hi sona! i'm sending this as an ask so you can ignore it as long as you want. i have been noodling on this and wonder if you have thoughts too: emily and strauss. in "book of the dead" you wrote that convo between derek and emily about strauss' drinking and derek's issues with hotch when they were stuck in traffic with that very funny christmas truck. in hit/run we see erin strauss thank derek for calling her out on her drinking. do you think strauss ever tried to make amends to emily? i like to think so, and i like to think about how poorly that conversation might have gone, given what strauss did to emily and perhaps colored by emily's experiences with matthew. i went back and looked at some of strauss's episodes, and it appears that any lingering animosity between them was gone by season 7, i guess put to rest(?) by emily's death. so maybe an amends conversation wouldn't have gone as poorly as it would have in say season 5. follow up, do you think CME section chief emily ever thinks about strauss? because i sure found strauss haunting me as i watched.

first off: thank you so much for sending this as an ask because i did have to watch a couple of cm eps about it! and many other things in the interim. so my initial instinct re amends— in the style of strauss reaching out to derek— was not really, kind of, maybe and i don’t think that’s changed, but i do have a lot to say now. unfortunately. nb and disclaimer i didn’t watch back every strauss ep so whatever’s dumb here is 50/50 just me being dumb / i don’t remember what happened. tldr i don’t think strauss would have seen herself as having anything to apologize for or remedy without prompting from prentiss, and i don’t see prentiss in a position to do that without either a) strauss surviving until the later seasons or b) reimagining how much was going on behind the scenes of prentiss exit s7.

so first (yuck fic talk sorry) — i’d meant to write something longer about strauss in “book of the dead”. when derek’s trying to decide how far he thinks hotch was willing to see strauss fall, i’d been meaning to write prentiss more overtly wondering how far she’d have been willing to see it go, examining the conditions of her own resentment and compassion, etc. something more about reid, too, whose struggles with addiction i think would have weighed on her mind more in that context, and more, too, after matthew’s death. [more on this below. if i remember.] i’d thought about whether she’d then tell him about strauss’ role in hiring her; it strikes me as the primal scene for emily leaving, even though it’s never brought up in that context, because it’s unimaginable to me that a profound sense of you weren’t supposed to be here hasn’t dogged her ever since. a lot of the s6-7 prentiss arc works because she is fundamentally a different kind of person than the rest of the team, and she’s aware of that. the conditions of her hire, i imagine, might be part of how she names that difference for herself. at the same time, though, i can see her really wanting to say something about it— wanting it as a clean breaking point, easier than everything in the wake of the doyle case— and deciding not to, knowing she’d regret it and hate what she’d expose herself to by opening that door. so i just left it. point here isn’t just something i didn’t bother to write, it’s that i really do think of early season strauss as pretty critical to prentiss as a character, even if that’s kind of reading against the grain of the show. the show, after all, thinks of prentiss as having earned her place on the team through the events of 3x02, which i assume is why we don’t really see her processing this moment. 

as for making amends. i say not really because i think not overtly— in part because i do not think strauss would consider her actions worth amending. i think strauss would largely see herself as having operated in good faith albeit without the right big-picture mentality, but also as having handed prentiss a really good job which she wouldn’t have gotten anyway. her whole speech to prentiss is basically like, i am your benefactor who got you what you wanted, i see this unit as a huge problem, i want you to help me fix it. sneaky, cloak and dagger shit, sure, but a kind of office politicking i don’t know that strauss would have totally reneged on by later seasons, and likely not something she’d see as anything other than typical quid-pro-quo. it leads to some initial awkwardness and a sense of a lingering liability (prentiss could make things more difficult between hotch and strauss, which could presumably go up the chain of command and get strauss in trouble?), but i don’t know if this would have translated to guilt for strauss. (i was sort of wavering on how much i’m overreading this, because i know i read against the show’s grain a lot.) 

one way strauss was thinking of her relationship with prentiss was as one of potential protégée: she was, after all, pretty honest about her intentions, and pretty clear that, while she was holding the job as a cudgel over prentiss’ head, she effectively expected prentiss to work for her. you’d choose this person carefully; i don’t think strauss saw herself delivering the kind of verdict on prentiss’ merit and place on the team that i think prentiss received. i do kind of wonder if she saw a younger agent who had a bit of a reputation for ambition and hotheadedness and saw someone she could shape— probably a career she could build too (lots of upward job mobility if hotch goes, after all). i think ‘saw her younger self’ would be pushing it too far, but i think there are some parallels between the recklessness and ambition that strauss throws at prentiss and the recklessness and ambition we see from strauss in her villain arc. in some ways, i can see strauss thinking of prentiss as an unfortunate lost cause, impressed and exasperated in equal measure by her display of hard-headed devotion to the bau. 

