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Chapter Text

You must first understand that House Rowe is at a disadvantage, the count said to him. We’ve always been mistrusted, and you will be mistrusted for standing with me. You have to prepare yourself for that. You’ll have to learn to survive in spite of it. 

He brought a delicate hand to Yuri’s cheek, caressing the bone with his thumb. 

But you’ve always had that strength, haven’t you? 

Red Wolf Moon, Imperial Year 1175

Yuri hadn’t been back to Fhirdiad since he’d left his mother here. He’d spent enough time in Enbarr by then to be familiar with large cities, but it felt somehow more oppressive closer to home. It was for the best, both of them knew that, and both of them knew how to suppress any illogical doubts. She smiled when she let him go. 

He’d celebrated Founding Day with her years ago, as a little boy. They’d save up all year for the start of winter and make their heartiest meal as the cold was just beginning to set in. He was a different person then. Yuri Leclerc has no need to save or indulge, or for that matter, to celebrate. He lurks at the fringes of noble gatherings at Gwendal’s heel or his new father’s, politely indulging the stares of others, listening in on their whispers. 

The count is here for business, under cover of the holiday. Some of this business Yuri is privy to, whether directly or just looped in afterward, and some of it he’s excluded from. Some of it interests him, some of it doesn’t, all of it is valuable. Everything he can get his hands on here is valuable. Once he has enough resources, he can figure out how to use them. 

In the middle of the night, once Gwendal and the count are deep enough asleep, Yuri slips out of his room and out of their lodgings. It takes him an hour at least to find what he’s looking for. He’s always had a good head for navigation, but the stone buildings all look the same in the dark. 

He stops down the street when he recognizes the hospital. He stands there for a long time, watching the windows for movement. 

The nurses might remember him. He could walk right in and say hello. It would be so easy, if he wanted it to be. He could probably even climb straight to her window without waking up anyone else if he wanted to stay out of anyone else’s sight—but it isn’t anyone else that he fears. It’s his mother herself that he can’t face. If she were to see him like this—healthy and well-fed, well-dressed in silks and furs—he knows she would be proud. 

Yuri knows he couldn’t bear it. He stares at the dark window for a moment longer, and then he turns back down the darkest alley. 

The journey back takes three days. It doesn’t begin to rain until the last one, as they’re crossing the hills through the border of Charon territory. Yuri pulls the curtain aside and presses his cheek to the carriage window, watching the raindrops hop and slide along the glass as the wheels turn. The count scoffs quietly from the bench opposite, but doesn’t bother him about it any more than that. Manners don’t matter so much when they’re alone. 

Gwendal, wet hair flattened to his skull, meets Yuri’s eye from the back of his horse before riding past him toward the coachman. He doesn’t wink—that's too familiar for a man like him. Yuri smiles to himself even so. 

After a while he can feel the sodden ground slide under the wheels. After a little while longer, a sudden jolt sends them flying forward. Yuri, fortunate enough to be in the backward-facing seat, catches the count’s book as it’s flung across the carriage.  

Grumbling, the count balances himself against the tilted seat. He throws open the door.  “What was that?” 

The coachman calls from up front: “One of the wheels, m’lord.” 

Yuri pokes his head out into the rain. One front wheel is sunk into the mud, the rim bent into a shape that will no longer turn. The coachman hops down from the driver’s seat and delicately positions his feet on the most solid ground to inspect the damage. 

The count lifts a sleeve over his head to look out over Yuri’s shoulder. “Can you replace it?” 

“Of course, sir,” says the coachman. “Though it’ll take some time. And we ought to move a bit more carefully going forward, as the road looks no better up ahead, and we haven’t got any more spares than that.” 

They’ve been going slower than planned already. The count looks around at the hills under the darkening sky. 

“Where are we?” 

The coachman pulls a scroll from under his cloak and unfurls a map. “Round here.” 

They all look down at the paper. Even Gwendal circles around on his horse, dripping water. The count sighs. 

He points decisively elsewhere on the map. “We’ll take this road and stay the night at Castle Gaspard.” Looking up, he nods to Gwendal. “Go on ahead and tell them to have a meal waiting.” 

“Sir.” 

He turns to the coachman as Gwendal’s horse takes off, cutting over the hills. “And you, get the wheel changed out as quickly as you can.” 

“Of course, sir.” The coachman pauses uncomfortably. “Though if you don’t mind, you’ll have to wait outside of the carriage while I replace it.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“...It’s the weight, sir. I need to lift the whole carriage to fit the new wheel in.” 

“Oh—of course.” The count scoffs, squinting out into the misty dusk. “If it’s not one bloody thing, it’s another. Of course.” 

He gingerly steps outside, his fine boots sinking an inch into the mud despite his best efforts. Yuri tosses the book onto the seat and ignores his offered hand to follow. They wade off the road, toward a winter-bare tree with enough branches to offer a little shelter, and there they stand to watch the poor coachman get to work. 

Yuri doesn’t mind the rain as much as the count does, though he expects he’ll be told to reapply his makeup before dinner. “You’re sure Gaspard will be able to host us?” he asks. 

“I’m Gaspard’s liege,” says the count. “It doesn’t matter if they’re able or not.” 

“I’d just rather not spend the night with someone who doesn’t want me there.” 

The count laughs aloud, bitterly. “Nobility is little more than that, I’m afraid.” 

There are moments when Yuri might have felt sorry for the man, if only he’d ever tried to be anything more than others thought he was. He watches the count wring out his sleeve and lift it over his head again. 

“Though Lord Gaspard is a friend of Gwendal’s, so ideally he’ll smooth things over before we arrive.” He turns to Yuri. “You remember Lord Gaspard?” 

He’d never met the man, but that’s not what the count means. Among Yuri’s first and most vital lessons was a roster of the Faerghus nobility. “Lonato,” he says. “Former attendant to the Grand Duke of Itha.” He had met the Grand Duke in question for the first time this past week. He’d pity this Lonato if he had a leg himself to stand on.  

The count nods. “I expect the family will be there too,” he says. “I went to school with the son; he’s a fool. You don’t need to worry about him. But I’d like you to keep your eyes and ears open as regards the children.” 

This was the most interesting thing about Lord Gaspard that had come up in his lessons. Some time before Yuri’s arrival at House Rowe, Lonato had taken three orphaned children from the village into his house. He wasn’t heirless like the count was, and there was nothing about these children to explain why he would take pity on them in particular. Rowe wasn’t the only house baffled by it. 

“Of course, it may not amount to much,” says the count. “He’s too sentimental to disinherit his son, and even if he wasn’t, none of the children have a crest to speak of.” 

“Are you sure?” replies Yuri. “I have no crest to speak of, after all.” 

The count snorts. “True enough, I suppose," he mutters. "I would like the chance to get a look at them myself.” 

As much as Yuri hates to admit it, the count is perceptive about this kind of thing. He’d spent years studying Crestology in the empire. He’d bought an hour of a boy’s time there on a wild hunch, to test him. He’d been right. 

“But I’d just like to be sure there’s no scheme going on. It’s strange behavior from a man as practical as Lonato.” He leans closer to Yuri’s ear to speak more softly over the rain. “I have contacts in Gaspard. I’ve heard that the eldest was caught attempting to rob his estate.” 

“...Hm.” 

“If true, I suppose it just speaks to his foolishness. But it may be a concern.” 

Yuri’s concerned about all this too, in a different way than the count is. He doesn’t give a damn about any of this vapid noble politicking, but dragging children into it bothers him. If they’d been desperate enough to steal, surely they’d have been easy to exploit? Did the Ubert children have a price, like he had? Was Lord Gaspard happy to buy them, as Count Rowe had been?  

The count looks out over the road in the rain, thoughtful.  

He wouldn’t wish this on an innocent child, but Yuri supposes he’s glad to be educated by a man who sees the world through such miserable eyes. No one foresees the failings of others better. Regardless of anything else, that’s a valuable thing to know. 

They’ve dried off a little by the time Yuri can spot Castle Gaspard in the dark. Before they step out of the carriage, the count takes Yuri’s face in one hand and rubs stray kohl from his undereyes with the other thumb. He combs fingers through Yuri’s hair, and he sits back to inspect his handiwork.  

He sighs. “Very well.” 

They venture out of the carriage, onto solid ground. The rain has stopped by now. Lord Gaspard and son are waiting for them outside. The count bows deeply before them. 

“Thank you kindly for your hospitality,”  

“Of course, my lord,” says the older man. Lonato. “It’s a pleasure.” He’s too polite to say the obvious: they look awful, and it’s clear they need it. 

Servants take their luggage case by case, and a groom leads the coachman and horses away with the carriage. “Come on inside,” says the son. Christophe. “We’ll have your things taken to your rooms so you can change before dinner. We’ve been watching it rain all day. It looked miserable out there.” 

Yuri and the count follow their hosts into the entrance hall. Castle Gaspard isn’t as large as Arianrhod, but it’s still enormous. The decor is spare and military, deep blue and silver, Faerghan to the core. He looks around. The corridor behind the upper railing is shadowed, but as he scans the room Yuri can see shapes crouched there, overlooking.  

He turns his head toward them. There’s a shuffle of movement as the children, spooked, scamper away back down the hall. Yuri smiles. 

Gwendal has dried off too, and in the absence of his luggage, he sits with a cup of tea in must be Lonato’s dressing gown. He rises at the count’s approach. “Sir.” 

“Thank you, Gwendal.” The count waves a hand: at-ease. “We’ve brought your things. I’m sure you’d love to get out of—”  

“—Yuri, is it?”  

Yuri turns around and takes Christophe Gaspard’s extended hand. “It is.” 

“Christophe.” He shakes, firmly. “I’d heard Count Rowe had taken on an heir, but we haven’t had the chance to get out to Arianrhod lately.” 

It must be busy, with the children. Not many kids could fit into society as seamlessly as Yuri had. “That’s alright,” he says. “We’d have made it here eventually. Friends of the family, and all.” Yuri drops his hand. “I hear you and the count were at school together.” 

Christophe nods. “Though he wasn’t Count then. I was sorry to hear about his father. But—yes, we were.” 

There’s an odd, tight expression on his face. “You didn’t like him,” says Yuri quietly, teasing. 

Among the nobles he’s met, Christophe is the easiest to read by far. Yuri can see why the count thinks him a fool. The reply is clear in his eyes: Of course not. Do you? 

“…Well, I don’t think he tries very hard to be likable,” Christophe says, more diplomatically. “We got along fairly well when we were children, actually. But we’ve fallen out since then.” 

After months immersed in the nobility, it’s bizarre to talk to someone who overshares. Yuri feels like he’s on vacation. “Oh?” 

“All of us would play together, at parties while our parents were busy running estates and such. Him and me and sometimes a couple of the Charon kids. You know.” 

Yuri had seen the children of some of the northern lords this week in Fhirdiad. They all seemed to know each other in a similar way, and—aside from one boy that Gwendal had to bodily remove him from the presence of—didn’t seem to have much interest in opening the circle. These things were established young. It was probably best he avoid making friends with any noble brats, however—and the count seemed more keen to socialize him with adults anyhow. 

“I’m sorry we’ve come to ruin your evening, then,” he says. 

