110 | elusive; the worth of a smile

In the dimly lit basement where moss and cobwebs lined the filthy walls and humidity thickened the air, two creatures stared at each other. One, a dragon shackled by chains as he sat against a wall, gazing sharply at the other.

And the other, cloaked in intrigue and darkness, the shimmer of his cloak granting a temporary glimpse of the night sky within the windowless cells.

The figure stood deathly still, every breath clinging to the air.

"The worth of a smile. Not everybody can see it." Their voice, airless and faint, distorted and hoarse. "To protect that child, that boy had to become worth something to the visible eye. Or he would be thrust away once more."

Noah's back pressed against the wall, one ear fixed on the measured breathing on the opposite side. Every few minutes he would hear a muffled groan of pain or a body shifting uncomfortably from within.

He interlaced his fingers, pressing deep enough to leave indents in his skin. Inside the cell, there was a small leak in the corner. Tauntingly, a single drop slowly dripped onto the ground.

He waited, but the story did not continue. His slitted eyes flickered over to the cloaked figure observing him with such biting scrutiny, that he felt his body being taken apart. "What happened to the boy?"

A pause. "Not the teenager?"

Noah drew his attention back to the ceiling, closing his eyes briefly. "The teenager chose the boy. The boy chose nobody. I care more for the tale of the one who didn't want to be in the story."

If the teenager was the main character, then what of the boy? The child with equal importance playing the role of a mascot or a shiny gold coin, a role in which he was important, but not important enough.

Not important enough to be a main character.

From beneath the starry cloak, the man—or so Noah assumed—hummed lightly in thought. Noah wondered what fabric it'd been made from, stolen from the night itself.

The figure noticed his train of thought, grasping it easily.

"He always...liked the skies. I thought...this night...would bring comfort."

Noah didn't want to hear the answer, frowning at the discomfort twisting in his chest. He swallowed and looked away. "Continue."

And thus they did.

The teenager had wondered what would help the boy survive. Survival, by his trivial definitions. His father's cruelty or the world's cruelty? He chose the former.

In the blink of an eye, the peaceful laziness of companionship swept away. It transformed into immense studies, carving the child—a boy who knew nothing, not even the clarity of his memories—into something beyond him.

Something that he was not.

The particular issue was that the boy had no particular talents or intelligence, no secret skills that set him off besides sly hands that could steal and fast legs that could run—although even that was merely mediocre.

And yet, if a need to impress was a skill, the boy had it. He studied endlessly under commands until his vision blurred and blood ran down his nose, yet his smile remained tantalizingly bright, although awkward, as it always had.

The teenager, believing his actions to be true, fought against those seeking to ruin the child and cast him away. He fought as best as a powerless teenager could do in a palace where every action was monitored.

For once, he cursed his indifference in all the years prior that doomed him to be lacking.

He banished abusive tutors that had been hidden from his knowing, fired the sadistic maids, and slowly, terrifyingly, the image he transformed into was something akin to his father.

It frightened him.

This teenager who wanted to run away. But for what he believed to be right, for the sake of that child, and to keep that child by his side, he continued.

"Is a love that becomes a need dangerous?"

When pure adoration became obsession, wrenching desperation to keep somebody living by their side—was that still love?

Noah's gaze was measured and cold. "Were they close, then?"

"No. Their paths...had already diverted."

"Then yes." Noah stared at the standing figure, darkness swirling in his gaze. Was he not one who knew the dangers of obsession the most? "He wanted to preserve the boy's innocence. But how little did he know of that boy to claim to love him?"

In those fleeting days, had the teenager really known the boy?

"Did he want to save that child, or the idea of him?"

The air swirled around them, stifling and chilling. Perhaps there would never be an answer to that question; the complexities of emotion were too vast to define in clarity. But there was one fact.

That the teenager wanted to save the boy; and the boy had not asked to be saved.

In the attempt to save him, was he ruined instead?

"...the child was destined to die. There was no cure. After all the years and efforts...his life already had an ending written out."

Noah's nails dug deeper, viciously as he sucked in a breath.

The teenager's father had laughed and laughed and laughed, his mocking jeers echoing through the palace. Look at that! How miserable the teenager was to be unable to save even a stray from the streets.

The words echoed beyond the walls, wedging into the teenager's heart. Foolishly, he believed. In his inability; and this, a grave sin, led to desperation.

"An irredeemable mistake was made." They faced the closed cell, then, exhaling deeply. "You are...right. He did not ask...to be saved. I should've let him go."

