A/N: Just an angsty little piece I put together based on a concept a wrote on a long time ago. It amazes me how many depressing things get written for these two. But anyways, part of the point of this piece is display my abhorrence for the rest of the cast's attitude. To me, it's always seemed like they acted as if Ratatosk really had no reason to hate humanity and instead of trying to figure out the "why" and remedying it, they just spent their time together calling him a jerk... At least that's how it seemed to me.
Disclaimer: I don't own Knights of Ratatosk. Sad, I know.
Ruin
People had so many expectations. There were so many that Emil Castagnier sometimes wondered why he bothered at all. Everyone just expected him to walk down this path, become Ratatosk and seal away the red-eyed Emil's personality without so much as batting an eyelash. Why? Because it was the morally correct thing to do.
But just because it was morally correct didn't mean that Emil wanted to do it.
He didn't want to seal his other personality away. Not only was it just like killing him, the numerous times he and his other half had talked, he didn't find anything wrong with him.
Expectations had ruined Ratatosk.
Humanity had betray him one too many times. Humanity was why his tree-half of the reason he even existed- had withered. Yet despite all this, they still expected him to go on without holding a grudge. They still wanted him to protect them from the demons of Niflheim- expected it from him because it was the morally correct thing to do.
Like a bad influence, they ruined him. They took every lick of compassion he had in his body and ripped it out, then wondered where it had gone and when he'd demanded humanity be destroyed, it wasn't revenge. No, the finger was pointed to Ratatosk then, as if humanity had done nothing to him to get this.
Favor after favor had ruined Ratatosk. Chance after chance had been abused by humanity and it had ruined Ratatosk.
So why was he here now?
Here he stood in the expanse of their mind, staring ahead at the mirror image of himself. His red eyes were boring into him, glaring at him with such a ferocity that the guilt of what he was going to do hit him head-on.
Standing there, he could see it in those red eyes. Betrayal. He had an excuse; Ratatosk knew that. The pressure of these expectations had finally made Emil collapse under all that weight. His other half had done his best to help him with that weight, but had ultimately failed. And the saddest part is that the failure wasn't Ratatosk's fault.
He felt terrible, standing there and staring into the ferocious eyes of his counterpart. He could tell what he was thinking and the more he considered what was going through his head, the worse he felt. He tried to convince himself that what he was doing here would make the world a better place. He tried really hard.
Ultimately, he failed.