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She is a being meant for war, she is something cruel, her temper only stopped when He steps in. She is feared, known for her blades and her willingness to go after any man that goes after a woman. She is not named, not like He is but She is She all the same, with Him following in her footsteps. What a powerful woman, they whisper, to have a man like that following in her footsteps - what the Taverns said of Ban and ?
“You’ll never be wanted, you’ll never be necessary.”
Jericho has spent her entire life trying to be useful for other people. First it was her parents and she doesn't like to think about that, about what happened between, then the holy knights, giving everything to just be something more than herself, and now she follows Ban, trying to help him find his lost partner. It isn’t so bad, most of the time at least, with him guiding her and occasionally teaching her when he gets in the mood, but sometimes she feels terribly lonely.
She is used to being alone, used to the aching feeling in her chest, eating at her and making her feel so scared, so terrified of what could be her fault. She downs it with drinking most times, ignoring the way that Ban always watches her, always has his eyes where she is (he does it to the other people that he cares about, but it’s somehow different with her) but especially if she’s fighting someone.
In the same breath as he used to insult her, Ban calls her worthy of her name, worthy of her strength when something makes her angry enough to do something about. In the same breath that Ban uses to annoy her, he uses when he is sleeping, breathing soft and even. Sometimes he calls her worthy (only when other people do not). There is a certain sacredness to the way that act around each other, tied together by this (stupid, painful) mission to find Ban’s lost lover. Ban does not talk of Elaine often but once he said “She’d probably tell me that she wanted a pet knight if she saw the way you fought.”
It’s an honor (right?) to be compared to Ban’s lost love but sometimes when they’ve fallen asleep next to each other, his even breathing the only thing keeping her from screaming after a nightmare, she wishes that the quest was anything else.
It does not matter in the end because she is only useful and in her use she is able to find her worth, even when her brother tells her anything else (when Ban heard the first time what her brother said to her, he’d raged for a long while and gently promised her “never again (my) knight, never fucking again”)
Jericho named herself after the moon, after the only thing that she had for a very long time. She wants to ask Ban, sometimes what his name means, and if it is sacred to him, if he ever heard himself as anything else and how felt for him. She knows that his name means comrade, means trusted and isn’t a funny thing for a thief to be something that is trusted? Does the thief even know what his name means?
“If you ever wake me up with cold water ever again, I am going to take your entrails and strangle you with them until you stay dead.” She isn’t shouting, not like she does when she’s playing and Ban’s face whitens as he realizes that she’s serious. She takes a step forwards, and then another, and then she’s chasing him around the room, holding a knife, and screaming of betrayal.
Ban laughs when she gets him in the shoulder, using the momentum on her body to flip her over and hold her own, knife still sticking out of his body. “If you calm your shit and stop trying to kill me, then I let you up, kay knight?” She thrashes under him and promptly tries to bite his nose. He laughs, unsurprised when she uses the momentum to get free and wrench the knife out of his shoulder, immediately going back to chasing him with it. He cackles, jumping over a chair to avoid a (concerningly accurate) thrown sword.
“Have you considered not scaring me awake, fucker?” She snaps, jumping off the chair and making Ban laugh. “Where would the fun in that be?” He watches the way she seems to snap, going from playfully trying to kill him to actually wanting him dead in a ditch. Jericho is fun , more so then almost anyone else because she trusts him to take care of himself and heal after a fight, meaning that she never holds back.
In the end he manages to steal the knife from her and pin her, even as they’re both laughing and she’s still reaching for the knife and in a second she remembers that this will have to end. She doen’t let it show on her face because she doesn’t want to think about it anymore (Ban knows anyways, he has no plans to let his knight go anywhere) so she doesn’t, lets herself laugh and reach for the knife as if to poke his eye out.
He gets off of her, tucking the knife into his pocket. She notes it for later, so that if she needs one mid fight she can just take it from him. Pulling her leg to her head and arms across her body, she stretches in the same way that she does every morning, carefully and without fail. Ban watches her do it every morning with a horrified look on his face.
“How you do that?” He asks, watching the way she lowers into the splits and twists her waist. “I was classically trained as a ballet dancer for years and now I’m using those skills to do everything that my parents and that fucking instructor would have hated.” He laughs, the sound a vicious cackle. “Fuck yeah,” Ban says lazily, “fuck those assholes.”
“Why are they so mean to you?” Her baby brother asks her and she does not have an answer. She pulls him closer and lets her breathing even out, ignoring the pain on her body because it she does not matter.
She lets herself laugh as she bends into a bridge, “fuck all those assholes,” she agrees, enjoying the feeling of her body loosening and becoming more comfortable. Stretching every morning is the only time that she feels comfortable in her body, letting herself loosen and finding the beauty in the efficiency of her actions.
“Hello? Room service.” Ban’s eyes meet Jericho’s and they share an empathetic ‘fuck!’
(they get kicked out of the inn (again))
“I can feel her again,” Ban mumbles, one day on the road, and then veers off of it entirely. She sighs, following after him carefully. As she catches up to him, she realizes that he has a very familiar look on his face, the same look he has when she’s trying to kill him in the mornings, the same look he has when they’re falling asleep at her, her curled into him because she doesn’t like being cold, the same look he has when he looks at the little locket he has of Elaine.
Something inside of Jericho shatters just a little bit because he’s going to find Elaine today and then she won’t be needed anymore, there will be no use to her anymore. Jericho needs to be useful and she’s been useful to Ban. Without Ban how will she have use, how will she be good enough all on her own? The idea makes her sick and she tries her best not to think about it.
“This way,” ban says softly, sticking his nose up in the air and just feeling for his lost lover. His knight follows behind him, completely silent for the first time in days. He chances a look and realizes that she hasn’t figured it out yet, that she’s staying with both of them. He meant what he said that day, when he told her that if Elaine were to meet her, she’d be demanding a pet knight.
