Trigger warnings: self-hatred

In the days following, Varian walked on eggshells around Hector. It pained the warrior to see. His nephew didn't have the same spark to him, the same vibrancy. His eyes were constantly shifting, he startled easily at sudden noises, and he was back to not speaking as often. Months of recovery had been damaged by Hector's idiocy, by one lost temper. Varian wasn't as bad off as he had been when Hector had first found him, but in some ways, this was worse. It was worse because it was Hector he was afraid of. It was Hector who had hurt him.

After that debacle, Varian had attempted to continue training, but Hector had quickly brought a stop to that, saying they needed a break for a week or so. The boy had stubbornly insisted he was fine, but he flinched at sudden motions, and Hector didn't want to be the one to cause him to fear physical contact any more than he did. As a compromise, they stuck to exercise and mental training and avoided combat training altogether.

Ruddiger, of course, never left his boy's side. He glared at Hector any time the man got close to them. Once, Hector made the mistake of reaching out to put a hand on Varian's shoulder. The raccoon's teeth had sunk almost all the way through his glove. Not enough to break through completely, but Hector did sport a nice set of bruises after that.

There was one bright side, though. After his apology, Hector had realized with a shock that he had used the word "promise," which he had tried to avoid around his nephew. But Varian either hadn't noticed or didn't mind. If that could be considered a "bright side."

Four days after his mistake, Hector was repairing the leg of a table Kubwa had knocked over when the bearcats had ambushed him playfully. The repair wasn't hard, but his distracted thoughts made him lose focus and smash his finger between the two planks of wood. "Crap! That hurts like the dickens!"

A frightened gasp came from behind him. He whirled around to see his nephew standing there, having just come through the nearby doorway. The doorway which the damaged table sat to the right of. More than likely, Varian hadn't even seen Hector until he yelled.

Oh, crap.

"Sorry, kiddo." He kept his voice controlled and calm. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"I-it's okay," he whispered. "Sorry."

"For what? You didn't do nothing."

Varian winced. "Sorry. I mean—"

"It's fine. Don't apologize."

Varian looked like he wanted to say something else but refrained. He started to walk away. Ruddiger, perched on his shoulders, glared back at Hector vengefully.

"Kid, wait."

He stopped, his shoulders hunched, and turned back to Hector.

"We need to talk." Hector motioned for Varian to sit and waited until he did so. The boy kept a good distance between them, placing Ruddiger in his lap. "Look, it's been tense around here for the last few days, and it's my fault. I'm sorry I yelled at you. And I know I don't deserve your forgiveness or anything, but—just yell at me! Be mad! Something! I can't stand seeing you all timid like this knowing it's my fault. You have every right to be angry at me, so… please just say something!"

Varian rubbed his arm uncomfortably. "I'm not mad," he murmured.

"You should be!"

He shook his head. "It's my fault."

"It's not. I know you would never have touched it. There were a million better ways I could have handled that situation."

"I disobeyed you."

Hector shook his head. "Yeah, but that didn't give me the right to do what I did. I hurt you."

He could see Varian's mind running a million miles an hour. "Why are you apologizing?" he finally asked. "People don't apologize to me."

"Well, I do. I'm mature enough to admit when I do something wrong. Look, if you can give me one good reason why I shouldn't apologize, I won't." This might work. Getting him involved in a mental exercise might help break the ice a bit.

Varian tilted his head. "I messed up," he argued. "This was my fault. I deserved to get yelled at."

"Not a good excuse." Hector crossed his arms. "I messed up, too."

"I started this."

"And I made it worse. Still not a good reason. Try again." There was something dark in his eyes, Hector could see. If he could force Varian to bring it to the light, maybe they could deal with it. But it had to be Varian's choice. Hector could only push so far.

"I…" he was grasping, struggling, trying to justify Hector's behavior against him. The man was sickened all over again by how he had been conditioned to do that. And he had only compounded the problem. Taking away the possibility that Varian deserved it, that Hector was somehow in the right, left the child dazed and confused. The thought that someone else might have done something wrong and actually admit it was foreign to him. "I'm not a good kid," he argued weakly.

"Wrong. You are. And even if you weren't, that's still not a good excuse. Sorry." That wasn't what Varian had wanted to say, he knew, but he wasn't sure how far he could go to get to the truth without hurting him worse. "Try again."

