Title: Adieu False Heart
Characters: Natori, the Cat King
Pairings: No romantic pairings (...unless you want to read it that way, I can't stop you)
Notes: I wasn't originally planning to post this one here, given it's so full of headcanons, but I. Kind of. Really like some of the writing in it, so I thought why not. Uses the name 'Phoebus' for the Cat King, which is not my own idea/headcanon.
It may be that father and son share the celestial names, and opposites, at that, but it is without a doubt king and advisor who in the end embody those symbolic traits— one faithful and steadfast, the other fickle and boisterous. And yet, there still lies a particular oddity— like sun and moon, Phoebus and Natori are in some way bound. Where one goes, the other typically follows. But always at a distance. Always just a few steps behind.
Or perhaps, as more commonly believed by the vast majority of their peers, it's Natori who spends his days as the patiently enduring Heliotrope, dutifully following the unpredictable trail of an erratic Sun from east to west with no hope of appreciation, nor even of the most meager of acknowledgement, for his dedication and skill.
As might be expected, Natori himself is no fan of this particular interpretation. Faithful and forgiving he may be, but he is no battered martyr.
(Is he?)
He does not allow himself to be trampled.
(Does he?)
And even the king, selfish, temperamental Phoebus… Tactless as he is, even he has his standards.
(But what are they?)
It will come to Natori at inconvenient times, this cold, smoldering resentment, arising out of the depths of the blackness he'd originally buried it in to float unencumbered on the surface of his emotions. Most times he will quite frantically shove it back down into the abyss without even a spared glance, but occasionally he finds himself mutely studying it like a forgotten, rusted blade. He will never let it see The Light for too long at a time, but it's good, he thinks sometimes, to remind it.
(Remind it of what, pray tell? That's quite easy.)
It is nothing more than a buried, brittle blade, and it longs to wound The Sun.