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Rachel once killed a flower.
It was when he was still young, a small child, taking a stroll in the royal garden with his mother. Fascination quickly hit him upon seeing a flower whose name he couldn’t recall, and in an attempt to have a closer look, he bent and broke its stem.
A strange feeling, really, seeing how the flower looked the same, smelt the same, but wasn’t alive anymore. It would wilt soon, his mother told him as they walked some more and she kept Rachel further away from the floras. Rachel’s wide blue eyes gawked at her, trying to comprehend what she was explaining. He had yet to grasp the concept of death. Blissfully ignorant.
His mother let him take it into the palace and his room, and a maid helped him keep it in a small cup of water. Rachel only understood when the flower visually succumbed to its lost life, with petals going brownish and falling, lying on the windowsill, and eventually getting cleaned up. He was only interested in its nice appearance and fragrance, yet he found himself still stuck on it when such qualities no longer existed. It was his first time thinking about death; more specifically, how the flower was dead even though he wanted to appreciate it. Because he wanted to appreciate it.
Many said Rachel was like the human form of the Sun.
In a literal sense, it was easy to reach that association since his hair was brightly golden, almost as if thousands of strands of sunlight were woven together. But he knew they meant something different. They regarded him as bold, outgoing, friendly. Straightforward, confident. Sometimes impulsive and aggressive. Likable, unless you had the temper of Xiakhan. Not like it was entirely wrong.
Rachel was the one who chose to burn. He was strong, he was capable, and there was little to no harm in making sure that fact was made known to everyone. He burnt so fiercely, blindly, so that few could truly mess with him. So that no one knew the depth of his cruelty, how filthy his desires were, or how, in trying to control them, he had lost his sense of self and so could only reflect what others expected to see, like a mirror.
It was fine that way, handy even. Attacking when the enemy was least guarded was always convenient. They might see him coming more or less, but surely not the length he could go with them. No one knew, because no one lived anyway. That side of Rachel stayed well hidden. Even if there was a slip somewhere, it was small and insignificant enough to be overlooked.
But the blaze he embraced also meant that he could destroy anything and anyone he loved, without intending to.
Rachel knew, acutely so, that those who got too close to him would only be reduced to ashes, one way or another, including ones he held dear and didn’t deserve it. And he couldn’t do anything but live with the tormenting guilt for the rest of his life. He tried hard to convince himself that it wasn’t his fault; it was always despicable vermin doing everything for their incredibly selfish and immoral wants, and he shouldn’t be lumped together with them. Yet somehow, his mind found it oh so easy to shift the blame on its owner.
Maybe it would have been better if Rachel had never existed, never been born. Maybe that would have saved all those lives. The maid. His father and mother. Athlon. Even Nemeris, however unbelievable that sounded. And many more. Perhaps it was really his fault. Such a voice could effortlessly drown out other thoughts, rendering him shaken to his core, helpless of it all. And so Rachel kept people at arm’s length, wore a seemingly perfect facade, and shut his heart tight.
Yet deep inside it kept on beating, feeling, loving. Subconsciously he was still searching for someone, someone who could withstand the blaze, soothe it and embrace him despite it. Someone who stayed, no matter what. He would never let that person go once he got his hand on them.
When Rachel did, though, the last thing he wanted to do was to keep them by his side.
Ramge had his own fire, a quiet one but was just as strong as Rachel’s. It was dormant beneath that timid and frail appearance, that oppression from his family, and at times its smolder was clear in those crimson eyes. Rachel was the only one, besides Sia, who recognized it and decided to become the fuel. After all, he had experienced firsthand how it was capable of both love and destruction, unlike him.
For a moment or two, it truly made Rachel think he wasn’t so despicable; he could be saved and save others, even himself. A fleeting, foolish belief was all it was. Ramge was meant for the good, and Rachel was anything but that. Rachel couldn’t bear to taint such a pure existence with the little conscience he had left.
Ramge was observant, however, and knew there was an unspoken distance in their relationship. Naturally, Ramge didn’t push him, likely didn’t dare to, for which Rachel was grateful yet disappointed. Although Rachel was the one who kept things to himself, he still wished Ramge would embrace him and accept him, love him wholly, violent urges and all. In the end, the persistent need to not burn Ramge down, to preserve and keep him safe, outweighed that pathetic desire. He shouldn’t end up like that flower.
On that fateful night, the darkness Rachel suppressed for so long got out. Only when the sword was retracted from the lifeless Emperor’s body did he come back to his senses, yet what bothered him the most wasn’t the atrocious crime he had just committed but the reaction Ramge had. Even though it was dark, Rachel could see the crystal-clear shock and fear in his expression. Of course Ramge would be horrified; Rachel was the naive one for briefly hoping he was happy instead. The knowledge that now Ramge could push him away filled him with relief and something akin to dread.
Rachel should have left Ramge’s life for good without a care, but being back in Saint West felt truly, unbearably suffocating, which he almost erased from his mind with the time in Lenombe. Thus he set out to find Ramge; Rachel still owed him a pardon, a ticket to freedom, after all. It was a good distraction for a while. He even found out that the blaze he both loved and resented couldn’t stand a chance against the icy, piercing cold of North von Frosty and its ruler. So back to homeland he went; the feeling that he might have to use it again soon chilled Rachel down to the marrow more than any wind and snow.
Rachel once thought he couldn’t live without Ramge, yet he did anyway. He endured; he had to, bearing the title of the King of Saint West, for his mother and all of his people. Had Rachel been granted a choice, he would rather have had his life ended long ago. A slash to his neck, an arrow to his head, a stab to his chest—he couldn’t care less. Humans can’t feel regret when they are dead. Living with himself and all he had done, plus the newfound responsibilities with limited time, was a fate worse than death.
In those insufferably lengthy yet short days, within the confines of the King’s room, Rachel had considered leaving it all behind. His comrades (he hated the term "subordinates") were all competent, especially some of the generals; he felt safe entrusting this to them. This position fit someone like Garff better anyway. Finding out how to not get stopped by them was another story, however. Rachel could already visualize their reactions when they knew.
If not for the tragedy Accor brought with him to the continent and the strange appearance of Athlon, that plan of his would have been put into action, and Rachel wouldn’t have been here anymore. After all, a country needs its leader the most at times like this, and he couldn’t just leave people to die without doing something, anything. He learned more about his family along the way.
That word felt strange in his mind, and even stranger on his tongue. Rachel never seemed to have the time to truly ponder what ‘family’ meant to him, only repeating it like a child mimicking adults. Such a matter was bound to be difficult with how he had experienced each and every emotion there was towards ‘family’. At the end, though, no matter how messy, painful and broken it was, it was his family, the family in which he had his share of ruining. It was the last thought Rachel had while turning away from Athlon’s decision, his swallows bitter with grief.
He didn’t know how he got to Lenombe. Nothing felt like his own anymore. He walked, talked, fought with utter disconnection from reality. Rachel kept wanting each second to be his last, yet his survival instinct persisted almost stubbornly. Every dodge, every swing of the sword was carried out automatically, until exhaustion did him in. So what the people said was true: your life will flash before your eyes in your last moments. A crimson-like flower appeared in the end, the name starting to feel so distant to him.
Did I burn you too, believing I didn’t?