#wilred

walk on, never look back, through you we live.

Blood & Gold 01: First Dance

Chapter directory

Content warnings: blood/gore, physical violence, (canon) character death

Every so often I remember I need to actually post.

Cessalie has a soft spot for the scrappy kids with good hearts, who haven’t learned the world will take their idealism and hope and dreams and twist it to their own ends. The world was a hard, bitter place that had taught her not to trust, to wrap herself in layers of armour lest a genuine feeling should escape. It didn’t have to be that way for them. Let them believe a little longer, believe in a better world. She shed bitter tears when they found young Wilred. Not there of course. Instead she stood, silent and trembling with rage at the sight of such hope and belief and goodness cut so irrevocably short. Never mind that the lad had tried (and failed) to kill her once. His heart had been proudly emblazoned on his sleeve, weal or woe – and his naivety had served him ill. There was no justice. She had a soft spot for Haurchefant, but he hardly needed her concern. Though exuberant and optimistic to a fault, there was a cleverness and cunning in his eyes that knew all too well the way the world of men would trample the unguarded. His optimism a conscious choice, a necessary balm against a world that was at odds with him from birth. The Fortemps men were perhaps more alike then one would expect at first glance – all noble, well meaning souls to the last. Though where Haurchefant wore his heart as a shield, it might have been said that Artoirel’s heart was a burden. For all the pride he comported himself with, there was a genuine heart kept hidden from the machinations of the nobility, the Ishgardian state. To show preference was to display vulnerability – and potential for exploitation. And despite the lengths taken to guard his heart from being known, it rallied within him regardless – A desire to step up and make a difference in his ailing city, to not let the death of his brother be for nothing. The weight of a thousand years of injustice bearing down on him, on top of the already weighty expectations of being first born.

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“W-We were going to make an offering of crystals to Rhalgr- to summon Him, j-just like the masked man taught us.“

“And you believed that load of shite?”

“… It was our only hope of a better life.”

one mother’s pride is another mother’s sorrow