Thyroid King

Tenna art by @9Aaaalt29 on twt

*I..DID…ROUXLS CAN’T REMEMBER THE RESETS…BUT I DO.

//I’d like to believe Jevil understanding his world is a game, and understanding code to a degree would mean he knows how resets work. Or at least he’d attempt a reset, but not know how save points work and end up back where he started. Jevil most definitely tried it many times… Almost every time having to watch Rouxls brake down, and desperately try to hold his soul together. //  

• Jevil’s instability was actually relatively minor when he was initially imprisoned. Then the card kings decided they wanted to know what the ‘Strange Someone’ had told him.

• He was okay until they started interrogating him. Seam was not informed, and couldn’t see him until after it was over, and by then it was far, far too late.

• Spade King interrogated him first, and he was utterly terrified. He begged for it to stop, but refused to tell what he knew because he knew it would be dangerous. He cried for hours afterwards, in too much pain to move, and curled away from the bars in the corner of his cell.

• Heart King came next. Jevil tried his best to stay stable, forcing himself to smile for a few minutes before crumbling and crying quietly. After they left, Jevil was happy that the bars of his cell separated him from them.

• Diamond King was third, and was the one that broke him. Jevil knew it was coming, and had been sitting in the empty quiet all by himself, wondering when the next part of this awful game would begin. He forced himself to laugh through the torture, convincing himself that it was all just a game they were playing, in order to handle the pain.

• Club King was last, and was the end of the last bit of Jevil’s stability. Jevil was laughing before he even entered the room, and asked for the games to begin because he was bored. When the first blow fell, Jevil declared it was his turn next, and attacked. Club King’s men restrained him and interrogated him for hours, but every time they did anything, Jevil just laughed. In he end, Club King left and told the guards to get away from the cell because Jevil was dangerous. The conclusion in Jevil’s pain addled brain? That the Kings had locked themselves away from him.

• There were weeks between each interrogation, and in between the second and third a few of his injuries stopped healing properly. His magic was just too depleted. As a result, his back and chest are covered in scars.

• When Seam was eventually allowed down to see him, he barely recognized him. He wasn’t informed about the interrogations, and just assumed Jevil went insane. When Seam left and went back up the elevator, Jevil just curled up on the ground and cried.

• Jevil sleeps curled up in a little ball with his tail wrapped around himself.

• Jevil balances on his tail while he is doing things to help himself get to what he is too short to reach, or when he is bored. He also wraps it around himself when he is sad or nervous, and absentmindedly wraps it around things he is standing near.

• He gets bored all alone down there, so he makes up games to play all by himself with his magic. He makes a lot of magical cards and toys, and will occupy himself as best he can until he exhausts his magic, then sleeps until it is replenished.

• He loves when people come down to visit, though he isn’t sure how to interact with them anymore. All he really wants is for them to stay so he isn’t alone. He wants someone to play with.

• Spade King still interrogates Jevil sometimes, but usually sends other people down to do it. When he does, Rouxls takes Lancer to leave the castle for the day so the child can’t hear his screams. Sometimes, the screams aren’t Jevil’s, and whoever the king sent down never comes back up again.

• Jevil’s favorite visitor technically isn’t supposed to visit at all. Lancer. He ran down there once, trying to get away from his dad, and ran into Jevil. Jevil likes to play little games with Lancer when he comes down, and Lancer has snuck a few toys and snacks down for Jevil when nobody is looking. He has to be careful though, because if Rouxls catches him down there he will make him go back upstairs and scold him for it. Jevil makes Rouxls nervous, but he can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him.

• Despite Rouxls’ warnings, Lancer releases Jevil after he becomes king. Since he has been imprisoned for a long time Jevil follows Rouxls, Lancer or Seam around like a lonely, albeit unstable, puppy, since he doesn’t really know what else to do.

• If someone gets mad at him, he acts like it is funny at first, but if they corner him or don’t stop yelling he eventually will start to panic. Once that happens, he usually winds up cowering away from them, crying. It has been a long time since he has been around anyone who hasn’t been there solely to hurt him after all, and he associates people shouting at him with pain now.

