The Ozpin in Glynda's memories is a very specific sort of person. He's calm and a bit passive, content to indulge (or at least unopposed to indulging) Glynda's curiosity and whims despite the two years he has on her. He's a bit tense and a bit harried, but only in the way that everyone who lives outside a proper settlement tends to be. And also much like everyone who lives outside a proper settlement, he doesn't have the luxury to think too much about his future beyond ensuring his immediate survival. It stands in sharp contrast Glynda's carefully planned path to becoming a Huntress. They're not especially close, but they're friends all the same.
And then one day that calm, passive young man vanishes without warning or even a message. It's not uncommon outside of the kingdoms. When Glynda approaches one of the older members of his group to ask after him she's prepared, even at only fourteen, to hear that he's dead. It's the biggest shock of her life to instead lean that he's enrolled at Beacon (her personal top choice) after passing with top marks. She's frustrated to not have any immediate answers for the sudden change, but he never comes back to visit and she has no way to contact him. All she can do is wait to catch up.
And when she does, the Ozpin attending Beacon Academy turns out to be a very specific yet entirely different sort of person. He's charismatic and friendly, but both traits are amused, aloof, and devoid of warmth. He's confident and smug in a way that leaves no room for debate or argument and barely any room for questioning. His investment in the people around him is minimal, and from Glynda's (admittedly limited) perspective he seems to stand slightly apart from even his own teammates. He is liked by everyone, friends with no one, and nothing at all like the boy Glynda remembers.
He's also very, very difficult to catch alone, which means Glynda has had no chance to address these differences throughout her first semester. Their interactions thus far have been brief and strictly formal, no different than what anyone would expect between an upperclassman and an underclassman. Glynda gets more opportunities to speak to his teammates one-on-one than she does with him (including one particularly embarrassing moment where she mistook the shortest of the group as a fellow freshman and asked if he needed help finding his classroom).
To say that it bothers her is an immense understatement. The whole situation is wrong, and Glynda has never been able to just leave something like that alone. So when she sees Ozpin actually alone one evening - no teammates, no teachers, no headmaster, and no gaggle of shy underclassmen - she jumps on the opportunity. Her team leader, who's in the middle of importing some actually very important information for their assignment the next day, is cut off with a promise to catch up later. Said team leader watches her go with a tired, sarcastic, Sure, no problem, it can wait. but Glynda is already down the hall and out of earshot.
"Ozpin." Glynda's voice is only slightly raised, but she's already had a lot of practice at hitting a tone that's firm, demanding, and difficult to ignore. She just hopes it'll still work on him.
She had been one of very few other teenagers in the area, and so they drifted together half by curiosity and half by expectation. Her family's settlement fell consistently within their range, and so it became one more way to mark the seasons: each year, without fail, he would meet the intensely focused blonde girl and hear about her dreams. From ten years old, she could lay them out as a tidy set of steps, a series of hurdles she would conquer. He had no doubt that she could. His own aspirations didn't make for nearly as interesting storytelling: he rather enjoyed gathering stories, and he could hold his own as well as anyone needed to, out past the Kingdom walls— but neither seemed to promise much of a career. It was difficult to believe in such long-term things as a career, living as they did. If he was to have a future, it was likely to be a humble one.
Then the King arrived.
It all happened very quickly, after that. Ozpin did not try very hard to resist the call; he loved his family, but the forest held little else for him. And the King told such incredible stories.
Early on, Beacon was all he'd hoped it would be. It was grand and towering and magnificent, all white stone spires and the glow of pride. (Even then, he couldn't tell whose pride it was.) Most of his professors bowed when they met him, which left Ozpin flushed and awkward and the King profoundly amused. Whenever they watched him fight, he internally cringed at every stumble, every clumsy parry and moment of missed footwork. In the classroom, he leaned into the threads of memory until he could answer any question without the fumbling beat of pause. He leaned into the steady tones of the King, until it was hard to find the difference in their voices, except that one was young and afraid.
He grew used to taking tea with the headmaster and being asked for thoughts on team assignments. He grew used to discussing chess. He learned that the King was afraid, too, and now young was the only difference left to him.
The first year was the hardest. It was nice, sometimes, to have the team: Alva was an incredible warrior, Keppel earnestly good, and Argent sharp and capable. More often, it was lonely. He watched them bicker; he led them through missions; he gently dismissed their prying curiosity and concern as he vanished more and more to the headmaster's office. He pressed hard at the threads of memory, every time he-or-the-King lurched with unnamed emotion to see Argent's silver eyes, until he understood. And still he told them nothing.
The King wanted to see who they would become. And Ozpin— he was afraid. The expectant eyes of professors made for pressure enough. It was... a sort of reprieve, to be thought of as a fellow teenager, albeit a strange one. Even if they thought him oddly apart from it all, on some level they had to think of him as one of them. They weren't watching him and seeing chess moves. They weren't watching him and measuring him against the man who'd worn the crown.
