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I’d like to start by giving one of my biggest hcs when interpreting chaltan as romantic. They don’t say ‘I love you’. Now I know that's probably not what you want to hear, but just listen.
In some ways, chaltan reminds me of andriel from the book series All For the Game (The foxhole court, etc.). If you haven’t read it, the link on ‘andriel’ will take you to a fanart of the ship and the ‘All For the Game’ link will take you to a fantasticfiction page with the description and publication info.
The author, Nora Sakovic, has said that she doesn’t think Andrew and Neil would ever say ‘I love you’. (You can find the link to that post here if you’re curious.) I believe it’s the same concept for chaltan.
Because Altan was on Speer for so few years (and even then it wasn’t very pleasant was it?) and throughout his life he was used as a weapon, I feel like he has a very fucked up sense of ‘love’. The people he thought he ‘loved’ never really cared for him at all, they wanted the phoenix. And so when Chaghan rolls around and Altan gets attached to him, he doesn’t know what to call it. Maybe he tried (or maybe not) to love at first, but he’s so full of hatred and anger that the word “love” has lost its meaning. He cares for people, the Cike for example, but he can’t get too attached. It’s death or a fate infinitely worse than it. When Chaghan shows up and he feels something else, he shuts it out. It can’t be love. It can’t.
And I think he will never actually admit to himself that it is. It’s bad enough that he cares for Chaghan as much as he does, but for it to be love, something so foreign and tainted for him? No.
But I also think that there’s times where maybe he lets himself think it’ll be okay if he is in love. Times like when he’s kissing Chaghan and it feels the world stopped, or times when Chaghan is there to wordlessly comfort him without ever making him feel weak.
He shuts down thoughts quickly and locks them away. It’s not okay and it never will be okay to be in love. For him, love is pain and death and destruction. It causes wars and suffering, and he has to be steady.
He has to stay steady for the Cike and everyone counting on him.
Headcanon 2: Injuries and comfort
Now, neither Chaghan nor Altan are the type to kiss injuries better. They don’t have the time to waste on that, and it’s pointless anyway. If either one of them gets hurt, they go to a doctor or any person who is trained to help.
However, sometimes right after a battle when they’re all exhausted and the extent of the injuries aren’t bad, then they’ll help each other.
If Chaghan got hurt, Altan would help quietly. He would rinse it out, then wrap some bandages around the injury (if it’s a cut or something of the sort) and he wouldn’t speak.
What he would do, though, is give Chaghan this look. A pointed look conveying many messages at once.
You’ll be okay. Please try and avoid injuries when possible, we need you and Qara in good condition. I don’t like seeing you hurt.
Chaghan loves that look because it shows a softer side of Altan only he gets to see.
Now if Altan got hurt… that’s a different story.
His pain tolerance is very high so injuries are more of an inconvenience to him. He gets injured all the time, so it’s mostly not a big deal. Chaghan would send him a look asking if he was fine, and let it slide when he nodded in return.
It’s only when things are bad that he offers any sort of comfort. He’s better at dealing with Altan angry rather than hurt, but he does his best.
When I say comfort though, I really don’t mean much. I don’t think Altan would appreciate being babied or having people underestimate what he’s made of.
So Chaghan does small things.
He changes bandages instead of nurses because he “believes they are incompetent”. He’s just slightly more careful when touching near broken bones. But most importantly, he doesn’t treat him any different. As soon as he’s able to stand, he helps him train, they make plans, they go on missions. But one thing he never does, is change his attitude.
And Altan would never say it out loud, but Chaghan acting so indifferent yet still caring about him was the best form of comfort he could receive.
Oh, one more thing. If Chaghan ever got badly injured, maybe Altan would kiss him just a bit harder than usual as “motivation” to get back on his feet.
You wouldn’t hear it from him though.
Altan comparison 1:
Tpw is about cycles. Quoting Twenty One Pilots here, “this is a story about cycles, and trying to break them.
about discerning between external and internal attacks.
and about balance.
a balance between being saved by a friend,
and saving yourself.”
I think this very much applies to tpw, especially since Kuang made such a big point about cycles in The Burning God.
One thing that stuck out to me after finishing tbg was just how much Rin became like Altan. If anyone has seen/read Bungou Stray Dogs they remind me a lot of the (dubbed by some) cycle of abuse. If you haven’t seen it, dw! This post explains it. If you don’t want to read it that’s fine too.
