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Though high up in the mountains, the winters this far down south aren't too harsh. They're nothing like the famed blizzards of Regna Ferox, rumored to be able to freeze even the hardiest of wyverns solid. Even so, it’s still harsher than the mild chill of Central Ylisstol, or the perpetual sun and dry breezes of Plegia. And so, for the locals of this village, the end of winter is still cause enough to celebrate.
“The Spring Festival is beginning tomorrow,” says Gangrel, breaking the early morning silence.
“Ah… Thank you… I had forgotten…” Emmeryn’s voice is as quiet as it always is. Her memory problems had faded, somewhat, over the months. They had not entirely vanished, however, and were prone to flare up at times.
Truth be told, Gangrel had no intention of attending the festival, but throughout the winter Emmeryn had expressed interest when the neighboring farmers talked of it. Dances, and small parades, and carnival games; frivolities, but her eyes had lit up all the same. It would be… cruel to deny her the chance to experience it to the fullest, he thinks.
“…We should go,” she adds. “The both of us.”
Her gaze is sharper than he can remember it being for a while. Not with the razor edge of reproach, but a simple kind of focus that used to make his own eyes cloud over red with rage; something like the knowledge that there is a proper course of action, and the sincere, honest desire to see it done. Oh how he had loathed her then.
But circumstances are different now. Perhaps, if he lets himself hope, he is different now.
Gangrel lets out an exaggerated sigh, placing his hand in the center of his chest just to accentuate. “Very well,” he says, as if it’s a great concession. “The Spring Festival it is.
Emmeryn gives him a smile, a small and satisfied thing. “Very well,” she echoes.
-----
“You could stay,” the damnable tactician says.
Hah. He could’ve laughed in Robin’s face. Absolutely not.
It had taken up almost all his coin to catch a ship from Plegia to here. He didn’t even have enough to pay the fare for a full trip to Valm, far away enough from evidence of his mistakes that he wouldn’t have had to face them.
But all right. This island is fine too. He doesn’t even know its name, so he can probably at least live out his remaining years here, anonymous. Most likely die in a ditch somewhere in the rain, maybe even in a drunken stupor. That would be, if not a just one, an end befitting a wretch like him.
Well, that would probably have been his end already, if not for charity. His pride’s taken more than enough beatings over the last while, but it still smarts to admit it to himself.
“Well,” says the farmer, removing his hat to scratch the back of his head. “Not like we don’t got any experience with taking in folks who need some help. Can you work a plow?”
Wonderful. Hard labor in exchange for his life. But it’s not like he’s in a position to refuse, and anything would be better work than scrubbing chamber pots. “I can learn,” he says. After a brief pause, he adds, “I’m handy with a staff too, if there’s any need for that.”
The man gives him a once-over, shrugs, and nods. “Sure.” He chuckles. “I mean, we got a lot of healers droppin’ out of the blue around here, but another staff’s always ‘ppreciated.” The farmer gestures over to what looks like a humble little town square, to the profile of a person in the middle of speaking with a street vendor.
Gangrel follows the movement, and feels his heart sink.
Emmeryn finishes speaking and turns around—the accursed Brand is covered by golden tresses sweeping over her forehead, but it is unmistakably her—and when her gaze finds him, there is a spark of something like recognition.
Curse all the gods above; didn’t he come here to run?
-----
Emmeryn is hopeless at the ring toss, and so is Gangrel. They get six tries each and one of Emmeryn’s ricochets off the side of a glass bottle and almost smacks the booth attendant in the face. It would’ve been a just punishment, Gangrel thinks.
“This game is rigged,” he says, watching Emmeryn’s fourth ring clatter uselessly onto the dirt. The attendant laughs.
“Who’s got the time to be rigging games?” the man asks, stooping over to collect the ring. “Two more tries.”
The man is right, and Gangrel had been exaggerating, really. He knows what rigged carnival games are like; there had been the odd troupe or two waltzing through Plegia in his youth. When he was a bit older, he had on occasion picked a few pockets and indulged in a game or two. Just as well that he had used stolen coin; if there hadn’t been any blatant cheating going on back then, Gangrel will eat his coat right now.