• He lives with Seam, but Lancer insists that he have a room in the castle too, and he spends a fair amount of time there when Seam has had enough of Jevil pestering customers and shoos him out of the shop.

• He sometimes likes to sneak into Rouxls’ shop and hide behind things, waiting for Rouxls to move them so that he can scare him. He then dashes out of the shop, laughing maniacally while Rouxls angrily chases after him. He has taught this ‘game’ to Lancer, much to Rouxls’ chagrin, and the Duke is now very wary of moving things around in his shop, just in case one of the two troublemakers is hiding there.

• He doesn’t like it when Lancer visits the Spade King. Jevil is scared of the cells in the prison, but forces himself to go with Lancer anyway. He knows what that man is capable of, and he doesn’t want anything happening to the child that set him free. Protecting Lancer from the spade king It is the one thing that Jevil and Rouxls always agree on.

• Sometimes he goes with Lancer and Rouxls when they go catch worms. He doesn’t understand the appeal, but he likes to watch them anyway, and it is better than being bored all by himself.

• Jevil can use his magic to hover if the wants to. He can’t float extremely high, but he still likes to do it sometimes. It burns him out pretty fast though, so he usually settles for balancing on his tail instead

• Jevil can and will eat pretty much anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, if he decides he wants to eat it, he will find a way. He usually sticks to edible things, but he has a particular fondness for paper. Lancer once found him absentmindedly eating a deck of playing cards, and Rouxls has had to lock him out of the library to stop him from eating the books

• He really doesn’t like being alone, and will go out of his way to stay around other people, often willingly participating in even the most mundane of tasks in order to ensure that he doesn’t have to be alone

• Jevil eventually told Seam what the Strange Someone had told him in it’s entirety. He had told him a bit of it before he was imprisoned in the first place, but after getting out he told him the rest of it. It made him feel better that someone else knew.

• Jevil loves playing games. Nothing makes him happier than when someone offers to play a game with him. He doesn’t even care what kind it is. It could be anything at all, as long as it is a game.

• He is extremely curious. A lot of things have changed since he was first imprisoned, so he does a lot of poking around at things that should probably be left alone. This results in Jevil getting himself into a lot a trouble, even if he doesn’t mean to. There have been a few times that Seam or Rouxls have had to grab him at the last minute and pull him out of a dangerous situation because he wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He still pouts about them not letting him have any fun, even after they had just saved him from getting himself hurt.

• Rouxls once had to grab him by the tail to pull him out of the way of a falling bookshelf after Jevil wouldn’t stop poking at one of the wobbly legs that was supporting it, then had to do the exact same thing less than 5 minutes later when Jevil decided to mess with the table the fallen bookshelf had damaged, and it almost collapsed on top of him.

• Jevil adores cooking. That does not, however, mean he is good at it. In fact, he should be kept as far away from anything cooking related as conceivably possible, for the safety of him and everyone around him. Everything he makes either winds up on fire, an indiscernible mess, so rainbow that it makes your eyes hurt, or just a big ball of glitter and sprinkles. He also tends to incorporate entirely inedible ingredients into his “cooking”, so it is best to stop him before he even starts.

• If Seam leaves a large enough empty cardboard box in the back of the shop, Jevil will drag a bunch of pillows and blankets from his bedroom, curl up in it and fall asleep while Seam works. Or eat the box. Either way, it keeps him distracted for at least an hour.

• Seam has a pile of notebooks for Jevil to snack on throughout the day so that he doesn’t pester the shop-goers. It also isn’t uncommon for him to be playing some kind of board game with Jevil while people are browsing the shop.

• Jevil, Rouxls and Lancer are all terrified of making mistakes. They learned very quickly that none of the Kings took kindly to the people that served them messing things up, and it only got worse when Spade King was the only one in charge. If Lancer makes a mistake, he will start whimpering and pleading for forgiveness, promising to fix it and eventually starting to cry. If Rouxls makes a mistake, he will freeze and start shaking and hyperventilating before moving to fix whatever it was he messed up, usually resulting in him only making it worse because he can’t stop shaking and his vision is blurred with tears. If Jevil makes a mistake, he will freeze before beginning to laugh, starting off quiet and getting louder until he is on the ground laughing so hard it hurts, trying to ignore the fact that he is crying and bracing himself for whatever painful punishment he is about to receive, automatically falling back on his old interrogation coping methods in order to keep himself from having a full blown panic attack.

