YOU'VE BEEN FAKING IT ALL THIS TIME // open, Weekly Prompt 5/21

[CAESAR CIPHER.]

SO NOTORIOUS !

CAESAR CIPHER. MALE. THE TYPHOON. CREW MATE.

Did Caesar have any regrets killing people? Of course he did. He may look like an emotionless monster, but he did have his regrets. He choose not to show them, in fear of being seen as weak. He choose to lie to himself, to tell himself that everything was fine. But deep down inside? He knew what he was doing was wrong. It was unmoral, nonredeemable, and he wanted, oh how he wanted to stop. But his drive for power, his drive for fame always beat these feelings of regret. "People will fear you if you don't show you things affect you." Caesar had always told himself mentally. "People will respect you. People will want you. They will fear you. You are proud of destroying Home; they were all weak shits anyway!"

But sometimes, at night, these memories haunted him. More specifically, of the day he killed his parents. They are the people he regretted killing the most. His parents loved him dearly, they didn't deserve the fate they did. But they never heeded your warnings. Caesar thought to himself, flattening his ears. They shrugged off his warnings, saying he was just a kid and that everything will be fine, everything will return to normal. But he knew things weren't. He knew things weren't going to go back to the way they were before they got exiled. But none of his family believed him. Not Atbash. Not Vigenere. So his only course of action was to destroy the place; to restart new. It's the only way he knew to make things normal again. But his parents didn't believe him. They had what came to them!

They... didn't deserve their fate. They didn't deserve to be burned alive. Caesar remembered the look of pain in their eyes - but not pain from the flames as they slowly traveled up their bodies. No, the look of pain was a look of disappointment. They were hurt that Caesar had done such a thing. They were hurt that Caesar actually did what he planned on doing. There was no anger. No look of hate. No look of terror. His mother's bright blue eyes shone with the emotion of hurt, tears in her eyes. The look she gave him pierced his soul. Caesar actually felt regret. He didn't want them to be suffering as they did, he didn't want them to be so hurt by his actions. I'm sorry! The demon cried mentally, digging his claws into his bed. You didn't deserve what I did to you. Caesar couldn't imagine the thoughts they had going through them - he didn't want to. Their looks gave them exactly what they were thinking: they were upset. They were disappointed. He disappointed them. He disappointed the only people in his life that actually cared about his well-being.

Caesar didn't think of saving his parents, either. He didn't want to get stuck as his Home rotted from the inside out, and only saved his siblings because they happened to be there with him as their den went into flames. But he knew they would have wanted him to save them before the Dimension collapsed. Both of them had been wounded, Atbash more so than Vigenere, and they were highly upset that he had saved them. Vigenere claimed it would've been better to die than to live with what they just went through.

Caesar snapped out of his thoughts as he felt blood fall onto his paw. It took him a couple of minutes to realize what was going on, but he finally noticed that his nose had started dripping. The black substance he knew as blood was coming out of his nose, dripping onto the floor and onto his paw. It wasn't a steady flow, luckily, but he had distracted himself enough to the point that the blood stained his fur a bit. He used his other paw (the one that didn't have blood on it) to wipe the blood off as much as he could, ears flicking with irritation. Stop. He mentally growled to himself. They deserved that. They didn't listen to you, remember? They believed everything would return to normal. They think 'normal' is living without you.

#psychosocial.