Quietly, Noah wondered. "What did you do?"

"I made him irreplaceable. Those who wished him dead could no longer. And..I threatened...to destroy my father's most prized belonging."

Noah didn't understand and looked at the figure, but they still stared quietly at the closed door where Kaden remained.

"There is...no justification. I devised...punishment...to appease my father without harming him gravely...and even that..."

Noah unfurled his hands, staring at the indents on his skin. "Have you succeeded? In saving him."

Silence blanketed over them and Noah closed his eyes.

"So this is a tragedy."

"I have not... told the ending. There is yet... to be an ending."

"It is a tragedy," of that, Noah is certain. "That will end in one of their deaths. One of yours."

Slowly, Night turned to regard him, and seemed to smile. Noah did not know if he was smiling, but he felt like he was.

"Then let that teenager die, for the weight of his sins."

"Why does sacrifice seem to be the only ending people know? Is there an ending where everybody lives?" Noah wondered out loud, knowing an answer.

This time, there was no denying Night's smile. "Even you, cruel writer, know the answer to that. There is no story where nobody dies; it is merely whether the one who dies is a significant character or an insignificant background act."

Noah could not deny that malicious truth, the inevitability of death that hid beneath flowery sentences.

There, in that very second, somebody was dying. Perhaps, unknown to him, it was somebody related to him. Often, it was a person completely unrelated; and did that strip them of the significance of their life?

Simply because theirs was a story untold?

When Noah looked up again, the cloaked figure had vanished in silent steps, as if he were a fleeting ghost that came to visit.

A ghost designed to exist for Kaden Chauvet.

Noah exhaled softly and tilted his head to allow his thoughts to crowd his entire body, drifting off into a restless sleep.

———+++———

A week after the Blood Moon had longed passed, a slender man sat on the tiled rooftops of the palace rooftop. His straight back pressed against the slanted surface, a foot securely wedged in place.

He stared at the gloomy skies, the beautiful moon obscured by the wisping clouds.

When he'd been younger, small and pathetic, the one who held a finger to his lips in secrecy and brought him along the dangerous widow edges had been Reed Chauvet.

They circled corners and hid from the watchful maids and roaming guards that seemed to confine them within the castle walls. It was an adventure; a little rebellion.

If they weren't able to go straight, Reed had said coolly with the air of knowing that he'd always had, then they would go up. Nobody could fault them for that—they would be, after all, still within the castle grounds.

It'd been a cheeky thing to say and Kaden had laughed joyously at that, a curious stray clinging to the elusive nobility of the other.

Something was liberating and exhilarating about sharing a secret with a person of great standing—perhaps, then, Reed had been a little more than a nobody, but to Kaden, he was like a God.

The night of the Blood Moon had invoked his old memories, bringing further clarity to the pieces that had slowly begun to weave together.

He felt as if he were back in his body three years prior, standing before Bolivia's shriveled and bloodless body, curled on the wooden floorboards.

His fingers dug into the rooftop, pressing firmly against them until pain prickled the tips of his nails. His ambitions were lofty and his protection was insecure and unreliable, he knew.

That at the end of the day, he returned to this life with nothing to offer.

He had the certainty of a fool, the fury and vengeance of a miserable man who had nothing else to hold to.

Kaden almost saw Noah's disapproving frown in his head and reprimanding words. It was frightening, how Noah's cruelness was so much more relieving than his overwhelming kindness.

There that dragon was, sitting in a cold and damp cell, waiting for Kaden's return.

Kaden choked at the thought, an ugly sound wrenching from his throat, and he was thankful for his solitude. Pain rippled in his body, a pulse as constant as his beating heart.

Noah Bellamy loved him.

When would he start believing it?

When would he stop going in circles, unable to reach the conclusion Noah confessed, over and over?

The dragon's yearning words as their bodies entangled together, woven around each other in a frenzied heat. The solemn, listening gaze carved from the skies that possessed both his mind and body, undoing him in all the knotted ribbons he remained lost in.

He shivered against the breeze, a ghosting touch grazing over his exposed wrist and skin.

He wished there was an answer, clear-cut and reasonable. Loving Noah Bellamy was not. Love, this human-constructed idea that was built off the hypothetical and ideals.

He resented Noah, both for ruining his own future and redefining this feeling he never wanted to realize.

And that was the problem, wasn't it?

But his mind was clear now, or at least, clearer than it'd been before, trapped in his undoing, the aftereffects of his blessing.