His nephew bit his lip. Hector fought the urge to order him to stop. Then Varian's next words stole his breath.

"I… I made you do it," he whispered.

O‴O‴O‴

The conclusion had been hard to come to, but it made perfect sense. It was the reason why he couldn't hold Hector's words against him. Even now, though, he could see his uncle struggling to understand, to realize what Varian meant. What he had done.

"Ooookay, you lost me. You didn't make me do anything. That was my own bad decision."

Varian shook his head. There had to be some way to explain, but he wasn't quite sure how to put his thoughts into words. "It's my fault. I made you bad."

Hector blinked in surprise. "What the dickens, kid?"

"I made you bad," he repeated. "That's what I do. I make people bad." He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably.

Hector's head dropped into his hand. "'Kay, that's a no. You don't make people bad or good. They make their own decisions."

Varian wrapped his arms around Ruddiger, as if the raccoon was a shield. "No. I bring out the worst in people! I didn't see it at first. It was easy to think the Coronans were bad for hurting me. But then there's the princess. She's pure and good, and everyone loves her, but she abandoned me. She doesn't do stuff like that. Just to me. And there's my dad. He was… he was amazing. But every time I messed up, every time I did wrong, I could see that look in his eyes. It was my fault for upsetting him. For making him disappointed in me. And you're good. I can tell. But I made you yell at me. I bring out the darkness in people. In everyone."

It was so simple. He didn't know how he hadn't seen it before. Everyone around him, no matter how good or perfect, always turned. The only common factor was him. Only Ruddiger hadn't turned, and Varian had taken the horrible step of mutating him anyway, forcing him to become a monster. It was as plain as the nose on that stupid advisor's face. He didn't know how he hadn't seen it till now.

Hector was giving him that look now, that look that was an odd mixture of shock and horror. Varian hated that he thought the way he did months ago, thought that maybe Hector would see the error of keeping Varian around. He had trusted the warrior when he said he would never leave him behind, but it wasn't safe for Varian to stay with him. He surely saw now that he was a bad person to be around, someone who would corrupt him and turn him dark like he did to everyone else.

"Oh, kid…" Hector reached out a hand to Varian but stopped when he involuntarily flinched. Ruddiger hissed angrily. "Varian, I don't know why you think that, but you're wrong, 'kay?" He shook his head when Varian tried to protest. "You're wrong. No one is perfect. No matter how wonderful someone seems, they're human. We all mess up. We all do stupid junk like yell at people we're supposed to be protecting. You don't bring out the bad in people. You just happen to get on the receiving end a bit too much. That's not your fault. Everyone has evil in them. You can't blame yourself for that. All you can blame yourself for is what you do, the choices you make; and trust me, you do that enough. Don't put everyone else's actions on your conscience, too. It'll get too heavy."

"It doesn't make sense," Varian argued. "I'm the only common factor."

Hector rolls his eyes. "You're a scientist. You know correlation doesn't always equal causation. There's no good scientific evidence to support the claim that people around you go bad because of you."

"I—" He froze. True, the evidence of people turning pointed to the possibility that it was a problem with him, but Hector had a point. There was no actual scientific reason why that was true.

Was it not him, then?

But if it wasn't him, that meant good people had darkness inside them. Could he believe that? He knew he certainly had a dark side. But people that everyone seemed to love, like the princess? Did she have darkness in her? She was the Sundrop!

And she was also human. And humans made mistakes.

"So then… well, how do you know it's not me?" he challenged.

Hector's eyes glanced off to the side for a second before he answered, "Because I've seen evil, kid. Lots of it. I've seen it in forms so true it'd melt your little child eyeballs. Pure evil that's got nothing to do with you." His shoulders slumped in a very uncharacteristic manner. "Trust me. Sometimes people just do evil things because they have evil in them."

Varian hung his head in shame. He knew a thing or two about having evil inside.

"Hey." Hector gently reached out a hand. Varian hesitated, but then he shyly took it. "Everyone does, 'kay? Even me."

"Why…" Varian bit his lip.

"'Why' what?"

He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he asked anyway. "Why did you do it? Why… why did you get angry? I mean, I know I did wrong, but—you don't usually do that. It was…"

"Extreme? An overreaction?"

"Scary."

"Kid." Hector shook his head. "I'm not about to try to give a good reason for what I did. It was wrong, and there's no excuse."

