Notes: Big thanks and hugs to Misura (the pictures aren't really pornographic, Pain was just being a … pain –grin-) and to Animegoil for the wonderful reviews. Love you both! There are some things that you mentioned Misura that are actually explained away in the next chapter, so hopefully some stuff will eventually make a little more sense. Faeries' Landing is a very sweet (and a little strange) series Animegoil with a nice, big cast, and while I obsess over two of the more minor characters, in general it's a very fun series. ANYWAY. Onto the actual chapter. This takes us back into the past as we learn a little about the relationship and what makes Charon in particular tick, as opposed to what simply ticks him off in general.
Chapter Two.
At sixteen, Charon had been a very lonely, very lost pseudo-adult. Few people who knew him now would believe such a thing even if evidence was provided, but then Charon had made sure all evidence of his less than stellar childhood had been incinerated long ago. Things had been different when he was thirteen, when he'd had some friends and a somewhat warm, only partly insane, family. Back then he had only spent half his day absorbed in things such as work and study, the other had been half spent doing childish things like playing – not that many people would believe that now, either. But a child will only ever remain a child if they stay at home all their lives, and Charon had always held far loftier goals.
He wanted to be a pilot.
Of course, Charon had realized very quickly that 'Charon: Pilot' was not all that likely to ever happen. Firstly, faeries did not have planes, making the occupation a fairly difficult one to find any true success in. However, it had been more the growing realisation – and at that deadly age of thirteen – that the faerie world was run by an inept fool who did far more harm than good that had truly made Charon forget the thrill of flight. His mother had coldly told him that he was a fool to think that a mere child could change anything, but Charon had decided that adults who changed things had really once just been children who managed to outlive their parent's forebodings. The next year, when he applied to join the elite academy that only the brightest (or most connected) students were accepted into, he didn't simply turn heads with his marks, but created a rumble throughout the entire faerie kingdom.
Everyone knew right from the beginning that Charon was special.
It was exactly why things had been so completely horrible for his first three years.
Charon had known that the world of politics that he had thrown himself into would be cut throat, what he hadn't realized was that it would be his throat everyone was trying to slit. Marked out as the brightest, possessing by far the most leadership ability, and being able to handle anything that was thrown at him with an unnerving calmness, he couldn't have painted a larger target on himself if he'd broken out some florescent paint and drawn one on. It didn't help, naturally, that he actually studied all hours and threw himself completely into his work, ignoring the barbs and then fists that were thrown in his direction in an attempt to make him 'reconsider' his choice of future. Bullies like their victims to be cowered, and by refusing to play at being a victim Charon had denied them even the simplest of successes.
His mother had said once, in that special tone of hers that she reserved solely for her dearly loved children, that perhaps the reason why all the other boys didn't like him had nothing to do with petty things like jealousy and greed. Perhaps the reason they all hated him was because he was a cold, unemotional little boy who even a mother would find difficult to love.
And people wondered why his sister was so needy and clingy.
But his sister had only been ten when Charon was celebrating his sixteenth birthday, alone and empty and holding the only birthday present he'd gotten that year (Popularity: Learning to Adapt and Change, thank you very much, mother) (but at least she'd gotten him a book). It was looking like it was going to be another one of those years, where the days were safest spent in the library and the nights passed curled in his room, reading and studying and quite possibly – although he would never admit it now – plotting revenge on all those who'd made his last few years so miserable. But then, something totally inexplicable had happened.
Pain had arrived.
Everyone loved him at first sight, naturally. Everyone always loved Pain, although Charon was generally hard pressed to say why. Pain won over instantly the wealthy snobs who thought power was a birthright (it helped that Pain had a fair few connections himself), and he was fawned over by their followers by always having a smile and sly joke at hand. Charon had been intent on despising Pain instantly, a defensive move he'd picked up half way through his first year when he'd slowly began to realize that friendship was something that was obviously beyond him. He knew that his new roommate had been warned all about him – mostly lies of course, although not quite totally – before Pain even ventured into the room, and Charon was all prepared to nod in a noncommittal manner before ignoring the other boy completely. It turned out however, that Pain, with his warm greeting and warmer smile, were very difficult to ignore. Pain didn't care that Charon was the pariah of choice, or that Charon had a habit of making everyone – including Pain, especially Pain – look like an idiot through everyday comments and conversation. Pain didn't even care when Charon turned down every single one of his invitations to a party or outing, although he might have understood that it wasn't quite that Charon didn't want to go, and just that he didn't really know how to say yes.
Pain did care however, when he walked in early from class one afternoon and found Charon nursing a fresh set of bruises that made his arm look alternatively like a plump and squished grape. Charon had at first waved off Pain's concerned and then threatened darkly to hex the other boy when Pain ignored him completely, running slightly trembling fingers down the bruises and allowing the magic they held to wash away the pain beneath them. There hadn't been all that many times in the past when someone else had preformed a healing spell on him (the time that an eight year old Medea had tried to fix one of her brother's 'boo boos' was best not thought about), and it shook Charon in a rather undignified manner to have Pain of all people get so intimate. Pain hadn't noticed, luckily, although to his credit few people would have when they were on the other side of the room, half buried under a shelf that had fallen down when Pain had hit the wall with a hard thud. Charon never dared use magic against even those who deserved it, but he HAD warned Pain. A book spread open across his head like a traumatic wig; Pain had mock glared at him before rising and belly flopping on his bed, pointedly ignoring Charon in a way that teased the tiniest of smiles from Charon. Charon had been somewhat horrified by it, hiding the traitorous and completely out of character smile behind a book. The only plus was that there was no way Pain could have seen it, could surely not have seen it, and so when he said – his face buried still in pillow – that Charon should smile more often as he looked all sorts of cute when he did, Charon threw the book at the other boy. As it bounced off his shoulder and brought a startled yelp from Pain, Charon discovered that the move had the opposite effect that he had intended, as instead of yelling or getting pissed off, Pain retaliated. With a pillow. And, when it was all over and their room was filled with feathers that kept turning up in strange places for months afterwards, Charon actually laughed.
