[Can’t Opt Out]

Baylor stared down Hetexia—or, he tried to. The woman was terrifying, and while neither he nor his brothers could actually feel fear—not unless one of them or Emilia was in danger, anyways—Baylor could still appreciate that if he pushed the hy Gru too far, she might very well attack him. The woman probably wouldn’t kill him… probably.

“We just want to know what happened in the raid. We understand you and the northerners with you saw less of whatever was manipulating heroes’ minds; still, we would like to hear what you did see and hear,” Taelor said from behind him, always the voice of reason. Baylor didn’t want a voice of reason at the moment. He wanted to force answers out of Hetexia about how Emilia had been inside the raid. Unfortunately, Hetexia wasn’t talking and Taelor wasn’t letting him demand answers!

Fucking Hetexia and her loyalty to Emilia! It didn’t matter that Emilia had fucked off and left all of them to pick up the pieces of their lives after the war ended. It didn’t matter that Emilia probably hadn’t even asked Hetexia to not speak about their meeting inside the raid. Hetexia would go on being quiet and refusing to answer his questions, simply because Emilia hadn’t explicitly given her permission!

“You wish only to know about the manipulations of people’s minds?” Hetexia clarified, speaking to Taelor but continuing to stare down Baylor because she wasn’t an idiot. Hetexia was the hy Gru—a hy who had been so since she was barely walking with more than stumbling steps—and she knew that of the three of them, he was the most dangerous clone.

Most people, with their prejudices against Hyrat clones, looked at all of them with the same fear in their eyes. Those who knew a clone or two—who knew they weren’t all unfeeling, murderous monsters—tended to then trust that all clones were like that: a bit removed from normal human emotions, but still logical, reasonable human beings. Some of their childhood friends had realized along the way that of all the clones they knew, he was the only one they knew who would happily become a serial killer, if only the people he loved were to vanish into the aether. Most had never noticed—they had only ever seen him happy and cheerful, upset at times when no one would question where his murderous ire had risen from.

Baylor kept his darkness tucked inside, only letting it out in front of a select group of people because he knew he was broken, dangerous—the nightmare black knot that haunted the wildest dreams and stories of the continent. There were his brothers, Emilia, Loren, Malcolm—although Malcolm knowing had been more an accident than anything; a moment of breaking apart and having Malcolm pull him back at great cost to himself. Despite what they saw, each of them still cared for him—would still protect him should the day come when the faction of clones who would love to stamp out every difference and abnormality among their numbers came to strike him dead.

Every so often, however, someone who immediately saw him for what he was would come along. Most of them didn’t actually seem to care that much. Some kept their distance; some didn’t. Coral had always been oddly friendly with him, sweet little thing that she had been. She had seen the yearning darkness inside him and flinched, but never looked away. Probably, it was because he had never turned that pure rage and desire to snuff out lives—rip them apart, cut into them and draw out blood and guts as they screamed—directed at her or anyone she loved.

Well, there had been that one time with Halen, but Coral probably hadn’t known about that, and that had more been… a moment of imagining killing Halen, seconds of wishing doing so wouldn’t upset Emilia. There was a difference between imagining and actually wanting—that was part of why Loren could still love him, despite how often Baylor turned that murderous intent turned onto the man who had raised him. Baylor would never actually kill his once-guardian, but he had long made a habit of imagining it in the moments where the man was being too obstinate—too demanding that he do this or that; too insistent on denying him what he wanted. Baylor didn’t love Loren—he wasn’t even sure his brothers felt more than a vague affection for him. Emilia’s heart would break if something happened to Loren, and Baylor knew that for all her promises that she would never look at him differently should he ever slip and strike a knife over a throat, if he was the one to have killed Loren, he didn’t think she would ever be able to truly forgive him.

As much as Baylor was currently fuming at her—had been since the moment he had shown up at Olivier’s hospital room with a change of clothes and food only to find her gone, Antoine staring into space and muttering that she’d left, and he didn’t expect to see her anytime soon—he didn’t want the woman he loved hating him. He wanted to yell at her—tear into her skin with his nails and teeth; yank her by her hair and force his cock down her throat until she was gagging and crying, but not forcing him off because she trusted him.

Used to trust him, anyways. Baylor had no idea what to do with the knowledge that she hadn’t trusted him—them—to help her through whatever had driven her out of virtually all their lives. Then again, had they ever given her much of a reason to trust that they wouldn’t leave her to figure it out by herself? Sure, after Alliance Ridge they had stuck close to her, but before that?

No, before that, they had left her alone so many times. The three of them had gone to work some mission for The Black Knot, leaving her alone for years to enjoy her gap decade despite the tears that had soaked into their skin for weeks beforehand as she silently begged them not to go with hugs and kisses and lingering looks as her eyes shone with tears and words that would never spill from her ever-sacrificing mouth. Emilia would never outright ask them to stay, and despite how clear it had always been that she wanted them to stay, they’d gone anyways. Of course, they’d come back. Of course, they’d left again.

What kind of fucking shits were they? To give the woman they loved bits and pieces of themselves, then vanish. There had been so many moments where they could have stayed—could have refused to live the lives that had been set out for them—and just been with her. They hadn’t, so why the fuck would Emilia have trusted that if, in those days after the war ended, she had told them something was wrong and she needed help, that they would actually stay for once?

Baylor liked to think they would have, but a decade removed from the person he had once been—from someone who had known for decades that Emilia would always be there waiting for them to return to her, giant smile spread over her face even as fear and hurt and loneliness filled her eyes—he didn’t know for sure. Maybe they would have stayed—said fuck you to The Black Knot. Maybe they would have left the moment a job came along because they were needed—and there had been so many jobs where they were needed in those first few years of peace.