Jericho lets herself be lost in her movements, in the steady pace of her walking, not thinking just being, her existence for once, at a peace for which there are no words for. She thinks, here and there but mostly she is silent, even in her own mind.
“Knight, you with me?” Ban says softly and she startles so hard that she jumps. He laughs, watching the way she seems to rapidly come back to herself, even if she was previously on half here. “What’s up Ban?” she snaps crossly, ready to go back to that peaceful place where she didn’t have to think of loss and her only friend going away. “Come walk next to me,” he says, taking her hand when it’s close enough, a rare gesture from him. It’s odd in a way to be holding someone’s hand as the two of you search for his lost love, but somehow it feels familiar, like you’ve done this over and over again.
“I'm here ban,” she murmurs, still thinking more than reacting to the world around her. There’s the sudden feeling of her foot getting caught and she falls, never hitting the ground. Suddenly, she’s hoisted into Ban’s arms, held there like she doesn’t weigh anything at all. “You just fell over your own fuckin feet knight, don’t seem like you’re here to me.” She hits his arm, not reaching for the knife because she isn’t actually all that mad, she’s just annoyed (even if being carried is nice, at least because she can hear Ban’s heartbeat)
“Why can’t you just eat less,” her mother snaps at her, snarling at her hips, her thighs, her chest. “I can’t believe this daughter of mine is so selfish as to not be willing to sacrifice herself for her family.” She’s curled on the ground, ignoring the need to throw everything up. It doesn’t matter then.
It matters now.
She matters now.
“Are you sure that this is the spot?” she murmurs, looking at the clearing. It’s a pretty clearing but it doesn't seem somewhere that would find a faery. The clearing is light and warm, soft flowers bending down and trees creating a circle around the area. Some of the flowers are familiar, things that her parents used to keep in their garden, just to look at and to never enjoy. She always felt bad for the flowers, doomed to never live in their natural environment, doomed to only be beautiful and nothing else.
Ban nods, “positive, I can feel her here.” She wonders what it’s like to feel someone else so completely that you can find them even when they’re lost. Is it soothing, to know where your other half is at all times or does it break you when you can't feel them anymore. She thinks to asks but knows that Ban won’t ever give her a straight answer for something like that. Absently , he squeezes her hand as he talks to himself, leading them around in a circle.
“What do you need to do?” She asks, staring at Ban while he stares at the ground, talking to himself. “I’m thinking that it might be a good idea to use our chant after we drop blood on the ground in exchange for elaine. The earth is pretty into equal exchanges, and some of our life force aka blood should be enough.” Jericho pulls out a dagger and before she can flinch, makes a thin cut across her palm. It stings like a bitch but she lets the blood drop onto the earth. Ban steals the knife from her and lets some of his own blood fall.
“Daughter of the earth, come home, Daughter of the earth, find your lovers, daughter of the earth come home.”
As Ban speaks, his voice seems to take on an almost musical quality, low and familiar, tugging at something in her brain long forgotten. Sounds seem to pick up around them, carefully and softly, like it’s testing, questioning. He says the word lovers and she frowns, because she didn’t know that Ban has another partner. It hurts like a stab because she could have belonged, if that other person didn’t get there first.
“Ban?” A warm musical voice says softly, and Ban’s wolf smile turns gentle. “Elaine?” he whispers as a person forms in the middle of the circle. “Elaine,” he says joyfully, as she rushes him.
Jericho watches them hug, watches Ban hold her tightly, smiling so widely that if she didn’t know him, she’d be able to think of him as gentle. “Ban,” the fairy named Elaine whispers, “mine” like she’ll never tire of saying so, like there is safety here.
Jericho turns to leave, to give them their moment because this is a moment and even she, with all of her awkwardness and social hatred, knows that there is something special going on here. She turns away from Ban, not bothering to voice a goodbye because he’s so far away, focused on Elaine, and she doesn’t want to take away from that. She can’t take away from that.
Jericho is halfway down the hill when Elaine materializes in front of her. The fair woman is small, blond and has these beautiful golden eyes that match her giant, glowing wings. They’re delicate things that are so very perfect for her, on her. Against her will, Jericho is reminded of the nights that the moon was a beautiful yellow color, of how safe she used to feel looking at it.
“Why did you leave?” she asks softly, the sound of her voice not unlike the sound of bells clicking against one another. Jericho has the sudden urge to apologize and feel guilty for loving the person that Elaine does. “Because Ban doesn’t need me anymore.” Elaine snorts, says something in a language that Jericho doesn’t know and takes her hands. Usually Jericho would jerk them back, would yell and cause a scream but she owes at least a little respect for the ancient that ban obviously loves.
“What are we going to do with our knight?” Elaine asks her partner once Jericho is asleep. She might have caused the sleep but Jericho won’t know that tomorrow. Ban looks at her with his sharp, considering eyes.
“She can’t leave,” he finally says, and she nearly rolls her eyes. “Obviously. If you think she’s a good fit for us then I believe you. She is very pretty.” Carefully, she smoothes back Jericho’s wild hair and presses a kiss to the human’s forehead.
“You have her name, right?” She raises an eyebrow because she hasn’t heard this tone of voice from her lover since they got into their only real fight.
“I do, what are you thinking lovely?”
Ban smiles cruelly, and walks away from the window, shucking off his shirt and crawling into bed with Jericho, arranging her around him with practiced ease.
“We bind her. I’m pretty close to fair myself, at least enough that I can bind with a name.” Elaine smiles at her love, and her new gift, moving around so that she can let her wings flair over them both. “You can’t leave us again. I call fucking dibs.” Ban mutters, before nosing his way into her throat and falling dead asleep.