My Candle Learns At Both Lens

"Glory, when did I get so lame? I used to be cool, man. People were afraid of me. Girls wanted to get with me. I even had a few teachers in my pocket. Wasn't bad at Fight Club, neither. Won Paintball. I used to be so cool...Now I'm just... I'm just the 'Angry American' now. It's only gonna get worse."

- The Yankee

Airmid Valerian returns from a little trip they took in France and Germany. Ever since then, they're been burnt out, and much more tired than usual. The Yankee -- once great, but whose reputation has been dropping -- notices the difference. Over coffee, they talk. It's not necessarily effective.

Written in February 2018. Edited and re-purposed for publication on the Wikia in 2020.

The title is a pun on the line my candle burns at both ends, taken from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, the saying meaning "to exhaust oneself".

The Fic
When Airmid Valerian had returned to Ever After High, there was a different sort of light in their eyes. It burned, not like the sun, not like a bonfire, but slow and consuming. It was neither grand nor glorious, more akin to the flickering flames atop a birthday cake.

Yankee had found the man, legs tucked into an armchair, nested within Ever After High Library. The American had been returning books - strategy guides, engineering textbooks, and a brief history of nineteenth century conflicts. He had no intention of staying longer than necessary, but nevertheless--

“Doctor,” he stalked over, and startled them with a nudge. “You’re back.”

It had been a fortnight since they left Ever After High, and a month since he last saw them. And another two weeks, in addition, to when they last talked.

Airmid Valerian looked up at him. The green in their eyes lacked their intensity, their dark circles more severe. Their hair was slumped into a casual ponytail. Hardly the dignified doctor image they had been.

“I had forgotten you existed,” they spoke with a weighted certainty. “Dead Epics Society seemed so long ago.”

Indeed, ever since destiny was dissolved, ever since Raven Queen decided to destroy all power of the Storybook of Legends at some Wonderland dance, the group had disbanded. A group that had once meant so much, and now, didn’t seem to exist at all.

The two had been younger then, when there had been activity. And careless, too, in the ways they would riot and flip tables and find catharsis in fighting not the system, but each other. Those meetings were always recounted with a sickening sense of nostalgia, mixed with a deep red glow of anger.

The physician lowered the MirrorPhone in their hands, crossed their arms and forced a smile.

They never had to force smiles before.

“One could say the same to you,” the Yankee frowned. What a flattering way to make an introduction, he thought. It was as if the civility of conversation had the same civility of states in war. “It’s like you regressed.”

The smile fell.

Point to him.

“Doubt it,” they made no effort to restore the smile. Their expression was neutral, but enthused, not at all separated from the conversation.

“Look,” he started to raise his voice in reply.

It was only by a little, but enough to prompt a librarian in rushing over and dismissing the two from the place.

“Can I get you coffee?” Airmid asked, once they realised that they had been thrown into conversation and had lost their library seating. “Beanstalk’s?”

The Yankee begrudgingly accepted.

~*~

It felt way too exposing, out there, in the open air cafe - with people around, and the two of them together. Both of them had enough insecurity over their masculinity to bring two tables together with two more chairs than necessary. They sat, distinctly apart, nothing more than bare acknowledgement.

“Your general attitude has seemed down,” Airmid commented immediately as the two finally finished arranging the seating. “Any particular reason? Recent election seasons?”

“That’s low.”

It really was.

The future physician laughed. Yank really wished they hadn’t. It was in jest, it wasn’t at all serious, and that hurt. Not that he would admit it, but it did.

A part of him wanted to go back to the time when the world made sense to him, when he did what he did without question, without any more thought than necessary.

Yet now...

The Yankee was a relic of the past. Once, people had feared the way he strode through the hallways, the quickfire anger of his gun. Then, that fear had melted into pity. Behind his military jackets and combat boots, there seemed to be only an ordinary, overcompensating boy.

“How was your little excursion?” he asked instead, darting his eyes as if to swipe the previous tibit of conversation aside. There was no point in demonstrating weakness, especially not in front of a man who taught themself how to read other people well.

“Illuminating. Enlightening. Lit.”

A groan emitted from the Yankee. “Lit?”

“Lit.”

He shook his head. “I’m not even going to merit that with a reply.”

