Dimensional Descent

[Bonus chappy thanks to Mr. Ham <3 (2/6)

Leonel sat on a stone in silence, looking out into the ocean. Every part of Anastasia's world-well, almost all of it-was absolutely beautiful. But he wasn't able to enjoy the beauty of it at all in this moment.

It wasn't like he wanted to have conflict with Aina's father, it was just that he couldn't see eye to eye with the man. It only made it worse that it was almost impossible to win an argument against Leonel. By the time you thought of one rebuttal, he had had a thousand.

It was hard to see how that could be a problem with Leonel, but when an argument was so one-sided, and yet the other party still felt like they were in the right, it made it impossible to come to a true common ground.

The only way would be if Leonel purposely held back and allowed Aina's father some concessions, but he didn't want to do that. Maybe that was a hint of his selfishness coming up, maybe it was his unwillingness to lose, but he truly meant those words he said to Aina.

He was willing to lay down and take a loss to her, but not for anyone else.

Leonel knew there wasn't really anyone wrong in this situation.

He felt that he was still rightfully mad at Aina back then. She didn't like his reckless actions, but he always had 100% confidence in himself. The idea that his woman wouldn't have the same unfettered belief in him not only hurt his own ego, but something deeper than that.

It had taken him a long time to understand what really bothered him about that moment back then, but as he came to understand more about himself, the more clarity he had about that day.

He had always imagined his relationship with Aina to be some perfect fairy tale. Or maybe it was that he always had an ideal of her in his mind, an ideal that shattered that day he watched her kill someone for the first time.

His feelings for Aina came from a power beyond him, probably much like his self-confidence. In the beginning, he didn't even really know why he liked her, so he filled in the gaps with fantasies instead.

smart she was at the same time. He felt that she was the kind of quiet, housewife sort of woman, one that

when she never came to his game. That was why he felt so lost when

mind wasn't acting the way he fantasized about, and the cognitive dissonance ripped

then he began to learn more about

and exceedingly

was a complex person much like everyone else was, but that fantasy was stuck in

the perfect woman, the only woman that could possibly gain his interest out of all the myriad of women out

trust him? How dare she not lean on him? How dare she try to be her

It wasn't coming from his current self, but rather

rather than it ending in separation and cruel words on his part, it ended in

the Shadow Tail appeared, the first

and yet

She hadn't trusted him.

was why it was

her trust in him was becoming just as unconditional as her love, it may even have very

fact that he hadn't even known who she truly was, the fact he tried to fill in so much of her personality on his own as though she wasn't her own person...

had no obligation to him at all. He was a father, of course his allegiances would be

situation where two men refused to back down and the lives of tens of thousands were in