Trill: So I've been itching to let out some of that built up stress, and a game I recently played has become my outlet. Lyude is always so self-doubting and such in the game, and I was looking at how violent most of his finishing moves are compared to his meek demeanor. This is the franken-story that was created from stress and an overactive urge to write.
WARNINGS: This fic is rated M for sadistic thoughts, mention of gore and violence, and suggestive situations (all of which caused by the Sadism.) If you don't like it, or think the ruining of this wonderful character will scar you for life, don't read.
Also, I do not own Lyude or anything from Baten Kaitos! If I did, you can be guarenteed many of the male characters would be cannon with each other.
Lyude wasn't sure when the thoughts started. Maybe it was all the repression of the empire finally getting to him. Maybe it was the lack of dreams and joy that spawned them. Maybe it was even when he joined Kalas and the group, and had a chance to let his body once again act in violence. He didn't know, and Lyude didn't want to really figure it out, either.
Every battle, he watched Kalas, Xelha, Gibari, and Sayvna release their 'Wings of the Heart', and longed for some of his own. It was such that, at one time, he had a small pair of his own as a child, but they soon disappeared. Lyude tried to figure out why when he was older, and came up with an answer: in the empire, there were no dreams to flitter about on. You grew up, served the emperor, and died either in battle or of old age. There were no dreams for people to chase, there was no hope to be a better person, for the empire to be a better place; for it already believe it was the best. And therefore, no dreams were made, and no wings were grown.
Maybe it was the day he came up with this notion that Lyude started to think such dark things, that he seemed to 'angst' over everything and start letting the things around him get to him. Of course, if the empire saw this change in him, they would have outcast and maybe even execute him, so he bottled these emotions, these feelings, and apologized profusely for anything they blamed on him… even if it hadn't been his fault. But when they attacked Almarde's home, he couldn't bottle up the emotions and just do as they said. As a result, he was exiled to Diadem.
Eventually, this was where he met Kalas for the first time. He saw him as just some new traveler, and ignored his presence. Later, though, when he joined the group of three (Kalas, Xelha, and Gibari) and started traveling around after the End Magnus, he realized he had been craving something. Diadem's small port was wonderful for calming the mind and numbing it towards any outside activity. It had become his morphine; leaving it meant that those thoughts were back in full swing. What he had been craving… was release. In conversation he was timid, maybe even a bit over apologetic and self-doubting, but in battle… in battle he was a force to be reckoned with.
Finishing moves are a wonderful thing. They spawn from your own talent, soul, and being, to form a perfect little ability trapped in a card, waiting to be unleashed. Lyude knew something was wrong with him when he saw Sforzando sitting neatly at the top of his deck one morning. It seemed like such an innocent card, but when he tried it out next battle -the adrenaline rushing through him, the overall joy of beating something to death and not firing a single shot, smashing the beast's skull in until he stumbled back after such a vicious attack- he knew he was addicted, and that it was a very dangerous addiction. Of all the other finishing moves he learned, this one gave him the best thrill. To see their eyes roll back in their head, to hear the bone crunch, to feel their life substance lightly splatter over his cheek right before he backed off; it had all become a drug. The more he used that tiny little magnus, the more vicious he became.
Soon, even when he wasn't in battle, such thoughts began to plague him. He would groan and toss in his sheets as he tried not to imagine the gruesome damage he would cause, he would try to push away the sheer pleasure of seeing the enemy fall from his attacks, and he would relish the shame he felt when he touched his aroused body because he knew it was wrong to feel this way. He had a sneaking suspicion that Kalas knew something was up, that his eyes had gotten a midge darker since the ex-imperialist first joined, but if the one-winged man noticed, he said nothing about it.
Savyna kept to herself, and Lyude was thankful. He had accused her of being a spy when they first met, but after a while he grew to understand her solitude. Mizuti was a different story, though. He seemed to know instantly what was up with Lyude, and the two did not get along well. When there was a common worry, problem, or reason to be happy things were tolerable and no harsh words were said. When they were alone, though, even the mask's odd expression seemed to darken and become dangerous. Mizuti warned Lyude on several occasions "It be not safe to touch such darkness, friend, lest you be willing to give into it."
Lyude did take The Great Mizuti's words to heart, and he really did try to stop the horrible things that went on behind his head. But at the end of everything, when he had his own room and a night to himself, he found his body craving release again, and whether it was a sleepless night of hunting down the local monsters, or pleasing himself with thoughts of the prior… he was going to have it.
Trill: So, definatly not my usual way of writing... and I really hate that kind of stuff, but it seemed to just... work for this. I love Lyude, and he's my favorite character, but I had to ruin him like this. I had to! Forgive me!