Varian let go of Hector's hand and crossed his arms. "I told you my tragic backstory."

"Yeah, but I'm not a traumatized kid. I'm an adult who should've known better."

"Please. I want to know."

"I… can't. Sorry."

He scootched closer and waited. Hector sighed. "You're not going to stop asking, are you?"

"Uh-uh."

"Fine. Let's get some food, though. I don't do tragic backstories on an empty stomach." He stood and offered a hand to Varian, who allowed the man to pull him to his feet. Even now, it took effort to allow Hector to touch him, but he fought to bring his nerves under control. No sense in letting on how he felt. Especially when he wasn't sure how to feel.

If what Hector said was true, then maybe he was overreacting about his effect on people. Hector told him all the time he wasn't a lost cause, wasn't worthless. Maybe he wasn't the reason people turned bad.

Best to see what Hector's answer was, though. He could probably clear some things up.

O‴O‴O‴

When they reached the kitchen, Hector immediately grabbed the ingredients for ham sandwiches. Maybe if he distracted the kid with his favorite food, he'd forget to ask questions.

Yeah, not likely.

"So what's going on?" Varian asked softly.

Hector kept his back turned as he answered, "I told you. I've got no excuse."

"You never act like that. Something's wrong. I saw it that morning when you were making breakfast."

"It's not something I like talking about, 'kay?"

"But it's hurting you."

"What?" Hector finally turned to look at him.

Varian was watching him with those big blue eyes. Even with one clouded over, he still managed to pull the best puppy dog eyes Hector had ever seen. "It's hurting you," he repeated. "You're keeping all your problems inside because you think talking about them makes you weak. You never act like I'm weak for telling you things, though, so why won't you?"

Yikes. He hadn't known he was that transparent. Unfortunately for him, Varian was determined to find out about Hector's problems, and there would be no getting out of this without explaining. Maybe it would be better this way. No more secrets between them. Finishing up with the sandwiches, he set a plate in front of Varian and sat across from him. "Fine. First things first, I want you to remember I'm not mad or upset with you. For anything, 'kay?"

Varian nodded and gave one of the sandwiches to Ruddiger, who swallowed about half in one bite.

"Good. You remember I told you my siblings and I were close once, right? Then the Dark Kingdom fell, Quirin left, and Adira committed treason." He laced his fingers in front of his face and rested his head on his thumbs. "It hurt. I thought we'd always fight beside each other. When Adira started talking about the Sundrop, I tried to get her to see reason, but she wouldn't listen. I knew I was losing her. Maybe it was my own fault. I should have tried to understand her. But Quirin… I didn't ever expect him to leave the mission. He traveled for a bit, then met a girl and settled down in Old Corona. Had you." A deep sigh rattled his bones. "I suppose it's because I didn't expect him to go that made it hurt so bad. I didn't know I'd lose him. He came to see me here before he left, and we got in a fight. We'd write letters back and forth every once in a while, but it wasn't the same. Then I heard rumors about the battle and decided to go check on him."

He stood and started pacing, unable to look at Varian, despite knowing it wasn't his fault. "When I saw him there… When I saw his body, I didn't know what to think. It was… awful. I was powerless to help him. I tried to get him out. When that didn't work, I-I got mad. Furious. I wanted to know who did it so I could make them pay." Across the table, Varian shrank into himself slightly. Hector forced the cold edge out of his voice and continued. "I'd only felt that sort of anger a time or two, and only when people messed with my family. It's the same way I felt when you told me what those monsters did to you. So I started asking around, found out about you, and decided to help you. That's—I wasn't mad after that. Not at you. I couldn't be, not after… not after everything." He leaned against the counter. "Then a few days ago, I got a nightmare about that. Brought all that back up again when I just wanted to forget it. So I was jittery and moody, and then I saw you at the Heart, and I just lost it. Snapped for no reason. And I'm sorry."

Varian was watching him with that little head tilt. Truth be told, it made Hector nervous. He was being judged, tested, scrutinized, to see if he was worthy of being Varian's guardian. If his nephew decided it wasn't worth the risk to stay, if he thought Hector was too dangerous, then what? It would destroy him to lose this kid who had become so important to him in such a short time, especially if he lost him because of his own stupidity.

He should have made up some excuse! There had to have been a better answer he could have given him other than "I hated you when I first heard about you because I thought you murdered my brother." How the dickens was the kid supposed to take that?

