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One was raised among the world. She had kind family and learned how to be gentle and solve problems to help everyone. Nature and its powers brought her a strength of the land. Her introduction to loss made her determined and resolute in her goal to succeed where her mother had failed, and maybe find her mother on the way.
Another was raised in a large family, one that didn't care about him enough. No mother and a ruthless father, traveling and ravenging countrysides. Refusal to kill an innocent man lost him any family he had and left him injured to the point of near death.
He was saved by a smaller one, a golden woman of faith, and her grandfather. One raised by gentleness and joined the service of the goddess of healing and joy. The one she saved becoming nearly a brother.
The next spent the majority of his life alone, traveling and doing his best to hide his loneliness. He goes through bars, spending no more than a night in one bed. Magic imbedded in music keeps him going and a troop with whom he robbed and ran.
They grew up as royalty, pressured to be perfect, resented and resenting. With teachings that never stuck and away from their mother, the parent who cared. Illegitimate children of a ruler, half elven, half human, always scorned. They ran away, one taking to city streets, hiding under long black hair and cloaks, daggers as protection and a brand on his back; the other fled to the woods, a bear and arrows her protection from the world, striding confidently through the dappled shade, tailed by a lumbering creature of brown fur and claws.
The final was raised royalty, usurped by an assassination that succeeded on all but two. Going from a happy family and time to tinker to two years on a ship, the memories blurry and warped. The creator of the first gun and unwitting host to a demon, anger and frustration fill his days with darkness and fear. All that is visible through the black smoke some days is white hair.
All are alone.
And then they meet, and everything changes.
The keep’s gardens flourish and so does she. Confidence slowly changes her walk, uncertainty begins to overwhelm her as they lose themselves. The moral compass of her new family, she is the reason none are lost when darkness attacks, she is the reason they escape when the world ends.
He is still a barbarian. He always will be, but now he saves people. Now he is a hero and he can say he’s a better person (he’ll never be a good one, but if he can be better, maybe that will be enough). He would never tell, but he prays to his new sister’s goddess before he sleeps, stumbling over the prayers he’s heard her recite time and time again.
She still saves people, but now, it’s not just with magic. When one has a nightmare and needs a shoulder she is there, as a priest or a friend, it doesn’t matter. She rebuilds a place of worship and hope in a different city and still returns to aid in the destruction of the waves of darkness in the world.
Almost honorable. That’s how he would describe himself. He is almost honorable. A family, a team, and, surprisingly, a daughter have brought him to try to be better. His music is more and more cheerful by the day and when the world ends one day he is a driving force behind fixing it. No one would believe it to meet him but he is a moral compass as well, although a little grayer than she is.
They can laugh again. Both are in love, their lives are better than they have been in years. He still hides in the shadows and sneaks, but he can heal now, high-fiving her to fix the scrape on her arm, wrapping an arm around the tinkerer to dispel the shadows (although their friends insist he casts no magic when he does this, that it is simply a natural effect.) She still hoards gold in a way that would make any dragon proud, the memory of poverty strong, but she does it less and less as time goes on. A title has helped her release some of her financial stresses, and she loves far more freely.
He has his city back, his sister, the demon is gone and he is better. His mask is used less and less, the smoke and need for revenge eased. He and the druid are close. Near siblings from early on. Even while saving the world, he is happy again.
They aren’t fixed, they aren’t always good, but they’re better than they’ve ever been and that is worth the world.