#romulous sanders ment

[lycanthrop-ee]

Sires and Sons

Chapter 4 of ?

First chapter, previous chapter

A/N: I definitely missed the right day for this one, but the last week hardly even happened and time is an illusion so whatever! Anyway this chapter’s full of Lore and a Twist so have fun losers /j

Synopsis: When the twins split two years ago, Janus was tasked with raising Remus. His only help was the evasive and sullen Virgil- who he already had to wrangle like a stray teenager. The endless days in the Dark Side’s Mindpalace were broken only by monthly catch-ups with Patton, and the only thing that ever changed the stories that Janus used to get Remus to bed. This time, though, something was different: secrets were slipping through Janus’ lips- and past the divide between Dark and Light.

Ships: Moceit (probably just bg but I don’t actually know can you tell I’m a professional-)

Word count: 1122

That afternoon, after Logan and Patton had left- without Virgil- Janus faced a thousand questions at the tiny hands of Remus. 

“Who were they? Where’d they come from? What were they doing here? Are they the ones you go on work meetings with? I thought there was only one? I know you like him!”

Virgil was no help- he’d shut himself in his room the moment he’d been let off of Remus duty. Janus knew he should check on the dreary side, but the leftover frustration from the earlier argument still fizzled in his chest, snapping at anyone who dared to set him off- and it had found an easy victim in Virgil.

Janus sat his kid on the stiff couch.

“Remus. Let me answer.” 

“Why were you angry at them? Why’s Virgil angry at you? Who should I be angry at- am I supposed to be mad at you, Jan? I can do that, watch-” The side twisted their face into a scowl. Janus sighed.

“Remus.” 

“I don’t like that tone, Mister!” 

“Remus.”

The kid’s face fell like a kicked puppy’s, but Janus didn’t relent. “Listen to me,” He stressed. “You’re being immature.”

Remus scowled for real this time. 

“Well, what if I don’t wanna hear what you were gonna say anyways!? Cause I don’t if you’re gonna be mean.”

Janus gritted his teeth, forcing the irritation nipping at him to still. He apologized to Remus, trying to think of a way to make Remus actually focus. He sighed as he fell on the only answer.

“Before the Light Side was a stable, loving kingdom, when King Thomas was just a Prince- there was turmoil.” Remus, as much as he tried not to show it, was interested. “The Prince had six royal helpers. The baker, the archivist, the advisor, the prophet, and the inventor.

“Of course, back then, life was a game. They were children, you see, and had given themselves fancy names and titles- but at that age, in that environment… it’s easy to get lost in the story. 

“The first two children you know- the archivist was one day to become the advisor, and the baker stayed true throughout the years.

 “The prophet was quiet as a mouse, creeping about as though he had already lost his seat at the table. When the others asked for his input, he was always surprised. He pointed out every possible outcome, turned over stones to see what malicious grubs crawled underneath. He brought the game to truth, added pressure until the scale tipped into fear- Prince Thomas grew to live in the future, trying to solve the kingdom’s problems as though the responsibility already belonged solely to him.

“The advisor of their time had a mastery of strategization, especially navigating the give and take between rulers to keep balance between kingdoms. He knew-”

“Why is everyone in your stories a he?”

“...”

“Jus’ seems kinda bias to me, that’s all.”

“...He knew what time and supplies they could bear to part with for the benefit of others, but he also kept in mind the limits of the kingdom, the needs that must be met to keep their own people strong. The Prince, however, always kind, often vetoed the advisor’s calculations in favor of giving more than they should. The pâtissier believed, in his unwavering efforts of peacemaking inside the castle and out, that their supplies and strengths were best given away. 

“Thomas had a strong platonic relationship with the bubbly pâtissier already, and thus trusted his judgment more than his advisor’s. Because his own nature agreed with the pâtissier’s as well, he found less and less of himself urging to consult his advisor in times of division. 

“His archivist, too, he found trust in- each time he chanced a meeting with the boy in the royal library, he would answer any question the Prince could think to ask with nothing but unbiased fact. Thomas would eventually find his way into the man’s affections- as happened often with the kind Prince- and once he was close enough to see his vulnerabilities and opinions he found they quite matched up to his own. From then on the archivist was his true, unofficial advisor, and the previous was pushed to the side by the Prince’s altruistic morals.

“His closest friend, though, was the inventor. Excitable and imaginative, he helped the Prince think outside the box, push past the politics of a situation to find the beating, bloody heart of the humanity he was trying to protect. He was brave and daring, and had no qualms like that of the pâtissier’s about going too far. As the Prince’s dilemmas grew more complex, however, the inventor’s habit of flitting from opinion to opinion made him unpredictable and sometimes rash. 

“The Prince stayed up each night debating and worrying, pushed by the prophet into urgency and almost never reaching a singular conclusion- every debate turned to an argument at the hands of their many differences. The archivist and the pâtissier watched as the endless battle to form opinions, ideas, and solutions spiraled, the lack of sleep effecting every facet of his life- his childhood, really- and soon found that something had to be done about it. 

“They decided to narrow down the amount of helpers in the Prince’s court, lest the goal of assistance be lost in numbers. What they failed to take into notice was that the true plague was but a bacterial dissonance, not an infectious wrongdoing.” Remus’ face was scrunched up in effort, and Janus dialled back on the long words. “The personalities and flaws in the Prince’s court weren’t the underlying issue. It was the unwillingness of some to see the perspective of others that drew them apart,” he remedied. 

“The pâtissier and the archivist, however, couldn’t see that. They held counsel with Prince Thomas and ruled that some of his attachments were doing more harm than good- that some of them were infectious, that they’d only spread their illness to those around them. They ruled that some of his friends had to be sent away.

And that is the story of how the archivist became the advisor, and of how the prophet’s chair at the table was finally pulled away.

The inventor, however, stumped the pâtissier. While he was brave and powerful, he wasn’t as guarded as the others thought he should be. He had been unchanged by the pressure to conform, and the advisor was afraid that his lack of a polite filter could influence Prince Thomas, something that they saw as potentially catastrophic to his political stance. 

Finally, they raised the problem with the inventor himself- and he had an out-of-the-box, unfiltered idea. Ironic, really, that they took him up on it.”

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