what i can see, though, is strauss catching animus off prentiss and either going after her about it or really examining the situation. i haven’t rewatched every strauss episode, so i don’t remember how much the strauss redemption arc they go for coincides with the period of time in which that would be possible or reasonable— after all, i imagine strauss knew very well how unpopular she was among the bau team. i don’t think something like the extremely bad vibes she caught off prentiss in 5x09 would have done it, precisely because it arises from that more generalized hostility— and, as i said above, i think strauss probably had an impression of prentiss as, by nature, obstinately loyal to the team and hostile to her authority in the wake of 3x02. 

so that’s what i think about strauss’ character. i did really like her as a villain, and in general i love a careerist woman character who is just so driven by her own ambition that she doesn’t really know how to do anything other than aim upwards. my fondness for that kind of character does shape the above thoughts, too, since i see her as a kind of character who is pretty limited in her capacity for guilt, or her capacity to act on guilt. shame, sure, and i think that underlies her conversation with derek. like, bottom line TLDR etc— i think strauss would have regrets about prentiss but would put the onus on prentiss falling in line with the unruly BAU and its practices. there’s an element of the moral (administratively so) crusader to strauss in her anti-hotch agenda, one which i think would largely lead to her seeing prentiss as a bit of a letdown whose resentments were immature and poorly conceived.

i also said not really— i do think if we imagine more going on behind the scenes of prentiss’ departure, there’s space for there to have been some kind of confrontation during s7, as you say. like blah blah the show’s short memory and inconsistent commitment to totally smoothing out issues jars oddly with the way that we see prentiss often really holding onto resentments (e.g. 4x17). i think in some ways, the only person prentiss would have brought up the ‘i wasn’t supposed to be assigned to this unit’ thing to would have been strauss, because she’d see it as established knowledge between them— it wouldn’t require the same measure of vulnerability or confession. (or, like, impossibly, when prentiss becomes unit chief. if she hadn’t died and had remained in the fbi after the uhhh… replicator? storyline, then 100 percent i can see prentiss bringing it up in later seasons.)

as for prentiss— like i said, i think she would have a MASSIVE chip in her shoulder about all this. but one thing i find interesting is whether or not that would translate to hating strauss. i declined to say that strauss would see prentiss as a younger version of herself, but i do think one thought that was VERY loud in prentiss’ head as she stared up into the far distance at the end of season 2 was the realization that not letting her mother get her a job didn’t disentangle her from getting politicked upwards. this is because of my family, even. here, more overthinking: i think the extent to which strauss is not just one person who fucked with her but also emblematic of everything she didn’t want for herself is less than the extent to which that is true of her mother, and in a way that i think she would have sat down and reckoned with. it’s not a resentment and anger she can necessarily get rid of (cf. 5x09), but it’s not one she can meaningfully act on. 

in the same way that i think prentiss is a letdown for strauss, strauss strikes me as a letdown for prentiss. i was thinking about how in limelight prentiss jumps to agent morris’ defense in this moment of the show doing lil babby feminist politics— if she were a man you’d say she had balls, or something like that. there’s the obvious angle of responding to what she sees as chauvinism from her peers, but i think it also bespeaks a level of admiration for ambitious women. you know, growing up around ambassador prentiss, i’m sure she had her fair share of women in power that she admired even as she came to resent the kind of power-politicking that came with said positions. the show leans into a particular kind of incompetence (i.e., bad in the field) for strauss as it progresses— i kind of imagine prentiss watching, cataloguing, and feeling more angry and let down the more she saw. i guess (circling back to yuck fic talk) that’s another reason i wanted to write prentiss thinking about strauss— i see her as unable to figure out how she feels about the possibility of the woman’s professional downfall. i think she might think, at some point, there’s no use really holding a grudge (which she nevertheless holds) after strauss no longer is a threat to the team— like i think she is aware that her life’s path has been eased (/her agency over her life has been limited) in equally significant ways which were simply not made so apparent to her, and the grudge against strauss is really just a grudge against the condition of her existence. i think of when she tells reid, worried about failing to live up to his potential, that she thought she’d be a bored socialite at this point: i got the sense that prentiss thinks, despite it all, that this is probably one of the better ways her life could have gone. 