• Sometimes, Jevil forgets he isn’t imprisoned anymore, returning to his old “the rest of the world locked itself away” mindset. He realizes he is stuck on the same side as the kings, and tries to get “free” again. When this happens, he vanishes, and Rouxls has to go looking for him. He is always in the basement, hiding in the corner of his old cell, playing a game of some kind with himself. It always takes a while for Rouxls to remind him that he doesn’t have to be in there anymore, and sometimes Jevil doesn’t fully believe him, even going as far as to attack him. When Jevil finally realizes what is going on, and what he is doing, he always falls apart. Once he does come to, it isn’t uncommon for Rouxls to wind up sitting down there for hours with a sobbing Jevil curled up against his chest.

• Back when he was imprisoned, you would sometimes hear him singing if you passed his cell. The songs would range from tiny little things he made up on the spot and happy performance pieces to incredibly depressing songs. Rouxls will never admit it, but sometimes he would take the elevator down and stay inside so that he could listen to Jevil sing, just to get away from everything for a while.

• Lancer is the first king he has ever had that has treated him kindly, and he is fiercely protective of him.

• However, he is also slightly afraid of him. He goes out of his way to constantly keep Lancer happy, even though he doesn’t actually have to, and gets panicked and anxious if he can’t make him smile. He knows Lancer is just a child, but he isn’t sure what Lancer will do to him if he can’t keep him happy. The previous kings weren’t exactly shy about showing their displeasure when he didn’t do what they wanted, after all.

• He usually takes little catnaps throughout the day if he has nothing else to do, since he would rather sleep until something fun happens than be awake and bored, but since he also has a lot of nightmares, he feels safer if he is resting around someone else. It isn’t uncommon for Rouxls to walk into his shop and find Jevil curled up on one of the shelves, half asleep and waiting for him to come back so he can actually nap in peace.

• Rouxls eventually moved the other kings into the prison as well, but before he did, Jevil wouldn’t even go into the throne room. It made him incredibly anxious, and the few times he actually had to, he spent the entire time forcefully grinning and pretending to ignore them while simultaneously clinging to Lancer or Rouxls for comfort.

• The more upset Jevil becomes, the more words he repeats in sentences, until practically every word is said twice. It makes it very hard to understand him once he gets too upset. This is in direct contrast to Rouxls, who speaks more and more clearly the more upset the becomes, until he has dropped his Shakespearean speech pattern completely.

• Jevil still isn’t quite used to the whole “you can eat normal food whenever you are hungry” concept yet. He is used to either being starved until he talks (which never worked and resulted in him becoming extremely malnourished until Spade King had no choice but to feed Jevil enough to keep him alive before he could try again), or only being fed the bare minimum because all the king cared about was keeping him alive. Besides the occasional snacks from Lancer, Jevil had no access to real food at all until he was released, and is still getting used to the fact that when people give him food, especially warm food that he actually likes, it’s really for him and it’s okay for him to eat it.

• He hates being cold. It was always cold in his cell. Always. It didn’t matter how many magical layers he added to his clothing or how much he shivered, it was always cold. Now that his world has expanded and he is no longer stuck down there, he has made a conscious effort to always stay warm. As a result, he feels calmest and happiest when he is curled up by fireplaces or under blankets, and is most on edge and upset when he is in colder areas or out in the snow.

• He likes bubbles. More specifically, he likes popping bubbles. Lancer finds this really funny, and has taken to blowing a bunch of them whenever Jevil seems bored and watching him chase them around for a while.

• He really likes Dark Candy, and can often be found perched on low hanging tree branches, eating some while watching Lancer run around or Rouxls try to create puzzles.

• Lancer loves playing with him because he is so much fun. Jevil always has a new game for him to play, so he is never bored when the jester is around.