It didn't matter, in the end. He is their leader. They still look to him for orders; they are still pieces on the board, even if they don't know the shape of the game. (No one, he came to learn, really knows the shape of the game.) They are more than worthy, in the eyes of him and the King, and they are to be his new generation.
So he tells them a little. He tells them enough. They look at him with the awe and devotion of knights to a king, and now there is nowhere left for him to pretend to be a teenager. He learns to speak like the King, or as the King, or in the place of the King, until the hesitation blurs away. He spends fewer nights curled in on himself, harried and exhausted, feeling smothered in the King's colors; he thinks of them as their colors, and it hurts a little less. He stops trying to peel apart whose thoughts are whose. He stops wondering which of them keeps pouring cocoa. It doesn't matter; they like sweets.
When he sees her step onto campus at the start of their third year, he does not know what to feel, or which of them is feeling it.
He avoids her. Difficult to say which of them that is, too. He'd liked her when he was sixteen and merely Ozpin; now, she is a liability and a reminder. The King will not say as much, but he dislikes loose ends, or maybe fears them. And Ozpin knows that he's different now, perhaps unrecognizable. He— he's come to terms with it.
It's easier to come to terms with it when there isn't someone looking at him like he's wrong. Like there's something else he could've been. He is guilty and restless and miserable with it, and he avoids her twice as fervently.
But she's driven. He's always known that. The day she catches him alone is inevitable, and it draws them up midstep with a little thrill of dread. They'd curse internally, if they were the sort for it. (They aren't; Ozpin cannot even bring himself to say By the Brothers anymore.) They— but mostly the King— think, wryly, This will be interesting.
Maybe she sees the little flinch in his shoulders, the hesitation. Maybe she sees the flash of just-Ozpin in his eyes, when he turns, nervous for the barest instant before distance rushes back in like a tide.
Glynda doesn't actually have a specific approach in mind as she closes the gap between the two of them. She has an abundance of questions and a dearth of answers, but no real understanding of the situation beyond 'something has changed'. No one in Ozpin's community had any idea what prompted him to suddenly leave, and no one in the school (no one that Glynda can ask, at any rate) seems to know anything about his life prior to enrollment at all. The only hints at anything resembling the person she'd known before are in rumors from his freshman year. They sound accurate to what she remembers, but the stories are scattered and she knows that rumors may be all they actually are.
So she's not sure where to start, but then she sees that little flinch, that sudden distance in his gaze, and half a dozen other brief interactions with him spring to mind - alongside, more importantly, all the interactions they haven't had. At times it had felt like everyone except her has had some sort extended interaction or conversation with him. Now she wonders if that might not be true, rather than just some sort of paranoid flight of fancy. Because that tiny flinch might not be much of a reaction, but it imparts some very important information to Glynda. This isn't someone that simply hasn't happened to interact with her much, but someone that actively doesn't want to interact with her.
The realization hurts. They may not have been close, but they had been friends, and for him to simply disappear without a word had been upsetting already. If she were alone she might have taken a few moments to process that hurt before proceeding. But now, with Ozpin right here in front of her, she decides that she doesn't have time for that. There's a task to complete, which means everything else can wait.
"You're avoiding me." There's a slight bit of wonder in her voice - the answer is so obvious now that she can't believe she missed it before - but for the most part her tone and expression are comprised of stubborn, uncompromising irritation. "Why?"
The King lied a great deal, early on. Four years into the process, Ozpin can now look back and understand the shape of things. He can see the underbelly beneath a hundred little soothing deflections. The King implied that he could not take control without permission, which Ozpin now knows to be an incomplete truth at best; he implied that Ozpin was destined to save the world, and of course the truth of that has become apparent from the tangled memories and misery now uncovered; and he implied that, at times, he could look away. He could turn his attention from his host. He could grant Ozpin a breath of space, of privacy.
There is no such thing. There are moments the King's presence seems to retreat from the forefront of his mind, yes; there are moments he could imagine Ozymandias is sleeping, or at least distracted. But it is all a polite fiction. They are two minds in one body, and every breath, every touch, is a shared experience.
He learned that one early on. Alone under the covers, he— heard? felt?— the catch of breath that wasn't quite his own, and thrilled with shame and hyperawareness: he was not only being watched, he was being felt. He hissed something humiliated and accusatory into the darkness of his empty bedroom; Ozymandias said something half-amused and half-apologetic about the perils of being sixteen. They didn't discuss it.
For months, they didn't discuss it. Ozymandias seemed to take pains to be unobtrusive. Until his fantasies started blurring in: memories of things Ozpin absolutely should not be able to imagine in such detail. He was curious enough to lean into it, to go poking for more, and unraveled more vivid scenes than he'd bargained for. (He was fascinated and disturbed by turns, and was met by simmering amusement, bittersweet nostalgia, and only very tired scraps of shame.)