“We… had them… in Ylisstol too,” Emmeryn says as she steps back, giving the attendant a gracious smile–her fifth ring missed the group of bottles entirely, and the sixth had made as if to slither around the neck of one but ultimately slid off the side. “Rigged games. Li- Liss…a… always got upset when she lost. That’s why I… tried. Asked them to make things fair.”
How very Emmeryn.
“I just had fairs banned altogether,” Gangrel says airily–with coronation came an easy path to payback. “Who would want to take the time to enforce such a frivolous law anyway?”
Emmeryn pauses. “I knew someone who would.”
There is something like steel in her voice when she says this: certainty and, perhaps, regret. Gangrel gives her a look out of the corner of his eye; she is frowning, slightly, the way she does when she realizes that she’s forgotten a name.
He says nothing, and they take their leave of the ring toss. There are other wonders that the festival can offer, ones that can take their mind off such things.
-----
“I know you.”
And there’s the voice that Gangrel’s been avoiding for weeks. He turns around slowly, feeling his stomach drop every inch he moves.
There is no hesitation in Emmeryn’s voice, and similarly, there is none in her expression. Disregarding the tatter to her clothes and the messy swipe of her hair across her face, she looks every bit the impassive, holier-than-thou Exalt that he has always known her to be. There’s a brief stab of spite, but it vanishes quickly upon a closer look at her: the traces of a faint, fading scar spiraling out of her left temple; the slow, mechanical way the words emerge, like she’s had to practice them over and over again; her hand clasping her cloak around herself, trembling lightly.
This is not that Emmeryn.
“I remember…” she continues.
Despite himself, he has to hide a flinch. Here it comes.
“I remember… some. Some of… what happened. But…” She closes her eyes. “Not… everything. But enough. I remember… the sky, and the wind. Falling…”
Damn, damn, damn. He says, “I don’t regret it.”
Fuck, that wasn’t right. But it’s too late to take back words already spoken, just as it is to take back actions already done. It cuts off anything that Emmeryn might have wanted to say. She bows her head slightly, and waits.
“I don’t,” he says, compelled to insist. It sounds as hollow as it does when he says it to himself. “I did what was necessary for my country. That was all.”
“I… understand,” Emmeryn says. She makes aborted motions, as if to brush her fringe to the side. “I know… what it’s like. To… need to do something. Because of a crown.”
“Good,” Gangrel says. He refuses to let his voice shake. “Then you know that I have nothing more to say to you. Good day.”
She doesn’t need to know. That it was a lie, that guilt is a constant flame setting his heart ablaze. That he has nightmares, sometimes, of her falling. She doesn’t need to know any of it, despite how much the words want to slip past his lips. He doesn’t need forgiveness. Her forgiveness. He doesn’t.
So he’ll hold his silence.
But he feels her eyes watching him as he walks away, and he gets the feeling that she already knows.
-----
They take a break from games, settle down by a bench with some dried fruit and other small delicacies. Well, Gangrel is on a bench; the whole area is crowded, after all, and Emmeryn had elected to sit in the pale green grass, sandals kicked off her feet and shawl flapping freely in the cold spring air.
“I was never… allowed,” she explains, “to sit like this. When I was young. It was… undignified. But this is nice.”
There’s a flock of kids talking to Emmeryn; she’d gotten to know a lot of them in the time she’s spent fixing up sprained ankles and other such scrapes. She’s smiling and nodding along, occasionally asking a short question that sends the children off into another lively conversation. Emmeryn’s good with children.
Gangrel hates them. Or, well, he hates specific children. If not having to deal with the damnable Prince is the best part of not staying with the Shepherds, then not having to deal with the gaggle of brats underfoot is the second benefit. The pigtailed girl constantly shouting about camp, the brat who wouldn’t stop digging pitfall traps, the frankly unbearable kid in the mask with the attitude problem… Yes, Gangrel’s days are much improved without having to spend another day in the same camp as any of them ever again.
So that’s why Gangrel is sitting back and watching. Not with any sort of interest, mind. He just has nothing better to do while he eats and waits for Emmeryn to finish.
