74th of Summer, 513 AV
Why did it have to be morning . . . ? The dusk was easier on his eyes than the sun that seemed to be always shining through his window. "God..." He sighed, the glare raging against his vision. His simple solution was to hide under his covers, where the sun couldn't make his mood any worse than it was. Last night, he wanted to seem so angry and wronged that he devastated the only thing he could've had going for him. For that one moment, he felt like he was speaking out against all of the misconception over him. He saw a self-righteous man in Aoren, who thought that Caesar was a charity case. His pride couldn't take that folly against it, and that's why everything went downhill so quickly. Aoren offered him a place to stay. They could've really had something; they could've fallen in love, and went to Zeltiva together like they talked about earlier. Aoren was like a shield for him to bat off all of the wrong in his life.
But he really fucked it up. He took hospitality as pity, and couldn't understand that Aoren was trying to verbalize what he must've thought as the truth. Maybe he really would end up in the mines, or before the council. Before, when he lived in Syliras, he could look over his shoulder and see Aoren. That prospect motivated him to want to do things. He didn't feel so... alone, living in this place, because of that. Truth be told, Caesar never actually had a real friend in his whole life. He could never trust any of them, because they systematically had screwed him over since he was a kid. He was always teased as a young boy, and hazed as a young man. All he really hoped was that his heart could flutter away and find love. He wanted to just find one person who he could stay with for the rest of his life, so he could look back at those brutal times and laugh. Laugh the way that a happy, fulfilled person could, when reminiscing about all of the past stupidities.
Instead, when he looked back, all he could feel is bitterness. Anger at every embarrassing thing he ever said, things that made him feel like all of the hazing was somehow 'his fault'... it was sickening to think about how screwed up he was earlier in his life. The worst part was that he was still exactly the same. The Ravokii curled up into a ball under his covers, his eyes closed shut. He felt if he opened them he'd want to cry, because he'd just see all of the 'nothing' he ruled over. He had no friends, an empty house, and no more Aoren. Because of his own misplaced words.
We could have been happy... He thought to himself. His imagination flowed with all of the great things they could've done. It wasn't even about the physicality anymore, like it initially was. Now he would've settled for anything. Even just discussing their day together. I could've been happy, after a whole twenty-three years of nothing. He'd already blown a third of his life. You couldn't be young forever, and his time was ticking. Had he really spent the entirety of his youth in this unhappiness? He promised himself that he'd make a life here, in Syliras. That he could break his chains to those ill-reputed people who filled his life. Instead, he was even more unhappy here. At least he was used to that life. He'd learned how to deal with it, he even managed to thrive, in some cases. He became a very proficient hypnotist and reimancer, even though it was with the help of his brother.
It didn't matter, though. He felt like he could see the end of his life as if it were a visible thing before him, and as much as that prospect scared him... he wished he could finally have a break from all of this.