• When he needs to distract Jevil AND Lancer for a while, Rouxls will lead the two of them around with a laser pointer. He has no idea why both of them fall for it every single time, but it is always nice to get a break. At least until Jevil starts summoning attacks to destroy the red dot, of course. Then he has to stop and do damage control before something (or someone) gets hurt

• He likes to burrow all the way under the piles of blankets and pillows on his bed until only the tip of his tail peeks out. Otherwise, nobody would ever know that he was under there

• Sometimes, when Jevil is really cold or sleepy, he will go and bury himself under the covers and pillows of Lancer’s or Seam’s beds instead of his own. There have been a few times that Seam has gone into his room and sat down only to be startled by Jevil whining in protest because Seam sat on his tail, or Lancer has taken a running leap into his bed only to be met with a yelp because he landed on top of Jevil instead. He would do it with Rouxls’ bed too, but Rouxls only has a blanket and like 2 pillows, so it is no fun to try and bury himself in there. Seam’s and Lancer’s beds are covered in pillows and blankets and stuffed animals though, just like his own, so he likes curling up in their rooms

• He loves to decorate for holidays, and everything he is allowed to decorate usually winds up more decoration than original object.

• He has been banned from caffeine of any kind because he bounces off the walls for roughly 48 hours straight.

• Jevil can sing, dance, paint, juggle, and do pretty much anything else necessary to entertain. As long as it is to make someone else smile or laugh, he really can do anything.

• Jevil used to sew all of the costumes for Seam and himself while they were still performing together. Now that he is free, he makes most of his own clothes, and some for other people as well. He also uses leftover fabric to make toys for Lancer, then puts them in Lancer’s room when the young king isn’t looking. As a result, Lancer is utterly convinced that the Rouxls, Suzie, Kris, Ralsei and Seam plushies that have appeared in his room are magical, and carries at least one of them with him everywhere.

• Seam once tried to knit him a sweater after noticing how much happier he is when he is warm. It probably would have gone a lot better if it hadn’t been the first thing Seam had ever tried to knit. It’s at least 2 sizes too big, has at least 3 holes that aren’t supposed to be there and what appears to be a half-completed third sleeve, and is just an all around disaster. And Jevil loves it. It is warm and soft and Seam made it just for him, and it is one of his favorite things in the world now. It is one of the warmest articles of clothing he owns, and he wears it all the time, no matter how often Seam begs him to just burn the thing and forget it was ever created

• Much like the monsters in the Underground, Darkners celebrate Gyftmas, along with a handful of other winter holidays.

• Jevil is quite possibly the most festive little gremlin in the dark world. He gets extremely excited whenever the holidays are mentioned, and is overjoyed at the thought of finally being able to celebrate again.

• Seam and Rouxls find Jevil’s festivity both adorable and infectious. He is just so happy about it, and it is hard not to feel joyful too when you have a happy little jester hanging off of your shoulders and singing Gyftmas carols.

• Jevil made everyone multiple Gyftmas outfits, and made himself so many that he has enough to wear a new one every day of the month and still not run out. Rouxls knitted a bunch of Gyftmas sweaters too, since Lancer outgrew his and Jevil is always cold. He even made a few for Seam and himself, though it takes a fair amount of begging from Lancer for him to actually wear his.

• Jevil adores hot cocoa. He can’t remember the last time he had access to it, and practically cried from how happy he was the first time Rouxls offered him some. If he had the option, he would drink nothing but cocoa for the rest of his life. He especially likes putting marshmallows and candy canes in it and watching them melt.

• He once absentmindedly ate two full boxes of cordial cherries, complete with packaging, while sewing something. Seam has no idea how Jevil didn’t get sick from eating that much sugar in one sitting.

• He eats a sizeable amount of Gyftmas cookies now. Rouxls spends a fair amount of time baking during the holidays, which has resulted in endless batches of gingerbread monsters and sugar cookies for Jevil to snack on.

• He is quite possibly the only one in the whole castle who is actually willing to eat holiday fruitcakes. Even Lancer won’t touch them. Then again, Rouxls did once catch Jevil trying to eat a plate, so nobody should really be all that surprised.

• He is terrible at wrapping gifts. His claws always wind up tearing the paper and he never manages to cut things the right size. He finally gave up after somehow managing to wrap up part of his tail in one of the gifts and getting stuck. He has Rouxls wrap them now, since the duke is exceptional at it. Rouxls has tried teaching him, but Jevil just can’t seem to get the hang of it.