It's difficult to say when things become more... direct. The blurring renders it all a mess; he often does not know when the King is in control and when he is simply becoming more and more the King. He knows that, by this point, he willingly submits to a touch that isn't quite his own. He eagerly steps aside for it. And he knows that he has started noticing girls.
The latter is the disorienting part: he's never taken that sort of interest in anyone. Living outside Kingdom walls, no one often bothered to imply that he should. Some people don't care terribly for romance, or for sex, and he is comfortable being one of these. Beacon is full of very beautiful and impressive people, he's aware, but this has never struck him as a very pressing issue.
And yet he can't stop noticing them. He snipes at the King about it, but as usual, blame rolls off him like water off a duck. They are left humiliatingly distractible and frustrated, a little through second year and certainly all through third, and it does nothing for Ozpin's building feeling of being trapped. The arrival of Glynda only makes it worse: he loses whatever comfort resignation had brought him. He is jittery and miserable with knowing that he is changing and being constantly reminded.
By fourth year, he despairs at how little of Ozpin is left. His voice is the King's voice, now. Glynda knows, and she looks at him like he's both a corpse and a murderer, and in some moments he cannot stand it. The teachers, the team, do not even care that Ozpin ever existed. To them, he is nothing more or less than a very young king.
They fight about it, he and Ozymandias. Fight is perhaps a strong word. Ozpin paces and snarls and cries, and the ancient King is ever-calm, ever-tired, ever-patient. Ozpin is sick of it. He is sick of knowing he is too deep into his destiny to ever get free. He is sick of knowing it's too late.
When the end-of-term dance comes, he damns the whole thing to hell and goes to get drunk. He is twenty, not ten thousand. He smothers away the protesting voice of Ozymandias, hates the knowledge that Oz lets him, and chokes on cheap liquor with a fierce satisfaction.
This is how Glynda finds him: spitefully drunk, rumpled and unsteady with it, loudly explaining historical minutiae to some starry-eyed freshman. Every time he nearly blurs a he into an I, talking about the Great War, he fumbles more spiked punch into his cup. The stuff is appalling. He's lost track of how many he's had.
He knows two things with conviction: this was a mistake, and he will not stop until he's unconscious. It feels like freedom. It feels great.
It had been easy for Glynda at first. She likes things to be neat and tidy and is good at compartmentalizing, and both traits are out in force for the first few months. She cares about Ozpin and doesn't care at all for Ozymandias, and treats them both accordingly. There has always been a layer of formality and polite distance between herself and Ozpin, but it pales in comparison to the chilliness in her demeanor whenever she knows that Ozymandias is in control.
It doesn't last long. Glynda is quick to realize that the situation isn't neat and tidy or easily compartmentalized. More and more often she finds herself addressing Ozpin when she expects to be speaking to the King, or the King when she thinks Ozpin must be in control. Sometimes there's no way to tell them apart at all, and increasingly it seems that they're both at the same time. Attempts to address it fall flat. Requests to speak with Ozpin are increasingly met with reassurances, given in solemn, stately tones, that he is Ozpin. Glynda isn't used to feeling so completely useless, but by the end of her first year the knowledge that there's nothing she can do to help is inescapable.
So she switches gears. Most people, she knows, look at them and can only see the King. She stubbornly refuses to see anyone but her childhood friend. She addresses them as Ozpin at all times and as 'the King' only when necessary. On days when the fragmentation is especially severe and there's no sign of her friend at all Glynda will occasionally, spitefully, call him Ozymandias with no more respect or formality than she'd show to any other student, and certainly no title. It doesn't help, and she knows that. She's come to realize that one day there won't be anything left to distinguish the two, and that the sooner she actually comes to terms with it the better it will be for both (all) of them. But she's young and she's stubborn and she has no idea how else to come to grips with the slow disappearance of her friend. For now, being petty helps.
Her teammates help, too. Nilla's easygoing personality means she strikes most as an odd choice for leader, but she's clever and observant and it turns out that 'easygoing' can also mean 'level headed'. Lucasta is charming and friendly in a way that Glynda often finds mystifying, and her talent for smoothing over difficult situations is nothing short of astonishing. Thalia is often harried and anxious, but she's kind and attentive and always reliable. Glynda accepts their team assignment knowing they'll need to work together and prepares herself to set aside her personal feelings to make it happen. She doesn't expect camaraderie to come so easily, nor run so deep, nor for the three of them to provide much needed warmth and stability on days when she's stressed over secrets that aren't hers to share. She works hard, throwing herself into her studies with the same single-minded intensity that had pushed her towards Beacon in the first place, but in between classes and assignments and missions she makes friends. She has fun.
