Title: Black Crowns and Stones
Fandom: Yuugiou
Characters: Ryuugi Otogi
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Ficlet, mention of OCs
Disclaimer: Yuugiou is copyright Kazuki Takahashi and all related affiliates.
Challenge: Written for demoerin at Livejournal. Prompt: Otogi, mother, black crown.

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His mother never yelled. That was his father’s job, the ranting, the obsession, the hatred and general unpleasantness that comes with having your face twisted and deformed. His mother’s job was far quieter; she sat and stared at her husband with eyes of stone, dark and unmoving and powerful. Ryuugi thought her beautiful in that state. Casting a spell with her eyes, she made his father’s screams seem nothing more than childish tantrums, not nearly as frightening. He loved and worshipped his mother for her power: she was the goddess who drove the demon in his father away.

But he grew older, and she was present less and less. Even stone weathers and softens and cracks, and rather than endure its cause (the man with inexhaustible hatred burning holes in his shriveled heart), she removed herself from the house whenever she could in order to cry in someone else’s arms. Ryuugi never saw her cry, never realized goddesses could shed tears; he knew only his own predicament, the terror of having to endure the volts of bitter rage that circled like a crown of black thorns about his father’s very soul.

He was not like his mother. He could not become stone or ice or anything so hard. For he never hated his father, could never hate a man whom he pitied and cared about in spite of the fear. His father had weaknesses, imperfections, things Ryuugi could understand. His mother was a stone goddess, and he could not reach her.

So Ryuugi told himself he understood his father’s lust for vengeance, and the reason he the man struck and yelled at him until he felt like crying. He trained, and hated, and pretended not to meet his mother-goddess’s gaze. For inheriting a black crown that he could feel was better than receiving a stone one he could not.