blah blah my sense of how prentiss works and ticks is very much hinged on me being like She’s Just Like Clarice Starling and the self-examining steely* control that starling has is very much central to how i think prentiss thinks as well. (*steely isn’t impermeable. but i think prentiss has learned to compartmentalize well partially by just having to when she was growing up and developing individuality which was antagonistic to her environment, and partially by sheer force of will. i feel like i am always beating this drum in fic lol.) so other TLDR bottom line— i don’t think she would have let herself bring it up except under extreme duress.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT THE LAST PART. yeah for sure i think she thinks about her. i do kind of imagine her desire to not be like her mother has a far more complex echo in strauss, who is presumably the imprint for prentiss’ sense of what misuse of power looks like in behavioral science. i assume she thought a great deal about strauss, who thought what she was doing was right, and that the agents caught up in her desire to roust hotch should either bend or break. i’m cutting this off here. this is long. i just think the show should actually try to write prentiss as good at her job so i can more fully commit to like, oh yeah i also think that the way she wasn’t (imo) ever fully able to respect or not respect strauss really dogs her and her capacity to evaluate her actions as leader. 

hi again! previous anon here, just remembered a question. there's something that's been nagging at me about the show's lan parents storyline — LXC tells WWX that story about his parents and it seems like it's meant as a parallel for LWJ and WWX. But the Lan parents thing sounded like a super toxic/unhealthy relationship? like their mom was literally being kept against her will... maybe i'm just missing the nuance for the parallel? would love to hear your thoughts on this!

(ask con’t, sorry it’s long) i’ve just gotten out of a bad relationship not too long ago and gets really leery of cdramas portraying control as love (ie one love interest preventing the other from leaving, or clear power imbalances as with period dramas). i really don’t think that’s what’s happening here but got kind of uncomfortable too at the “i want to bring someone back to gusu/hide them away” line LWJ had earlier. might you have an alternate interpretation? i’m almost sure i’m misreading!

So a couple things first: thank you so much for asking me this question because my thoughts about the untamed/mdzs have been so much and turbulent that having a specific thing to focus on is really helpful, AND it’s also really flattering that you think I??? would have worthwhile thoughts???? about this really complicated thing.

Second: I want to make sure to say that no matter how strongly I feel about my interpretation, no matter how long I spend composing this response, you are not obligated to change how you feel. If that line still bothers you, it still bothers you. Our experiences are different! And it’s okay! That being said, haha, buckle up I guess, because WOW do I have a lot of things to say.

Spoilers up through episode 43, obviously, with allusions to the novel. I will try to keep any details about things that happen post-43 vague.

Let’s begin with this moment:

“Was he right to do this?” || “I don’t know.”

[id: image 1 is a screenshot of lan xichen asking “was he right to do this” and image 2 is a screenshot of wei wuxian responding “i don’t know” from episode 43 of the untamed /end id]

I think we need to think about how to answer this question before we can answer your question: how can we interpret the relationship between lan wangji and lan xichen’s parents? Was it moral? Was it okay? Was it right? This is clearly a question that lan xichen has been wrestling with his whole life. And from this scene, I think that he’s made his peace with the fact that it’s always going to be a question for him, not because the inherent morality is unclear, but because of the emotional subjectivity he’s always going to hold for it. He doesn’t expect wei wuxian to have an answer because he doesn’t have an answer himself.

Something that I remember from the novel that doesn’t make it into this scene, though, is what wei wuxian says after lan xichen asks, “can you understand why my father acted this way?” and he nods, is the explanation he gives: he hated the person who had murdered his mentor, but he also loved her so much he couldn’t bear to see her destroyed. Unable to live with himself, he married her, swore to protect her, and then imprisoned her for the rest of her life. Tormented by his contradictions, he then locked himself away as well. lan xichen agrees.

lan wangji and lan xichen were raised without their parents—largely, they were raised by their upright uncle, who, due to his brother’s behavior, took up the responsibilities of sect leader and parent at the same time. (It’s really no wonder that lan qiren has such a vicious dislike for wei wuxian: he loves lan wangji so much, and he’s so afraid to watch the child he raised repeat history. Beyond that, I think it’s pretty safe to say that lan qiren probably harbors not insignificant resentment towards his brother for the harm he did to both his children and to lan qiren himself.) Lan qiren is not married and as far as we know, never has any romantic entanglements after he begins raising the lan brothers. So where does that leave lan wangji and lan xichen in terms of models for romance? All they have is the fraught relationship between their parents. 