He tried to abandon everything once. And what had he accomplished in the past three years, a ghost of himself, a loyal dog to Reed that resembled what he once was?

Kaden curled up, drawing into himself as he sighed into his splayed hands.

Please don't justify my actions, the dragon had requested, a lonely and aching sense of loss painted across his voice.

Do you want to know me, or merely the idea of me?

A question laced with careful fear, as if he didn't want to hear the disappointment of the truth.

Kaden's mind continued to unravel, intertwining with new understandings and old memories in this secret place from his lost childhood.

Noah always came back. He was always there, as if he were as natural as tomorrow, existing to reassure Kaden that he was alive and that another day was to come.

There, by the painting the very first day with inquisitive and sharp eyes that slowly took Kaden apart.

There to comfort fading pains that Kaden had long been numb to, there to wield a sword and reprimand Kaden's carelessness.

Why?

Why, of all people in the world, did Noah have to love him?

Then, bewildered, he thought of the cherry gaze that had smiled and cried before him, that night in the Ghost Festival. The joyous forest eyes gleamed with mischief and curiosity.

Kaden's pressed deeper into the tiles, staring ahead into the garden. Two figures had stepped into the pathway, one standing behind several steps in a rigid posture. They stopped there, surrounded by hedges and unbloomed flowers.

Kaden's pupils constricted.

Two figures stood, their backs facing Kaden. One, slender but powerful, the lines of his body meticulously trained to become a knight, a protector.

Why?

Why did any of them choose him, of all people?

A light noise escaped the bushes and the soldier turned his tired head slightly towards the sound, his profile glinting in the delicate brush of waning moonlight that escaped the clouds.

A vicious amber gaze that remained unfeeling but behind burned a raging determination.

Arlo.

How did he dare forget?

He gasped as his foot slipped, his body plummeting. Quickly, he grasped at the ledge, kicking a scatter of rubble off the edge as his heart pounded.

The teenager's head jerked back and up. Slowly, his eyes widened into two rounded shapes.

In mere moments, he became that same silly child that always followed Kaden around.

An apology rested on the tip of Kaden's tongue, a hundred apologies to this teenager whose eyes gleamed with a sudden light of happiness, staring up at Kaden. No words could forgive the lives that Kaden had ruined.

He swallowed. Why did that boy have to be here?

Now, now, Kaden, to apologize to the majestic I, he could almost hear Niklas' teasing voice ringing in his head, Then you'll need to be alive to do it.

Yes, Nicola might say, please do your best to live and come back to us, Kaden.

Come on, Holly would exclaim, there's so much fun to have, so hurry up, and let's not waste time!

The voices bounded around the man's vacant mind, and for once, he wasn't scared. Alone, under the never-ending skies, Kaden's resolve was remade.

He stood up, his clothes billowing in the wind, figure shrouded by shadows far above the palace. Reed turned slowly in following, tilting his head with a knowing air to meet Kaden's obscured stare. Far away and yet close.

Kaden's heart thudded against his chest; a premonition of something beyond him sprouting inside.

There, Reed regarded him in all the rigid lines that drew his solemn bearings. Then, his posture shifted a margin, and a lazy, wild casualness seemed to spill into his lone shadow.

A wilderness from youth, a reminder of that once-teenager who ventured into the slums and brought back a stray.

Kaden took a step back, frozen.

Across that face carved by arrogance and nobility, a smile flickered. It was an assured, knowing, and elusive smile, both fearful and charming.

It was the smile of Reed Chauvet, long before he'd been defined as Kaden's master.

It was an acknowledgment that once again, as they'd been brothers to master-servant, their roles were changing again. What happened after an obedient mutt broke from its restraints? Then they were no longer balancing on unequal fields.

They became enemies with a victor undetermined.

———xxx———

Lukiyo says,

HELLO. There's actually nothing important, I just want to wish you all a happy, cozy day and once more, as always, thank you to another dimension and back for your existence.  The next post is happening on a leap day~

I find that very interesting. Who determined the days of a year, which years get an extra to balance something out? I actually could look this up (I will) there's a lot of times I randomly think, well. This is odd. I wonder why this exists the way it does.

Even after finding the reason why, I wonder beyond that. Like, okay, so somebody decided this because the math decided this; but where does the math come from? Who found that, and if they discovered it, how did they discover it to be true? Through testing of course but then how did testing come to exist?

It's a whole cycle. I don't know where I was going with that.

Happy Sunday (Monday for some, and for me in a few hours!) You're absolutely brilliant.