A girl catches Gangrel’s eye, hands and face smudged with dirt, her clothes littered with tiny nicks and threadbare edges. She is young, but even then she seems small for her age. She skulks about at the outskirts of the pile of children, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and watching the conversations happen around her.
This is familiar, Gangrel realizes. Not the girl herself, but the look in her eyes: longing, hope, and the kind of exhaustion only found when it’s been battered into you by a world that just doesn’t seem to care. He knows this look well.
But Emmeryn is standing, brushing off stray blades of grass from her legs. It appears that it’s time to move on.
The dew has begun to soak into her cloak- she’ll start to freeze, with the chill of winter still being carried by the breezes. Gangrel sighs and takes off his own coat, draping it around her.
She blinks, mildly surprised. “Thank you,” she says with a soft smile.
“Don’t mention it. Shall we continue?”
“Yes.” She hesitates and takes his hand, and when he doesn’t shake her off her smile grows wider. “Let’s.”
-----
Emmeryn finds him again a few days after, and Gangrel prepares himself for the castigation to follow.
“It is past.”
…What?
“It is past,” she repeats, slowly. And then she smiles lightly, extends her hand, then continues, “So, please… leave that behind. There is always… time. There are always chances.”
And honestly? That’s not enough. It can’t be enough.
But he takes her hand, and says, “Chances, eh?”
Perhaps, given time, he can even come to believe it himself, too.
-----
So it turns out there are games that Gangrel can actually win.
Gangrel stares at the painted wooden crown in his hand. A prize for some inane coin-flipping game that Emmeryn had pulled him into. He’s honestly still not sure what the actual objective was, but best that he can gather, it’s basically all luck. The perfect game for mindlessly entertaining young children, which explains the gaudy yellow paint and hastily-prepared false gemstones- or rather, stained glass.
Some of the children that have taken to following Emmeryn around the festival applaud politely. Gangrel is still looking down on the crown, wondering whether it would be polite to shove it back towards the booth attendant and take leave of the festival immediately. For one thing, it feels dirty, winning a prize only due to luck. For another…
Said attendant nudges him in the side, bringing with her a second crown. Or, no- it’s more a diadem than crown. A lovely intricate blown glass thing, that’s perhaps a little lumpy on one side, but that does nothing to detract from the fact that it is very, very shiny.
“For your lady,” the woman says, shrugging at Emmeryn. She deposits the diadem in Gangrel’s other hand. “Come on now, don’t keep her waiting.”
If Gangrel is being honest, the crowns are both rather poorly made. But that is rather besides the point.
He glances back to Emmeryn, notes the faded quality to her gaze as she looks between the two crowns. He’s always suspected, but there is something comforting in seeing that looks as uncomfortable at the idea of crowns as he does. There must be a reason she wears her fringe long and swept over her forehead, after all.
He is done with crowns and kings, and even if he wasn’t, he’s the last person who deserves to be wearing one. And Emmeryn is the last person who deserves to be made to wear another.
“Save them for the kids,” he says, handing the crowns back to the attendant. The woman looks up, confused. Gangrel pays her no mind and walks over to the gaggle of brats. The scrappy girl is still slouching at the far end of the pack; he makes his way straight to her, pulling out a small pack of coins.
“Here,” he says, dropping the small pouch in her hand. “Enjoy yourself. Maybe try to win yourself a crown.”
She stares up at him with wide eyes, hands clasped around the pouch like it’ll vanish if she loosens her grip by even the slightest bit. And then, she abruptly smiles, posture shooting straight up. “Thank you!” she says with a grin, showing off the gap in her crooked teeth.
She looks down to the pouch as if to confirm that it’s real, smiles again to him and then stumbles into the crowd of kids, chattering excitedly and leading them into the rest of the festival. Gangrel wonders if he’d have turned out any different if he had someone to watch after him like this.
When he turns back to Emmeryn, the look in her eyes might be pride. Pride, and gratitude.
As he approaches her, he helps brush a few errant strands across her forehead again.
“Let’s go home,” she says.
He turns the word over in his mind: home. Such a strange thing. Strange, but warm.
“Yes,” he says, and lets himself make the first move this time, reach his hand out her to take. “Let’s.”