What would have been an awkward silence was broken by the waitress bringing over their coffees. A small mercy. The Yankee still didn’t know why he agreed to coffee - why he approached Airmid Valerian in the first place. Still, he refused to leave. He dug his grave and he was going to sit in it stubbornly.

Airmid’s hands rested on the coffee mug, fingers tapping on it absentmindedly. Without conversation to grab his interest, Yankee glanced down. At the future physician’s wrist was a Scrollex.

“Nice watch.”

They blinked, bringing their wrist towards themself defensively.

A Scrollex, he realised, that they never had before.

“It’s… sentimental. Nothing more,” Airmid confessed.

Yet durable, functional and pricey.

He gave a curt nod, no response and conversational silence.

At least it wasn’t small-talk. He couldn’t stand that shit.

“Hard for a watch to be more than sentimental if it’s a Scrollex. What’s up with you, Doctor?”

Airmid’s other hand now covered the face of the watch completely. “I’m not obliged to release that sort of information. I suppose I appreciate the man who gave me this a lot. That’s all you need to know.”

~*~

Call it frequency illusion, call it what you will, but the Yankee ran into Airmid Valerian again.

“Coffee?” they asked again.

He accepted - again, albeit less begrudgingly so.

~*~

“One day, you’re going to be by nothing but yourself and the crushing realisation that you held yourself superior - incorrectly so - to all other men.”

Something told the Yankee that although Airmid was talking to him, they weren’t talking about him.

“You’re had a lot of time to muse,” he said.

“Well, yes, there’s not much else you can do when you’re recovering from the fall from a pedestal,” they scrunched up their mouth.

He frowned. “What is wrong with you?”

In response, Airmid only took a long sip of coffee. "I'm not quite sure if I can really say."

The Yankee rolled his eyes. “You’re a terrible doctor," he said, thinking about medical professionals who miss details and risk lives.

“Right now, perhaps. To be fair, I don’t have a medical degree yet.”

“Yet.” What a word that was, he thought. So simple - three letters - yet imbued with uncertainty.

“Yet,” they repeated. “Say, do you think much of the future?”

“No.” Grimm damn it - why was he admitting this? “Frankly, I think more about the past.”

They looked almost sorry for him. Dear Author, that was absolutely pissant. The Yankee didn’t need pity, much less from Airmid Valerian. Then, they tilted their head away, off to the side, into the distance, and he was once more hit with the realisation that it was not him that they were sorry for.

It was Airmid Valerian themself.

“Preservation is important,” they acknowledged. “Protecting the past.”

A past, Yankee thought, centuries back. Medieval times, an age of knights and overromanticised glory. He thought of early centuries - closer to his time, still tainted by idealism. He thought of ermine, of tricone hats, of a harbour stained red with both blood and tea.

The other man would be off, paving a future in medicine. He would be lagging behind, bringing present to prologue.

“I don’t think of preservation. I think of erasure. Destruction. Casual imperialism.” All the themes of his story, the Yankee knew too well.

“So, preservation nonetheless, because that’s your history and your hexpectation for destiny.”

“Why are you like this?“

“If you want an answer, then we better talk about the nature of medicine. It’s very human, and if you want to make an accurate diagnosis, you need to know the full story. We live in a world of fairytales, I understand, but even if we didn’t, I’m convinced that there's curative power in stories.”

He nodded and pretended to understand. But Airmid was a future physician, they were meant to have the eye of a future physician, and they could sense that they were not understood.

“Rambling," they added, almost embarrassed, with a small handwave to dismiss themself. "Nothing less.”

"Nothing at all, you mean."

“I know,” they responded in the tired sort of voice a berated child would use. “Rather, I don’t know.”

“Spit it out, Socrates.”

“I’m trying my darnest to understand. Grimm damn it, Yankee, I don’t-” They almost ended the sentence with ‘deal well with this sort of pressure’, but that would have been weakness, that would have been cracking, that would be further proof that they weren’t cut out for the line of work they were meant for.

Forget being formidable. Yankee fell prey to curiosity. “Doctor. Your little excursion. What happened?”

“Some mini-Grand Tour in which I entered it as a boy and left as a man,” they answered, dryly, a little forced. “Anyway, Yankee, men like us…” Airmid spoke tilted their head upwards, in a voice to convince themself and not him. “Men like us...”