The dance isn't something she's expecting to especially enjoy, but she attends with only the most mild of prompting from Nilla and Thalia. She's loses track of her team almost immediately - Lucasta arrived before the rest of them and Thalia and Nilla are quick to split off to find Argent and 'bother Keppel', respectively - but hardly finds herself alone. She catches up with friends, meets several students from Atlas, drinks more spiked punch than she probably should, and ends up agreeing when Alva insists on teaching her a specific dance.
It's immediately after said dance, while Glynda is caught up in a conversation with Alva and several classmates and straddling the line between pleasantly tipsy and simply drunk, that Nilla makes a sudden reappearance. Glynda turns to her, but any greeting she might have offered dies when she hears Nilla's muttered question.
"Is he gonna be okay?"
Glynda follows Nilla's gaze, curious, but that curiosity evaporates when she spots Ozpin, flocked by freshmen (not unusual) and looking like he's about to fall over (very unusual). Glynda heaves a sigh drains the rest of her drink (she probably shouldn't, but she does anyway) then passes the empty cup to Nilla with a promise to return shortly. She's not so tipsy that she can't walk in a straight line, but she does find herself wishing for a touch more sobriety or, at the very least, a dress with a back. Even so, she cuts through the cluster of freshmen with ease and walks right up to Ozpin, fearless as ever. She rests a hand on his arm, partly to catch his attention but mostly to forestall any further drinking. He's clearly had too much already.
"Ozpin." Her tone isn't unkind, but it's firm in a way that suggests she's not going to be happy if he ignores her. "Let's step outside for a bit." A walk to sober up would be enough, but right now she fully intends to drag him back to his room and dump him in his bed.
He has rather lost his train of thought, but is continuing on full-steam regardless, when a hand settles on his arm. This does, in fact, prevent him from raising his cup again, and Ozpin looks to see who would dare with some curiosity. People do not touch him, generally. Not outside of a fight, and these days, he always wins his fights.
"Glynda." He slurs her name with relish. She looks very good in that dress, and it swings his attention to her full-bore, his gaggle of freshmen forgotten. He is acutely aware of her shoulders, her neckline. This comes with the inexplicable urge to ask her to dance. Then he realizes that's the King, and that he is having none of the King just now, and he refocuses with visible effort. "By all means."
He gestures for her to lead on, and there is far more flourish in it than just-Ozpin ever would have managed. The look on his face is entirely too self-satisfied for just-Ozpin. But he allows himself to be steered readily enough, half a cup of horrid punch still in hand, walking with a tilt and a stumble. It simmers dread low in his chest, to so thoroughly lose his control, but what does it matter? He hasn't been in control for years now.
It's a good thing that he doesn't ask to dance, since he's drunk enough for Glynda to decline outright and who knows that sort of scene that might cause? The way he slurs her name, the excess of satisfaction in his expression, and the flourish in his gesture are all already enough to earn him an arched brow. She doubts it's a complete flip - whatever his flaws, Ozymandias does not strike her as the sort to get this drunk - but similarly doubts that this is solely the result of liquid courage.
But she doesn't have much time to focus on that, because she doesn't have much time to focus on anything except keeping the two of them upright. He's in no condition to walk a straight line and she's not quite sober enough to easily guide someone who totters with every step. They don't make it more than a few feet before she gives up and steps closer, slipping her arm through his and pressing their shoulders together. She tucks a stray strand of hair away as she does; her hairstyle tonight, a pair of asymmetrical braids wound into a loose bun, is both more complicated and less tidy than usual, and the silver chain clipped onto the style does nothing to hold anything in place.
"Do you usually go to parties to give history lessons?" Her tone is sarcastic, but edging towards amused despite herself. Belatedly, she reaches over with her free hand to try to snag that last cup of punch from him. She doesn't want him any drunker than he already is, and she definitely doesn't want him to spill it on her; her dress is a pale cream color that would stain in an instant.
"I am a history lesson," he says, a little less quietly than is advisable, given that they are still thronged by several dozen intoxicated teenagers. It comes out all amusement and very little bitterness, which is a nice side-effect of being astonishingly drunk. All the bitterness is very far away. He's put a nice, fuzzy sort of wall between it and him. It can't get to him here.
She snags the cup of punch, and it takes him several moments to realize it's no longer in his hand. Ozpin inspects her, and the stolen cup in her hand, for entirely too long a beat before he huffs a little laugh and leans more heavily upon her shoulder. He tips his head towards hers, so that his perpetually messy hair brushes her braids.
"I am going to insist upon better drinks, next time." It is very unclear what 'next time' he is picturing, but he looks very confident about it. "Beacon Academy," and he says it with such pride it's certainly not just-Ozpin behind the emotion, "is the best in the world. We can manage a better-- a selection of proper spirits."