“Oh, it’s no trouble. I love having guests.” Christophe grins, lowering his voice. “Even when they’re not very likable. What’s the use of a castle otherwise?” 

Yuri had had a dim view of noble estates to begin with—it hadn’t ever occurred to him to find Arianrhod lonely; he had no other expectation. But Christophe would have grown up here as an only child, and a gregarious one. Perhaps the children had only been taken in to fill the empty space. Some men are fatherly, after all, even if it’s easy for someone like Yuri to forget. 

Christophe goes on. “Now, the dinner itself on such short notice was a bit of a challenge, but I humbly feel we’ve managed. We all pitched in.” 

“Even you?” 

“And I’m sure I’ve still got flour somewhere to prove it.” Christophe lifts his arms, twisting around to look over his shoulder. “It was a lot of fun, though. I’ve never spent much time in the kitchen, but the children have taught me a thing or two.” 

Yuri had been spending some time in the kitchen lately too, but no one had shown any interest in it besides the cook. “Have they?” 

“Oh, yes. They’ve got a great instinct for that sort of thing. It makes me wish I’d gone out more to the village, before—well—forgive me while I change. I ought to go check on Ashe, anyways.” 

The eldest of the orphan children: the alleged burglar. Ashe, Bran, Clara—their parents had been kind enough to name them in alphabetical order, though they’d never have foreseen the busybodies of the Faerghan nobility needing to remember. Yuri’s not meant to know at all, much less remember. He chuckles. 

“Is that your horse?” 

“My brother.” 

He’d been expecting a brief explanation of the situation, but Christophe skips over it entirely. It catches Yuri by surprise. Barely anyone calls Count Rowe his father, after all, and he certainly doesn’t. The only ones to say it always refer to his adoption: their tone, depending on affiliation, either expressing skepticism or daring anyone to. 

“...I see.” Yuri looks toward the upper floor. “He needs to be checked on?” 

“He’s just turned twelve this last moon. We thought this might be a good chance for his first dinner in company.” 

It’s a novel idea that they’ve planned for this. Yuri has been dining in company as long as he’s lived with House Rowe. He’d been older than this Ashe to begin with, and he’d been doing much worse at twelve before that, but until he might sire a child, participating in society is the bulk of his worth to the house. There was never much he could do from the nursery. 

The count has followed Lonato and Gwendal upstairs, but the hollow chill of his presence lingers in the drafty hall. Yuri looks back to Christophe, amused. 

“You’ve chosen a trial by fire for him, haven’t you?” 

He grimaces. “What dinner isn’t? At least this is only a small fire.” 

“A small fire, but a sudden one.” 

“…True enough,” mutters Christophe. “He says he’s ready, but I’m afraid he’s just trying to be tough.” He runs a hand slowly over his chin, smoothing his short beard, and meets Yuri’s eyes. “You’ll be nice to him, won’t you?” 

Softly, Yuri snorts. “I’m not the one you should be worried about.” 

Christophe sighs, looking back toward the staircase. “Yes, I imagine you’re not.” 

Yuri supposes it’s ideal that Christophe imagines him harmless. He nods to his farewell bow and watches him bound up the stairs two by two. 

My brother. It’s fascinating to hear him describe it that way, even to someone who doesn't matter. 

The pheasant really is excellent. It’s seasoned with a common blend, spices Yuri hasn’t tasted much since his ascent as a noble heir. When he’s left to his own devices at Arianrhod he’s free to eat whatever he likes, but after traveling in noble circles for a week, he’s begun to tire of fine food. 

“This is delicious,” he says. He nods toward Christophe and the boy. “You’ve done a great job.” 

The count nudges his leg with a knee, annoyed at him for speaking out of turn. But across the table, Ashe smiles. 

Lonato’s orphan boy is a tiny thing, rail-thin and half-hidden under a mop of hair. He sits up pin-straight at the table and seems especially conscious of where he keeps his elbows. He doesn’t have a shred of the slender, youthful allure that Yuri had leaned on at that age, which makes him feel a little better—but leaves him with fewer clues to explain all this. 

“And dessert is even better,” says Christophe, grinning. “Though that’s what I think about any meal, so you’ll have to judge for yourself.” 

As much as Christophe claims to enjoy guests, no one at the table tonight can match his enthusiasm. Lonato is a quiet, serious man, as is Gwendal—Yuri’s not surprised they’d get along. The count is in as politely poor a mood as always. And poor Ashe seems to struggle to speak even when spoken to. When the count finally addresses him, he flinches, startled. 

“Ashe, is it?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“I’m pleased to finally meet you. It’s been some time now, hasn’t it, since Lord Gaspard took you in?” 

Ashe only nods. He’s going to need to handle much more than this eventually, especially when his very presence raises so many questions—but Yuri can’t help but feel a little bad for him. He’d never been shy himself. He doesn’t know how long it takes to train that out of someone. 

“I’ve been curious, actually, how it is that you and your siblings came to be in his care?” 

Lonato answers this one for him. “I knew their parents from the village,” he says before Ashe can open his mouth. “When the children had nowhere to go, I was happy to take them in.” 

“How good of you,” the count replies. Yuri’s not gauche enough to meet his eye, but he knows they’re thinking the same thing. They have similar stories of their own. 

The Gaspards have probably been getting snide compliments of this nature for some time now. Christophe cuts in. “Personally, I think it’s good of them to trust us.” He takes a large bite of pheasant, nodding as he chews. “You were all in Fhirdiad for Founding Day, then?” 

“Yes,” says the count. 

“It wasn’t a big anniversary I’ve forgotten, is it? Something like…four hundred…?” 

“Four hundred twenty-fourth. But it’s worth attending there any year.” 

Christophe nods. “Maybe we’ll get over to the capital next year, then,” he muses. “Or I will, anyway. Dad’s too much of a homebody these days, but I’ve got some friends up there.” 

The count snorts too quietly for anyone but Yuri beside him to hear. Christophe turns to Ashe. 

“You’d like to see Fhirdiad, wouldn’t you?” 

Caught mid-chew, Ashe nods and hurries to swallow. 

“I hear it’s a lot nicer now than it was when I was your age.” He looks to Yuri—whom he seems to consider harmless enough to designate his lifeline at the table—to confirm this. 

“I wouldn’t know,” says Yuri. “I’ve only been recently, since I came to House Rowe.”  

Ashe turns toward him, surprised.  

His surprise surprises Yuri. Who did Ashe think he was? Does Lord Gaspard not educate his new children in the same way that Count Rowe does his, gossip and all? Did he think Yuri was a noble boy like any other? It puts him a little ill at ease.

“It’s a beautiful city, though,” he says, nodding to Ashe. “I think you’d enjoy it.” 

Christophe gestures at him with his fork. “And they’ve got loads of statues of good old Loog out there, haven’t they?” 

Ashe’s mouth drops open. “Really?” 

Yuri nods again. “All over the place.” 

“There’s that settled, then.” Christophe chuckles at Ashe’s bowled-over expression. “Four hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Maybe we’ll run into House Rowe there too.”  

The count looks like he’d rather be drawn and quartered. Christophe takes another bite, grinning as he chews.  

“Now, here’s a question for you, Ashe. Suppose we go celebrate the 500th Founding Day at the palace, in—what’ll it be—Imperial Year 1251? How old will you be then?” 

“What?” 

Lonato sets down his fork, weary. “Christophe, please.” 

“It’s only a bit of applied mathematics. Go on, Ashe, you know how to figure it.”  

The betrayed look on his round little face is so amusing that Yuri has to politely hide his smile in his goblet. 

“Oh, come on. You had your sums mastered last week, didn’t you?” 

Lonato shakes his head. “But isn't it something entirely different to be put on the spot?” 

“No skill is mastered unless you can pull it out on the spot. You taught me that—"  

 “Eighty-eight?” 

“—Hm?” 

Ashe speaks up. “I’d be eighty-eight years old, wouldn’t I?” 

Christophe pauses. “Bear with me—yes, I think that’s right? Dad?” 

Gruffly amused, Lonato snorts. “You didn’t know before you asked?” 

“I just got caught up in the question, is all. No, you’re right, Ashe. Well done.” He nudges him with his elbow. “Now how old will I be, when we go see Fhirdiad as old men?” 

“You do this one, Christophe,” says Lonato. “You had your sums mastered fifteen years ago, if I recall.” 

Gwendal chuckles. The count drains his goblet, but Ashe is laughing in earnest. There's a warmth in Lonato’s cold eyes as he watches them. 

Yuri can’t help but wish he’d gone to see his mother. 

Were they anywhere else, Yuri would probably have taken after-dinner drinks with the men. But here, however, tasked with investigating the children, it’s better to be a child for the night. Lonato is just going to keep stonewalling; Christophe’s mouth isn’t worth much in a group. Ashe is awkward and nervous and probably keen on a conversation with someone who understands. 

This is how Yuri works. Sometimes it helps to remember that a bit of light social espionage is a step up from where he’s been. 

The other children are in bed by the time dinner’s over. He and Ashe are bid farewell and sent to the library for tea. “You get to stay up late, do you?” Yuri asks as they walk. 

Ashe smiles tightly. “My brother’s jealous,” he says. “We never realized households like this were so strict about bedtime.” 

Yuri can’t say he’s ever lived in a proper household, common or noble, but he’s getting the impression that most noble children are raised like soldiers in a gilded barrack. “How old is he?” 

“Nine,” says Ashe. “My sister’s eight.” 

“Well, they’ll get here soon enough,” says Yuri. “And then you can tease them with math questions at the table.” 

Ashe blushes easily. If he remains so easily embarrassed, it’s going to get him into trouble. 

“I didn’t realize you weren’t going with the others,” he admits as they turn into the library. “I was just going to read a little before bed.” 

“That’s fine,” says Yuri. “I don’t want to force you to make conversation. I know how exhausting it gets.” 

Relieved, Ashe sighs. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.” 

Yuri might have thought the same of him after dinner, but it turns out he really can speak in full sentences. When he’s not under pressure, he’s a friendly enough kid. He might be able to make it with practice. “I don’t know about that,” Yuri tells him. “It just takes time to get used to that sort of thing.” 

Ashe unbuckles his boots and tucks his feet up in an armchair big enough to swallow him. He doesn’t sound optimistic. “I guess.” 

Their hot tea is waiting on a table nearby. Both of them take a cup. Ashe takes a long sip, closing his eyes.  

“Do you have a book?” he asks, looking back up at Yuri. He sets his cup down and picks up a book of his own. “If not, you can find one. I’m not sure what you like, but Lonato’s library has just about everything.” 

It certainly looks like it does. It doesn’t matter, really, what Yuri takes off the shelf, but he doesn’t know where to begin anyways. He sits down in the other chair and scans the books adjacent. 

Across from him, Ashe carefully removes his bookmark. Yuri looks back over. The book is big and heavy and old, and he’s curious what this kid reads. 

Ashe sees him tilting his head and angles the cover up toward him. “The Sword of Kyphon,” Yuri reads from the spine. 

“Christophe read it to us ages ago, of course,” says Ashe. “But this is the first time I’ve read it on my own.” And then his smile fades a little: he realizes this isn’t something to be proud of at his age.  

