Chapter Text
"So long sentiment
It doesn't matter now..."
- Celldweller, So Long Sentiment
Glauca is not sentimental. It isn’t to say that he has perfect control over his subconscious, however.
Sometimes, in the brief silences that precede battle the memories hit, unbidden and uninhibited, and when Glauca closes his eyes he is no longer Supreme Commander of the Niflheim army, but a scrawny wisp of a boy nicknamed ‘Wolf’, only nine years old, all knobbly knees and shivering miserably in the Baldr Mountains. He doesn’t remember how long they’ve been here, how long they’ve been running—only how long they are going to continue to be here. Galahad is a two day hike from where they are, but Val is sure she can get him there in half that time.
“Eyes!”
She catches him by the scruff of his collar and yanks him violently back, before he can trip over tree roots concealed beneath ten nights of snowfall, and plunge into the thorny ravine below. She flicks him in the forehead sharply afterward as punishment.
Wolf mumbles a ‘sorry’ to his feet but Val shushes him and drags him down to the ground beside her. His gaze shifts from the rifle in her hands to her face— bright and expressive, now an unreadable slate. Some say she was once a great warrior at the service of a king.
“I served a man,” Val will say later, over the fire when they take shelter in a cave hidden behind overgrown vines and tree roots. She shifts forward, the glow of the flames illuminating the hard lines of her face from below. “And the thing about serving men, Wolf, is no matter how strong they are, no matter how heroic they will weaken and they will die.”
“I think you’re strong,” Wolf said, quiet, and more to himself, but Val heard.
She flashed him a sharp grin that was strangely indecipherable. “Not strong,” she said. “A survivor.”
“Sur-viv-or…” This is the first time Wolf learns the word, tastes its syllables on his tongue. “Surv-ivor…surviv...or. Survivor.”
“Yes, survivor.” Val said. “Audeamus. We dare.”
“Audeamus.” Wolf is surprised he gets it right on the first try.
Val…somehow isn’t.
When her gloved thumb flicks off the safety, Wolf casts his gaze back to the ravine, following her line of sight. Two hundred meters away a man lies on his stomach by the stream, drinking and splashing water desperately against his face. Val squints dispassionately through the scope for a moment, then motions for Wolf to come closer.
In between resting and learning to track deer and elk, Val has taught Wolf to shoot. One would think him used to her rifle’s weight by now—he already knows how best to manoeuvre it with his hands being as tiny as they are – but muscle memory is not enough to overcome the knowledge that he holds power in his hands. The power to take away life. Power he’s seen Val use with little hesitation in picking off children who Niflheim uses as bait to entrap fellow runaways. Some of these children Wolf had even been friends with in school, had played leap-frog with long before the first shells leveled his hometown. He knows why Val did it—‘them or us, Wolf’—but he still struggles with that cold logic.
(Today is the day he stops struggling.)
“His leg’s broken,” Wolf observes.
“And?”
“We could save him.”
Val tilts her head—tight, black curls flecked with grey, dried leaves and twig netted in a few of the strands.
“Your parents were doctors,” she remembers, and Wolf nods, unsure if she perceives that as strength or weakness. She’s never coddled him, but she’s never been gentle with him either—has tossed him right over her shoulder onto his behind a few times when his frustration gets the better of him during a sparring session. “Alright, Wolf. Time for a test. See if anything’s stuck in that pretty little head of yours. Let’s say we save him. Let’s say you patch up his leg real good—”
“I could do it—” Wolf says in earnest.
“I know you can,” Val says, and when she continues, the smile on her face, every little line, every crease near her eyes goes razor thin and sharp. “Let’s say he wants to come with us. Let’s say we let him. Let’s say we even share our food with him. Let’s say that you and I are nice enough to slow down enough for him to keep up. Enough for Niflheim to keep up. You following, Wolf?”
Wolf nods, feeling a sudden dryness in his throat.
“You know what happens when Niflheim catches up to people don’t you? Sol and Old Nan. Your parents. Tyr and his brother.”
Wolf nods again.
“Say we have a chance to run—run, Wolf. Not trickle along like we'll do for our broken-legged friend. Run,” she says. “If the choice was between your life and his—would you leave him behind?"
When Wolf doesn't answer immediately, she grips him roughly by the arm, forcing him to look at her.
"Are you a survivor, Wolf? Or are you a fool?” she hisses.
Wolf peers through the scope, down at the man crawling around on his stomach, trying to find a piece of branch or stick thick enough to fashion into a splint. In just a few hours the sun will set, and if the soldiers do not find him, it will be a tossup between the elements and the beasts roaming Baldr. Wolf’s thumbnail grazes the safety catch. He controls his breathing, like he’s seen Val do, and drowns out everything else until the only sound he can hear is his heart pounding steadily in his chest. There is a brief moment of uncertainty when the man below suddenly stills, like a deer sensing it is being watched and Wolf wonders against the impossibility of the man knowing.
THA-THUMP. THA-THUMP.
Wolf closes his eyes.
Glauca's sword plunges through Lady Sylva’s chest—deadly and deep and true, and while her eyes widen in horror, Glauca twists the handle, swiftly severing the last strings of life tethering her to this world.
Her corpse pitches forward after he yanks it out, and the sight of her hunched over, pathetically prostrate, has irritation coiling tight in Glauca’s gut, burning hot as the fires razing the forest all around him. Val's laughter rings shrill in his ears as he turns his attention to Regis, presently worrying over his son.
Lady Sylva was a fool.
Regis fares better than she did, but Glauca knows, as his back slams against the cliff wall, pinned by swords wielded by invisible masters...
...that it is only a matter of time before Regis makes the same mistake she did.