lan wangji is not good with words. He expresses himself primarily through action, which we see time and time again. When lan wangji says to lan xichen, “there’s someone I want to take back to the cloud recesses. take them back and hide them away,” I think he’s trying to explain (with words) his feelings for wei wuxian in the only way he knows how: by making a reference to the only romantic relationship to which he and lan xichen were firsthand witnesses. lan xichen canonically understands wangji better than pretty much everyone: he sees straight through him at Biling lake when he invites wei wuxian and jiang cheng along to hunt the water spirits because he knows lan wangji wants wei wuxian to come. He asks if he wants loquats even when wangji refuses them. So when lan wangji says that, lan xichen first repeats the statement carefully to make sure he understands what’s at stake, and then he says something very crucial: “you only fear that he isn’t willing”.

I think this says a lot— specifically, that both lan xichen and lan wangji understand firsthand the pain their father caused and what exactly was wrong about it. I think what lan wangji is saying between the lines is, “I’m in love with someone. I want to take them home with me. I want to hide them away from the world to protect them. I fear this makes me like our father, whose love led him to do such terrible things to our mother, and by extension, to us and our uncle. I can’t repeat his mistakes.” And lan xichen, understanding all of that, gets to the heart of lan wangji’s inner conflict: wei wuxian is not willing, and lan wangji refuses to follow in his father’s footsteps, no matter how tormented he feels about the person he loves, no matter how much he wants to.

Every time lan wangji tries and fails to get wei wuxian to return with him to gusu, it’s with the intention of trying to help him, trying to protect him from the other sects, trying to pull him back before he does something unforgivable, much like his father’s motivations for bringing his mother back to gusu (“he swore that this was his beloved wife and that anyone who wished to hurt her [for her crimes] would have to go through him”), but unlike his father, lan wangji never forces wei wuxian to do anything. He never keeps him locked up, never forcibly kidnaps him. Not only that, but lan wangji is also willing to fight wei wuxian when he believes that wei wuxian is doing something inadmissible: heis the only one to stand against his initial forays into demonic cultivation, and physically confronts him on the roof at the nightless city. Would he have actually followed through on killing him, had things gone differently? Maybe, maybe not, but at the very least, it shows that he, unlike his father, was willing to try to destroy the person he loved when he crossed the line.

Anon, you’re right that there’s a parallel between the lan parents and wangxian, but I think the key is how they parallel each other. Lan wangji doesn’t repeat his father’s mistakes. When he finally does bring wei wuxian back to gusu and hide him away to protect him, wei wuxian is not there against his will, and, I think also importantly, lan wangji is with him. It’s no accident that lan wangji’s residence is the jingshi, the place his mother was imprisoned for his whole life, and it’s no accident that he brings wei wuxian there. But lan wangji doesn’t lock him there and abandon him like his father did with his mother: he’s there with him the whole time. Lan wangji, when all is said and done, is finally ready to stand by wei wuxian in spite of everything he did, unlike his father, who couldn’t do so with his wife: couldn’t destroy her, couldn’t stand with her. lan wangji makes his choice. “I regretted that I couldn’t stand with you at the nightless city.” The parallel is one that emphasizes contrast in spite of similarity.

All this ties vaguely into bigger themes present within the story, particularly the tensions between freedom/restriction and parents/children. These are like, two whole other essays haha, so I won’t get too deep into the weeds (unless you or anyone else wants to ask me!!! bc, anon, believe me, I would BE WILLING!!!) but:

1. lan wangji and wei wuxian are fundamentally very similar people, even if their personalities are not. They have incredibly strong moral compasses and want nothing more than to be righteous and to live with clear consciences about their choices. The difference is in how they go about that. wei wuxian chafes under rules, breaks them when he finds them unjust or unimportant, and thinks that he doesn’t deserve to be punished. When lan wangji finds that his moral compass conflicts with the rules he chooses to live by, he prioritizes his own sense of justice, much like wei wuxian, but he also accepts the punishments that are given to him without complaint. wei wuxian cherishes freedom over all while lan wangji lives under strict regulation, but the point is that they both take it too far. wei wuxian is righteous to the point of arrogance, flaunts his peers’ judgments and warnings to his eventual downfall. lan wangji, after doing what he thinks is right, allows himself to be punished without protest so severely he’s bedridden and imprisoned for three years. I would say neither of these approaches is… ideal, and I think that’s part of why wangxian feels so profound. They temper each other’s worst weaknesses. (rereading this, i’m not sure i’m 100% behind everything I just said lol, but again, an essay for another time)

2. Like lan wangji is paralleled with his father, wei wuxian is paralleled with his mother, zangse-sanren: free-spirited, mischievous, and ultimately meeting a tragic end for the choices she made out of that desire for freedom. He too is able to eventually escape his mother’s fate, just as lan wangji escapes his father’s. The parallels between parent and child are strong for almost all the mains, though not all of them manage to free themselves and achieve some measure of happiness, and this in itself relates to the even bigger questions of what matters more: your heritage, or your actions? Your heritage, or your upbringing? What can you do to avoid making the same mistakes as your predecessors?