Every inch of his impressive 6'10" wanted to talk his way out, to explain himself, but he'd already said enough. No sense in digging a deeper hole for himself. He kept quiet and watched the gears turning in Varian's head. The boy's eyes held a pain and heaviness no child should have to bear. The reminder of Quirin's death couldn't have been easy to hear, especially coupled with the fact that it had led to Hector wanting to kill him.

He could imagine Adira mocking him, the way she used to when they were kids. Way to go. Always had to open your mouth and insert your foot, didn't you? Well, he'd tried ignoring his emotions for four months, keeping his mouth shut about what was bothering him, and look where that got him. Full honesty might be better this time.

Varian stood and silently got a pot from one of the cabinets. Then he got some milk from behind the waterfall. Hector moved over to the table to give him space. Maybe this was Varian's way of processing. He was more than likely used to doing alchemy to get his mind off whatever was bothering him. Without that, cooking was probably the closest substitute he had.

Then he saw the ingredients Varian had retrieved. A small smile found its way onto his face as he watched the boy and his raccoon work. As the milk heated, Varian came and sat at the table with Hector.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispered.

"I… I was scared." It hurt to admit. The last time he'd said that, he was a child, and his siblings were there with comforting open arms. But he needed to be honest. No more hiding things from his kid. "I was scared that you'd hate me. Scared I'd do something stupid. Look, I got a lot of bad reasons for not talking to you. I don't really do 'opening up about my feelings.' Never have, even with Quirin and Adira."

Varian cracked a smile. "Hypocrite."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"You're all about me talking about my problems, but then you shut down when anyone asks about yours."

"I know."

Varian stood and moved over behind Hector, draping his arms across his shoulders. "No more hiding things, 'kay? If I'm gonna be open and honest, you have to be, too. Deal?"

"Deal. Quick question, though; how come I'm the one spilling my guts when we're supposed to be talking about you?"

Varian stuck his tongue out and went to check on the milk. A few minutes later, he answered, "Because we're family. We both hurt sometimes, but we can be there for each other." He looked over his left shoulder. "You've been helping me for months. I want to help you, too."

If it were possible for Hector to love this kid even more, he did so now. His kid—his scarred, abused, abandoned kid—wanted to help him. Wanted to know what he was feeling so he could support him. So he could be there for the man who had yelled at him and betrayed his trust and hurt him. For the man who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as Varian.

"I'm sorry I got near the Heart," Varian said after a few minutes. "I knew better. I just wanted to see it. I shouldn't have disobeyed you."

"I forgive you."

"And I'm sorry I didn't see how you felt about Dad's death. You were brothers. I should have paid more attention to your feelings."

Hector shook his head. "No. You couldn't have known. I don't let on how I feel. That's my fault. I'm sorry I lost control and yelled at you. I'm sorry I hurt you."

Varian checked on his stovetop concoction, where Ruddiger had been keeping an eye on it. He threw the rest of the ingredients into the pot and stirred. When it was finished, he ladled it up into mugs and handed one to Hector. "I forgive you."

"Thank you." Hector sipped the hot cocoa. "That's actually pretty good! You've been practicing."

"I've almost got it like yours!"

He placed the mug on the table. "Also, I'm sorry I used the word 'promise' when I apologized after that. I know it bugs you."

Varian shrugged. "It's fine. I don't like it when people make promises, but I know you'll keep it."

"How do you know?"

"You've kept the rest of them."

"I didn't make any promises."

"Yeah, you did." Varian sat next to him. "Maybe not in so many words, but I know what you promised yourself about me. You promised to protect me. You promised to help me recover. To keep me away from the Coronans and take care of me. You've been making promises the whole time. And you've kept them."

"Not very well. I hurt you."

He shrugged. "Like you said. We all mess up. But you made it right. You didn't just let it go and pretend it didn't happen. You're keeping your promises." He hugged his thin frame. "I'm probably still going to be touchy about that from anyone else, but I trust you. Sorry if I forget and slip up sometimes."

"Eh, we're both learning. I suppose we'll just have to be patient with each other."

Varian smiled and nodded. "I think we can do that. It's what family does."

"Yeah. I suppose so." Hector's smile was sad but genuine. "We can do that."

The words were a promise, though neither said so. They didn't have to. They knew.

As always, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. Thank you and God bless!