Just based on the energy and how it mixes, this connection really confuses me. It’s a little lopsided as Baekhyun, who contributes Death to the relationship, seems to hold a higher awareness over Chanyeol like he’s more aware of what’s going on in Chanyeol’s mind, especially when it comes to stress and emotional turmoil. The reason this confuses me so much is that Chanyeol is contributing the King of Swords, an act of being very mentally clear, aware, and in control.

The King of Swords is very surface level, very conscious and more focused on what he can see and touch — anything else is none of his concern. Death, on the other hand, in relation to Scorpio, is connected to the deepest aspects of the subconscious mind. They are at complete opposite ends, but Death can see beyond the image of the King of Swords. The King, however, can not see much of Death at all. 

This is shown with how Baekhyun sees Chanyeol as the 9 of Swords, an image depicting someone waking up from a nightmare associated with past actions or events. A lot of times the man in the 9 of Swords is described as not even knowing that his nightmare is related to past trauma, hence why the swords he collected in battle from killing other people are hung over his bed, yet he doesn’t take them down after the nightmares. It’s stress and disturbance of the conscious mind through the subconscious mind which is not being consciously perceived. Very interesting. It’s like Chanyeol could be stressed out and not really know why, but it’s very obvious to Baekhyun where the stress is coming from and he tries to present Death, present the origin of the stress in order to help him fix it… but, like I said, Chanyeol can’t see Death.

Then you have Chanyeol over there seeing Baekhyun as the 5 of Swords, as… half of him, like half of his awareness. It’s hard to explain how I was seeing this play out, but it’s almost like the King of Swords thinks the mystical abilities of Death is actually some kind of magic trick, an illusion or something to entertain him. It’s not being perceived as negative or anything, it’s more like if Chanyeol is upset and he’s doing a good job at hiding it, even hiding it from himself, but when Baekhyun calls him out on it, he won’t assume that he’s being easily read by Baekhyun, he’ll think that it was just a lucky guess, a magic trick that caught him in the moment. He’s almost dismissive of it.

Their energy mixes together as the 10 of Wands, which further confuses me because it’s not really good but it’s not bad either. There’s a lot of tension because it’s lopsided, but it’s lopsided on different levels, BUT this imbalance within different levels of consciousness actually creates a balance between them as a whole. So, if you were to think of each of the wands shown in the 10 of Wands as a different level of awareness where they are not balanced, both overpowering the other on every other Wand, then at the point where the Wands come together in the man’s arms creates this perfect balance where they can act as one, but only in those moments where they are literally being held together and have to consciously work together.

So, it’s a good relationship. There’s tension, but nothing that I would assume contributes to any negative or aggressive energy between them. They just have very different modes of processing what they observe and very different ways of expressing themselves as if one operates from intuition while the other operates from intellect. As long as they choose to balance, they can work really well together, but if they are not making the effort, the Wands in the 10 of Wands are essentially dropped on the floor and have to be cleaned up.