He looks entirely ready to launch into an impassioned speech on just what the teenagers of Beacon should be drinking. If she doesn't stop him, she'll be subjected to an enthusiastic review of Remnant's wines and whiskeys, with all the experience of the King and all the clumsy eagerness of Ozpin. He is certainly Ozpin in the way he leans against her, happy and inelegant-- two things Ozymandias never seems to be.
Oz inspects her and Glynda stares right back, fearless as ever. She even makes a point of setting the drink aside on an unoccupied table as they pass, though by then Oz has given up and gone back to leaning on her. It's concerning that he's so drunk in the first place, and she knows the good cheer won't last once morning comes, but in some ways it's a relief to see him so thoroughly relaxed. Even if he's not just-Ozpin, even if there are clear shades of Ozymandias blurring in, surely it's fine to let him have this much for just an evening.
Still, he's making very loud commentary on subjects a student simply shouldn't know about. Glynda lets him talk, but she still hurries to usher him into the much emptier hallway outside the dance hall. It's quieter out here and his voice will carry more, but there are fewer people to hear.
"I'm sure the other students will appreciate the subtle notes of aged whiskey once it's been dumped into a bowl of fruit juice and soda." Surely Ozpin, even as drunk as he already is, sees the flaw in his plan. Still, the sharp edges of sarcasm have largely faded from her voice by now, replaced with more amusement and a relaxed sort of contentedness. She'd been a little aggravated by the prospect of escorting him away at first, but he's been so pleasant and cooperative it's all but impossible to hold on to that annoyance. "Now, do you think you can make it to you dorm, or do we need to find you a bench, first?"
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no subject
And then one day that calm, passive young man vanishes without warning or even a message. It's not uncommon outside of the kingdoms. When Glynda approaches one of the older members of his group to ask after him she's prepared, even at only fourteen, to hear that he's dead. It's the biggest shock of her life to instead lean that he's enrolled at Beacon (her personal top choice) after passing with top marks. She's frustrated to not have any immediate answers for the sudden change, but he never comes back to visit and she has no way to contact him. All she can do is wait to catch up.
And when she does, the Ozpin attending Beacon Academy turns out to be a very specific yet entirely different sort of person. He's charismatic and friendly, but both traits are amused, aloof, and devoid of warmth. He's confident and smug in a way that leaves no room for debate or argument and barely any room for questioning. His investment in the people around him is minimal, and from Glynda's (admittedly limited) perspective he seems to stand slightly apart from even his own teammates. He is liked by everyone, friends with no one, and nothing at all like the boy Glynda remembers.
He's also very, very difficult to catch alone, which means Glynda has had no chance to address these differences throughout her first semester. Their interactions thus far have been brief and strictly formal, no different than what anyone would expect between an upperclassman and an underclassman. Glynda gets more opportunities to speak to his teammates one-on-one than she does with him (including one particularly embarrassing moment where she mistook the shortest of the group as a fellow freshman and asked if he needed help finding his classroom).
To say that it bothers her is an immense understatement. The whole situation is wrong, and Glynda has never been able to just leave something like that alone. So when she sees Ozpin actually alone one evening - no teammates, no teachers, no headmaster, and no gaggle of shy underclassmen - she jumps on the opportunity. Her team leader, who's in the middle of importing some actually very important information for their assignment the next day, is cut off with a promise to catch up later. Said team leader watches her go with a tired, sarcastic, Sure, no problem, it can wait. but Glynda is already down the hall and out of earshot.
"Ozpin." Glynda's voice is only slightly raised, but she's already had a lot of practice at hitting a tone that's firm, demanding, and difficult to ignore. She just hopes it'll still work on him.
lovingly dumps 1000 words of backstory hc
She had been one of very few other teenagers in the area, and so they drifted together half by curiosity and half by expectation. Her family's settlement fell consistently within their range, and so it became one more way to mark the seasons: each year, without fail, he would meet the intensely focused blonde girl and hear about her dreams. From ten years old, she could lay them out as a tidy set of steps, a series of hurdles she would conquer. He had no doubt that she could. His own aspirations didn't make for nearly as interesting storytelling: he rather enjoyed gathering stories, and he could hold his own as well as anyone needed to, out past the Kingdom walls— but neither seemed to promise much of a career. It was difficult to believe in such long-term things as a career, living as they did. If he was to have a future, it was likely to be a humble one.
Then the King arrived.
It all happened very quickly, after that. Ozpin did not try very hard to resist the call; he loved his family, but the forest held little else for him. And the King told such incredible stories.
Early on, Beacon was all he'd hoped it would be. It was grand and towering and magnificent, all white stone spires and the glow of pride. (Even then, he couldn't tell whose pride it was.) Most of his professors bowed when they met him, which left Ozpin flushed and awkward and the King profoundly amused. Whenever they watched him fight, he internally cringed at every stumble, every clumsy parry and moment of missed footwork. In the classroom, he leaned into the threads of memory until he could answer any question without the fumbling beat of pause. He leaned into the steady tones of the King, until it was hard to find the difference in their voices, except that one was young and afraid.
