but you're somebody else

Valentine went silent, he didn’t offer any narrating comments orwords harsh or otherwise to Rhyme. With a nod and a promise to do as he asked Valen turned to leave. A part of him wanted him to go, and make it so he never had to look at him again, but another part of him couldn’t help it. After everything that happened and how tired Rhyme was, he didn’t hold back.

“I always wanted to make you proud. I wanted to be you. You were my Idol. A King, a father, you always had a beautiful woman at your side. You’d say, ‘Rhyme you’re an Imperialis and we take what we want.” He felt raw emotions fill him and he tried to suppress all of it. If he never spoke to Valentine again he needed him to hear these words. “I took what I wanted and all I got was shit on for it. I led a pack, but it was the wrong pack. I became a father, but my children and their mothers were shameful. I was loyal to my family but it was the wrong side.” His heart ached as he spoke, remembering all too clearly his younger days and then the many years of servitude before finally finding freedom. Of his father stripping him of the name he’d been born with.

Rhyme didn’t know what point he was trying to make to the old King, but even after all this time he still felt slighted, bitter, and betrayed. Even if he tried to tell Theory otherwise. He shook his head, disappointed in himself for holding onto that dream for so long. ”Nothing I’ve done is good enough for you, I finally accepted I never needed your approval.” Rhyme wasn’t trying anymore, Valentine Imperialis was an old man doomed to fade from existence. Rhyme had to look to the future, he was stuck in the past for far too long. He had to find his strength and his resolve, because his children needed him to be the figure that Valen had once been for him.