Brief run down, 4 characters in a cycle of abuse. Mori, a mentor to Dazai, manipulated him, used him, encouraged extremely unhealthy and very concerning behavior. Dazai, in turn, became a mentor to Aku. And he manipulated Aku, emotionally mostly. Made him dependent on his approval and never gave it. As the op put it, he was molded into a rabid dog and Dazai had the leash. Moving on, Aku eventually became a mentor of sorts to Kyouka. Same deal. Emotional manipulation, made her a weapon, abused her. She’s under better care now, and hopefully that breaks the cycle. How does this relate to tpw? Let me explain.
Altan and Rin.
Altan, when Rin met him in the Cike, was losing it. He was irrational, he had to be in control, he wanted to watch the world burn, he was so incredibly full of bloodlust it clouded his judgment.
Rin has been angry for a while, she absolutely had reason to be, but she wasn’t near the point Altan was.
Chaghan later points out how similar she was to him. She denies it.
And yet she is like him. As the story progresses, but especially towards the end of tbg, it’s like Altan all over again.
He was shaped by many people to be a weapon, to be powerful, to burn. He passed this onto Rin.
He passed his anger onto her, and clearly he made a huge impact on her. She sees him in visions even in tbg. This reminds me so much of the cycle of abuse in bsd.
Altan passed on characteristics of his to Rin which eventually made her into another version of him even if she didn’t realize it. At the end of tbg (SPOILERS!!)
--when she kills herself, it’s to end a cycle.
And just like in bsd, it’s always been about cycles. She repeated his history, went down his same path. Yes, she made some different choices, but wasn’t it all the same in the end? In the end when she killed Venka because she thought she betrayed her. When she blamed Kitay for being a traitor. When she went completely off the rails. Was this not Altan all over again?—
In bsd (I haven’t read the manga so my apologies if I get this wrong) the cycle ends with Kyouka joining the ADA and accepting herself (for those confused, I can assure you The ADA is a better place than where she was).
In tpw, the cycle ends with Rin realizing that this needs to stop, and doing what needs to be done. She sees all the hurt in the past that came from this cycle she’s trapped in, and she knows it has to end.
This was probably very confusing especially if you haven’t seen/read Bungou Stray Dogs, but I was honestly just very interested in all the cycles in The Poppy War and I thought of bsd in the process and tried to put it into words. BACK TO CHALTAN NOW SORRY!!
Headcanon 3: Nightmares
Okay well back to the point of this thought dump.
Anther hc of mine is about Chaltan and how they deal with nightmares.
This might be but self indulgent, but I like to believe they did (literally) sleep together after they “got together” (see my thoughts on Altan and love for now, I’ll elaborate later).
So, naturally, now that I’ve explained about Rin and Altan, this might make more sense to say.
Rin has nightmares, that much is very clear. She gets paranoid too and has to sleep in shifts with Kitay while one of them guards the other. If she is so much like Altan, then could Altan have the same problems?
I, for one, think so.
I also think that both he and Chaghan are very light sleepers, mostly due to the nature of their profession, which requires them to be on edge. Naturally, this means that if one of them wakes up, so does the other.
I like to believe that there were times when Altan woke up from a nightmare (Speer, the experiments, you name it) and tried to calm himself down. Tried to regulate his uneven breathing, tried to make sure he didn’t gasp as he woke, to make sure he didn’t wake up Chaghan.
But he almost always did.
Personally, I also think Chaltan aren’t really the type to be really into pda. Rather, I think they’d like to keep their relationship private. But also, they just aren’t touchy feely people.
But these nights, the ones spent lying awake in the dark while one of them was suffering, these nights were different. And they never spoke of what they did on those nights.
They were some of the very few moments where they let themselves just comfort and care and love (even if Altan wasn’t—and likely would never be—able to accept it.)
When Altan woke up from a nightmare, Chaghan woke up too. He never asked what they were about, he didn’t need to. All he would do was simply pull Altan against him and just hold him until they fell asleep, pressing soft kisses to his head.
No words, no empty promises everything would be okay, nothing except the comfort of being held by someone else.
And yet, in the mornings, he would push Chaghan away and pretend it never happened. It was better to let himself think he dreamt it rather than admit to himself that he let himself be that weak in front of another person.
Chaghan never said anything about it, he wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up. And it tore him up inside, watching Altan wake up and try not to scream, watching the man he loves tremble in fear of whatever hell his mind was putting him through. But he couldn’t do anything to help, so he held him tight and hoped it was enough.
It never was.
The nightmares never went away, and soon enough—maybe after he broke the dam, maybe before—Chaghan started getting them too.