Frankly, Yuri thinks he ought to be prouder of learning later. It’s much more difficult: he’d been taught to read himself so young that he’d barely realized he was learning, and he knows he’d been luckier than many. But that’s an awkward compliment to give. He keeps it to himself. “I’ve never read that one, actually,” he says instead. 

“You haven’t?” 

Yuri’s heard of it. It’s so ubiquitous a fable among Faerghan children that he can understand Ashe’s surprise. “I didn’t have much time or money to spare on books, before House Rowe took me in.”  And by then, fiction felt childish. He doesn’t want to say that to Ashe either. “The library at Arianrhod is mostly academic,” he says. “You must be having a great time here, with all the tales.” 

“Oh, I am!" Ashe beams all of a sudden, so brightly Yuri's almost taken aback. "It’s been really tough getting used to everything, but it’s all worth it to have a library like this.” 

“I’m glad to hear that.”

His smile frozen vacantly on his face, Ashe pauses. He picks up his teacup again and takes another sip, maybe just to fidget.  

“Were you ever this nervous about it all, though?” he asks.  

“You mean about the nobility?” 

“You were like us, weren’t you, before House Rowe? And now you’re so good at this.” He looks up again, straight into Yuri’s eyes. “Does practice really help?” 

Yuri had never needed to practice. He’s an actor by trade, though under different titles, and playing Yuri Leclerc is no different than any other part had been. But he can’t say that to Ashe. “It does,” he says, as honestly as he can lie. “There’s no rushing it, but once you’ve been to enough dinners like these, you’ll know exactly what to do without even thinking about it.” He smiles faintly. “It’s like your sums.” 

Ashe sighs.  

“I owe it to Lonato to try,” he says. “After how kind he’s been to us. He didn’t have to be.” 

This really isn’t a confirmation of anything, but in tone, it sounds like one. 

Considering all Ashe’s earnestness, Yuri had begun to doubt the burglary story. He knows from sneaks and thieves, after all. This kid wouldn’t last a day in the circles he’d run in. But he’s also been watching the way Ashe moves tonight: quiet, delicate, deliberate. With some thought... Yuri can see it in him. His own way isn’t the only way. Larceny takes skill, but not duplicitousness if you do it right.  

Yuri admires that kind of criminal. He watches Ashe turn a page, freckled cheek in one hand.  

Part of him hopes Lonato raises the Ubert children like he had his own son: to be honest, friendly, and unpretentious. That’s what a boy like Ashe deserves to be. But Yuri’s also been learning a lot about the nobility as of late, and he can’t help feeling Ashe would be better off with a touch of duplicitousness. He’s sure even Christophe has found some of that in the bottom of his earnest heart, just to get along.  

There’s something heartbreaking about it. Yuri finds himself grateful he’d been broken from the start. He’d learned it young, like his letters, before it felt like learning.  

He picks up a book at random and cracks it open. 

The count knocks on the door of his guest bedroom later that night. Yuri lets him in. He smells faintly of wine. 

“You’ve gotten to know the boy?” he asks, leaning close to speak under his breath. 

“Some,” says Yuri. “You’d like my conclusion?” 

“Please.” 

He coolly lifts his chin. “Lord Lonato is a good man,” he says. “I know you or I might doubt it, but some men are. It’s nothing more than that.” 

The count sighs.   

As if on impulse. he reaches out to smooth a lock of hair over Yuri’s shoulder. His fingertips linger at the end of it for a long time, rolling the hairs flat against his thumb. 

“Very well,” he mutters. He lets Yuri go and turns to leave. 

Chapter Text

Verdant Rain Moon, Imperial Year 1180

Ashe had never been to church before he lived with Lonato. That’s not to say that he didn’t believe in the goddess, but it had always been a vague, directionless belief. Piety didn’t matter to a common boy in the same way that it did to a lord. There was no performance required of it. 

He remembers Clara sitting beside Lonato in the front row of the village chapel, studiously watching him pray. He remembers Christophe and Bran with their heads together, muffling laughter in the lulls of the liturgy. 

Turning to the goddess for answers now feels ironic, if not ridiculous. Their last acts, both of them, had been to turn against her. What could she show him about why they’d done such a thing, at such a cost? Shouldn’t he be looking elsewhere to understand how it had come to that? But—he hasn’t been looking for answers here, not really. There’s nothing the church can give him that will change any of it. He’s just looking for comfort, in the way he’d have done as a child, when the goddess was nothing but a sense of order in the world around him.  

As each successive framework of reason he’d ever built had broken one by one, he’d been left with nothing but the first and oldest. 

Ashe likes the cathedral, anyway, regardless of what it means or what it doesn’t. It’s peaceful here. This is the largest room he’s ever set foot in, with the highest soaring ceiling, and there’s something about the scale of it that deafens the turmoil outside. It’s an island apart from the rest of the world. Walking above the mist below the thin bridge feels like walking from the earth to the clouds. 

He passes below the gate and walks more softly on the marble, through the pews. After so many months he’s come to find a routine. He’s come to recognize so many of the others who spend their time here, and to recognize the space they’re all seeking and giving. Ashe scans the open floor before the altar for a space of his own. 

It takes him a second longer to recognize Yuri Leclerc in a room so bright and spacious than it might have taken him in the dark. 

He’s staring up at the sun through the stained glass. His pale uniform glows in the glare of it, and Ashe stops, curious. There have been others here before that he would never have expected to see—but after everything…  

Anyone could have thought the same of him, but Ashe had always considered Yuri less foolish than he was.  

He watches Yuri tilt his face further up into the light. Ashe stays put, but he wishes he could see the look on it. Perhaps Yuri hasn’t come here for any faith or goddess, he wonders—but just for the rare pleasure of standing in a sunbeam. Surely he doesn’t get enough of it. 

But Yuri’s heard the footsteps behind him pause, and he glances back over his shoulder. Ashe cringes as he meets his eye. 

The amused curl of Yuri’s lips is hardly a pious expression, but as befits an altar, he speaks quietly. “Hello, friend.” 

There’s nothing Ashe can do about it, now that he’s been caught. He steps up closer and stops at Yuri’s shoulder. They stare up at the window together for a few moments in silence, side by side. 

“Do you pray often?” asks Yuri, in that same quiet voice. 

Ashe hesitates. “I don’t know if it’s praying, exactly,” he says. “More like thinking.” 

Yuri exhales softly. “There’s not much difference.” 

Another silence, this one briefer. Ashe is too curious. 

“…Do you?” he asks. “Pray often?” 

“I wouldn’t say often,” says Yuri. “But I do when I need to.” 

All things considered, it’s not a surprise that he’d need to. But even still— “I didn’t expect to see you up here,” says Ashe. 

“What, in the light of day?” 

He doesn’t want to admit it, but Yuri hears it in his silence anyhow. He chuckles. 

“I’ve been pardoned,” he says. “I’m within my rights.” 

“That’s not…” Ashe shakes his head. “I meant—I wouldn’t have expected anyone from Abyss to be religious.”  

Garreg Mach allowed them to exist, but delicately: in a way that made it clear that the power was not their own. Everyone in Abyss knew that they had their freedom only because it suited the church to let them stay there. Ashe is starting to wonder if that’s any less true of the world at large.  

Hapi had been wronged by the church, and she distrusts all clergy on principle. Lonato had been wronged by the church, and he’d died grinding his axe. Ashe still doesn’t—may never—know what wrong Christophe had seen in the archbishop, but he’d risked everything to see her dead. Yuri had been wronged by the church too: manipulated, controlled, bled by it. What could he still see in it, after everything? He had always struck Ashe as a man who didn’t let betrayal stand.  

But Ashe supposes he doesn’t know Yuri at all. Not really. His friends had seemed to have a very different view of him than a stranger like Ashe might, and Yuri seemed to put a lot of effort into keeping it that way. 

Yuri shrugs. “I don’t know if religious is the way I’d put it,” he says. “I do believe in the goddess, but I’ve never worked very hard to be what she’d want me to.” His lip curls. “I guess I believe in nuance, if I believe in anything.” 

It’s not much of an answer. “Nuance?” 

“I know the church has done awful things,” says Yuri. “And so have a lot of the people in it. But that’s true of every institution. Power attracts the worst of us, and it makes them worse.”  

He looks back to meet Ashe’s eye. 

Ashe almost wants to shy away, but he can’t bear the shame of it. He’s spent a lifetime aspiring to be worthy of the great Faerghan institutions. The nobility, the knighthood, the Blue Lions. He knows all this, perhaps not as well as Yuri does, but he knows it. And in truth...that corruption has been a part of his drive, since Christophe’s execution or maybe even before. He longed to stand where those people stood, with equal power, and matter. 

It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he might not make it there uncorrupted. Perhaps they’d all been like him, once. 

“But I don’t think that’s a reason to give up faith entirely,” says Yuri, still looking into his eyes. “The people who work in her name I can take or leave, but sometimes it makes the difference to believe in something.” He turns back to the altar. “Baby and bathwater, I suppose.” 

Ashe stares at him. Yuri keeps looking straight ahead, into the sun. 

“I heard they sent you,” he says. “To Gaspard.” 

“Oh... Yes. They did.” Ashe sighs. “You heard about Lonato, then.” 

Yuri nods, jaw clenched. “I’m sorry it had to go that way.” 

Had he known all this time, Ashe can’t help but wonder?  Even down in Abyss, when they’d barely spoken, had Yuri known what was haunting him? Had Yuri known why he couldn’t sleep that first night to begin with?  

Maybe he just couldn’t say. Maybe, if he’d ever acknowledged that he understood, it would have been too easy to break his cover. 

Ashe can still remember the sorrow in Yuri’s voice as he fought the monster that Aelfric had become. He hadn’t ever heard him speak like that—it had chilled him. And as Ashe stared up at the umbral beast himself, he’d found himself feeling the same sick way he had in Conand Tower: wishing that Lonato had become a monster too. It would have been easier to bring him down. Easier to convince himself it was for his own good. It would still have shattered the very ground he stood on, but it would have done so without leaving behind a doubt that it had to happen. 

Aelfric’s story had pulled Ashe’s heartstrings. He expects that Lonato’s would have too, if he had ever deigned to tell him. “I just can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if he’d never taken me in. Or even if he had, but he’d told me how he felt...” 

Ashe can barely remember the months after Christophe’s death himself. They'd broken him too, and after he’d just begun to believe in happiness again, he hadn’t been able to weather it. It was Lonato’s strength that kept them all together. Lonato had brought him back from rage and despair to the point that he could wear the church’s uniform, stand in this cathedral. It agonizes Ashe to know now what he had been hiding. He had been too blind to see beyond his own pain, and now he can’t even look back at what he’d missed. 

He stares at the floor, head too heavy now to lift. “I’d have been in that army myself if he let me be.” 

“And he didn’t let you be.”  

Ashe flinches as Yuri’s hand grips his shoulder, squeezing. 

“This is what he wanted for you, Ashe.” He speaks slowly, in the deepest whisper. “He kept everything from you. He spent years making sure you wouldn’t be killed along with him. Clearly, he wanted you safely on the other side.” 

“You think he was intending to die?” 

