Xenoposting: OTP Edition

[yvannairie]

This is a repost from Tumblr

quetzalpapalotl asked:

So like, IsuNami, right? Nimue was not under the influence of the flame clock, right? Her colony was aware of the reincarnation thing, right? After so long, their culture must have had figured out love, right? Nimue totally knew what love was and what she and Isurd had got going, but that Isurd would never be able to even understand, let alone reciprocate.

YEAH YEAH YEAH YOU GET IT. Like she really went “you seem like someone I’d like to serve to my death” and left to join a notably brutal war with him, and then fabricated means by which to stay by his side even after she had her opportunity to leave and go on her adventures by herself (with his help!!! Notably with him enabling and facilitating Nimue’s identity fraud every step of the way, committing to taking the knowledge that the Castle was lying to them to both of their graves)

like both of them really committed to lock arms and lie to everyone until the end of this lifetime, to be the only two people in the world who understand, and they were never even on the same page about what that meant!!! Isurd did not and could not understand the source of her loyalty and Nimue fucking knew it, and still chose to be loyal to him, because even if Isurd was incapable of loving her back, his loyalty and affection towards her are undeniable.

And the best part is that there’s no indication that Nimue’s colony knew Flame Clocks could be broken. She thought Isurd couldn’t and never could love her back, but chose to stay by his side for as long as she could, and then chose to save Taion, full well knowing neither Isurd nor Taion could understand her reasons. And then Noah breaks Lambda’s Flame Clock and now Isurd has to deal with the emotional fallout Nimue never intended, and quite possibly couldn’t even conceive. What he can’t comprehend, can’t hurt him further, yes?

So now Isurd just has to live with the knowledge that his one chance at being with Nimue, his once chance at being happy with her, is dead and gone and Nimue knew the entire time and chose to live with the knowledge. That he was missing some extremely critical context, and he can neither apologise or make her explain. Now, he has to just live with the knowledge that she loved him, and had made her peace with him never loving her back.

[Later addition:]

Another thing is that before Lambda’s flame clock broke, Isurd only had rational explanations to fall back on. On paper, Nimue sacrificing herself to save people who had more terms on the clock than her made sense… if you ignored that Nimue wasn’t like the rest of them and didn’t have to keep killing to stay alive. She could have, if she chose, to leave Lambda and go exploring Aionios the way she wanted – who was gonna stop her, right, all she’d have to do is stay away from any Keves colonies. But instead she’d opted to stay with Isurd, going to lengths to hide her presence and be indisposable to him. Isurd can rationalise his own loyalty towards Nimue, but he has no context in which Nimue choosing to stay makes any sense.

So he just has nothing to ground his grief on. He lacks a rational basis to understand her decision to forego her entire reason for leaving her colony in favour of saving Taion. He could have understood if she’d just left, because from his perspective that was always her goal, but she didn’t. There was no pressing reality that forced her to do either of these things, and it’s not until after she is gone that he has even the ability to understand her choices. He doesn’t have the words to explain why Nimue, who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place, being gone hurts so much.

And even after he understands, she’s still gone.