I’ve already talked about this wrt wei wuxian and lan wangji, but the same goes for characters like jiang cheng, jin zixuan, wen qing, wen ning, mianmian, jin guangyao, su she, nie huaisang, jin ling, lan sizhui, ouyang zizhen, xiao xingchen, song lan, xue yang etc. like the list is endless. Part of why mdzs/the untamed is so heartwrenching is watching history repeat itself while the protagonists, who are also acutely aware, are nearly powerless to stop it. The juniors end up being the breaking from all that: willing to defy their parents, make their own decisions about right and wrong, recognize that a person’s actions should speak louder than the rumors that run on their account.

tl;dr: the lan parents’ relationship is toxic and hurtful to everyone around them. wangxian absolutely parallels it, but in a way that highlights how they differ from their predecessors, tying into larger thematic issues of the story.

eek that was almost 2k words yikes!! I hope my enthusiastic rambling helped you see that “take them back, hide them away” line in a different light haha, but I want to say again: you’re not obligated to take my interpretation as fact, and you also don’t have to think everything about wangxian is perfect to still like it. We all consume and like imperfect stories! I totally get your feelings on weird power dynamics/inequalities in relationships because… it’s abusive? it’s terrible? It hurts to see?? esp given what you said about your own experience, like yeah, for sure!!! but for me? when lan wangji says, “I want to take someone back to the cloud recesses—take them back, hide them away”, it reads as a really powerful, self-aware expression of what it means for someone like him to fall in love.

EDIT 16 APR 2020: I find myself only agreeing with ~85% of this after many months of reflection. /o\ *hides face* leaving it as-is because it’s what I wrote at the time, but! you know. I have changed some of my views.

@the-twisted-otaku Maro this has been in my inbox for so long I'm so sorry. Forgive me because ily <3

----

“Xerx, what are you doing? ” Reim asks, deadpan and staring with great annoyance at Xerxes Break hovering over him with a bandage pulled taut between his hands. What Xerxes is even doing on the bed of his room, he isn't all too sure. Reim, if he remembers correctly, had returned to the Barma mansion after being ambushed by chains - not the Rainsworth Manor.

“You're injur-” Xerxes chokes on the word, shaking and coughing up blood onto his handkerchief, “I'm treating you. Let the doctor see you now,” he adds, making a beckoning motion in Reim’s direction, cheerful and acting as if he hadn't just coughed up half his life.

Reim stares at him with disbelief, out of the two of them, Xerx is most definitely the more injured one, “You're blind. The doctor isn't seeing anything.”

“That's rude, I can still see a little bit, you know,” Xerxes whines at him, petulant like a young child. He sits back on his knees, quietly groaning with pain and withdrawing the bandage when Reim protests too much.

“Don't lie to yourself, you can't even tell where I'm injured - plus if you could still see why do I have to do all your paperwork?!” Reim says, incredulous and exasperated, getting only a pout in response.

Reim rubs a hand wearily over his face, sighing audibly, and Xerxes takes advantage of his momentary inattention, pouncing on Reim with the bandages and quickly wrapping them around what he guesses is Reim’s head, he can't quite see. He ignores Reim’s protests and slaps away his hands when he tries to claw at the bandages until he ties them securely in place and sits back down, grinning and pleased with himself.

“Mmf ismfnt helping,” Reim says, voice and words garbled by the bandages over his mouth, and entire face, really - funny how Xerx had managed to bandage everywhere but the cut on his head. He reaches behind his head and unties the admittedly sloppy knot, letting them fall soundlessly off his face and into his lap. He hopes that Xerx won't notice and try again. Just in case, he takes it and wraps it around the part of his head where he actually hit it and covers the small cut there.

Fixing him with a stare that Xerxes cannot see, Reim watches him critically, he might be good at hiding it, but then, Reim is good at seeing when his best friend is in pain too. “Xerx, you can stop pretending now. Let me see.” Reim says quietly, somber.

