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Rasplin has taken a lot of things off him that he didn't want.
Every time the leaders slam their hands on the table and speak of the Exiled they see Rasplin in the place he sits. That makes Doly look almost a victim to their eyes, but he knows the truth and knows how harsh it must be on Rasplin to be seen as the person that Doly had to become.
Doly, after all, has given the order for every single thing that they list. They spit Rasplin's name instead. His body should be lying broken after their execution.
They won't take it.
He doesn't think that would fix any single thing, so he doesn't even try. Going along with their demands is not just actions of a weak man, it's following such people, a brainless crowd, scared of their own scapegoat.
He says, Rasplin is his friend. He doesn't, that they have no idea who they're talking about and to. He has more blood on his hands than Rasplin even if the blade that has killed the most living things in this world isn't his.
Don't antagonise.
He balances on the edge with those words that aren't quite insults, when he tells then if the Exiled aren't in the right, there is no right, and there isn't. That's the point. That's quite literally the point.
They seem so fucking disappointed when he admits it, put in words, that he's not serving them Rasplin's head on a plate.
He thinks that they think he's weak.
He hates it in this moment Rasplin's the one demonised by word of the people as much as Rasplin himself does. When Rasplin suffers from it, Doly is left ultimately powerless. He can cover the six Nations in blood of every citizen of it, and the ghosts of them will still never say his name.
He plays on it, then.
Doly has one goal, because it's not been about revenge a while now. It's defence.
He doesn't think they want to believe him when he talks of peace and joining the nations under the united black banners that Zombie wants so much, but they also don't see the bloodshedder.
Some of them may not even be sure why he's here.
"We agree to this." He says, proposes to join them in their peace and ignores the scuffed laughs.
They start seeing him when they look his way, afterwards.
It might be the first time they speak his name in the meeting at the end, with remarks of his statement that they call a promise.
Rasplin may've taken his image of a destroyer, but Doly might actually go down in history as a maker of peace. He's not sure he deserves that. Neither do any of the people here.
He's gotta go with what he has.
For his team, for his... He won't call them family. A family isn't a party cutting through nation after nation wiping them out because they betrayed them first.
Maybe it is.
They're wrapping that up, he has to remind himself.
Violence is so easy, so... addictive. But it's not how one makes peace.
He goes back to his team then, to his... He's met there with the same curious eyes with disbelief hidden not far back when he announces they're meeting with all the people of Nations that are left. Squid laughs quietly, flashing a weapon into his hands for a moment.
Doly shakes his head.
He wants them to understand one thing, there is going to be peace whether they want it or not.
He's just too done to make it happen through destroying every single other nation, if he doesn't have to.
Maybe they see him as weak too, because of it. Not the first time.
But they're gonna listen to him.
They're... they're all he has left.
"Don't antagonise." He tells them the same thing. "Don't fight. We'll get there, and we'll smile in their faces, and if they do anything suspicious, then we'll fire. Only then."
Rasplin's eyes are fixed on him, heavy.
Doly hopes one day they can put the present behind them. For that, it has to be gone.
He says in his head, I shall make world peace, and he doesn't want it.
It just has to be done.
It takes less than a heartbeat for a skilled player to activate an end crystal. Doly knows that.
He's held one in his hands, he knows that as well, somewhere before the blurry wall in his mind and memory, more than once, not enough for it to be second nature but quite enough to know.
In Rasplin's grasp it sings naturally like it's part of him, like it always has been.
Where did you..., Doly wants to ask, but his thoughts are running faster than that when they have to, analysing the enemy's every movement, when did Rasplin become the enemy?
Bits of dirt scramble and fall apart, and there might be scratches of red flying with them.
He'd like to say everything clicks in his head and he knows exactly what it is he dies for.
He just knows it, that Rasplin has taken a lot from him, and that he is a traitor.
Doly sees Wailable beginning to stagger back and Ivory's calm, dead cold eyes on the crystal, and then he sees nothing at all.
(The reason Ray never speaks of Doly's team of the Exiled as Rasplin's the way everyone did, he'd say, is the blood spilt on the grass and the dead eyes of the demon that's taken everyone's souls. Rasplin used to belong with them, and he's not proud of it, but he's gone rogue, and not as any kind of leader. Ray has seen those.
He thinks, it could've all gone so differently.
In another world, Rasplin could've been remembered as the disgraced leader he never was, and Doly a noble warrior that proposed and settled peace.
There's no point to dwell on it now, though. So he doesn't spare it much though anymore.)