I Wanna Tell You A Story About A Beautiful Baby Girl And The Parents Who Swore Theyd Die To Protect Her.

“I wanna tell you a story about a beautiful baby girl and the parents who swore they’d die to protect her.”

ship aesthetics : klaus mikaelson and hayley marshall

A Defense of Guren Ichinose

Everyone on here is hoping he’ll atone for his sins, that he’ll pay for what he did, that he suffers because of all the hurt he caused.

He knows.

He’s suffered.

Bro’s been fuckin doing that for years.

All of catastrophe at 16, Guren’s entire goal is to save the world. To stop the catastrophe. No matter what it took. He never knew he’d be the one to end the world. Up until the end he’s saying with blood coming out of his mouth, “We… are going… to halt the catastrophe.” But that didn’t happen.

We’ve known from the beginning. Noya always told him, it’s in the manga, he would destroy the world by loving too much. That it would be weakness to do so, that he was too nice. 

“You know, the kinder you are, the further you’ll fall.”

Mahiru killed his friends, she told him that the seraph of the end would bring them back, if she hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t have known, he wouldn’t have done it. But she knew if he didn’t that the Hiragis would come in and do the same thing, and the world would end anyway.

For when Shinya died he forbid Guren from giving up on life. Forbidding Guren from letting his demon take over, Guren literally staring at Mahiru after she’d slaughtered everyone he loved and refusing to kill her because “shinya would be mad”. He would have just given up and let Noya take him over. But Shinya wouldn’t let him.

He paid with his humanity, his sanity, his dignity, his own conscience. He would much rather give his life to fix it all.

“If this was a dream, Guren wanted it to end. For the last ten years his one wish had been to wake up from the nightmare that was his life, but that nightmare never seemed to end. It only got worse.”

Guren Ichinose pays for what he’s done every time Shinya looks at him, every time Shinya asks what’s wrong, every time he can’t answer. He paid the moment he realized he wouldn’t be able to get close to the friends he’d ended the world to keep. He paid the moment he tried to count how many heartbeats Shinya had left and took his demon’s power to hear it louder because he couldn’t let Shinya know that he cared but he did so much.

Guren Ichinose paid for it when Ferid threatened to kill the unconscious Shinya again and he knew that if Shinya was dead none of it would matter at all, he paid when he gave up his dignity and begged for Ferid to let Shinya go.

Guren Ichinose paid for it when he held Shinya unconscious and cried “It’s my fault… I’m sorry, I… I just wanted a little more time with you and the others. Is that so wrong? Maybe it is. Could you ever forgive me?” And knew that he could never say it out loud.

Guren Ichinose paid when he called himself a real mass murderer, the worst, most despicable killer in history. He paid when he looked at the ruined world and ruled that he had no right to cry.

“He had no right to cry. He was the one who had chosen all of this. He had brought them back. He had violated the taboo. And the world had ended. It had been his choice He had known this would happen and he had done it anyway. He had no one to blame but himself. It was all his fault.

And if he ever told anyone what he had done, if Shinya and the others ever found out, they might disappear again, forever. So he could never speak of it again. He could never complain. Never ask for advice. Could never even appear troubled…. so Guren could never again wrestle with his guilt. He could never cry again for what he had done. This would have to be the last time. This was the last time he would ever have the privelege of crying.

He howled, beating his fists against the earth, choking on his own despair. His cries echoed across the beautiful night sky. But there was no one left to hear him. Everyone was dead. And Guren had killed them.

Guren cried until his throat was ragged, then got back to his feet. His tears had already dried, but he scrubbed his cheeks again and again to make sure no evidence was left. He drew in a deep breath. Let it out again. He was calm now. Ready to shoulder the burden of his guilt.

He thrust out his chin, returned to the elevator, and hoisted his friend over his shoulder. “Shinya, it’s time to live.”

He injects himself with enough sedatives after that to kill an elephant and wants to sleep forever when he wakes up, when he wakes up to see all of them going “wtf the world ended” and he has to fake surprise, he has to calculate which lies to give and he worries that Shinya knows too much, when he’s panicking. When Shinya says “good morning, sleeping beauty” to him and he can’t react too strongly because he’s supposed to pretend. When he’s freaking out going “Shinya’s too smart, Shinya knows me too well, Shinya knows I’m lying and how do I craft another lie underneath it. I already know what you’re going to tell me I did all of it it’s all my fault and I can’t let you know and I have to pretend that I’m mad at someone else. And I have to pretend like everything isn’t different. And I love my friends so much and I have them back but now i have this giant burden and I can’t betray anything. And they’re telling me to save the world when I was the one who broke it.

When he says how the hell is he supposed to keep a secret from Shinya? How could he ever do it?

The only time when you get to see how much it truly hurts him is in Resurrection at 19. In Vampire Reign, he’s so used to keeping it all inside but he’s still hurting just as bad- you can see it because he knows he’s personally responsible for every second of hurt that everyone around him. He takes all that responsibility and the full weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s trying so hard to fix it and he’s completely willing to give up his own happiness for it, to save his friends and to save the world even if it isn’t his to be happy in anymore. Because it really is his job.

You can tell that’s still exactly how he feels in vampire reign when even after they realize the world would have ended anyway, he still insists that it’s his fault and his responsibility. 

When Shinoa attacks him for using Yu and Guren says “I wouldn’t mind if it was you who killed me.” When he watches Shinya from the other side of the jail cell and lets Shinya cry and point his gun at Guren and Guren says go ahead and kill me because he knows he can’t try to explain his actions. When Shinya says “if you weren’t possessed by your demon then how am I supposed to forgive you” And Guren has to lie and say he wasn’t. Because if they knew about Mahiru they’d die. Guren has to let Shinya hate him. And that’s probably just himself projecting punishment onto himself for what he did.

When he has to attack his own squad when the reach the mansion to knock them out and stop them from figuring it out. When he stares at Shinya’s unconsious body and he’s completely expressionless but you know how terrible he must feel.

When he nearly breaks down in book 14 when his squad keeps asking questions, because they’re getting too close, and he can’t let himself show too much emotion because they’d figure it out but he’s begging them to stop, stop thinking because with one word they could turn to dust.

When Shinya cries out for him in chapter 83 and Guren says “I will always drown in my own power to save you.”

Not to mention the fact that Guren continues to be an atheist even after literally fooling with angels, devils, demons, divine punishment-

He remains saying there is no god in a world so terrible, staring at literal divine beings.

Guren has fucking paid for his sin.

betrayal