• Since it is getting colder out, they have started lighting the fireplaces in the seapkeep and card castle, and it isn’t uncommon to walk into a room and find Jevil curled up in front of the fire, fast asleep. Rouxls and Seam have carried him to bed multiple times because he has fallen asleep in front of the fire and they don’t want to wake him up when he is finally sleeping peacefully.

• Jevil has completely given up on sleeping in his own bed, and now either sleeps with Seam or Rouxls, depending on where he is staying that night. It is just too scary for him to wake up in a cold dark room all by himself. It was easier when it was warm out, but now that the temperature has started to drop he feels safer if he is sleeping next to somebody else.

• He has successfully turned Rouxls’ bed into a pile of blankets now too, under the guise of saying it was too cold for him to sleep in there because it was freezing outside. The extra blankets slightly annoy Rouxls, but they make Jevil so much happier that he can’t really complain too much.

• After seeing the boring red stockings hanging by the fireplace in the main hall, he made everyone new ones, complete with embroidered names and intricate personalized designs. He made Seam one too, and hung it up on the mantle at the seapkeep. He was actually so engrossed in making the stockings for the others that Lancer had to remind him to make one for himself.

• Rouxls let him decorate an entire tree in the castle all by himself, and it was legitimately one of the best moments of his life. You can no longer see the tree anymore under the sheer volume of tinsel, lights, ornaments and garlands, and Jevil is immensely proud of it. He has tried on multiple occasions to convince Rouxls to let him decorate the rest of the trees, but Rouxls has resolutely told him no.

• He likes bundling himself up in blankets and perching on windowsills to watch the snow fall. Sometimes, if they aren’t too busy, Seam or Rouxls will join him. Lancer will too occasionally, and likes climbing into Jevil’s lap to draw things in the frost on the windowpanes.

• He is terrified of blizzards. They are deafening and freezing and he can’t see anything but blank, foreboding white no matter where he turns. He is trapped wherever he is by them too, so while at the Seapkeep he worries about Rouxls and Lancer, and while at the castle he worries about Seam.

• He uses the holidays as an excuse to slip extra sweets to Lancer whenever the child visits the seapkeep. He already does it during the rest of the year, but now that there is more candy lying around it is much easier for him to sneak some of it to Lancer without Rouxls and Seam noticing. It has become a game between to two of them to see how much Lancer can get before Rouxls starts getting suspicious.

• Rouxls bakes a lot of cookies around Gyftmas, but has taken to decorating them himself as fast as possible, because if he doesn’t then Lancer and Jevil will ask to help him do it. Lancer’s cookies always end up a sticky mess of multicolored icing, and Jevil’s become an inedible pile of sugar sprinkles that might have once been cookies if you squint.

• He loves all of the sparkly lights that are hung up everywhere now, and, depending on who is closest, likes to grab Rouxls, Seam or Lancer and drag them around by the hand so they can look at them together.

• He has started making little Gyftmas outfits for Lancer’s toys, and now most of them are dressed up for the holiday.

• He once got curious and tried to swing from a loose string of Gyftmas lights attached to a banister in the castle, just to see what would happen. The result was a bunch of broken light bulbs, a very painful crash landing on the tile floor, and a narrowly avoided fire from the light string being yanked out of the wall.

• Sometimes Rouxls and Jevil will fall asleep and wake up in the morning to find Lancer snuggled up between them, fast asleep. On mornings like that, Rouxls will open the shop late and all three of them will just stay in bed and cuddle with each other, warm and safe and happy as can be.

• He spent the last few weeks leading up to the holiday worrying that what he got the others wouldn’t be enough. That maybe he was expected to earn what he had been given since he was freed. That if he didn’t give them enough, if everything wasn’t good enough, they would take it all away and he would go back to being all alone in his cold, dark little world, waiting for the next time the king wanted to play a game. He tried to convince himself that they would never do that to him, but the worry wouldn’t quite leave.