Yuri doesn’t answer. It’s too obvious to bother, and if he had, Ashe thinks he might have begun to cry for real. He swallows thickly. 

“There should have been a way to resolve this.” he mumbles. “If I’d figured out the right thing to say, or if I’d been able to convince the others...” He looks up. “He would have known, wouldn’t he, that the Knights of Seiros would come to stop him? What if he was counting on me—” 

“He was counting on you to kill him,” say Yuri. “He would know that was the only way it would—” 

“—But I keep thinking about you.” 

Ashe turns back to look at him—at the quiet, serious expression on Yuri’s face. 

“Me?” 

“Aelfric thought he could manipulate you, but he couldn’t. You were always one step ahead.” You knew how to think on your feet, when my mind just went blank. He looks away again. “You were clever enough to keep all your friends safe, and protect everything that mattered, and I just keep thinking—if I were more like you, if only I’d been smarter—” 

“Ashe.” 

Yuri’s hand tightens on his shoulder. Ashe squeezes his eyes shut.  

“Do you know why I was sent to Abyss?” Yuri asks.  

“Because of your crest,” mumbles Ashe. “Right?” 

“Hm.” Yuri chuckles mirthlessly. "You’re right. I’m here because of my crest, and if no one happened to find it useful, I’d have been executed.” 

The word still makes Ashe’s blood run cold. “What do you mean?” 

“When I was a student, I was assigned a mission from the Church of Seiros. I was sent to take out a group of bandits. When I got there, I found out that they were my own men.” 

Ashe opens his eyes again to stare at him. Yuri keeps looking at the altar. 

“They were my brothers. I wouldn’t do it. There was an argument, and I turned my sword on the knights accompanying me instead.” He sighs. “I was sentenced to death, but Aelfric stepped in and had me spared. That was how I ended up in his house.” 

“...Oh.” 

“If you’d stood with Lonato, you’d have been killed with him.” Yuri shakes his head. “The only reason I’m still here is that I could be exploited, and no one had a reason to exploit you.” 

Ashe breathes in heavily, trying to suppress a sob. 

“You’re alive,” says Yuri. “You did the right thing.” 

Lonato had told him something similar once. That first service at his side, hearing of sin and punishment. Dare not disrespect the goddess, dare not harm, lie, steal. Ashe had reeled out of the church at the end of the sermon, hyperventilating. How could a person like him sit there like any true believer? How could a common thief presume to be worth a noble title? How could he face society, if he couldn’t even face the goddess?   

Lonato took him by the shoulder, not unlike Yuri holds him now. Lonato told him that he would be forgiven, because he’d done it to keep himself alive. He’d done it to protect his brother and sister, who could not protect themselves. His parents would have been proud of him. The goddess understands that some evil things have to be done for a good cause. 

Even as he justified his rebellion, Lonato spoke of the goddess. Did you believe you would be forgiven? Ashe wonders now. Or did forgiveness no longer matter to you? 

“This was building up for years,” says Yuri. “It’s not your fault for not seeing it, or for not stopping it. He took steps to keep you out of it.” 

“If he’d just explained—” 

“Then you and your siblings would have been implicated. This was his own problem, and I don’t think he wanted it to be yours.” 

“His own?” Ashe repeats, so quickly he can’t stop himself. “If he didn’t want anyone implicated, then why didn’t he just kill himself!?” 

The viciousness of his whisper surprises him as it leaves his mouth. It surprises Yuri too. His fingers dig into Ashe’s shoulder, as if to keep him down. It makes him seethe. 

“Lonato didn’t have to do all this, if all he wanted was to die,” he hisses. “Innocent people were killed! And for what!?” Ashe grits his teeth. I killed innocent people, for him! 

“Ashe...” 

“He could do whatever he wanted to, but he didn’t have to drag the villagers into it—” 

“I think he did have to,” says Yuri softly. “He needed an army. No one would have listened otherwise.” 

“I would have listened!” 

Yuri sighs. The implication is clear. No one who mattered. 

His hand loosens on Ashe’s shoulder. It slides down over the blade and his palm flattens there, warm. Ashe lifts his head. The tears have streamed down his face without effort, without crying them. Humiliated, he curls his fists in his sleeves and rubs at his cheeks. 

“...I don’t mean to make excuses for him,” says Yuri. “I don’t know for sure what he was thinking. I didn’t know him well.” 

Ashe laughs wetly, bitterly. “Neither did I, I suppose.” 

“I don’t know about that.” Yuri removes his hand, thoughtfully folding his arms. “What I do know is how much he loved you. You, and your brother and sister, and Christophe. And I know you know that too.” 

He does know that. He’s never doubted it. He doesn’t even doubt it now—and that’s what makes all this so impossible to reconcile. 

Yuri lowers his head. “I’ve never met a good man,” he says. “Nor a bad one. There’s just hurting and there’s helping, and both of them mean something.” He pauses. “It’s alright to hate him and love him at once.” 

How!? Ashe wants to demand of him. But he’s not sure Yuri has an answer. He’s not sure he would have been here now if he did. 

His shoulder aches faintly where Yuri had gripped it.   

“…I really do think I could have handled it,” Ashe admits, voice thin and hoarse. “I know how to grieve. If it were just Lonato, I could have...” He could have understood. He knows exactly the pain and the hopelessness that would have driven Lonato to suicide. It would have devastated him, but not shocked him.  

“But this...” Ashe looks up to the sun. Maybe it will dry his face. "I don’t like the thought that he loved me enough, but not his people.” 

“...Ah.” 

“The villagers loved Lonato,” he mumbles. “They would have followed him anywhere. My parents would have fought for him. I would have.” He digs his nails into his fists. “It makes me sick that he would lead them somewhere he knew there was no coming back from.” 

It makes me sick that I was spared. 

“Nothing makes a monster like grief and vengeance,” says Yuri. 

Ashe looks back up at Yuri’s grim face, and the pit in his stomach deepens. Grief and vengeance. What has his own grief driven him to? Handwringing and navel-gazing? Crying here uselessly on the cathedral floor?  

He doesn’t have a heart for vengeance. The hand of the church had marked Lonato and Christophe both for execution, and he hadn’t turned against it. He’d helped carry out the sentence. And ever since, he’s been standing here before the goddess, trying to justify that choice. Trying to find a way to live with that guilt. Is this the monster grief has made of him? Not a rampaging beast, but something dark and slimy and cowardly? 

Yuri’s lips twitch in the silence.  

“There’s no real answer,” he says. “Not one that’s going to satisfy you, anyway. And in times like these, I think there’s only one question that matters.” He turns to Ashe again. “Are you going to keep going, or aren’t you?” 

The look on Yuri’s face now is too intense to match. Uncomfortably, Ashe looks away. 

But Yuri won’t indulge his cowardice. “Are you?” 

And Ashe knows he has to. As much as it hurts to dwell on it—too much has been sacrificed to get him here, to keep him here, than he can bear to waste.  

“...I guess so.” 

“Good.” 

Defeated, Ashe sighs. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean to... I think I came here in the first place so I wouldn’t have to bother anyone else about it.” He’d known it was too much for anyone else to listen to. He’d felt the viciousness bubbling up in him, and he’d been too afraid to give it voice.  

“Mmhm.” Yuri smiles faintly. “That’s something I like about the church. It’s always nice to know someone’s listening.” 

“It is.” 

“But sometimes you need someone to talk back.” 

Ashe looks up at Yuri. There’s something larger-than-life about him, like a character in a storybook. He’d felt that a little as a young boy, and in Abyss he’d felt it so strongly it took his breath away. But he’d never felt it quite so much as now. 

He hesitates. “There’s...actually something I’ve been wanting to ask you.” 

He’d been considering a trip back down to Abyss, but the idea made him nervous. He didn’t belong there. It’s almost an absurd feeling, considering that his first thought when he set foot in Abyss was how close he had come to belonging there. But the very fact that he’d been steered off that path means he feels like he can never walk it. Maybe that’s how Yuri feels above ground. 

“Go for it.” 

“Now that you’re free, are you going to go home?” 

Yuri snorts. “I hope you don’t mean to Arianrhod.” 

“No, I mean—to your mother.” 

It hadn’t ever occurred to Ashe that Yuri still had a mother, not until he first said so. He’d been adopted himself, after all, because he had nowhere left to go. None of this would ever have touched him if his parents were still alive. What kind of a mother would give up her son to a man like Count Rowe? It baffled him.  

But when he could remove the situation from his own, the answer was obvious: a poor mother, a sick one, a starving one, who saw a chance to give their child something more than they ever could themselves. A mother who would surely like to know what had become of her son since. 

Yuri looks surprisingly sheepish. He tucks a lock of hair behind one ear. 

“I might visit,” he says. “It’s been a while. But I don’t want to leave Abyss for good yet, especially not in the state things are.” 

“Is it bad?” 

“I wouldn’t say bad, but it’s certainly disorganized. They owed a lot to Aelfric.”  

“Oh.” 

Yuri shrugs. “Once upon a time, he did good work. They’re my people now. I want to carry that on.” 

His people, like those bandits he couldn’t abandon had been. Yuri’s built a brand on deceitfulness, but he’s nothing if not loyal. Ashe admires it. Maybe that means it’ll be worth asking. 

“You’re sticking around the monastery, then.” 

“I suppose.” 

“In that case... What I wanted to ask was whether you’d like to join the professor’s class.” 

Surprise is a strange expression on Yuri’s face. He blinks. “Me?” 

“I know it took so much for you to make it here,” says Ashe. “You’re finally welcome back. Do you really want to give this opportunity up?” 

Yuri doesn’t answer. He lowers his head again, thoughtful. 

“You wouldn’t have to move out of Abyss or anything. You’d just have to show up for class.” Ashe nods encouragingly. “I’ve seen you fight, and I know you’d work really well with us. And I know the professor likes you a lot—” 

“Okay. Okay.” Yuri snorts, but there’s fondness in it. “…I’ll think about it.” 

“Good,” says Ashe. He pauses. “I mean—I don’t want to tell you what to do, of course. But I’d like to see you graduate with the Blue Lions. Like you were supposed to.” 

Yuri looks up again, to the stream of sunlight through the glass. 

“Neither of us were ever supposed to be here,” he says. He glances back to Ashe from the corner of his eye. “That’s why it’s so important that we are.” 

Back in his dormitory, Ashe unbuckles his sidearm. 

This sword had belonged to Christophe once, when he was a student at Garreg Mach. Ashe had tried to refuse when Lonato held it out to him. He was no swordsman, after all, and as romantic as it sounded, he had no intention to be. But to carry them was only custom at the officer’s academy. Christophe’s sword was just a memento, offered by a proud man seeing his second son off to school. 

Ashe slides the blade from its sheath halfway, looking into the polished surface.   

He’ll never know what had gone through Lonato’s mind, when he sent him to Garreg Mach. He’ll never know how much of this was calculated, how much was coincidence. But he knows Lonato had loved him as much as he had his own son. He knows Lonato had seen Christophe in him, the first time he’d stood there before him in black and gold. 

To Christophe, Lonato had given his own life, and to Ashe, he had given a life—the gift he had been unable to give his son. Ashe won’t refuse it. He’ll take it, and he’ll carry it with him, and he’ll find a way to love it.  

