Vincent - Kaelin

_{Strong Bond}



He looked a lot like his father. Some would say that would good, most would say that was just plain bad luck. It wasn’t that his father was bad-looking or carried a notorious criminal record (even though his was quite long), it was simply that he held the traits of a demon. Traits that had passed on to him, leaving a near mirror-like image of father and son.

Vincent pushed up his glasses, the one thing that distinguished himself from the teenage image of his father. He was Yami’s spitting image in his younger days. Short, petite, shoulder-length raven hair and brilliant crimson eyes. His crimson eyes, however, failed to function properly and at birth he was believed to be blind. By the age of three his father had realized that the boy simply was just having problems seeing and with a thick pair of glasses that were miraculously small in size considering the amount of focus involved, he was able to see as clearly as any other.

Vincent may have not been well accepted at first, being in an elf dominated city where whispers of witchcraft and murder still followed the few demon’s who dared live in the city. However, with his persistent charm, humility and intellect those in the city had finally warmed up to the young man. He was an ‘exception’ to the rule. Part of his readily acceptance was due to the fact that most believed the young demon was incapable of using magic. They thought that perhaps he was just a dud—maybe a little bit normal, but in reality, Vincent just never cared to harness his innate magical abilities. He was too peaceful to believe in magic, even in self-defense.

And there weren’t many times in his life that Vincent regretted his crimson eyes. In fact, he hardly noticed these days… but it was little setbacks like this that often reminded him that he was different.

Vincent tilted his face a little more to the left, frowning at the bruise forming just over his cheekbone and under his eye. It was aching and he could feel his teeth throbbing underneath. However, the physical pain wasn’t nearly as bad as the mental anguish inside.

It had all happened in a matter of seconds. Vincent had stepped out of one of the local shops and when he did he had heard a little girl start to scream. Blinking, honestly alarmed, he had spun towards the screaming. A man then lashed out at him (not really sure why himself) and Vincent had fallen back against the side of the building, seeing spots of white dancing across his vision. The little girl began to cry—she was terrified that she was seeing one of those notoriously evil crimson-eyed murders. All of the fairytales were coming to life. Her father, rather embarrassed when he realized what had just happened, quickly picked up his daughter and scuttled away from the gathering crowd.

There had been a startled silence in the marketplace as townspeople huddled together staring. Even though these people had all socially accepted him as best they could, no one moved to see if the young man was all right. They simple gawked as if expecting the crimson-eyed man to jump to his feet and unleash an array of devastating spells. Most appeared to be frozen in fear.

Instead of ‘unleashing havoc’ as expected, Vincent had struggled to his feet, picked up his bag and left without a word. It was not in his nature to seek out conflict… and in truth, Vincent was trying not to process what had just happened…

Now, however, as he stared at his reflection and his crimson eyes stared back hauntingly, he knew. He struggled silently for a moment, reaching up to push up his glasses and touch the cut on the bridge of his nose from his glasses. All because of these red eyes… All of this misunderstanding.

Instead of bringing all of his pain inward—a mistake his father had done, Vincent sought out the one person that could always make him feel better; his Papa, Kaelin.

He found the blond relaxing quietly out in the garden on one of the stone benches, hands folded neatly in his lap with his head resting back and his eyes closed, enjoying the sun. He was a pretty thing and could have easily passed as a woman with his long blond locks and his usual violet robes that seemed to only emphasis his femininity. Kaelin was often mistaken for a woman, but he always laughed off the gender-confusion. He honestly didn’t mind.

Vincent briefly wondered why he didn’t laugh off his encounters with racism, but decided it was much different. He cleared his throat gently and Kaelin jerked up, blinking several times to try and adjust his lavender orbs to the bright sun. The Elf squinted for a moment and then sat up quickly, alarmed. “Vincent, what happened?”

Vincent smiled and took a seat beside his father before the other could jump up and begin to worriedly poke and prod at him for other unseen injuries. Kaelin did, however, turn to him and gently took the demons face and examined his sons swollen eye and cheek.

“…What happened, Vincent?” Kaelin asked softly, finally releasing the others face. He reached out to take his sons hands. The little demon was trembling slightly and Kaelin hadn’t noticed until he had touched him.

Quietly, objectively, Vincent explained what had happened. He stared silently off in the distance, as if he were reciting some boring historical fact, like he had no emotional attachment to the event. This scared Kaelin. Vincent may not be emotional, but he wasn’t known to hide his feelings either.

“… I want you to know, Vincent, that what happened was just an unfortunate misunderstanding…”

Vincent nodded slowly and smiled at his father, “I know, Papa… I just… I wonder how Father was able to even function… He grew up before the war, before the demons and elves had tried to mend their relations… Back when fear was at its worse and demons were simply killed because they were there… without any prompting…”

Kaelin nodded quietly. As a pure Elf himself, Kaelin hadn’t been under the harsh scrutiny of his peers growing up. He had never been kicked out of a store, chased out of a town, beaten or verbally assaulted. He had never had to grow up under such negativity like his husband had… But the day they had married Kaelin had been treated differently.

It had been strange going from being welcomed with open arms as a holy monk and follower of the goddesses, to being barred out of churches and sanctuaries with fearful groveling and feeble excuses to ward him away. It had hurt, and Kaelin had not been able to quite grasp that sudden isolation for many years until he had realized that nearly every demon lived like that day by day. Kaelin had spent years after that repairing his relationships with the townspeople and churches. It had taken years, many, many years to finally become accepted nearly as lovingly as before. But there would always be those whispers, always. Those whispers always hurt.

Kaelin continued to stare quietly down at his son. He knew that he would never be able to fully understand what his son and husband encountered in their daily lives, but he would always be there to listen.

Kaelin reached out to pull his son into a hug and sighing quietly Vincent accepted it and rested his head against the others shoulder, staring silently down at his folded hands.

“One day, Papa, we’ll all get along. My children will be able to walk the streets like everyone else without fear of ridicule or hostility. Even if we have to make everyone in the world understand, one by one… We’ll do it.”

Kaelin smiled gently and nodded, running his fingers through his son’s short black locks.

Unfortunately, even though Kaelin didn’t want to admit it himself he knew that there would always be whispers.

And those whispers always hurt.


[Ramirez]

<sub>A/N: Story Bond 25/81 of a project I'm working on.

I honestly can't believe how difficult this was to write. I erased over a page of it and started over, and then erased even more when I was finished and changed and added here and there. It was really odd having to work so hard to make this run semi-smoothly. I don't think I accomplished it.. but man, that was really hard. Took me like 6 days to think of what to write.

Vincent is too sweet for his own good, but even he had to learn how to deal with his crimson-eyes. I think he does pretty well with it.. the alternate would have been like his father who eventually snapped and killed hundreds of elves. e_e;

Kaelin was a very well renowned doctor and monk before he married Yami, and when he did his renown sort of plummeted and whispers that he was actually evil/worshiping the evils of the world came about and it took a lot for him to clear that up. Eventually he started to get accepted again, but he still runs into a few problems here and there.</sub>




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