• Rouxls was remaking Lancer’s torn up old winter scarf and wound up with way too much extra yarn, so he knitted one for Jevil as well. Rouxls intentionally made it too big so that the eternally cold jester could bundle up in it, and Jevil wears it everywhere now.

• Whenever he needs to go outside, he winds up bundled in at least 3 layers of clothes, and is usually still shivering. If he has to be out for more than 30 minutes he is absolutely miserable, and reaches out for whoever is with him so that he can steal their body heat.

• Lancer, Rouxls and Seam have all started keeping extra blankets and scarves in their inventories for when Jevil inevitably gets cold throughout the day. Lancer is actually the best about catching it out of the three of them. He likes climbing up and riding on Jevil’s shoulders when they are walking around, so he can feel Jevil shaking the second it starts, and essentially just drops a blanket on his head. It has resulted in Jevil walking into a few walls when his vision gets unexpectedly obscured, but Lancer means well, and it really does help.

• On Gyftmas morning, he tried to build one Lancer’s new toys by himself because Rouxls was busy. It ended up being so hopelessly confusing and frustrating that Lancer had to go get Rouxls in tears because Jevil looked about ready to destroy the thing. Rouxls built it in less than 5 minutes, and Jevil didn’t stop pouting about it for a solid 2 hours. (It probably would have helped if Jevil hadn’t taken one look at the instruction manual, claimed that he didn’t need rules to build things, and threw it away)

• Sometime before the holidays began, Lancer got himself convinced that he wasn’t good enough of a kid for Santa to bring him anything, courtesy of his father belittling him at every opportunity before he was arrested. Lancer started to tell people that he didn’t deserve anything whenever they asked what he wanted for Gyftmas, and it broke everyone’s hearts. This lead to Seam, Jevil and Rouxls all collaborating to make certain that Lancer gets more presents than he knows what to do with, and a massive distraction effort on Jevil’s part to make certain that Rouxls and Seam could sneak all of the boxes in undetected.

• Unbeknownst to Jevil, a similar effort was happening between Rouxls, Seam and Lancer for him. Although he got (or made) something for everybody, Jevil honestly wasn’t expecting any gifts himself. After all, according to him, he had already been given so much. A home, a family, food, safety… he had been given everything he had ever wanted. It never occurred to him, even for a second, that they wanted to give him even more. Rouxls and the others went over the top with making or buying everything they could think of for him, determined to make up for all of the Gyftmases that were stolen from him by the kings.

• Between the huge piles of gifts for Lancer and Jevil, and the still sizeable stacks for Seam and Rouxls, it was almost impossible to get anywhere near the tree on Gyftmas morning, and Jevil wound up being the one to pass everything out because he was the only one that could float above the gifts and see who they were for.

• Lancer once found Jevil wandering the castle and looking at decorations while eating an entire container of sprinkles. He still has no idea where Jevil got them, but he seemed happy enough, so Lancer didn’t bother him about it.

• Rouxls wound up buying too many Gyftmas cards, so he gave the rest to Jevil to snack on. When Lancer asked what they tasted like, Jevil told him that Gyftmas cards taste like merriment, which made Lancer even more confused than before.

• Most of the trees in the palace are decorated with generic lights and ornaments and garlands. They are beautiful, yes, but none of them really feel like a family Gyftmas tree. As a result, Rouxls started setting up his own tree in the shop when Lancer was a baby. It is where they hang all of the more sentimental ornaments, and he and Lancer decorate it together each year. They also put all of their presents under it, and open them all on Gyftmas morning. It holds ornaments from all over, including a few from Jevil and Seam, now that Rouxls’ and Lancer’s little family had grown. It certainly isn’t pretty like the others, but it is theirs, which makes it the best tree in the castle as far as they are concerned.

• Despite attempting to be as proper and elegant and possible, Rouxls is absolutely abysmal at ice skating. He can go approximately 5 inches before he is flat on his face, and cannot get the hang of it no matter how much he tries. Even Lancer is better than him. Jevil, on the other hand, is a very good ice skater, and thoroughly enjoys watching Rouxls flail around on the ice and be the exact opposite of graceful.

• Rouxls likes to light the fireplace in his room at night during the colder months, so it is always warm in there, even when the rest of the fireplaces in the castle have gone out.