alec rodero / d4. ( fin )

Alexander Gideon Rodero was born a gentleman, and a gentleman he stayed.

He was born in midsummer; it was late, or early depending on your definition of the word, somewhere past midnight but before one in the morning. The eldest of three consecutive boys, though, he never seemed to live up to his parents expectations the same way the others did. His was a family born of silk and lace, his father the son of a former peacekeepers family and his mother an old money socialite whose family made their money by taking advantage of Four's over-priced wine market, and the combination made for a lethal childhood, turned the three boys into adults long before they ever should have been.

They learned to idolize money and wealth, taught the importance of old-world elegance in a land where new money was abound, spending summers in the south of Four and the rest of the year training to be the very best that the nation had ever seen. And as often as they preached the importance of class, as much as their parents tried to shelter them inside their world of careful composure, there was no keeping those three boys in the sheltered community their parents loved so much.

They never make sense, the bonds between brothers, and for the male heirs to the Rodero family tree, the bond was nothing if not a study in contrasts.

Where the two younger were light, the eldest was darkness—but what is it, when the Golden Boy is not the sun-haloed and honey-tinged son but the one who personifies old-world elegance and wears the family motto excellence above all with perfect grace? This is the problem between Alec and his brother; for a time though, it is also their salvation. Where Alec was a cavalier child, taught abuse before affection and what it meant to fail before he even knew the word fly, his brothers were long hailed as the heirs he was meant to be. It never made any sense, why their parents not just favored the younger sons, but constantly berated the elder. Maybe it was because for all the self-loathing his parents instilled in him, Alec always fought on his own behalf.

A reckless young man was once a rebellious young boy, and for that, they could never love him.

But his brother—Oh, the darling brother. How he loved them. In spite of every nasty thing his parents had to say about Alec, his brothers never truly felt the same. That was the thing about contrasts—at some point, they have to meet in the middle, and for the three Rodero brothers, that center was the weight of their last name, because for all that their parents hailed their younger sons, they all knew criticism far better than they knew praise.

And for every praise they sung about his brothers, they had to balance it with enough cruelty to keep him in line.

That was the thing about contrasts; they were never the same—and where cruelty made docile creatures of his brothers, it only spurned Alec further towards mischief.

But there was an odd kind of darkness that spanned between Alec and his younger brothers as time pushed on, an expanse of years and a desire to impress their parents that never could quite be closed. And as Alec spent his early years staring down into the abyss that separated him from the rest of his family, he wore his champagne-smeared composure well. He should have known that a life of golden tassels and soft lips making plans for the masses wouldn’t be for him when he’d been ten wanted to explore the historical site near their hotel and his mother refused to leave the safety of their private beach, should have known when he tried to befriend a middle-class girl in his class at school and his father told him We don’t associate with that sort and enrolled him in the all boys boarding school just an hour away, the one with even better career training and too much money to waste.

But pomp and circumstance had taught Alec that there was little other way to live. Alec was young, and money had taught him a selfishness that he hadn’t the faintest idea how to let go of quite yet.

But his time came, finally, in that all-boys boarding school by the sea, where violence was second nature and nurture all in the same breath. There he finally learned more about the world outside of his home. He’d always been taught that there was a hierarchy, but that the hierarchy was beloved, that the masses didn’t mind having people like the Rodero's, that his kind of family was born to make all of their decisions for the masses–at thirteen he learned that he wasn’t really a god, but just a boy who’d been taught he held some false semblance of divinity.

At fourteen he started to rise up, slipping from the shackles his parents had put on him, slowly but surely becoming the man that the world would need him to become. Then at fifteen, for the first time, the world showed him the fate it had planned for him: the light in his hands, the weapon against this blind oppression he was to become.

He was a natural born weapon.

But the boys whose blood had turned into a weapon wasn’t ready to be a man, not quite yet, and when he ran to his brothers they looked at him with the same disdain they’d long ago turned on the doped up masses. They were wealthy, didn't need the glory of the games to be revered in Four, and the fact that Alec had even been sent to that school in their first place had nearly been the last straw with them. The idea that he was good at it? That he could get another boy in a headlock in five seconds flat, choke him out before he could even say mercy? When Alec saw that look in his brothers' eyes he knew that even though they were gone; their parents' world had sucked them in and turned them into something he’d never be able to recognize as family again.

Not really.

Not like they had before.

And especially not when he took his training and tried to make sure that others could learn it just as well. He didn't keep his head down, not really, but he tried, wanted more than anything to try learn what it was to be a soldier, figure out what it would mean to be a leader.

And then, just like that, for all that he’d loved his brothers—he hated them.

It’s strange now, reconciling the prejudiced boy that he once was with the noble creature that Alec is now. For a boy that spent half of his life being told that superiority was the key to life, that money and power went hand in hand and that power was the most important thing in his life, Alec has turned out completely different from the man his parents were grooming him to become.

For all the ways they taught him to be divine, he redefined it all, turned himself into one of the gods his parents would never be able to become: he won’t let them.