It was all downhill from there. Falling in love with Pain became something completely unavoidable, even though Charon certainly tried his best to avoid such a disastrous outcome. He told himself that the only reason he even liked Pain in the first place was by default, given that it was certainly difficult to like any of the other boys who were hell bent on seeing him fail. He justified away the times Pain made him smile as a sign that Charon himself obviously needed to get a sense of humor that was actually worthy of his intelligence and ambitions. It didn't help that Pain didn't appear to have any problems making Charon aware of his own, growing attraction for Charon, flirting in totally inappropriate ways that Charon never, ever enjoyed and always somehow being exactly what Charon seemed to need with an annoying consistency. But Charon tried to justify it all, all the same, mastering the art of denial on almost the same level as he was mastering magic and politics.
It was very hard to explain away, however, racing though the halls in a completely undignified manner, mentally rambling on about how he was going to kill Pain's sparring partner if what people were saying was true. Depending on the source, his roommate had either lost a limb, had broken half the bones in his body, or was suffering from a vicious concussion that had possibly resulted in a permanently diminished mental capability (not that there would be all that much difference between Pain with two brain cells and Pain with one, his feverish thoughts had still managed to acknowledge).
In the end, Pain was fine. Bruised and sore and with bandages everywhere while the magic healed skin that was still sure to scar, but fine enough that Charon didn't felt a single shred of guilt when, emotionally exhausted and more mentally frayed than he could ever remember being, Charon punched him.
Pain kissed him in return.
And, well. Splat. The downhill tumble into emotion might have been a torrent of denial, but the months that followed, Charon begrudgingly allowed, almost made it worth it. The relationship was exciting and vibrant and nothing like Charon had ever known before, and everything else didn't quite matter so much when Pain was there, sure to drag him into some shadowed corner or risk a dark glare from Charon by becoming slightly too familiar when they were in public together. Instead of finding Charon's intelligence and abilities overbearing, Pain instead somehow found them insanely attractive, and even when Charon occasionally tried to drive Pain away by being … well, Charon … the other man never went far, always managing to win him reluctantly back with a wide smile or a thoughtful word. Pain was the closest thing to perfect that Charon had ever known, but more than that he was also very accessible, what with his bed being on the other side of the room. These things were very important to teenagers who were acknowledging they even had hormones for the very first time.
Hormones, however, while very fun to discover and act upon, were not so very fun when discovered by someone else and acted on. Charon could still remember in vivid detail being dragged into the dean's office, his kind gaze the only warning Charon needed to know that something downright awful was about to happen, and Charon was sure to be the one who would end up losing out. The dean had learnt about Charon's relationship with Pain – although he wouldn't say how, which lead Charon to the theory that the man was a pervert who spent his evenings spying through the keyholes of each of the bedrooms in the hopes of catching some hot boy-on-boy action – and for Charon's own sake (of course) thought that it would be best if Charon ended it.
Charon refused. He was sixteen, in love, and very, very stupid.
The dean had been surprised – although also a little impressed, it must be said – that Charon wasn't so willing to give up something as silly and unimportant as acceptance and romance and fun in order to preserve his bright future. The dean had spelt it out then, warning Charon that this kind of thing could damage his chances of gaining prominence, and that he was too damn clever and brilliant to let something like this derail him. Was Pain really worth that risk?
Yes.
Was Charon willing to risk letting all the faeries that he had sworn that he would protect fall under the rule of someone who was corrupt and bent?
A painfully aching moment where he forgot how to breathe, before –
Yes.
Was he prepared to cost Pain his future?
That choice was Pain's.
True, his dean admitted, but he did not expand on why Charon alone had been pulled into the office. If Pain's feelings for Charon were even a quarter of what Charon's were for Pain's, then it might all be worth it.
And it had been a cruel ploy, even though it certainly earned marks for being so blindsiding in its effectiveness. Charon was hardly lacking in confidence when it came to most things; in fact, Pain often commented idly that their relationship was really a kinky kind of threesome when one took Charon's ego into account. But there was one, fatalistic flaw that years of his mother and school life had resulted in and that his dean had somehow managed to pick up on. Having found it, the dean relentlessly used it against him.
You see, Charon wasn't entirely all that convinced that he was worth being loved, and when someone wasn't all that convinced that they were worthy in the first place, it became harder still to believe that anyone might ever actually really love them. What the dean had so kindly alluded to was just how long it would be before Charon reached his expiry date and Pain lost his ability to care. Pain's career in tatters and with nothing left to justify it; it would be all Charon's fault.
He'd broken up with Pain the next day. Pain had argued at first, and then tried to mend the bridges that he never realized had been deliberately burnt. But a month later Pain had shrugged it all off with a grin, saying that they made better friends anyway, and was it just him or was the new exchange student sort of hot?
It had been the right decision, and one that he stuck by. They'd never really been in love, had just experienced the sixteen year old version of it that never really meant anything except at the time. It had been fun and it had been needed, but in the end it had been – as Pain had so perfectly put it - a fling. He'd realized that, in the end.
It was a fling that belonged very much in the past, and for it to stay that way those photos needed to be destroyed.