He grew used to taking tea with the headmaster and being asked for thoughts on team assignments. He grew used to discussing chess. He learned that the King was afraid, too, and now young was the only difference left to him.
The first year was the hardest. It was nice, sometimes, to have the team: Alva was an incredible warrior, Keppel earnestly good, and Argent sharp and capable. More often, it was lonely. He watched them bicker; he led them through missions; he gently dismissed their prying curiosity and concern as he vanished more and more to the headmaster's office. He pressed hard at the threads of memory, every time he-or-the-King lurched with unnamed emotion to see Argent's silver eyes, until he understood. And still he told them nothing.
The King wanted to see who they would become. And Ozpin— he was afraid. The expectant eyes of professors made for pressure enough. It was... a sort of reprieve, to be thought of as a fellow teenager, albeit a strange one. Even if they thought him oddly apart from it all, on some level they had to think of him as one of them. They weren't watching him and seeing chess moves. They weren't watching him and measuring him against the man who'd worn the crown.
It didn't matter, in the end. He is their leader. They still look to him for orders; they are still pieces on the board, even if they don't know the shape of the game. (No one, he came to learn, really knows the shape of the game.) They are more than worthy, in the eyes of him and the King, and they are to be his new generation.
So he tells them a little. He tells them enough. They look at him with the awe and devotion of knights to a king, and now there is nowhere left for him to pretend to be a teenager. He learns to speak like the King, or as the King, or in the place of the King, until the hesitation blurs away. He spends fewer nights curled in on himself, harried and exhausted, feeling smothered in the King's colors; he thinks of them as their colors, and it hurts a little less. He stops trying to peel apart whose thoughts are whose. He stops wondering which of them keeps pouring cocoa. It doesn't matter; they like sweets.
When he sees her step onto campus at the start of their third year, he does not know what to feel, or which of them is feeling it.
He avoids her. Difficult to say which of them that is, too. He'd liked her when he was sixteen and merely Ozpin; now, she is a liability and a reminder. The King will not say as much, but he dislikes loose ends, or maybe fears them. And Ozpin knows that he's different now, perhaps unrecognizable. He— he's come to terms with it.
It's easier to come to terms with it when there isn't someone looking at him like he's wrong. Like there's something else he could've been. He is guilty and restless and miserable with it, and he avoids her twice as fervently.
But she's driven. He's always known that. The day she catches him alone is inevitable, and it draws them up midstep with a little thrill of dread. They'd curse internally, if they were the sort for it. (They aren't; Ozpin cannot even bring himself to say By the Brothers anymore.) They— but mostly the King— think, wryly, This will be interesting.
Maybe she sees the little flinch in his shoulders, the hesitation. Maybe she sees the flash of just-Ozpin in his eyes, when he turns, nervous for the barest instant before distance rushes back in like a tide.
"Yes, Glynda?"
no subject
So she's not sure where to start, but then she sees that little flinch, that sudden distance in his gaze, and half a dozen other brief interactions with him spring to mind - alongside, more importantly, all the interactions they haven't had. At times it had felt like everyone except her has had some sort extended interaction or conversation with him. Now she wonders if that might not be true, rather than just some sort of paranoid flight of fancy. Because that tiny flinch might not be much of a reaction, but it imparts some very important information to Glynda. This isn't someone that simply hasn't happened to interact with her much, but someone that actively doesn't want to interact with her.
The realization hurts. They may not have been close, but they had been friends, and for him to simply disappear without a word had been upsetting already. If she were alone she might have taken a few moments to process that hurt before proceeding. But now, with Ozpin right here in front of her, she decides that she doesn't have time for that. There's a task to complete, which means everything else can wait.
"You're avoiding me." There's a slight bit of wonder in her voice - the answer is so obvious now that she can't believe she missed it before - but for the most part her tone and expression are comprised of stubborn, uncompromising irritation. "Why?"
(nsfw) cws: intoxication, consent issues, identity issues, underage mentions, age... gap............
There is no such thing. There are moments the King's presence seems to retreat from the forefront of his mind, yes; there are moments he could imagine Ozymandias is sleeping, or at least distracted. But it is all a polite fiction. They are two minds in one body, and every breath, every touch, is a shared experience.
He learned that one early on. Alone under the covers, he— heard? felt?— the catch of breath that wasn't quite his own, and thrilled with shame and hyperawareness: he was not only being watched, he was being felt. He hissed something humiliated and accusatory into the darkness of his empty bedroom; Ozymandias said something half-amused and half-apologetic about the perils of being sixteen. They didn't discuss it.
