#gwyn needs to do some psychological heavy lifting

[not-poignant]

Thanks for answering my ask about Arden’s POV! Makes total sense. Totally different style question, but in your opinion will Gwyn and Ef be able to come together again in the far future and have a relationship of some sort with heavy boundaries, or will it be better for them to not ever speak again? I could see it both ways so I am curious. Anyway thanks for writing! FFS has become a comfort fic for me as a “bad” ocd haver…

Hi hi

Yes! Actually that's very much what I imagine (that they do meet up again in the future). The reason Efnisien cut Gwyn off now was, in many ways, so that they could have some kind of connection in the future.

If things continued as they were now they would have never learned how to be healthy together. For a start, Gwyn had zero accountability for his own actions, because anything toxic he did, he threw under the 'you started it' bus. Which is not useful to, well, anyone. Even Gwyn. Gwyn's only going to learn that accountability with better therapy, and some time to actually process his childhood and what he experienced.

Likewise, Efnisien needs to learn how to respect himself around folks like Gwyn, and how to stand up for himself and his boundaries healthily. Gwyn violated his boundaries literally every single visit they ever had, and even the times Efnisien did weakly try to stand up for himself, Gwyn consistently and repeatedly ignored him. It's safe to say that was happening for years before this story started. So Efnisien certainly needs to learn to a) stand up for himself more firmly around Gwyn and b) walk away with a strong 'if you keep treating me like this you do not get my presence, period' if Gwyn ignores him.

I do think they can get there with time (a significant amount of time, like a decade or two). I think especially once Efnisien doesn't need Gwyn in any shape or form, and Gwyn has sort of learned some perspective on how he wants to treat people in general, including people that treated him badly (i.e. if he wants to go down the path of Lludd, which he's tentatively done already (Gwyn is, actually, extremely violent, and attempted to murder Efnisien, and did not stop himself - but was stopped by Augus), or if he actually wants to develop a personal ethical code, which Efnisien is lightyears ahead of vs. him - largely because of choices Efnisien was forced to make, and Hillview).

Honestly I like to imagine that one day they do meet, and Efnisien has pet dogs (or a pet dog) of his own, and as soon as Gwyn looks at them like 'oh god what are you doing to them' Efnisien's like 'right, see ya!' because he's just not going to put up with that anymore after the years and years and years of hard work he's done on himself. And then at their second meeting, Gwyn is much better lmao, and he actually gets to know Efnisien as a person, and they start figuring out a new path forward together. :)