Unlike most, the Goddess claims to love even sinners. Perhaps all he’s been looking for is to learn that love himself. 

Chapter Text

Pegasus Moon, Imperial Year 1185 

“Heave!” 

Yuri sits back on his haunches after heaving, wiping sweat off his face and flexing his hands before he re-adjusts them at the shoulder of Gwendal’s horse. They’d removed the armor worth taking, and now it’s easier to move her: easier, but still difficult. The Gray Lion was a big man. He’d required a big horse to carry him. 

It takes Yuri a moment to remember the horse’s name: Alcestis. A mare, young when he had known her, but old now. Her mane is matted with blood under his gloves. Gilbert, next to him at her spine, commands again: “And—heave!” 

They’re close now. They turn her again, to the edge. One of her limp legs touches the lava. The sizzle, like meat on a hot pan, makes the hair on Yuri’s neck stand on end. 

“One more. Heave!” 

This heave does it. The molten ground of Ailell burns the corpse and swallows the ash. 

If they had more time, or if the conditions weren’t so inhospitable, they might have done something kinder with the bodies. Not that there’s really anything kind to be done with casualties of war, or that it really matters—but even if it’s cleaner than usual, this feels crueler. Felix, on Gilbert’s other side, stares darkly at the spluttering surface of the lava for a moment before he stands.  

The Valley of Torment is a hell of a place to rest. Yuri’s ill at ease just standing here. A clandestine meeting would’ve been one thing, but he wishes they hadn’t been forced to fight a meaningless, avoidable battle on sacred ground. The theological implications are almost comical in their irony. This is exactly what the goddess had meant, when she had cast her wrath down on Ailell. How could humanity spill each other’s blood on such a scale and still presume to be worthy of existence? The fire is what they all deserve. 

But Yuri’s always known he’s a sinner. All that matters is that he isn’t burning yet. 

Felix stalks off toward another fallen horse—Yuri isn’t sure if he finds them easier to burn than the soldiers, or more difficult but with an obligation to shoulder it. Gilbert starts back to where they’d left Gwendal, where his horse’s armor still lies. Yuri follows him. 

Ashe is crouched at Gwendal’s side. He’s removed his fur-lined gloves to work at the buckles of his armor, and carefully shifts him over to separate the dented breastplate. The blood on the inside of it has begun to dry.   

“Should we keep this?” asks Ashe, looking up at Gilbert as he approaches. 

“...It’s weakened,” says Gilbert. “I suppose there aren’t many of us that could make use of such heavy armor to begin with—" 

“—But it’s worth melting down, at least.” Yuri cuts in. “A knight like that has high-quality armor.” Before and after himself, the Gray Lion had been the shining prize of House Rowe. He knows the count spared no expense. 

Yuri can’t help thinking of him. The count had known Gwendal since childhood. He’d been raised as his charge—it was the only way he knew, all those years later, to look after a son. And it’s his own fault for sending him here, but Yuri knows the count is going to weep for Gwendal. Everything Count Rowe weeps for is his own fault. 

Gilbert takes the breastplate from Ashe, turning it over in his hands. He looks down at Gwendal for a moment, and, thoughtfully, he sighs. 

He carefully stacks as much armor on top of it as he can balance, and slowly carries it back toward the convoy. Ashe turns Gwendal over again to remove the armor from his back—but as he does, he turns his head to the side so he won’t lay facefirst on the blackened rock.  

Yuri rubs sweat from his eyes with one hand and takes the backplate from Ashe with the other. 

“Did he ever tell you how he got that scar?” Ashe asks him. 

Cutting across his face, through one eye. Gwendal had it as long as Yuri had known him. He’d never asked. He’d never have wanted anyone to ask, if it were him. “He didn’t.” Yuri tilts his head. “Why? Did he tell you?” 

“No. I just wondered.”  

It doesn’t really matter, but the feeling that they’re never going to know is still uncomfortable. Ashe stares down at the empty face as he rolls Gwendal onto his back again.  

“I know I should feel better about it when we kill an older man,” he says, “rather than a young one. But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.” He sighs. “It’s like we took something we didn’t deserve.” 

Gwendal Roche was one of the greatest knights in living memory, but his death had been ignominious. This was no grand battle that will go down in history, where a man like that ought to have been heroically slain. He and his soldiers will burn forever in the pits of Ailell, for no other reason than blind obedience. Yuri understands the feeling.  

He sits down on the other side of the body and starts unbuckling the greaves from Gwendal’s legs.  

They work in silence until he’s stripped of armor. Seteth, who had begun circling as they got closer, kneels between them to search the body with quick, skillful hands. He removes a couple of short knives and pries open an old watch from one pocket. He doesn’t seem to find anything worth concern.  

“Alright,” he says, with a weary sigh.  

Yuri and Ashe look at each other. Ashe looks back toward the closest edge, where they’d pushed the horse. 

“...It doesn’t feel dignified enough to roll him,” he says. “I know he’s not the only one that mattered; I knew most of his soldiers here too. But...” 

But Ashe and the others were on more equal footing, while he wouldn’t have dared disrespect Lord Gwendal. “I think he’d want it this way,” says Yuri. It’s true, but it’s also easier. “Before everything, he was one of his men.”  

Any soldier who fights for long enough comes to understand themself that way. Ashe sighs. “I guess you’re right.” 

Considering Gwendal’s size, they should probably ask for help moving him. Neither of them tries to: it feels right that it’s the two of them. They slowly shift him over to the lip of the lava. They hesitate together for one long moment, and then, steadily, they turn his body over the edge. 

Yuri squeezes his eyes shut against the flames. He shouldn’t have touched his face with the same gloves he’d used to manhandle Alcestis—he can feel the irritation in his eyes, his nose starting to run. Frustrated, he tugs off his gloves and wipes tears from his eyes with sweaty fingers. 

“Are you okay?” 

Yuri sniffs, rubbing at his nose. “Sorry?” 

Ashe lowers his voice below the echo of the valley. “I mean... It’s alright,” he says gently, leaning closer. “I know you were close to him when you were younger.” 

Oh. “Oh, no, it’s—” Yuri gestures at the lava, gloves swinging from two curled fingers. “The horse. Allergies.” 

He doesn’t think he’d have teared up otherwise, but it’s nice to have a genuine excuse even so. 

“Oh!” Ashe looks away—blushing, probably, but his face is too red from the heat already. “Sorry, I... Sorry.” 

It occurs to Yuri with an uncomfortable flip of his stomach that perhaps Ashe had wanted him to cry. After he’d taken the life of a man who’d meant something to him, perhaps Ashe had wanted him to show an ounce of human guilt or grief. Yuri knows how humiliated Ashe had been years ago, when he hadn’t been able to hide his own.  

But Ashe clears his throat, moving past it. “I could probably find some herbs back at the monastery to help with that,” he says. “The greenhouse is in a much better state now than it was when we got here.” 

“I’ve been managing,” says Yuri. “You don’t need to go to the trouble.” 

“But I’d like to. Honestly. I miss working with medicine.”  

There’s not much call for it, Yuri supposes, when magical healing is more versatile and powerful on the battlefield. But something like hay fever is too banal for a priestess. 

Ashe goes on. “And I feel a little bit obligated,” he says. “I’ve been working on my horsemanship lately. I’d like to start riding in battle too, when I can.” 

“Oh?” 

He laughs, a little ruefully. “I suppose I’ve always wanted to be a knight on horseback.” 

Yuri smiles fondly. Of course he would. 

“Gwendal taught me a lot about riding when I served under him,” says Ashe.  

“He did?” 

“It took me a long time to learn properly. I was terrified of the horses at Gaspard when I was younger.” He chuckles weakly. “Though I guess anyone would be nervous if they were as little as I was.” 

Ashe is Yuri’s height now. Maybe even a little taller. He’d been young when they met, with plenty of time left for growing, but it had surprised Yuri to see him grown anyway. It’s strange to be forced to think of Ashe as an adult man. 

“He tried to teach me too, actually,” says Yuri. “When I lived at Arianrhod.” He gestures at his reddened eyes. “But I didn’t take to it.” 

Ashe laughs softly. 

The allergies aside, Yuri prefers fighting on his own feet. He prefers to control every movement himself. He’s not sure he has it in him to commune with anyone smoothly enough for his liking, not even a horse.  

“It was humiliating,” he says. It feels right to go on: a funny story for a funeral. “I was fifteen, maybe sixteen. He put me on that miserable old horse he had that wouldn’t flinch for anything.” 

“Do you mean Belle?” 

“Belle.” Yuri laughs. He can picture her big old horsey face, staring at him with half-lidded eyes. “Yeah, that was it. You, too?” 

“Me, too.” Ashe grins wistfully. “I liked her, though,” he says. “Actually—when I left, he let me take her to ride north.” 

Yuri whistles. Giving a boy a horse is as close to an affectionate gesture as he’d ever seen Gwendal get. “Does that mean you’ve still got her?” 

Ashe’s lips flatten into a mournful smile. “She’s dead.” 

“…Oh.” 

“Nothing bad, just old age. But they let me keep her at House Fraldarius for years before that.” 

He pauses, looking out over the lava. 

“It wasn’t me,” he says. “I promise it wasn’t.” 

“What?” 

“Who passed along our location. I imagine I’m the logical suspect.” 

If anyone suspected him, they wouldn’t have let him touch Gwendal’s body alone. Yuri snorts. “You?” he replies, amused. “And not House Rowe’s untrustworthy son?” 

“You’re not untrustworthy,” mutters Ashe. 

He’s taking this seriously. Of course he is. “You left his army years ago,” Yuri reminds him. You knew better than to die here. 

“But that sounds like something he would do, doesn’t it?” Ashe insists. “Send an alleged defector to establish themselves with the enemy?” 

It’s ridiculous, but Yuri can’t deny it either. He rubs his eyes again, annoyed. “If you’re trying to get yourself garroted, I won’t help you.” 

“I’m not—” Ashe grimaces, looking down at his hands. “I just… I know how bad it looks.” 

Is he thinking of Christophe, Yuri wonders, whose innocence hadn’t stopped his execution? He doesn’t know specifics about the man’s arrest. Had a young Ashe heard his confusion at the charge? Heard him plead, heard him beg? 

“There’ll be an investigation, I suppose,” Yuri says. “You’re close with Gilbert and Rodrigue now, aren’t you? Not to mention the professor.” He’d bring up Dimitri too, as his opinion still seems to be worth more than it should be, but Yuri isn’t confident making claims about his rationality. “They trust you. They’ll believe you if you tell them the truth.” He crosses his arms, nudging Ashe with one elbow. “Take it from me. You’re not that good a liar.” 

This makes Ashe laugh, though bitterly. “I guess that’s true,” he mumbles. “Count Rowe wouldn’t have sent me anywhere undercover in a million years.” 

Awkwardly, Yuri rubs the corners of his eyes and looks away. 

“He didn’t seem to trust me much in general,” Ashe admits. 

“Don’t take that personally,” Yuri replies, nudging him again. “He doesn’t trust anyone much.”  

They both find their gaze drawn back to the lava in front of them. There had been exceptions. 

“It was generous, offering me a position. And at the time, I was happy to take it.” Ashe pauses. “But... I don’t think it was me that he was interested in, either.” 

