Prompt – change
A theme similar to last week's, but it was what came to mind with the prompt – and it made me think of how clothes are such a thing in Noblesse. I wonder how many of these snippets will involve M-21? I will probably keep writing the first thing I'm able to write so I can come up with an ending for the ficlet within the time limit.
He didn't mind wearing a uniform, something someone else picked out.
Everyone did, here. The nobles, who had plenty of power, wore the school uniform anyway. Those with power were the only ones who didn't wear a uniform in the Union – even the scientists all wore white coats there.
When he'd been allowed out on missions, he'd chosen dark, complicated clothes with unnecessary layers. Heh, so maybe a suit was still the same kind of thing he'd chosen to wear. Not simple, not cheap, not like his life had been.
To these people, he wasn't expendable.
Raizel thought he was expendable when he wasn't. That was the point of RK. Maybe if they could just keep him alive long enough he'd realize that he was just like the school kids, like the rest of his friends – someone they wanted to protect.
He knew the others felt it too – Tao could have changed into off-the-shoulder tops as soon as he came home. Frankenstein had written a guide on how to make clothes for the three of them that just happened to contain a pattern for those tops.
Takeo chose to wear jackets, if M-21 remembered right, and a suit had those. In the suits they looked like people with elegance, to use the noble word. People who mattered, people who had dignity.
That was still the biggest change, that they and their dignity mattered here.
M-21 could have changed clothes ten times a day, if he wanted. He could grow claws and would only be hauled into a lab if he wanted to get stronger, or someone was worried about him. Because he was not expendable to them. Not something to be disposed of because it was useless.
When they went to South Korea's Union base, the most powerful person there spent his life for the sake of M-21's dignity. He couldn't even have imagined that in the Union. He couldn't have imagined friends outside the M-series, a scientist who worried about him. Getting to see those kids, still free to have a normal life, smile at him.
He was free. If he spent his life to serve someone, to defend something, it was his choice and he could do it even if they didn't want him to.
He could dream that they'd all survive, that Raizel would be okay and could keep going to school with them, because he was now in a place where miracles like that could happen. He'd given up on fighting the Union once, on bringing it down, but now it was down to three elders and one of them had chosen to help him. Him!
Now he wanted things to stop changing. To stay in this place with these people forever. Well, they could stop having to let Raizel fight, that was one thing that could hurry up and change. But protecting the school, doing dishes in the afternoons even, patrolling the city and buying a burger for a werewolf because that was the kind of thing he did now, apparently… If this stayed like this forever, he wouldn't complain.