For months, they didn't discuss it. Ozymandias seemed to take pains to be unobtrusive. Until his fantasies started blurring in: memories of things Ozpin absolutely should not be able to imagine in such detail. He was curious enough to lean into it, to go poking for more, and unraveled more vivid scenes than he'd bargained for. (He was fascinated and disturbed by turns, and was met by simmering amusement, bittersweet nostalgia, and only very tired scraps of shame.)
It's difficult to say when things become more... direct. The blurring renders it all a mess; he often does not know when the King is in control and when he is simply becoming more and more the King. He knows that, by this point, he willingly submits to a touch that isn't quite his own. He eagerly steps aside for it. And he knows that he has started noticing girls.
The latter is the disorienting part: he's never taken that sort of interest in anyone. Living outside Kingdom walls, no one often bothered to imply that he should. Some people don't care terribly for romance, or for sex, and he is comfortable being one of these. Beacon is full of very beautiful and impressive people, he's aware, but this has never struck him as a very pressing issue.
And yet he can't stop noticing them. He snipes at the King about it, but as usual, blame rolls off him like water off a duck. They are left humiliatingly distractible and frustrated, a little through second year and certainly all through third, and it does nothing for Ozpin's building feeling of being trapped. The arrival of Glynda only makes it worse: he loses whatever comfort resignation had brought him. He is jittery and miserable with knowing that he is changing and being constantly reminded.
By fourth year, he despairs at how little of Ozpin is left. His voice is the King's voice, now. Glynda knows, and she looks at him like he's both a corpse and a murderer, and in some moments he cannot stand it. The teachers, the team, do not even care that Ozpin ever existed. To them, he is nothing more or less than a very young king.
They fight about it, he and Ozymandias. Fight is perhaps a strong word. Ozpin paces and snarls and cries, and the ancient King is ever-calm, ever-tired, ever-patient. Ozpin is sick of it. He is sick of knowing he is too deep into his destiny to ever get free. He is sick of knowing it's too late.
When the end-of-term dance comes, he damns the whole thing to hell and goes to get drunk. He is twenty, not ten thousand. He smothers away the protesting voice of Ozymandias, hates the knowledge that Oz lets him, and chokes on cheap liquor with a fierce satisfaction.
This is how Glynda finds him: spitefully drunk, rumpled and unsteady with it, loudly explaining historical minutiae to some starry-eyed freshman. Every time he nearly blurs a he into an I, talking about the Great War, he fumbles more spiked punch into his cup. The stuff is appalling. He's lost track of how many he's had.
He knows two things with conviction: this was a mistake, and he will not stop until he's unconscious. It feels like freedom. It feels great.
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It doesn't last long. Glynda is quick to realize that the situation isn't neat and tidy or easily compartmentalized. More and more often she finds herself addressing Ozpin when she expects to be speaking to the King, or the King when she thinks Ozpin must be in control. Sometimes there's no way to tell them apart at all, and increasingly it seems that they're both at the same time. Attempts to address it fall flat. Requests to speak with Ozpin are increasingly met with reassurances, given in solemn, stately tones, that he is Ozpin. Glynda isn't used to feeling so completely useless, but by the end of her first year the knowledge that there's nothing she can do to help is inescapable.
So she switches gears. Most people, she knows, look at them and can only see the King. She stubbornly refuses to see anyone but her childhood friend. She addresses them as Ozpin at all times and as 'the King' only when necessary. On days when the fragmentation is especially severe and there's no sign of her friend at all Glynda will occasionally, spitefully, call him Ozymandias with no more respect or formality than she'd show to any other student, and certainly no title. It doesn't help, and she knows that. She's come to realize that one day there won't be anything left to distinguish the two, and that the sooner she actually comes to terms with it the better it will be for both (all) of them. But she's young and she's stubborn and she has no idea how else to come to grips with the slow disappearance of her friend. For now, being petty helps.
Her teammates help, too. Nilla's easygoing personality means she strikes most as an odd choice for leader, but she's clever and observant and it turns out that 'easygoing' can also mean 'level headed'. Lucasta is charming and friendly in a way that Glynda often finds mystifying, and her talent for smoothing over difficult situations is nothing short of astonishing. Thalia is often harried and anxious, but she's kind and attentive and always reliable. Glynda accepts their team assignment knowing they'll need to work together and prepares herself to set aside her personal feelings to make it happen. She doesn't expect camaraderie to come so easily, nor run so deep, nor for the three of them to provide much needed warmth and stability on days when she's stressed over secrets that aren't hers to share. She works hard, throwing herself into her studies with the same single-minded intensity that had pushed her towards Beacon in the first place, but in between classes and assignments and missions she makes friends. She has fun.