Yuri groans softly in the back of his throat. He'd been afraid of this.  

“Did he say something to you?” 

“He knew we’d been at school together. He thought I might know where you were.” 

This had been Yuri’s main concern, when he was putting off joining the professor’s class. If he started going out on missions with the prince himself, there was no doubt that Count Rowe would hear. And as soon as he’d heard Ashe had taken a post at House Rowe, he’d been afraid the count was running a gambit of some kind. Surely whatever Ashe had told him hadn’t been enough to track him even now? Was this battle his own fault to begin with? 

“I didn’t tell him anything,” says Ashe. “I said we weren’t close.” 

Yuri lets out the breath he was holding. There’s an uncomfortable silence as Ashe glances back up to meet his eye. We really weren’t close, were we? 

“Thank you,” says Yuri, and he means it. This sort of concern didn’t occur to a lot of people, especially the well-intentioned ones. He’d never have thought to expect it from Ashe.  

“Of course.”  

Ashe opens his mouth again, but it takes him a few moments to figure out what to say. 

“Do you remember when we met in Abyss, that first night?” 

Yuri sniffs, rubbing under his nose with the heel of his thumb. “You mean when I was staring down your arrow?” 

Ashe grimaces, sheepish. “Yeah.” 

“What about it?” 

“I told you something stupid,” he mumbles. “About how worried they’d been at House Rowe. That we should get you back home.” 

“Mm.” Yuri remembers it. The naivety had astounded him—he hadn’t been able to help but laugh. 

“When I left, I thought of you.” Ashe admits. 

“Did you?” 

“Mmhm.” He hesitates. “Before I spent time there, I never understood why you wouldn’t go back.” 

Yuri looks up at him, squinting through stinging eyes.  

“I always knew Count Rowe was different from Lonato, but... I don’t know.” Ashe glances over at him, meeting his gaze. “Can I ask how it happened in the first place? How you ended up as his son?”  

Helplessly, Yuri shrugs. 

“Did he pressure you somehow?” 

He can’t deny it. Count Rowe had found the same vulnerability that Aelfric had, and rather than threatening his mother, he’d helped her. He hadn’t manipulated him. He had bought him in a transaction. 

“I knew what I was getting into,” Yuri says, sidestepping the question. “He was using me, but I had a mind to use him back.”  

“...And did you?” 

In hindsight, he’s not sure that taking bait he was offered was using him, exactly, but at the time he’d been a lot less concerned with that and more concerned with whether the bait was worth it. It had been. Though his foot in the society door hadn’t gone as planned, his mother did get the treatment she needed. Even now she’s doing better. Yuri doesn’t want to owe anything to Count Rowe, but he doesn’t know where she would be without those years at the hospital in Fhirdiad. 

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t,” he says. 

Ashe looks back at him for a long time. Yuri had been hoping Ashe’s huge, pale eyes might lose some of their power now that he’s a grown man, but it seems it wasn’t just the innocence that swayed him. He looks away again. 

He looks away, but he has to say it even so. “I’m proud of you, Ashe.” 

“What?” 

“I hated that man, but even I wouldn’t have left him if I didn’t have to.” Yuri shakes his head. “It was your home. That’s not easy.” 

The news that Ashe had left House Rowe, like the news that he’d joined them to begin with, had come to Yuri through his grapevine. He’d wanted to keep an eye on the situation. He’d wanted to keep an eye on a boy like Ashe in wartime. Yuri can still remember the day he heard he’d gone. It had been the best news in an increasingly awful week. 

“It’s still my home,” says Ashe. “Bran and Clara are still in Gaspard.” 

Yuri knows that too. Clara is still at the church that took them in, helping them as they’d helped her. Bran is apprenticed to a local carpenter. Neither of them have ever even met him, but their safety means something to Yuri. They're closer to Abyss than Ashe has been. Making sure they’re doing well feels like making sure that Ashe is. 

Ashe clenches his jaw. “I didn’t want to leave them. I took the position in the first place to stay close to them. But—after everything, I just couldn’t stay on. And I couldn’t take them with me.” He exhales weakly. “House Fraldarius was under attack. It has been for years. All things considered, it was safer for civilians in the Dukedom.” 

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” says Yuri. “I know what it’s like to make decisions like that.” 

Ashe doesn’t reply for a long time, staring down into the lava. 

“As a knight, I couldn’t follow him. But…” He swallows. "I don’t like to admit it, but, as a lord protecting his people… I think Count Rowe might have done the right thing. Surrendering.” 

“Don’t be stupid.” Yuri snorts. “He was just trying to save his own skin. Trust me, the count couldn’t give less of a damn about protecting his people.” 

“Regardless of his intentions,” Ashe insists, “he did. That’s more than Lonato did five years ago.” 

This, even in the heat of the valley, makes Yuri’s blood run cold. He stares at Ashe, sickened. How long has he been fighting the battle they’d left unresolved that afternoon at the cathedral? 

“The count is a coward.” says Ashe. He still won’t look at him. “I know he’s a coward. But sometimes I think Fódlan might need more cowardly lords, and fewer waging war for their ideals. The people might be better off.” 

Yuri’s heard enough. Infuriated, he grabs Ashe by the chin and forcefully jerks his head over to meet his eyes. “Don’t ever let me hear you say that again.” 

When they met again after all this time, Yuri had been hopeful. Ashe had seemed more stable with war under his belt. But Yuri hadn’t realized what profound hopelessness still lay beneath that, and he wishes he had. He wishes he’d realized early enough to fix it. 

He roughly lets Ashe go, glaring back at him. 

“I know I haven’t spent as much time as you have on the front lines,” he says. “I don’t know what that’s like. But I do know how guilty you feel about leaving Gaspard, and this is guilt talking, not sense.” Yuri sniffs heavily, clearing his running nose. “I’ve been all over, these last few years, and they’re starving in the Dukedom. The taxes are bleeding people dry. They’re not much better off than we are.”  

He watches Ashe thoughtfully shift his jaw where he’d grabbed him, running his tongue over his teeth behind his lips. He sighs. 

“But my mother’s still in Fhirdiad,” Yuri says. “I can’t move her, but I don’t know if I would if I could. I know what that guilt feels like.” 

“Are you still in contact?” Ashe asks quietly. 

“When I can get a message there,” says Yuri. It’s not often, but he’s not going to worry Ashe with that right now. The question makes Yuri think he hasn’t heard from his siblings in a long time. 

“...You’re alright with Dimitri’s plans, then?” asks Ashe. “To attack the Imperial capital directly?” 

Yuri rubs his eyes, weary. 

“I’m alright with any plan we follow as an army,” he says. "I know he’s hardly in his right mind, but dissent isn’t going to do any good. The only chance we’ll have in either of these fights is all together.” 

“Then—Goddess willing, we end this in Enbarr.” 

Yuri hasn’t been back to Enbarr since he was a boy. It’s deep and irrational and makes him sick, but there’s a part of him that wants to see the city burn. He drags the irritated tears from the corners of his eyes with his fingertips. 

“You know,” says Ashe, “I’ve still never been to Fhirdiad.”  

“Mm.” It’s been difficult to visit for a while. “I guess you wouldn’t have.” 

He turns his gaze out over the valley. “If we do get the chance to see it though,” he says, “I’d like to meet your mother.” 

“...You would?” 

“Mmhm.” 

The last time Yuri had seen her in person was before the fall. He’d gone back after he was pardoned, when he could. He told her he’d been talked into rejoining the Officer’s Academy. She’d been proud. 

“I guess you could meet her, if you really want,” he says. And, impulsively, he chuckles. “I suppose she might feel better about my prospects if I bring home a man like you.” 

Ashe matches his teasing tone. “What kind of man am I?” 

Yuri hadn’t expected a reply at all, much less one that played along. Once again, the idea that Ashe is grown up now takes him aback. Does he talk like this often? 

He clears his throat. “...Thoughtful,” he says, inclining his head. “Polite.” 

“I see.” 

“Respectful, responsible. You know. Everything her own son always struggled with.” 

“Hm.” A little smile plays at Ashe’s lips. "I think my own mother would be proud to know anybody thought so highly of me.” 

Speechless, Yuri laughs softly, deep in his throat. 

What have you been up to, he wonders, these last five years? 

He knows Ashe is handsome. Not in the same way that he is himself, which is the handsome he’s always judged by, but handsome in his own way nonetheless. He’s sweet, sincere—and he keeps the bitter side of him Yuri’s seen on occasion well suppressed. How many village girls had swooned at the smile of a gentle knight? 

But it doesn’t feel right to picture Ashe with a woman. Nor with a man, nor with himself. Used by him or against him, Yuri has always seen sex first and foremost as a tool. And he doesn’t want to use Ashe. He doesn’t want to see him used. He doesn’t want to make him into the sort of person who uses others.  

He wants... He doesn’t know what he wants. And it’s stupid, it’s all so stupid. Ashe doesn’t see any of this the way he does. Ashe has always been a romantic, and now he’s a grown one. He deserves...  

Yuri stands there in silence on the edge of the rock, eyes watering, mind spinning. 

Ashe hadn’t lied to Count Rowe—they're not close, they’ve never been. But Yuri has positioned himself as Ashe’s keeper nonetheless. He could never help it. Their lives had followed such similar paths—how could he not look back, from a few steps ahead? 

Ever since the day they’d met, he’d been projecting his own past, his own pain. No matter what Ashe said to him in the decade since, he hadn’t been able to let go of it. Yuri’s always been looking at Ashe as a better, brighter, purer version of himself—himself if he could have been saved. Himself if he’d had a man like him who cared enough to save him. 

It’s not fair to Ashe. He’s his own man. And is it fair to himself, Yuri wonders, to take salvation off his own shoulders entirely? To give up hope and search for it in someone else instead? 

Yuri stares at Ashe, red in the glow of Ailell. He wants to know him. He wants to know him, after all these years, without all of this hanging over their heads. Maybe then he’d be able to invite him home with more seriousness than irony.   

And then Ashe speaks, startling him. “I’ve got some whiskey back at the monastery," he says. 

“Oh—do you?” 

“Only a little. I’ve mostly been using it to cook with. But that’s what he used to drink, isn’t it? Gwendal?” 

At the end of every day, peacefully, in the high-backed armchair in his chambers. Yuri had been permitted to share a glass with him once or twice on the condition that he didn’t say a word. “Yeah, it was.” 

“I thought maybe we could have a drink in his honor.” 

Yuri’s not sure, though, how much Gwendal had actually liked drinking. The spare ritualism of it felt bleak—like he’d granted himself a single indulgence to get him through each day and on to the next one. Maybe having no more days left to get through is worth more of a celebration. 

“I don’t know,” says Yuri. “Cooking with it sounds more fun. The man liked a good roast just as much, didn’t he?” 

"That’s true.” Ashe smiles over at him, green eyes crinkling. “There’s not very much whiskey left, though. It might have to be a meal for two.” 

Yuri still can’t tell if Ashe is flirting with him, or if he’s just earnest enough that it sounds like it.  

