sister remains trapped (safe) in the attic. No normal boy has been instructed to crush people to death over and over in a lab. When he describes putting the bell on the cat so that it couldn't run away, I didn't get the sense that he cared about the cat's well being at all, but rather MC's reaction to the cat being hurt. It was his frustration that the cat didn't know what was good for it that was the strongest emotion he exhibited toward the cat as opposed to concern for it. The signs of his ASPD tendencies are evident from many of the stories in the 'old days' cards and some of the discussions he has with MC in the present timeline.

It makes sense to me that Caleb would already have been deeply affected by his traumatic past and exhibit signs of ASPD up through his first years in the DAA. But then, Ever blows up his house and almost kills the only person who has ever been a real person to him, the only person he ever loves, and I think the significant remaining part of his humanity was burned out during this experience. Obviously, the Toring chip doesn't help, and only exacerbates what was already there in terms of his cold disregard for anyone other than MC.

The current version of Caleb is deadened by the chip, crushed under the weight of what he has to do to protect MC from Ever in the Farspace Fleet, and is struggling to learn to share his burden with MC in a way that can enable them to escape the destructive cycle of one being poison to the other, of Caleb always absorbing MC's destructive fate and thereby destroying them both in the process, since Caleb can't go anywhere MC can't follow--she won't let him. So I think he exchanges one mask for another: sunshine poster boy to ruthless, cutthroat colonel. And the Colonel is most likely the most aligned with his true self in this lifetime, simply because of everything this life has subjected him to in terms of pain and trauma. But the Colonel, the sociopath, is not all that Caleb is, even now. He is still so warm to MC, he can be kind to Gideon. He does care about a limited pool of people and can empathize with them.

On a final note: I'm not an expert on Caleb. Unlike with Sylus, I have struggled getting a grasp on his character, especially in figuring out why he sometimes drops his mask with Gideon despite Gideon being a previous part of his sunshine circle, why he sometimes helps animals or engages in daring heroic feats. And after discussing with friends who know him better than I do, I feel like I have a better grasp on him, his motiviations, how he's characterized. To repeat, he's not fully sociopathic, he feels safe enough with Gideon to drop his mask and still be liked and appreciated and likes Gideon in return, whereas any other time he drops his mask it's with Viper or enemies he's about to murder. He's only ever cruel to others when it serves a purpose and/or if they cross the line from harmless to potentially harmful to MC, and he'll be heroic and daring when it serves a purpose, but only if he's in a position to be able to do so and it doesn't cost him or MC anything to respond.

So. Yeah. TL:DR, like many deeply traumatized children who were not shown empathy in their formative years from stable attachment figures, he failed to fully develop empathy himself and as a result exhibits many of the behaviors of someone with ASPD. And I love him for it. It's one of the things that makes him endlessly fascinating to me, as opposed to just another one-note yandere big brother cliche. His backstory is so elaborate, his writing (the writing for his character, not nonsensical plots and bad localization of many of his cards) is so nuanced and layered, that he feels real enough to be able to plausibly psychoanalyze.