There had been the veterans, struggling with PTSD and causing issues. The echo attacks. The criminals rising from the ashes of the war. The internal and external politics and Hail—always fucking Hail. There had also been so many dead clones, and it would still be a few years before the youngest of the clones born during the war came of age and could take those long empty positions. Even now, with the relative peace of the world, Baylor knew there weren’t enough clones. There wouldn’t be for years, those children filling vacant spots wouldn’t have enough experience to do it well and—

And everything sucked because Emilia was who she was.

Someone else would be selfish—would ask that they shirk their duties and quit; leave The Black Knot to figure it out without them. They were just three people, after all. What little difference they made in the organization was nothing compared to how much joy they would all gain from being with Emilia—assuming she still wanted them. Baylor hoped to all the stars above that she still loved and wanted them. His brothers might keep him from snapping and becoming a serial killer, but he knew there was only so much they could do because their morals were just as dampened as his; if Emilia didn’t love any of them anymore, their morals would stutter. He would kill, and maybe his brothers would care—would put him down—maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d just start a black ops group somewhere—become murderers for hire, as Emilia had once joked.

“Please don’t snap, but if you do, don’t worry! I’ll still love you, and I’ll make sure you’re safe… and that if you can’t pull back your desire to kill, that you have, uh… more reasonable people to kill? Like! We could become assassins! Killers for hire! We all our training, I think we’d do pretty good as a black ops group! But! Like I said! Please don’t snap! All that is doable, but also, it sounds like a massive pain~” a younger Emilia’s voice said—cheerful and whiny all at once—within the phantom of a memory erased during The Flaming.

Did Emilia still have the original memory? Theoretically, she should have all her memories from before The Flaming, unlike the majority of the Baalphorian population. Yet, Baylor suspected that some of her memories had been altered by a clone—his own as well. Just some little things that didn’t match up, or things that, if he thought about the details enough, would rise from his mind, only to float back under the vague details of a thought—a habit of misremembering without effort that he knew was likely the result of another clone messing with his memory. If he dug hard enough—although it caused the sort of headache that would leave him unpleasant to be around for hours as he bit out in pain at everyone who dared even look his way—he could even find who had done it, that information fading away as soon as he stopped holding back the messy, perfect memories that had been created for him. As he’d never had the urge to go and kill whoever had done it, even without actively remembering who had done it, Baylor assumed he trusted them. Maybe it was one of his brothers. Fuck, it could even have been Emilia herself, although he doubted she had enough skill to alter his memories with so much beauty. She could! Emilia could do anything with enough practice! Baylor just didn’t think she had enough experience fucking with other people’s memories to do something so intricate.

That was all beside the point. The point was Emilia might have the precise memory he wanted, and while Taelor had told him and Valor to not message Emilia just yet, neither were here now, Baylor having abandoned the rather boring meeting with Hetexia to wander the northern town she apparently lived in. Hetexia death glaring him because she was one of those people who had always been able to tell he was a vicious hunter inside, and she was a hunter herself, knowing to never look away from the predator in her midst, had also gotten old. At least her glare had softened a little as he worked through his complicated anger at Emilia and himself and the entire organization he and his brothers worked for. At the very least, most of the people who had quickly realized he was a natural-born killer only tended to treat him that way when they could tell he was in a mood. Hetexia was simply being responsible, not leaving an opening for a monster to strike her or the people she was sworn to protect: once the Gru, then their unit, now the people of this strange town.

Honestly, the entire place gave Baylor the creeps. While he had known Nur’tha had needed to set up a few temporarily permanent towns in order to deal with all their injured and orphaned, actually seeing it…

It was wrong, he thought—off in a way that he couldn’t quite describe, his mind summoning up the stories he had managed to pull out of Nyren and other pyr over the years. Northerners were meant to shift over the land, not sit and wait for calamity to fall down upon them. Sure, there were logistical reasons to set up homes while the tribes recovered, but this place…

This place looked far more permanent than it should, he thought, sending off a message to Emilia about the memory before either of his brothers could figure out what he was doing. They might not be able to read each other’s minds unless MindMeld was active, but still, as people who had spent almost seventy years living within each other’s shadows and hearts, they all had an uncanny ability to guess when another was up to no good. Baylor didn’t exactly think he was up to no good, but it was still contrary to what Taelor thought was best, and while Taelor wasn’t exactly their leader, he kinda was, and— Google seaʀᴄh nοvelfire.net

A message from Emilia popped up barely a second after Baylor’s message sent, cutting off his spiralling thoughts. It was an automated message, informing him that she was asleep, and his message would be forwarded to a friend. A little piece of Baylor burned at that—at the audacity of Emilia having new friends while also avoiding the people who loved her, who would gladly lay down and do anything she asked of them, even if she demanded they avoid looking for her and respect her desire to be left alone to heal.

Then, a series of messages popped up—responses from the person her messages were being forward to. They were short—simple, and yet…

Baylor had always loved learning myths and legends of the Free Colonies. There had been a time when he had consumed all he could, eyes lighting up when some Free Colonier he met during the war would bestow on him some story from their homeland. It wasn’t something he talked about with many people—not even his brothers, most of the time—but somewhere along the line, he had come to wonder if the will of the aether were real. There were just so many stories, and even cultures that had long since brushed aside such beliefs as superstition and wishful thinking often had such stories of the aether’s will, personality, and power in their pasts.

So, he believed, a bit. Now, looking over the message—a simple hello, an acknowledgment that they would ask Emilia if she had the memory when she woke, and a soft promise that she still loved them and that things would work out, if only the three of them gave her a little more time, if only they let her make the first move—Baylor wanted to believe even more.

If Emilia believed, why shouldn’t he? A little more time… If it was for Emilia—for her love and happiness—of course he could give her that.