“Men like us aren’t made for neat little boxes.”

“I only know neat little boxes. Categorisation. Organisation. Clades. Systems. Genres...” they breathed in. “Roles. Legacies.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot. Not literally, mind you.”

He looked up, into the whites of the other man’s eyes.

“Who did this to you?”

“Do you want the truth, Yankee?” their voice was firm. “Because there is hardly any crimes worse than disguising truth.”

“Human trafficking. Mass murder.”

“You're mocking me.”

His own role was a destruction of integrity. This was all he could do - undermine the hurt he would cause with greater, more impactful things. “I mean,” he said, “I could do worse.” In a short demonstration, his hand fell around his pockets.

“A soldier does not harm a medic,” Airmid noted. “Shooting the Read Cross is an offence.”

“But what if the medic attacks first?”

“Would you call a simple statement of the truth an attack?”

But it was not a matter of whether it was right to shoot a doctor for running his mouth. It was a matter of whether he wanted to.

“We don’t know what’s true anymore. Heroes can become villains. Medics can become murderers,” the Yankee gave a practised shrug.

“That’s hexactly what happened.”

And shrugs and smiles stopped altogether.

The Yankee paused, replayed the statement in his head, before speaking again.

“My predecessor did worse than kill,” said Airmid.

It was this point that Yankee knew that to prod into the matter more.

“I thought they were supposed to be great, you know? Greatest physician in the world. Erudite, educated. Then I found out more about their failings and their errors, and I can't view them in the same light anymore.”

They held some dead men in high esteem and were disappointed by the fact that those men turned out to be asshats? That was just setting yourself up for failure.

Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to mock them. “Hex, Valerian, you’re not your predecessor. My whole Grimm-forsaken country is proof of that fact.”

Airmid gave an unconvinced “hmm” in reply.

It was a terrible example, but he wouldn't have admitted that. He let down enough barriers in this conversation, and wasn't going to let this damned physician expose him further.

“And yet--” he continued, and hated himself for each word, “this world is forcing us to re-live out their lives.”

Airmid thought of their godfather. Lanius Nightshade, a reaper of bacterial and viral infections. How ashamed he was of his destiny and of his story. How much he was willing to scrub it clean from memory.

What Airmid desired the most - renown - was the same thing Lanius feared.

“Do you think your father would have wanted that?”

A brief flicker of emotion passed by the Yankee’s face. “Let’s not bring our fathers into this. We’re hardly friends.”

“I can respect that.”

Huh. This conversation was becoming almost amicable. As if to test this amiability, as if to push this amiability and tread upon friendship, Yankee added: “Hey, we all can’t live without error. That would hardly be living.”

“I know we’re supposed to find such lapses admirable. They suffered and survived - all that sentimental shit,” their voice was on edge. “But it wasn't an error made. It was a crime. A purposeful, intentional, thought-out crime. I can't praise my line or my predecessors anymore. I can't praise what I once loved.”

“Countries have been built on worse.”

“Countries aren’t one person. One person wholly in control of himself.”

He wasn't scared of Airmid by any means. The physician did not evoke fear.

The respect they commanded was through merit alone.

Rightfully so, he believed.

“Funny thing that, the fact I used to hate your guts,” he said. “Still do.”

Philanthropy was admirable in some circumstances. They could talk as much as they wanted about his misinterpretation of survival of the fittest and instead defend the inherent goodness of humanity, yet he would roll his eyes incessantly. Rebuttal against Valerian only made the man more obstinate to prove his point. Inability to preserve oneself, the Yankee interpreted it as, inability to admit humility and defeat.

“That poor woman. An entire livelihood destroyed. And to think I was so determined to be as great as the men past.” Airmid had barely addressed him in all their past conversations, and certainly, they were not addressing him now. “I thought… I thought I was better. I’m sorry.”

Pride had been dangerous. Nothing toppled legends and heroes like arrogance did.

The Yankee considered the sweet taste of hubris. He had been so close once, but never properly reached it. A taunting asymptote, a perpetual reach for the heights.

He looked back at the man - the one who was so destroyed by it.

Perhaps it was a blessing, then, to be void of that desperation and determination.

The realisation was crushing, defeating.

He hated how much of himself he saw.