I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 218

Amy Pullman had thought she had seen everything in her twenty-three years of being a therapist but today changed that rather dramatically. It was a very good thing that Leo Blaze was the last of her clients for the day because she couldn’t imagine being able to focus on anyone else after that.

She drove home in a daze still unable to comprehend it all. Magic was real. More to the point, it was capable of having people travel across dimensions. That was even more unbelievable than someone setting themselves on fire without anything to light the flames or getting hurt!

The craziest thing about all of this was that she believed him. Given what she had seen from that very resistant, very troubled young man, what he said made more sense than anything she could come up with.

Leo—or should she say Rukelion—hadn’t been able to open up to her not only because he was suppressing things but because he was afraid she wouldn’t believe him. It was fairly unbelievable. A fictional character her daughter Callie was obsessed with not only existed but had been coming to her office for months acting like a normal (albeit mentally ill) person.

How was Amy supposed to come up with a treatment plan for someone who had been through something no one else in the world had? She hadn’t even heard much of what he went through yet but what she did know was bad.

He was only a few years older than Callie and he had been through so much. What he had told her so far was horrific.

At twelve years old after watching his entire family get impaled on spikes in an instant he had to make the split-second decision to climb under a giant monster plant, hurting himself in the process, and play dead so he would live another day. As far as he was aware, he was the only survivor of a mass genocide.

Then he went and immediately suppressed as much as possible driven only by thoughts of revenge to keep him sane. He was an extremely meticulous, goal-oriented person even now—she had noticed that from what little he said about himself—but it seemed that had started early.

Rukelion hadn’t had the chance to be a child from the moment he decided to shoulder what he saw as his responsibility to avenge his country. This wasn’t healthy but Amy had to acknowledge that he had come from a different world than her. He already admitted the morality there wasn’t like it was here.

He had been incredibly determined, first by following those mercenaries around to watch them train after they refused and then by becoming strong enough to beat them all in less than three years. All while doing heavy farm chores every day in order to pay for his room and board.

From what Amy understood, he was kept going partly by his desire for revenge and partly because of Daisy. The woman from earth whose soul ended up inside a side character from the novel world he was from while her true body was in a coma.

The one he eventually married only to watch her die in front of him. She had no idea how he had managed to follow his wife’s soul here using magic but she supposed she would find out sooner or later.

Rukelion was heavily dependent on her. Unhealthily so. Amy had always thought that given the strange nature of their relationship but it made more sense knowing they had been married before. He had loved her for a very long time and wasn’t willing to let her go after losing everyone else.

Coming to another world for the person you loved was quite the dedication. Honestly, it was heartbreaking to think about.

That kid had been through more than any adult Amy had ever heard of and she still hardly knew anything. Twenty-one years old and had already lost his entire family twice, his identity, his homeland, and even his home world. No wonder he was randomly bursting into flame.

She was concerned about continuing to treat him since her office wasn’t flameproof but she felt like she couldn’t turn him away. Not when he was finally opening up to her and wanted to get better.

Amy could never turn someone away who genuinely wanted to improve their situation, no matter what the motivations behind it were. So she was going to have to find a way to work with this broken fictional character like she would any other client.

Knowing more about his world would help her understand him better. She was going to have to talk to her daughter.

She had never understood the girl’s love of all things fictional and how much time, money, and emotional effort she invested into fandom. Callie was heavily involved in Tumblr, went to conventions, and wrote fanfiction. She cared more about fictional people than real ones a lot of the time.

This concerned Amy but right now it would be useful for once. She knocked on Callie’s door as soon as she got home.

“Callie? Can I come in?”

“I’m in the middle of something, Mom!”

“I only want to borrow a book from you. It won’t take long,” Amy promised.

The door unlocked and Callie poked her head out curiously. “You never read what I like to read. Which book do you want to borrow? What changed your mind? Did somebody recommend something to you?”

“Sort of. I want to borrow your copy of Down in Flames.”

The girl’s eyes lit up and she squealed. “Ooh that’s my favorite! You have to talk to me about it once you’re done. I’ve written sooooo much fanfiction and drawn fanart for it too. I can’t wait for the movie to come out in a few weeks!

“Even better, the prequel is getting released just in time for my birthday in October. I would have read it anyway but I’ve been dying from anticipation ever since I found out it’s about my favorite character.”

Callie had talked about the prequel before but Amy couldn’t recall who it was supposed to be about. “Remind me who that is.”

Her daughter rolled her eyes. “Ugh, Mom don’t you ever listen? I talk about him all the time! My poor misunderstood baby Rukelion Blaze. I swear, if the author doesn’t do him justice this time, the fandom is going to riot.”

So he was getting a prequel, huh? Did he know about this? Did it have anything to do with how he found out about the author? This raised a lot of questions but it might provide some answers as well. Unfortunately, Amy knew she wouldn’t be able to read it for months.

“Do him justice?” Amy asked in confusion.

“Yeah! He’s so two-dimensional in Down in Flames even though the rest of the characters are totally well-rounded. His main personality traits are ‘evil’ and ‘crazy’ and he isn’t given much of a backstory for why he ended up losing his mind,” Callie explained.

“There’s a Justice for Rukelion movement within the fandom because we thought he deserved so much better. We’re all dying to know why he actually ended up like that but at the same time we’re kind of afraid the author is going to botch it since she already screwed up with him in the first book. I really hope she redeems herself.”

So in the book he had lost his mind. The poor kid seemed about halfway there at this point though he was holding on astonishingly well all things considering.

“He’s the villain, right?”

“Yes but it’s totally not his fault! If I had gone through what he had I would have wanted to burn the world down too,” Callie said vehemently. “Poor thing. He deserves so much better. That’s where the fanfic writers come in. We can do whatever we want with existing characters.

“I’ve actually written a fair amount of fanfic about him myself. I made some fanart about what I imagined his family to be like too. It’s not my best work but I still think it turned out okay. Want to see it?”

Amy hadn’t heard her daughter talk this animatedly about anything in a while. This was the sort of stuff she spent all her time locked up in her room doing so she needed to show an interest.

“Sure. I’d love to see it.”

Callie gestured for her to come in and Amy stood behind her desk as she sat back down and pulled things up on her computer. Every time she came in here she was a bit overwhelmed by all of the clashing colors of the posters covering nearly every spare inch of wall. You could hardly see the light blue paint beneath poking out here and there.

There were Funko Pop figures lined up on every available surface too and she had two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves squished together in a corner. Even that wasn’t enough to hold all of her books. There were additional stacks scattered here and there on the floor or her desk.

She often wondered how Callie could stand all of the clutter. But to each their own.

“Here,” the girl said proudly. “This got a lot of attention in the fandom. I kind of started a trend. A ton of people started writing fanfic about his family before everything went down because of it. That’s my main contribution to the fandom. Pretty neat, huh?”

Amy stared at the drawing in disbelief. The general ages, features, and genders matched what Rukelion had told her perfectly.

His mother was a regal woman with a kind smile and blonde hair with blue eyes. The rest of the family’s hair was bright red and both his father and his little sister had the same eyes he did. One of his brothers’ eyes were blue and the other’s were hazel.

How would Callie have known? This didn’t make any sense!