The dance isn't something she's expecting to especially enjoy, but she attends with only the most mild of prompting from Nilla and Thalia. She's loses track of her team almost immediately - Lucasta arrived before the rest of them and Thalia and Nilla are quick to split off to find Argent and 'bother Keppel', respectively - but hardly finds herself alone. She catches up with friends, meets several students from Atlas, drinks more spiked punch than she probably should, and ends up agreeing when Alva insists on teaching her a specific dance.
It's immediately after said dance, while Glynda is caught up in a conversation with Alva and several classmates and straddling the line between pleasantly tipsy and simply drunk, that Nilla makes a sudden reappearance. Glynda turns to her, but any greeting she might have offered dies when she hears Nilla's muttered question.
"Is he gonna be okay?"
Glynda follows Nilla's gaze, curious, but that curiosity evaporates when she spots Ozpin, flocked by freshmen (not unusual) and looking like he's about to fall over (very unusual). Glynda heaves a sigh drains the rest of her drink (she probably shouldn't, but she does anyway) then passes the empty cup to Nilla with a promise to return shortly. She's not so tipsy that she can't walk in a straight line, but she does find herself wishing for a touch more sobriety or, at the very least, a dress with a back. Even so, she cuts through the cluster of freshmen with ease and walks right up to Ozpin, fearless as ever. She rests a hand on his arm, partly to catch his attention but mostly to forestall any further drinking. He's clearly had too much already.
"Ozpin." Her tone isn't unkind, but it's firm in a way that suggests she's not going to be happy if he ignores her. "Let's step outside for a bit." A walk to sober up would be enough, but right now she fully intends to drag him back to his room and dump him in his bed.
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"Glynda." He slurs her name with relish. She looks very good in that dress, and it swings his attention to her full-bore, his gaggle of freshmen forgotten. He is acutely aware of her shoulders, her neckline. This comes with the inexplicable urge to ask her to dance. Then he realizes that's the King, and that he is having none of the King just now, and he refocuses with visible effort. "By all means."
He gestures for her to lead on, and there is far more flourish in it than just-Ozpin ever would have managed. The look on his face is entirely too self-satisfied for just-Ozpin. But he allows himself to be steered readily enough, half a cup of horrid punch still in hand, walking with a tilt and a stumble. It simmers dread low in his chest, to so thoroughly lose his control, but what does it matter? He hasn't been in control for years now.
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But she doesn't have much time to focus on that, because she doesn't have much time to focus on anything except keeping the two of them upright. He's in no condition to walk a straight line and she's not quite sober enough to easily guide someone who totters with every step. They don't make it more than a few feet before she gives up and steps closer, slipping her arm through his and pressing their shoulders together. She tucks a stray strand of hair away as she does; her hairstyle tonight, a pair of asymmetrical braids wound into a loose bun, is both more complicated and less tidy than usual, and the silver chain clipped onto the style does nothing to hold anything in place.
"Do you usually go to parties to give history lessons?" Her tone is sarcastic, but edging towards amused despite herself. Belatedly, she reaches over with her free hand to try to snag that last cup of punch from him. She doesn't want him any drunker than he already is, and she definitely doesn't want him to spill it on her; her dress is a pale cream color that would stain in an instant.
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She snags the cup of punch, and it takes him several moments to realize it's no longer in his hand. Ozpin inspects her, and the stolen cup in her hand, for entirely too long a beat before he huffs a little laugh and leans more heavily upon her shoulder. He tips his head towards hers, so that his perpetually messy hair brushes her braids.
"I am going to insist upon better drinks, next time." It is very unclear what 'next time' he is picturing, but he looks very confident about it. "Beacon Academy," and he says it with such pride it's certainly not just-Ozpin behind the emotion, "is the best in the world. We can manage a better-- a selection of proper spirits."
He looks entirely ready to launch into an impassioned speech on just what the teenagers of Beacon should be drinking. If she doesn't stop him, she'll be subjected to an enthusiastic review of Remnant's wines and whiskeys, with all the experience of the King and all the clumsy eagerness of Ozpin. He is certainly Ozpin in the way he leans against her, happy and inelegant-- two things Ozymandias never seems to be.
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Still, he's making very loud commentary on subjects a student simply shouldn't know about. Glynda lets him talk, but she still hurries to usher him into the much emptier hallway outside the dance hall. It's quieter out here and his voice will carry more, but there are fewer people to hear.
"I'm sure the other students will appreciate the subtle notes of aged whiskey once it's been dumped into a bowl of fruit juice and soda." Surely Ozpin, even as drunk as he already is, sees the flaw in his plan. Still, the sharp edges of sarcasm have largely faded from her voice by now, replaced with more amusement and a relaxed sort of contentedness. She'd been a little aggravated by the prospect of escorting him away at first, but he's been so pleasant and cooperative it's all but impossible to hold on to that annoyance. "Now, do you think you can make it to you dorm, or do we need to find you a bench, first?"