Archive of Our Own ^beta

At one in the afternoon, on a beautiful summer’s day, Barok van Zieks sequesters himself in the parlour.

Outside, beyond the thick-paned glass windows, the June sun shines raw and bright, almost mocking in its intensity. Indoors, behind the heavy shelter of the drapes, the parlour in question lies as grey and silent as a tomb. A peculiar atmosphere under ordinary circumstances, today the bleak tableau is well-suited to the room and its occupants, for of the two bodies present, only one of them presently draws breath.

The clock on the mantle reads nine o’ clock, its hands frozen upon the presumed hour of Klint’s death. It isn’t the only notable change to the decor. The curtains have all been drawn, the mirrors covered in stiff black crepe, the family photographs turned facedown one by one. A boxwood wreath, its branches wound with dark ribbon, hangs on the front door, proclaiming the household’s sorrow to the world and halting any visitors in their tracks.

At the time, Barok had said nothing and allowed the staff to enact their small rituals. Let them have their petty comforts, he’d thought. It’d all been the same to him; what did he care for spirits and superstition, faced with the cold reality of his brother’s passing? He hadn’t considered then that every innocuous gesture, meant to soothe and ferry Klint’s soul on its voyage to heaven, would act as a double-edged sword, a pointed, painful reminder to the living around each corner.

Now, sitting alone with Klint’s mortal remains, in the empty shell of a house which had once been a vibrant home, Barok wishes that he’d forbade it all. He thinks that he could have borne the mournful ticking of the clocks better than this all-consuming quiet—this pressing, grief-laden silence. It’d forced the breath from him the moment he’d stepped into the parlour, and caused his knees to buckle just as he’d reached the settee. In the absence of any other sound, his heartbeat is almost intolerably loud, each anguished pulse resonating in his ears like the tolling of a church bell.

The coffin was well-chosen, he observes distantly, his eyes trained upon the edge of it, where the silk lining joins with glossy, dark wood. It’s richly embellished, their family crest carved with care into the side. He has Lord Stronghart to thank for the selection; he’d surprised Barok by offering to take care of the funeral arrangements, and Barok, too deep in his cups to even contemplate other options, had agreed at once with tearful relief. He hadn’t thought Klint and Stronghart so close—but then again, Klint’s most intimate companion of the last several years is currently indisposed, awaiting justice in a cramped cell.

The thought comes upon Barok without warning, and the anger that streaks through him in its wake is so potent that he has to grit his teeth to bear it. He refuses to think about that man here, in Klint’s presence, the devastating consequences of his betrayal on clear display. He’s already taken his brother’s life; Barok won’t allow him to poison his death as well.

Barok releases a shuddering breath. For the first time since entering the room, he raises his head past the perimeter of the coffin to look upon Klint’s face.

It’s still a shock to see him so pale and still, so familiar, yet foreign in his features. Barok had been the one to wash and dress him anew after his relinquishment from Dr. Wilson’s care, much to the staff’s dismay. An act of penance, for the indignities inflicted in the name of identifying his killer. He had carefully combed Klint’s hair into its usual coiffure, and shaved his cold skin. He’d coaxed Klint’s limbs into his court regalia one final time, until he’d looked nearly himself again, and then gently lowered his body into the padded coffin, as though laying him to bed.

But despite Barok’s best efforts, the deathly reality of Klint’s condition remains obvious. Endlessly animated in life, he’s lost all of the vibrancy granted by his soul. The delicate skin beneath his eyes has sunken, and he looks pallid and drawn, with a waxy complexion to rival Barok’s own after days of wine-soaked insomnia. And not even the cascade of lilies, artfully arranged around Klint’s form, nor the assemblage of lit candles, can entirely mask the cloying scent of death.

They’ll be coming to retrieve him soon–to escort Klint’s body to its final resting place. Barok is only here to say his farewells, before it’s too late. When he tries to speak, however, the words stick in his throat like a fistful of nettles.

He swallows, tries again. But what comes out instead of a goodbye is a thin and wretched I’m sorry.

Barok knows that Klint can’t respond, that his soul has already been severed from this earthly plane, but he hopes desperately that he can still hear him somehow. He needs to be reassured that this apology isn’t for naught.

“The autopsy,” he continues, and his voice emerges insubstantial, expelled as a wisp of smoke from a chimney. “It was necessary. To catch the one responsible for all of this—this horror.”

Klint would’ve understood, as a man of the law himself, but that knowledge doesn’t erase the unsightly scars hidden beneath his clothes, the stitched up grooves left in the scalpel’s path. Last night Barok had dreamt of him laid out upon the metal examination table, flesh peeled back to expose the inner workings. He’d looked at him, empty body and empty eyes, and woken up retching. The doctors had put Klint back together afterward, but Barok’s seen the truth of it: Klint isn’t whole anymore, and he’s to blame. He only prays that the rest will make up for it.

Barok reaches out with a trembling hand to gently tuck a stray strand of hair behind Klint’s ear. He’s missing an identical lock on the left side, where Barok had taken a pair of small silver scissors to it. The hair rests in his breast pocket for now, waiting to be woven into a watch chain or tucked into a locket. For all his immediate anger and worry at Amelia’s absence, he knows that she’ll want something to remember Klint by when she returns from her unexpected seclusion—something to give her fatherless child in the years to come.