To somebody that uses flirtation to keep others at arm’s length, it’s a strange idea. “That sounds alright,” he replies. “I’m looking forward to it.” It’s a date feels too on-the-nose—like if he says it out loud, even teasing, he’ll break the spell. 

Ashe’s smile widens. 

Yuri doesn’t want to break the spell just yet. 

Chapter Text

Verdant Rain Moon, Imperial Year 1190 

The first time Ashe ever laid eyes on Garreg Mach, it was hard to believe he wasn’t dreaming. Castle Gaspard was the most majestic building he’d ever seen, after all. He’d spent years getting used to it by then, and even still he’d be overwhelmed getting up some mornings. The first glimpse of the monastery on the hill blew him away. 

In practice, however, Garreg Mach had been a less intimidating place to live. In so many ways, it was a village more than a home, and Ashe understood how to have a small place as part of it. It was refreshing. He’d taken poorly to life as a lordling.  

Was it lonely? he asked Christophe once, in the first couple of weeks, as they walked around the pond. Growing up here alone? 

Awfully, Christophe replied with a grin.  

Castle Gaspard had never felt as lonely as the day he’d returned to it. The house had been empty for years, the grounds unmanaged, the staff and stock moved elsewhere. House Rowe had taken over day-to-day administration of the lordship after Lonato’s death, but they’d done it from Arianrhod. There hadn’t been a need for the heir to return—nor to confront that he was the heir at all. 

But Ashe owes it to Lonato. 

Since the end of the war, he’s been learning to manage the estate. He’d had a couple of introductory lessons from a particularly stern Lonato after Christophe’s death, but at the time, he hadn’t known how urgent it would be. He’d expected to grow up at Lonato’s side, after all. He’d expected to have time to come to terms with the role, and to take the step only when he was ready.  

He still isn’t ready, but he has no more excuses. He’d rather try than keep running. Bran and his wife have come to live with him, and they’re slowly figuring out how to bring Gaspard to life again. Hopefully, in time, it will be alive enough that Ashe doesn’t see ghosts in every empty hall.  

His horse’s hooves ring hollowly on the cobblestone as he slowly rides through the monastery, making his way over to the stables. He doesn’t hear footsteps behind him—only the voice as he pulls her to a stop. 

“Lord Gaspard. You’re out of your way.” 

He looks back to where Yuri leans casually against the hedge, eyeing him with a tiny grin. 

Ashe sits back in the saddle. He imagines someone had seen him approach—he wonders how much time Yuri had to plan his grand entrance. “I hear Lonato used to spend a lot of time here, actually.” 

“Embarrassing his poor son, no doubt.” Smoothly, Yuri saunters over to his horse’s shoulder. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” 

“Can’t I embarrass you?” 

Yuri laughs. Ashe has missed the sound of it. 

“I’ve been riding home from Fhirdiad,” he says, more seriously, as he swings his leg over his horse’s back to hop to the ground. “I thought I’d stop here and stay the night.” 

“With me?”  

He snorts lightly at the tone. “If it’s an imposition, I can ask the professor for a room.” 

“Our esteemed archbishop, do you mean? Don’t.” Yuri grins. “I’d rather not be debauched in the house of the goddess.” 

He’s been slowly getting used to it in writing, but having these kinds of conversations aloud still makes Ashe a little lightheaded. “But Abyss will do?”  

“Very nicely.” 

“Mm.” 

For an indulgent moment, they just look at each other. Yuri reaches up to run a hand over his horse’s velvety nose. 

“Happy birthday,” says Ashe. 

Yuri’s thirty now, still as lithe and lovely as he’d been at twenty. “You said that already in your last letter,” he replies, and he winks. “I’d imagine my reply is waiting on your desk at home. Maybe you ought to get back and read it before Bran gets nosy.” 

He’d tried, but Yuri’s always going to win. Ashe turns to unbuckle his saddlebag as he feels his face redden. “I had to stop by, actually,” he says. “I’m a messenger.” 

“Oh?” 

He lifts the large, wrapped bouquet from where he’d secured it in Fhirdiad, uncovering the broadcloth he’d tied over the flowers to keep them safe while he rode.

“For me?” 

“They’re from your mother.” Ashe tucks the envelope back between the blooms. It’s thicker than most birthday cards, but the woman’s son is more wayward than most. 

Yuri takes the bouquet in one arm, admiring it. “She can pay for these?” 

“She drives a good bargain.” 

He smiles fondly down at the flowers. “She does.” 

“This—” Ashe tosses a bottle of eyedrops, which Yuri catches gracefully. “—Is from me.” 

“Much appreciated.” Yuri pockets the bottle. “Your greenhouse is doing well, then?” 

“Better than it was. We have a proper gardener now.” Bran had had to forcefully scold him out of doing everything himself. “Though I’d like to stop by the Garreg Mach greenhouse, while I’m here. There are a couple of plants I miss.” 

“And you plan to do what, steal them?” Yuri chuckles. “Why, Lord Gaspard! I thought you’d changed your ways.” 

Ashe rolls his eyes as he reaches for his reins. “It’s called propagation.” 

“Which is different how?” 

“The plant itself stays,” he says. He catches the eye of a young stable boy, beckoning him over to lead his horse to a stall. “All I need is a small cutting, which I would ask for, and with some luck I should be able to grow my own at home.” 

“I see.” 

Yuri breaks a sprig of tiny blue blossoms off a stem in his bouquet, and he tucks it in one fastening of Ashe’s cape. He looks up to meet his eyes.  

“We’ll find time for that,” he says, smiling. “But in the meantime, come on down. I want you to see it.” 

It’s been a long time since Ashe has seen Abyss. He went down a couple of times during the war, and again before he left shortly after. It had been much the same then as he remembered from that first adventure—dim, drafty, and ramshackle, but very much alive. 

In letters, he’s gotten the sense that things have been changing, but in letters, that sort of thing is difficult to capture. Ashe really has no idea what he’s in for. It’s still as difficult to get down under the monastery as it’s ever been. He’s led down through steep, thin tunnels—different ones than before, he thinks, but no less prohibitive.  

His heart skips a beat at an odd gurgling sound, from deep in the earth. “I forget how dark it is down here.” 

“It grows on you,” Yuri replies, soft in his ear. “Don’t worry. I’m here to hold your hand.” 

Yuri doesn’t, however, hold his hand. A skittish part of Ashe is glad he doesn’t. He’s always nervous at the start. Everything is so much easier when it’s only words, when he has the privacy to read them and as much time as he likes to compose his own. But he’ll get used to it. He always does. They see each other in person so infrequently that Ashe forgets how to be a lover in the time in between.   

The tunnel opens up onto a great hollow space. Yuri descends the steps ahead of him. “Here we are.” 

Ashe follows slowly, wide-eyed. He knows where he is. When he was last here, Burrow Street had been crisscrossed by weathered beams and rickety scaffolding—half the buildings were built like war tents, and the other half like lean-to shelters. It was an impermanent town, operating in a way it wasn’t designed for, full of people resigned to their lot. 

It’s still poorly-lit. The cats and dogs still wander the shadowed street, and merchants’ wares still spill out into the road. But the town is no longer half-constructed. It’s clean and solid, doors and roofs and walls. The debris has been moved from the dark streetsides and corners, the stonework of the floors and walls is new and uncracked. Ashe gapes up at the gigantic statue of Seiros, now unobscured. 

“How long did this take?” 

He can hear the pride in Yuri’s voice. “Years.” 

“Was it the monastery? Or...?” 

“We’ve mostly done the work ourselves.” He leads Ashe further down the street, away from the saint’s gaze. “There’s always people here looking to make a little money above board. And the church helped us out at first, but now that we’ve got more merchants willing to trade down here, we could get our own materials. By now it’s pretty self-sustaining.” 

“And they actually like it like this?” asks Ashe. “The people here?” 

Yuri sighs.  

“...It took some time,” he admits. “People get used to having nothing, and after long enough, it starts to feel right. But when it comes down to it, most of us prefer a roof over no roof. Even if they’re just passing through.”  

“They’re not worried about Abyss changing too much?” If he were the sort of criminal who needed a town like this, Ashe can’t help but think he wouldn’t feel quite as at home. 

“Not anymore,” says Yuri. “We deserve a better place to live, but nothing else has to change. The professor knows that.” 

The professor certainly does know that. It’s strange to personally know the archbishop these days, to say nothing of the king. But that’s what the Officer’s Academy does to a person, Ashe supposes. He can understand why Yuri had gone to the lengths he had to get there. He’d barely understood what it meant when he’d ended up there himself.  

Yuri veers off the street, hopping up onto a steep, narrow staircase. “I live up here.” 

Ashe follows him up. He shouldn’t be surprised that Yuri’s got his own place now: he doesn’t belong in the student bunks anymore, he's a lord in all but name. But Yuri, unlike himself, is a lord of the people. He lives alongside the others, in between a pair of similar rooms on the row above the street. 

“Oh,” murmurs Ashe, stepping inside as Yuri lights the lamp. 

He’s gotten too used to his castle’s cavernousness—it takes work to fill up a room at Gaspard. Yuri’s room is small and tightly packed with furniture, but well-organized. It’s comfortable in a way he misses. Ashe watches Yuri pull the ribbon from his mother’s flowers to put them into a half-full bottle of water on the nightstand.  

Yuri picks up a small towel and splashes the some of the water into it. “Wash your hands,” he says, holding it out. “You’ve been riding all day, haven’t you?” He lifts the little bottle Ashe had given him to the light before setting it down on the table. “I don’t want to waste these when I don’t have to.” 

“What about my clothes, then?” 

“You’ll just have to take those off, won’t you?” 

Ashe chuckles softly as he pulls off his gloves. 

Rubbing his hands with water, he wanders toward the window. Though she’s turned in the other direction, they’re on level with Seiros’s face. He scrubs the wet towel over his face and neck before inclining his head toward her. “What were you saying, again, about the house of the goddess?” 

Yuri reaches over his shoulder to draw the curtain. 

His hand, on the way back, lingers at the crook of Ashe’s neck. He pulls in a deep breath as the back of Yuri’s slender fingers brush his cheek, as the pad of Yuri’s thumb moves over his lower lip. 

They kiss. Chaste at first, and then deep and slow. And as Ashe lifts his own hand to curve around the back of Yuri’s head, fingers deep in his hair, his anxiety blurs into meaninglessness around him like everything else. This is familiar. It’s like the last time they kissed, in his own bedroom at Gaspard. Like every kiss he’d imagined as he wrote. Hidden in a church alcove at his brother’s wedding, out in the dark garden at the coronation. The first time they’d ever kissed, alone in the kitchen upstairs, years and years ago.   

It’s always like this. Once he’s taken a first step again, Ashe forgets how he’d forgotten. Everything’s easier with momentum. 

He’d been distracted before he got the chance to properly look around, but afterward, Ashe inspects the room. Undressed, he leafs through Yuri’s clothes. He looks up at the tiny mismatched frames on the wall, over the little tubs and bottles on the dressing table. He scans Yuri’s pens and inks and paper, finds his own last letter still sticking out of its torn envelope on top. He trails fingertips along the bookshelf over the desk, tilting his head to read each spine. 

He pauses, and he laughs aloud. “The Sword of Kyphon?” 

