dear_mun | (no subject)

[His eyes roll. Thank the Watchers Leonard can't see. But he probably knows anyway.]

Fortune. Favors.

[He shakes his head.]

Fortune favors itself only. We are naught but pawns.

You should not think of yourself as such. If it were not for our efforts, the world would have fallen completely to ruin.

I believe it to be the will of the Gods that we were granted the power to help save it... that makes us more than pawns, but the world's protectors.

Your sentimentality is going to get you killed.

[Again.]

And the rest of us. Believe what you will. You are blind in more than simply your eyes, fool.

[ He looks down, before shaking his head. ]

I am not wrong in believing in the Gods, Caim. It is no coincidence that your sister was the Goddess and that you became Pact-bound to the Red Dragon. These things do not happen by chance, but for a purpose.

[His teeth grit together.]

Be bound by your precious devotion. You are no better than Verdelet, a holier-than-thou man so dedicated to a force more than willing to end us all. I shall not believe the Goddess was chosen just so intentionally.

If I am to be compared to the Hierarch, I am honored even if you do not see it as an honor. We all have a purpose, Caim, that the Gods have given us... yours was to save the world when it fell so close to destruction.

I must believe that it is all for a purpose... everything that we are, or I would not be able to face myself...

That was not my 'destiny' or my 'purpose'!

[No one's ever said that Caim's gotten his anger management issues taken care of. How did he manage to survive with Leonard tagging along?]

Do not speak your gospel to me. I am not a priest. I am not a Hierarch. I am not a man of the faith.

[Obviously.]

How can you say that after everything that you have seen, Caim?!

If you know what I have seen, then you know why I would say what I do. What is it that you saw?

The Gods try men not to hurt them, but to allow them to feel closer to their grace. It is in those moments that they are with us most!

That... that is what I saw.

[He shakes his head.]

No. That is how you interpret it. Your blindness prevented you from seeing how the sky went from blue to red, and how even children were nothing greater than Empire swine, fit for littering the dirt. It is as though your inability to see sapped your intelligence, Leonard.

Yet your sight has ruined your faith in all things. Caim, I do not wish for you to be in such a state. I consider you to be a companion and friend of mine... it hurts to me see you like this.

[...Implying Caim had any to begin with...]

I need not your sympathy. I need not your pity.

[But there is a pause.]

Why is it you came with me? What did you get out of it? Glory? A world lost? Forgiveness for your own sins? Or simply to hear yourself speak? Tell me.

But I feel that you do need something, Caim.

[ He appears uncomfortable for a moment. ]

I thought my reasons were clear enough...

What I need, you cannot provide.

[How rude of the prince. He pauses.]

Our reasons were not the same. And yet they were. To save the world from an impending destruction we could not avoid. We are not heroes.

Perhaps, it is only something the Gods can give you.

Nor do I believe that we are heroes. We are merely protectors. Knights, if you would, even though no king had given us the honor.

Can we not agree on that?

Knights.

[Leonard, you are trying him and trying him to the core. But... You are also sad and awkward to the point of pity.]

Very well. If that is what you need to sleep at night.

I hope it will allow you to sleep, too.

It seems as though you could do with some peace, Caim.

Unlikely to occur.

[But he doesn't argue it. Leonard's precisely on the mark with that one.]

Vengeance shall give some.

Have you not had enough?

Never.

One day the stench of death will become too much for even you, Caim.

Unlikely. Incomplete is what I am without it. As you are incomplete without your... words of 'wisdom'.

I will get you to see reason one day. Then perhaps, you can find rest.

Perhaps we both can.

[But Caim is the most faithless, evidently.]