Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Roland (LeanderxRoland)

Chapter One: The Archon Leander

Roland POV:

    It had been a little past a month since Leander had joined our eccentric group following the battle against Brineskimmer. Everyone including Tani, Batu, Lofty, and Evan seemed just fine accepting someone of such high esteem into our midst without even a second thought. Hell, Bracken, our latest addition, didn’t seem to mind him at all. I on the other hand couldn’t fathom it.

     ‘Why on Earth had Evan decided to appoint him Junior Consul of Evermore?’ I thought to myself.

      “Have you prepared the documents needed to build the Kingmaker’s Cathedral?” Leander interrupted my incessant contemplation from the other side of the throne room to Evan. They had paperwork sprawled out near the throne itself while I worked on battle strategies to advance towards Ding Dong Dell castle. I was just trying not to stare at them. I tried focusing on my work, but Leander’s figure kept distracting me.

Bracken poked my head with the end of her pencil for at least the third time.

“What’s wrong, Roland? You’re distracted againnnnn” She kicked me with her prosthetic leg under the desk we were sharing. I swore quietly giving her a dirty look.

“I’m not distracted” I clicked my pen and lowered my voice so as to only speak with her. “Leander is just sitting awfully close to Evan…”.

‘Queen Nerea had to have had a motive to send him along with us, right?’

Maybe she wanted us to be watched since she signed The Declaration of Interdependence. This meant if anything were to happen with the kingdom, Nerea’s army in Hydropolis would be forced to help us.

“Maybe you should just talk to him...avoiding a member of our team doesn’t exactly seem like the most logical thing to do. But aye, do what you’d like” She folded up the remainder of the paperwork and stood up stretching out her legs a bit. “I have some unfinished memoliths to run through, wanna join me Tani?”

Tani jumped onto her feet obviously excited to be included. “Of course! Let’s go!!” Both of them headed off down the hall in the direction of Bracken’s quarters.

The only people left in the Throne Room at this witching hour was Lofty, Evan, Leander, and I. Truthfully so, Lofty wasn't much for conversation besides the random facts concerning the origins of fairies or kingmakers. Evan was up much later than he should ever be and was fighting off unconsciousness. 

I turned my gaze to Leander who was looking extremely puzzled over a particular blueprint he was mulling over. I sighed heavily, beginning to feel the full weight of the adventures we had been through as of late. Despite acquiring this younger, more agile body, I was still an older fellow at heart and head. I was fairly certain I was just staring at Leander at this point, he must’ve begun to notice it.

“If I may be so bold…" Leander pushed his glasses up "Why is it you feel the need to constantly watch me? It’s almost as if I'm back home under the all-seeing eye” He was half-smiling as he stood up and began collecting his papers.

Evan slumbered off with Lofty in toe, taking that as a queue to head to sleep. I simply crossed my arms and studied his expression.

"You're far too comfortable around Evan. He's too young to understand any hidden motives you might have, but I know how these things tend to go”.

Leander was barely listening, opting to shuffle his papers instead. “You think too much of me, Roland”. He sauntered over to the desk and sat beside me smoothing out his Archon’s Cloak. He sat back in the chair, pushed up his glasses, and awaited a response.

I just couldn't formulate a proper sentence now that Leander was right next to me. The way he'd abruptly made his way over in an amass of purple robes caused my mouth to fall open a little bit. "Um…” I was staring straight into his eyes as my cheeks became flushed.

‘Smooth Roland. Way to go.’

Leander smiled fully now enjoying my reactions it seemed. “I can tell exactly what you're thinking; you're making it painfully obvious there's more than merely concern for our King"

“I don't know what you're talking about. Evan needs someone to watch out for him...that's all I'm doing” I thought of myself as an acting father figure for a grimalkin who’d lost everything. The only thinking I did was how to support Evan in the best way possible.

 I shifted my gaze towards Leander’s shoulder length hair, he'd decided to let it run a tad wild today; it was sticking up all over. I became extremely lost in thought again whilst noting the details.

“You resent me as though I were Doloran himself. I swear to you…” He brought his hand to my shoulder, pulling me from my daze. “I want nothing more than for both Hydropolis and Evermore to remain interdependent and for our common enemy to meet his fate. Please trust me, Roland” Leander was looking at me with such earnest meaning in his eyes as though he really meant what he was saying.

I could feel the heat of my cheeks turning red, he never spoke to me like this. We had barely spoken at all outside of our day to day functions. Now it he was talking to me as if there was some sort of urgency in his voice aching for me to trust him.

‘Where did all of this confidence come from?’

I gathered all of my paperwork hastily into my arms.

 “Everything is fine, I understand. I-I’m heading to bed. We can discuss our plans to approach Ding Dong Dell in the morning”

Standing up before Leander could object, I booked it off back into the direction of my bedroom with a million thoughts running through my head. 

'Roland, you can’t daydream about him while also hating him. You can't think about his hair while devising skeeming plans. You can certainly not almost kiss someone simply because they touch your shoulder. Get a hold of yourself’

I was trying very hard to relax a little bit now that I was in the safety of my bedroom. What could I do though? Leander had the trust of everyone around us before he even became a member of the team. And now that he was living in the castle, it was becoming extremely difficult to continue to ignore him. 

I needed to sleep, but God was it going to be difficult tonight. 

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(A/N: this has been off and on edited in an attempt to not to have to scrap the whole story cause my writing is awful. Hopefully we can only get better from here. Thank you for reading!)