Yuri lazily rolls over onto his stomach, watching him from the bed. “That’s the greatest romance ever written, you know.” 

Ashe meets his eye in the mirror. “Should I take notes?” 

“You haven’t already taken every note there is to take?” 

“I’ve never taken any notes, actually.” He chuckles awkwardly. “I thought a lot about it. I could probably still recite half that book from memory. But it was always just in my head.” 

“Annotate me a copy, then,” says Yuri.  

“What?” 

“As a birthday present. I’m curious.” 

Ashe looks back at the bookshelf. “I haven’t read it since the war, actually,” he admits.  

He’s been busy, but he’s also been afraid.  So much of his childhood worldview had formed around the world of this book. He’d been entranced by the valiance and selflessness of knighthood. But at the end of the day, it’s a fairy tale. Ashe is afraid of seeing that world he’d once loved so much through different eyes, now that his own eyes have seen so much more. 

“That sounds even more interesting.” 

“...Maybe.” 

Yuri rests his chin in one hand, looking at him with a shrewd, sad expression for a while.  

“How were things at court?” he asks. 

And Ashe is grateful for a question he has the answer to. “They all seem well,” he says, leaning against the table. “Dimitri and the others. The meetings were productive.” 

“Good.” 

“I saw Clara.” His sister has been at the school of sorcery. The years he’d left her in care of the church had left her with a talent for healing. “We had dinner with your mother.” 

“They’re still getting along, then?” 

He smiles faintly. “Like a house on fire.” 

“Good.”  

Another silence. Yuri leans forward to rest on his elbows.  

“And Gaspard? Things are going well?” 

Ashe sighs. Yuri had last visited a year ago, when he’d been in a much worse place. They’d talked it over in bed too, then. They talk over everything in bed, now that they’ve got a vested interest in privacy. 

“It’s still a lot,” he mumbles. “I’m not making as many mistakes with the household as I was, but there’s nothing I can do about the villagers.” So many of them still don’t trust him, and he can’t blame them. He’d had the same doubts in himself. How could he take this title, when he’d done no less than usurp it? “It doesn’t help when I do things like stay at the church.” 

“...Come here.” 

Yuri beckons. Ashe sinks to the floor beside the bed and leans against it, his head level with Yuri’s where he lies.   

“There’s nothing you can do but prove to them you care,” says Yuri, deep and serious. “You’re doing your best to look out for their welfare, and that’s all you want to do. If you do that for long enough, no matter what anyone says about you, eventually people will realize you’re sincere.”  

“...I guess so.” 

“You’re lucky.” He tucks a lock of Ashe’s hair behind his ear. “Being yourself—not everyone can get away with that.” Weakly, he laughs. “The count would just tell me not to give a damn what people thought, because he knew he’d never win anyone over.” 

Ashe snorts.  

“He isn’t giving you trouble, is he?” 

“Not really.” He leans his head back against Yuri’s bare arm. “I mean—he doesn’t think much of me.” 

“Mm...I’d imagine he doesn’t.” 

“But with Dimitri on the throne now, he doesn’t dare say it.” He’s not in a position for dissent. Officially, of course, no one discriminates against the western lords. Everyone’s aware of the pressure Cornelia had put them under, and has magnanimously granted them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s in the same way that no one discriminates against former Imperial soldiers: in law, but not in practice. 

“Well, let me know if you need advice,” says Yuri. “He’s easy enough to handle, if you know what you’re doing.” 

“Duly noted,” Ashe replies flatly. “I’d love to feel like I know what I’m doing.” 

Yuri leans over to kiss his temple. “And I’d love to make you feel like you do.” 

Ashe hesitates for a moment before he speaks. 

“I do wonder sometimes... Are you still his heir, on paper?” 

“Surely not.” Yuri grimaces. “If the man knows anything, it’s when to cut his losses.” 

Ashe isn’t sure about that, but he still doesn’t know him as well as Yuri does. Fidgety, he pulls at a loose thread on the rug. 

“If you were to even end up in my position,” he asks, “would you have taken on his title?” 

“What, me as Count Rowe?” Yuri doesn’t even have to think about it. “Absolutely not.” 

“But did you ever plan to?” asks Ashe. “You were his only heir, after all. I’m sure that’s what he wanted from you.” 

“...I didn’t have an exit strategy, per se.” Yuri rolls over onto his back, head hanging over the edge of the bed. “But I always planned to figure one out. Aelfric just beat me to it.” 

“Is it really that easy?” 

“I’ve done it before.” He shrugs. “Yuri Leclerc never existed in the first place. It would be easy enough for him to go missing forever.” 

“Yuri...” 

The first time Ashe had met his mother, he’d had to be warned she’d use a different name. He’s still not sure how he feels about it. He doesn’t want to love a false identity, but all the same, he’s not sure he can think of Yuri as anyone but. 

“Don’t worry.” Still upside-down, Yuri lifts a hand up to pat his cheek. “I’ve gotten pretty fond of him in the meantime.” 

Not entirely comforted, Ashe leans into his caress. 

“What about this.” Yuri’s mischievous tone sets Ashe’s hair on end. “If our friend the count dies without another heir, I’ll hand his title over to you.” 

He knits his brow. “Don’t joke about something like that.” 

“It’s not a joke.” Yuri grins slyly. “I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m a close personal friend of His Majesty. We fought together in the war.” 

“I’m serious,” Ashe replies, looking him in the eye. “I don’t want that. I’m struggling enough with Gaspard as it is.” 

“Alright. If you’re sure.” Still amused, Yuri shakes his head. “Then we’d best pray the man finds someone more interesting than me to write into his will before he dies.” 

Ashe snorts. He looks away, back across the room. 

He had never pictured himself as a lord. He never even daydreamed about it. He had pictured himself as a knight, because it felt possible. Something a boy like him could achieve, with focus and purpose. He admired responsibility, but only the kind he asked for. 

When he was young, the realization that he was Lonato’s next heir had hit him in waves. Vaguely, dully, so acutely it stung. All of a sudden, amid his grief, there was obligation. He’s had years to confront it, and he’s still working. He’s had to think about how he’s going to pass his obligation on.  

“I’ve actually been thinking about adoption,” he admits. 

Startled, Yuri rights himself. “Really?” 

Ashe flushes. “I mean—not imminently. But, well... I’m not going to have children of my own, am I?” 

Yuri smirks over at him. “No?” 

“No,” Ashe repeats, oddly embarrassed. He’s not the kind of man who could keep a wife as well as a lover. He’s not even the kind who would want to. It feels naive—like something he ought to be ashamed of. 

But Yuri’s just teasing him. He hums thoughtfully. “That’s certainly an option, then.” 

“Of course, I’m not sure it would be wise.” Ashe sighs, looking up at the ceiling. It had gone fine with Christophe, who hadn’t been skipped over as a firstborn son. But there had been no one else in Lonato’s direct line of succession. “Bran will probably have children, or Clara. The last thing I want to do is cause problems with inheritance. Not that any of us are legitimate, of course, but…” 

He'd never pictured himself having to worry about any of this at all. 

“If I can, I’d love to help someone who needs it.” He draws his knees to his chest, looking away. “I have to admit, though... Sometimes I wonder how Lonato made that decision.” 

“To take you in?” 

“To take us in, specifically.” He shakes his head. “We weren’t the only starving children in our territory. Far from it.” 

He’s run this kind of guilt by Yuri before. Guilt for surviving, guilt for thriving, guilt for being given the tools to do so. He’d spent so much of his life surrounded by the born nobility, who sometimes felt shame for their privilege, but didn’t have the past that drove his own unique shame. And unlike the handful of other commoners, he hadn’t won his place at Garreg Mach with grit or talent. He hadn’t even done it like Yuri had, by being special enough to take in. He’d been handpicked from the mud for no reason at all. 

Yuri had never indulged him. Ashe has taken to telling him, because he knows he won’t be indulged, and he doesn’t want to be. So when he says this, he expects an angrier reply. Yuri doesn’t even indulge him that. 

“There’s something I admire about you, Ashe,” he says gently. 

Ashe just stares as Yuri leans down, lifting his chin to look him in the face.  

“It’s that you’ll see someone in front of you that needs help, and you’ll help them without even thinking about it. That’s rarer than you think it is.” Yuri looks him deep in the eye. “Lonato was like that too. He saw you, and he knew he could help you. That’s all there is to it.” 

Helplessly, Ashe looks back at him. 

Yuri’s voice hardens. “I don’t want to see you get so lost in your own head worrying about what’s best that you never do any good for anybody, because the nobility needs people like you, Ashe.” 

“Yuri—” 

“Don’t lose that.” 

Ashe squeezes his eyes shut. 

“It was easy to be like that when I was just some kid,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t help everyone, so I just did what I could.” He shakes his head. “But all this lordship stuff... I’m making decisions on a huge scale, for so many people, with real resources.” It’s paralyzing. The nobility needs people like him, with his perspective—but it overwhelms people like him too. 

“The world needs people like you.” he says. “You’re not tied up in all this. You can just help.” 

From the beginning, Ashe had admired Abyss. He’d admired its mission, as someone who once thought he would have nowhere to go. He’d admired Aelfric, who tended to it, and Yuri, who protected it. And now, he admires its freedom.   

Yuri’s lips curl into a smile. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m starting to think the world needs us to work together, more than anything.” 

Though Yuri had assured him the spirit of Abyss still remained, Ashe hadn’t been sure until breakfast. He wakes to the smell and the sound of it. They still take meals here on the streets with doors open. Sharing, shouting, getting into fights. He looks down on the street from Yuri’s window for a long time before it even occurs to him to be hungry. 

He and Yuri go up to the monastery afterward. There still aren’t as many students as there were—Abyss is more densely populated, by comparison—but the sight of them wandering the grounds he used to wander still gives him a pleasant heartache. They visit the greenhouse, and he cuts the plants he’s been eyeing. They visit the offices to say hello; they visit the cathedral. They stand on the long bridge and look down.  

It’s a quiet morning, heavy and reminiscent. They walk together, just enough distance between their hands.  

When he’s got just enough light to ride back to Gaspard, they return to the stable. The monastery grooms have his horse saddled again, and when he can’t find any more reasons to put it off, Ashe reaches up to swing himself back astride her. 

“Wait.” Yuri holds him back. “One thing.” 

It’s the ribbon from his mother’s bouquet. Bemused, Ashe watches Yuri tie it to his armor, in a neat little bow above his heart. 

“For me?” 

“A maiden’s favor,” Yuri replies. “Or a scoundrel’s, rather.” 

“I wouldn’t call you that.” 

“Of course you wouldn’t.” 

For a long moment Ashe fingers the ribbon, curling it around his thumb. He looks up again. 

“I love you,” he says. 

As romantic as he’d been as a child, he’d never thought too much about romance itself. He’d never really understood what his peers around him were feeling. He’d certainly never understood Kyphon’s devotion that way. But maybe romance is just another lens he had to collect before he could see it. Ashe is keen to pick up his childhood copy in the library at Castle Gaspard, and to sit down in his armchair with a cup of tea. He wants to read this book as a knight, as a veteran—as a man in love. 

Yuri looks back at him, sharp eyes brimming with fondness. 

“I love you too,” he replies. “See you soon.”