The thought makes Barok’s eyes sting anew. No tears well up; he’s wrung his body dry with his demands the past few days. Still, he can’t help the dry sob that rattles its way out of his chest. That an entire family could be shattered with one, precise blow… it seems an unimaginable cruelty. He reaches out to take Klint’s cool, limp hand in his own, seeking some small comfort.

A small part of Barok had always known he’d stand at his brother’s graveside, just as he had their mother and father before; he’d simply never anticipated that it would be so soon. Klint had been meant to live decades still, to achieve even greater things, and then, at the end of his long, brilliant life, to pass peacefully in bed, surrounded by loved ones. He’d deserved a good death, not to be struck down so grotesquely in his prime.

“I’m sorry,” Barok says again, through the glass in his lungs. He’s breaking his own vow now, to not think of the villain responsible, but the words tumble from his lips as water over a steep gorge, with unalterable velocity. “I should have suspected that something was awry. There must have been some indication—some sign that I missed.” He swallows the anguished bile at the back of his throat. “More fool I.”

Even now, Barok struggles to pinpoint just what it was that he’d failed to perceive. He’d spent so much time with Asougi, studying case notes in the quiet evenings, or crossing blades, coaxing out information about his life and homeland, and never once had he imagined him capable of such a heinous deception. That the dashing, upright man he’d known and called friend, the man who’d defended him selflessly on the streets, had been hiding this sort of monstrosity—it’d beggared belief, at first.

Barok is past denial now. As he clutches Klint’s hand, the seed of anger that’s been germinating at the heart of him finally cracks open. The tendrils wind through his ribcage, threading him through with a fury that squeezes the breath from his lungs—fury at Genshin, and at Klint, who’s left him to suffer this alone.

He rises abruptly, pulling his hand free. “He was your friend as well,” Barok accuses. He begins to pace, unable to look at Klint’s impassive face as he speaks. “You were closer to him than I—spent just as much, if not more, time in his company. How did you not know?” Klint had always been the one he’d looked to for guidance—the capable one, the more intuitive. “You were supposed to be better than this,” he insists, as vehemently as his hoarse throat will allow. If Klint, with all his years of experience, could be so easily misled, what chance does Barok possibly stand on his own?

Barok has never considered himself to be of a violent nature, but the sudden urge to lash out, to crush something in his palm, or under his heel, is as overwhelming as it is unfamiliar. He has an abrupt vision of flipping the coffin—the heavy crash, the sight of splintering hinges, and flattened boquets—and not a second later the sheer guilt and horror of it stops him in his tracks.

The trembling fury abates nearly as quickly as it’d come upon him, draining through his feet like water through a cracked pot, and leaving Barok cold and trembling.

He sinks to his knees in front of Klint. “I’m sorry,” he says for the third time. What a disgrace he is, berating a dead man for his own murder. He grips the edge of the coffin, fingers digging into the smooth silk. “I spoke rashly. You couldn’t have possibly known what lurked in the heart of that… Nipponese.”

For how else could such a blundering injustice have occurred? It’s obvious now that Klint had been deceived by no fault of his own; he’d simply had no point of reference for Asougi’s duplicitous nature, born of a foreign source. Friendship had blinded Klint—blinded them both—to the ugly truth, but Barok will not make the mistake of trusting any of that murderer’s countrymen again.

Around him, the confines of the parlour close in as though the walls of a tomb. The smell of the lilies has become suffocating, a choking miasma of grief. And at the centre of Barok’s chest, there has formed a deep, black pit, which sucks the air from his lungs and leaves them rattling. It's all he can do to focus his swimming gaze on Klint’s blood-red coat, and count his leaden heartbeats until he’s once again able to breathe without pain.

“I haven’t the faintest notion how I’ll do this without you,” Barok confesses. “But I won’t make the same mistake again.” Too little, too late, but it’s a vow that he can keep. “You’ll have justice by my hand; I swear it.”

Barok reaches for his heart, where Klint’s badge rests, pinned to his lapel. He’ll go to Stronghart tomorrow morning. This will be his penance—to ensure that his brother’s killer follows him to the grave.

He remains there on his knees, head bowed, and sits with his sorrow until the sound of hooves on pavement at last breaks the spell. The plumed black hearse is arrived, here to ferry Klint through London’s streets, like Charon’s boat upon the Styx. If only Barok could follow him to gilded Elysium… Alas, his lot is to remain on Earth, entrenched in its mortal miseries.

With an unsteady breath, Barok stands and makes himself marginally more presentable. He wishes desperately that he had a glass of wine to fortify himself. Instead, he drinks in the sight of Klint’s noble countenance one final time, as he takes hold of the coffin's lid and lowers it with painstaking care. Even now, he can’t bear to say his farewells.

It takes six men to bear the coffin out of the house. They take Klint feet-first, to prevent his spirit from attaching itself to the home, but it’s Barok who still feels tethered, as he watches him cross the threshold one last time.

Barok takes a deep breath. He steps forward, and follows his brother out the door.