Childishly, Xerxes shakes his head, although Reim just ignores him and moves closer. If Xerx won't undo the buttons to show him where he's hurt, he will. He gets the first button undone before his hands are slapped away and, with a long-suffering sigh, Xerxes starts undoing them himself. The bandage wrapped around his torso is more red than white, covered in dried blood, hastily and messily applied and probably in need of a change. Careful to not jostle Xerx, Reim slowly peels away the bandage and exposes the wound to fresh air.

He cleans it up with a soft cloth, washing away all the dried blood as Xerxes winces. It looks like it could do with some stitches to help it heal faster, though he doesn't have any. “Wait there, Xerx, I'll only be a minute.”

Reim sets aside the blood-stained cloth and quietly leaves the room, heading towards the room where he knows Barma keeps his rubbing alcohol, fetching a bottle and a new cloth. By the time he's stepped back into his bedroom, Xerxes is seemingly asleep on the bed, it doesn't worry Reim that Xerx is no longer awake, he's snoring louder than a lion. Tipping some of the alcohol onto the clean cloth, Reim disinfects the slash on Xerx’s abdomen.

Xerxes stirs, cracking an eye open, “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Reim says, pulling away the cloth and applying the fresh bandages.

When Reim is done, Xerxes pushes himself to sit upright again on the bed, once again doing up his shirt.

“You've got to stop over-using your chain Xerx, it made that slash so much worse than it otherwise would have been.” Reim chastises, pausing for a minute in thought for how to say it, “You'll be fine - this time. But how many times are you going to take everything on by yourself before you realise you can't go about trying to throw your life away?! Are you going to push yourself to breaking point every time there's danger? I might not like fighting but I still want to protect you. Going about and constantly getting yourself hurt, you'll upset Sharon-sama! Even more so than me!”

Xerxes puts his hands up in surrender, waiting for Reim to finish his rant. He's listening and kind of tired of getting told off for trying to take on too much, not that one rant is going to fundamentally change him or how he chooses to protect others, but he supposes it's better to wait it out.

Reim trails off, out of breath from his long rant and watching Xerxes for any kind of reaction, even if it's obvious that he listened nothing he just said, Reim sighs wearily, flopping onto the bed next to Xerx and ignoring the muttered, ingenuine apology that comes from him. He could do with going to sleep, if it weren't for someone incessantly poking his side to keep him awake.

“Are you okay, Reim-san?” Xerxes asks, not ceasing his poking in the slightest.

Reim turns himself to face Xerx, not bothering to hide his annoyance, “Fine,” Reim responds, “I'd be much better if you'd stop poking me.”

Xerxes’ hand stills guiltily, “Well, I'm bored - and hungry - what can you expect?” Xerxes gestures around him to illustrate his point, sleeves covering his hands either side of him up in the air as if it was perfectly obvious that he'd decide to never let Reim have a moment of peace in his life. In retrospect, it kind of was.

Yawning, Reim covers his mouth with his hand, tired and watching as Xerxes unconsciously copies, “Would you let me get some rest if I brought you some sweets and something to do? Would that make you behave like an adult?”

Xerxes doesn't miss a beat, “One hundred percent!” Xerxes answers, dragging out the vowels.

Reim doesn't deign him with a response, pushing himself up and off the bed and leaving to raid the kitchen ofr whatever sweets that might be there - though they're not Gilbert's - and looking for something to occupy Xerxes. It's a rather difficult task, given that Xerxes is mostly blind and can no longer read; Reim can't satisfy him with a book. At least, Reim thinks upon spotting it, a chess set might be effective. Maybe he can convince one of Barma’s other staff members to play with Xerx whilst he finally obtains some much needed rest.

He returns to his bedroom with a fork, a full cake on a plate held carefully in both hands, the chess set in its box tucked tightly under his arm and no house of Barma staff member in tow. Reim hands the cake to Xerx - who gleefully and instantly begins digging in - and sets the chess set on the bed in front of Xerxes, climbing up and sitting cross-legged so that the chess set is between them.

“One game,” Reim states, pointing at the board and waiting for Xerx to fix his bleary gaze on it, “When I win, you shut up and let me sleep for a bit.”

Xerxes grins at him, “You really think you'll beat me at chess? I'm still pretty good whether I can see properly or not.”

Xerxes plays well, though it's one of the lucky matches where Reim wins and he finally gets to put his head down and close his eyes. He doesn't even bother to kick Xerxes out of the bed.