What Could Go Wrong?

When Tyrian had proposed marriage (haha), Chaos had been delighted with the idea of joining to the fierce viking woman Valkyrie. Marriage wasn't really a family tradition, and he knew that his nephew was much less pleased to be married than he was, but Chaos had always been one for getting attached. And he was happy about it, he was. He'd thought he was just fine with the idea of having a one-and-only he could settle down with and raise children together with. But he was, with some bemusement, watching his children grow up as vikings, not Saxe. He thought it would be easy when he'd agreed to the pups being Finnvi - after all, he had Lyra and Ares out there presumably - but it was surprisingly difficult to look at his children and see so little of who he was in them. For Valkyrie's sake he was glad they were growing up proper little vikings, and he was prous of how strong and fierce they were.

But it left him surprisingly lonely.

He felt more and more like he had little left of his family. Rhys was gone somewhere, playing pirate with Ashmedai's gang. Rhyme had been disowned, and had had very little interest in the brother he'd been practically born with even before then since he'd run off to join the Destructions as soon as he had returned and the whole relationship had disintegrated from there. He'd never been particularly close to Ash, who had inherited all the wildest tendencies of the family and seemed to resent Chaos for having left that behind. He did have his younger siblings, though he still privately thought they were more likely Vana's babies that she dropped on them without a word, but the years between them felt like a gulf that was too big to close. Of his full siblings, Vana and Phim had vanished years ago, and Angel was dead. He felt every second of time ticking past knowing that his father's time could be up at any minute, felt every year in his own bones.

Fuck, when did he get so old? Worse, when did he start accepting it? What an awful, horrifying thought, that he would just give up and be old. Just lay down and die as the docile husband and father of vikings, not to go out in a blaze of glory like his own mother had years ago.

In that mix of melancholy and self disgust he very literally almost stumbled over Asgeira, and he jerked to a halt face to face with her, blinked the cobwebs of thought away before he could grin and say, "We have to stop meeting like this. Next time you can run me over, just out of fairness." His mood made him more determined to be charming, as though to let himself believe the lie that you could 'fake it til you make it'.