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They bury him in the cold, naked soil.
Guts stares into the hole, at the small body wrapped in linen that lays at the bottom. One last mercy, to cover his ruined remains from the eyes of his soldiers, so that he might live on in their memory as the great commander he had been in life. A great commander who deserved so much more than an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere.
It was not Griffith they rescued from that godforsaken tower, but a body broken beyond recognition, beyond humanity. Nobody dared to speak out loud what they all knew deep inside, that their beloved Hawk, their guiding star, would never soar in the sky again.
The fever that took him lasted days. And for days Guts held that little body, cradled it in his arms like the most precious and delicate thing. And when Griffith exhaled his last, painful breath, he held him still until those frail limbs went cold.
There are pale, tear-stained faces all around the grave, faces that wear their grief plain on their features. Someone ought to say something, some parting words, but it is only a heavy silence broken by quiet sobs that accompanies Griffith’s mortal remains into the ground.
They all bury a little piece of themselves in that grave.
He leaves shortly after the burial. No one tries to stop him, this time, and there is no need to win his freedom. As the leaves crunch under every step, he remembers how quietly he walked away that day in the snow, how easy it was to break a man’s heart. Something screams at him, deep from inside his heart. He should never have gone.
The people he called friends wish him good luck. He briefly wonders if he’ll ever see them again. He knows he won’t.
The days pass in a blur, always the same. Sometimes, it feels like an eternity has passed, some other times it feels like only mere hours have passed. He must be losing his mind. They say some people go mad with grief, that their minds shatter under the heavy burden of loss.
The wind always smells of Griffith, now, and sometimes it carries his voice, calling his name, laughing, singing. Other times, he sees something in the corner of his eye, a flash of bright white, but when he turns his head, it disappears.
He wonders if these are the first cracks in his mind.
He travels alone. Black swordsman, they start to call him. Some recognize him from a glorious, distant past. It makes it easier to find work as a mercenary. So he does what he does best: he swings his sword and drowns himself in the blood and screams of men whose sole crime is fighting on the opposite side. He swings his sword so he does not have to think of the little buried body wrapped in linen somewhere forgotten. But at night, when it is just him and his sword and a fire, he remembers just how tightly that tiny, skeletal hand held onto his.
His mind, then, breaks a little more. Or, maybe, it’s just his heart.
He appears to him one night, at last.
A faint touch on his face rouses him, warm and cold at the same time. When he opens his eyes, he is there, crouched by his bedroll. He’s even more beautiful than he had been in life, his fully nude body glowing slightly from the inside. He is white as milk, all of him, and he is like a star that has been plucked from the night sky. He smiles like he used to, like an amused little boy.
“You see me now,” he says and his voice echoes as if it came from a distant place.
“I see you now,” he repeats.
It comes out naturally, as if the dead have always been coming back from the eternal darkness that claims them. If he truly has gone mad, insanity has never tasted so sweet.
“Are you a ghost?” he asks. He should be scared, but he is at peace for the very first time in a long, long time. “Or an angel?”
Griffith laughs, then lifts one of his slender, luminous arms. “Angels have wings,” he replies and then his eyes get a little sad. “I think I would have liked to have wings.”
He sits up and watches that creature that bears the likeness of his dead friend, but is so different at the same time. He wants to reach out and touch him, discover what that heavenly skin feels like under his hands, but fears he might disappear just as suddenly as he appeared.
“You died in my arms. But you’re here now.”
It’s an implicit question, asked by the last shreds of sanity desperately trying to find an explanation for the marvelous thing before his eyes.
Griffith’s slender index finger traces circles on the dirt that leave behind no marks. Like he does not belong in the same world as him. “I am tethered to you,” he explains. “Because you could not let me go, because you carry me within your very being.”
Unconsciously, Guts places a hand on his own chest. There’s a little pouch there, an insignificant thing that he carries at all times. It was as if a madness seized him and with eyes filled with tears he took a knife to short, snow-white locks and cut. That little piece of Griffith has been resting close to his heart ever since.
“Don’t you find it ironic?” Griffith continues, his blue eyes staring into him with an intensity that’s almost painful to bear. But he welcomes it, this penance. “How easily you discarded me back then in the snow. Yet now that you ought to let me go, to let me rest, you cannot bring yourself to.”
His words are like daggers digging mercilessly in already tortured, bloody flesh. He lowers his head in shame and pain and welcomes each and every wound: it is but a small price to pay, compared to what he condemned Griffith to. He wants to scream, to yell that, had he known what would happen, he would have knelt in the snow with him. But he has no time for it. Heavenly hands gently cradle his face in the same way they did so many years ago. The touch is freezing and burning at the same time, and it feels like absolution.
“Now I belong to you.”
He travels with a ghost. Mad swordsman, they call him now. No one wants to hire a man who talks alone all the time. They say he is cursed and, maybe, they are right. It does not matter. The lack of money is not a problem, after all Guts does not need much anymore. He eats little, sleeps less and shuns the company of others.
Griffith is his sole sustenance, he is all he needs. At night, he does not need to light a fire anymore, for Griffith is warm in his arms and he is cold. His hair is soft and shines so prettily as he runs his fingers through it.
Guts’ hair starts to whiten at his forehead, but he does not question why. When his muscles start to wither and lose their strength, he does not question it either. He feels like every day that passes adds another century upon him, and the weariness is heavy on his bones.
But Griffith laughs and cries, and extends his hand made of moonlight. “Come to me!” he calls out.
And so he dances all night.
The old, blind woman stares straight at the empty space next to him. No one ever sees his angel, for he exists solely for Guts: his blessing and his curse, his penance and reward. Her empty stare stirs his anger and he bares his teeth like a beast threatened.
“You carry a heavy burden,” she warns. “Discard it lest you collapse under its weight.”
She doesn't know what she speaks of. She knows nothing of his lovely burden, when he, under the stars, lays on the grass and welcomes him in his holy body and calls him mine, all mine.
He will not let him go.
Guts hasn’t yet seen thirty springs, but the reflection in the water looks as if he’s lived through a hundred. In its scabbard, his sword is more of a reminder than a weapon, for his strength has failed and he cannot lift it anymore. But by his side, Griffith shines ever so beautifully.
There is an old tree upon that hill. Underneath it, tall weeds grow, crowned with white flowers shaped like stars. Somehow, they make him think of Griffith.
“I’m tired,” Guts says and his voice, like the rest of him, is weak. “I want to rest.”
His angel, his demon, turns and smiles lovingly. “But I still wish to dance,” he complains.
“We’ll dance,” he promises, because he cannot ever deny him. “After I rest.”
“Swear it to me.”
“I swear.”
Griffith smiles, content, and finds his usual place on top of him, his head resting on his chest, above his heart, where he keeps those precious silver strands.
“You will never leave me,” he whispers. “We shall dance together until the end of time.”
Guts falls asleep with a smile upon his lips.
They find an old man under a grand old tree. In his wizened hand he holds a small, velvet pouch that contains a few locks of soft, silver hair. No one knows who he is, nor where he came from. They bury him there, under the tree that watched him fall asleep for eternity, among the wild asphodels that dance in the wind. They bury him with the silver hairs that were so dear to him.
The people talk, and a story is born. No one must not go under the old oak tree when the moon is bright and full in the sky, they warn, for the old swordsman comes out with his fair haired lover. And, together, they dance the dance of Death.