Chapter Text
You were dead. Drautos saw you die out on that battlefield. He saw you get taken down. He saw how no one could make it to you in time. You had been overwhelmed by the enemy and try as he might, he couldn't save you. Just one more name to add to the list of people he couldn't save.
The thing was though, your body had disappeared, vanished. What they had buried in the ground the day of your funeral was simply an empty casket, as empty and hollow as Drautos felt.
Just when he had thought he had finally found some crumb of happiness it was violently ripped from his hands. He was once again left with nothing.
The days after your death went by in a muddy blur. Drautos had continued to do his job as he always had, not letting the death of one of his glaives knock him off course. It's just how it was here, you never knew who would come back and who would stay on the battlefield forever.
A small piece of him was convinced that you hadn't died that day. He never saw your body after all, he only saw you go down. You could still be out there just waiting for him to find you. Or you could be out there bleeding out dying a slow and painful death unable to do anything about it. Maybe you were taken prisoner for one reason or another. The possibilities were endless and they tortured him day in and day out.
Drautos sighed as he plopped into his office chair and stared dead eyed at the papers on his desk. There wasn't anything he could do about it. He couldn't sound the call and go searching for a single Glaive that had gone MIA. Not for one, maybe for a good handful but not for one. Instead Drautos would soldier on as he always had as the ghosts of the dead followed him behind.
His life would never be the same with you gone. He didn't think he could break even more than he already has. Drautos felt a tear slip down his check. He clenched his jaw and his fist in a vain attempt to keep the dam from breaking. But it was too late, cracks had been forming in it for years and he couldn't remember the last time he truly cried.
There Drautos sat, doubled over, teeth clenched as he silently sobbed and silently screamed through his clenched teeth. It was too much. It was all too much. What was he supposed to do?! Hasn't he suffered enough?! Can't he have one thing that is his and his alone that won't get snatched away from him?! Why was he even still here?! Just to suffer?! To be the universe's jester?! To be the clown to the gods?!
He suddenly flipped his heavy wouldn't desk in a fit of emotion and rage.
He stood there in the middle of his office, panting from exertion, with tears flowing down his face. His destructive tendencies were coming out.
His mind was running a million miles an hour with a billion thoughts that cut and burned him. He was being shouted self-destructive and Impulsive ideas. Just burn it all down. Destroy everything and then destroy yourself.
But instead of following along with those ideas Drautos just collapsed into a heap on the floor.
That's where he stayed, sobbing through the night.
Every now and then a glaive would quietly walk up to the office door and check for any noise. If they heard noise they would go about their business and leave their poor broken Captain alone. It was only if they didn't hear anything would they disturb his grieving process.
The next day Drautos acted as if nothing had happened and that his eyes weren't red from crying all night.
Back to business as usual.