Work Text:
“Still writing?”
Ren looked up from his notes, squinted through the dim candlelight at Etho smirking at him from across the room. His fur coat was dirty and matted from the rain, and his headband had almost fallen into his eyes. He kept his eyes on Ren, even as he closed the front door and unlaced his boots.
”What happened to you, my guy? You’re looking worse for wear.” Massaging his writing hand, Ren stood up, pushing his desk chair behind him and moving to his friend. Like habit, he took the coat from Etho and hung it, as the man undid his headband and strode to the kitchen table.
”Yeah, and you’re looking so much better,” he retorted. He heaved the bag he’d been carrying onto the tabletop with a thud, and both of them watched as he undead the knots across the top.
”You sure it’s real?” Ren asked, reluctantly voicing his doubts yet needing to be sure, all the same. This was the first step of many. They couldn’t fail here.
Etho nodded, then pulled open the draw. Inside, a glittering powder sat, ashy and volatile. Gunpowder. Ren gulped, despite knowing it couldn’t hurt them. Not in this form.
“Job well done,” he whispered. “The source was right?”
”Yup,” Etho responded.
With both him and the gunpowder in place, Ren turned back to his desk, not the only haphazard mess of ink and paper in their dingy apartment. Sat everywhere were papers, maps, and bits of redstone— but unlike the rest of the mess, his desk remained the only essential.
Essential to the Red Ward, of course.
For strewn across newspaper clippings and scribbled notes, drafts of the same work repeated itself over and over, but with a few changes here and there. Ren’s next speech— the one that would matter, the one that would change the battlefield of the city— lay in front of him. If only he could write it. Instead, he’d been squatting on this current draft for forever, trying to think of a good alternative to ‘rectify’.
Frowning, he pulled at the edge of the paper before coming to sit in the kitchen. Etho turned to him, holding two cups of steaming tea. He grabbed his— green tea with sugar, how he always had it this late into the night— and sipped it quietly. Next to him, Etho did the same.
He recalled Etho’s mission tonight. Rendezvous with their source at a nearby gunpowder factory, break in, and steal— not enough for the stockers to be suspicious the next day, not enough to slow him down considerably, but just enough— enough to power the weapons he’d been building.
There was a reason people called him the White Night. Etho was a genius, after all; He simply needed tools to fight.
Now, his friend looked up from his tea, steam obscuring his scarred eye as it narrowed at Ren. “So, Ren… where’d you go last night?”
Ren bolted straight in his seat, then cursed his lack of stoicism. “Oh, nowhere… why? Did you… hear the door close or something?”
Etho snickered, and Ren slouched in his seat. Of course he had. He’d been too excited leaving, he was probably stomping all over the place. ”No, ‘course not, just happened to hear you come home humming.”
Ren sighed. He could lie, of course, say he simply went for a walk… but a walk for a few hours was hard to believe. It wasn’t that Etho had suspicions about his commitment to the Red Ward; after all, he had been the one to start it. Instead, it was more his friend probably knew him well enough to know his feelings by now.
“I was out. With a guy.”
Now, Etho grinned, enthusiasm returned after the ordeal outside. “Really? You’ve never told me any of this! What’s his name?”
Ren rolled his eyes, the corners of his mouth upturned. “He told me to call him Martyn. Dunno his last name, just met him a few days ago… but we really hit it off. I guess.”
”You don’t know his last name?! How are you meeting up with this guy without knowing who he really is? He could be a serial killer or something!”
At this, Ren snorted, and raised an eyebrow. “A serial killer? Really?”
Etho shot him a look, scoffing. “Don’t give me that! You know it’s different for us. It’s for the cause, anyways.”
“No, of course not, my dude.” Ren held up his hands, placating. “But I feel the possibility of two serial killers meeting to be a bit too high. Plus, he seems like a good guy! What’re the chances?”
”Whatever you say,” Etho laughed. “Where’d you meet him?”
Ren smiled softly. “We were seated next to each other in the theater. We talked before, then went out for drinks after. It was nice.”
Etho leaned back, staring at Ren. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “You like him.”
“…I do. It—it’s crazy, I know, but—“
“Does he know?”
Ren paused. Blinked at Etho, twisted his mouth before responding. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t give up everything we’ve worked for for him.”
“Do you want him to know?”
He thought about everything Etho and him had done to establish the Red Ward. The lives taken, goods stolen, past unchangeable, stained… Then he thought about the people they’d saved. The citizens they’d found, reached out to, called for as one of their own. He couldn’t take that away from them.
He shook his head slowly, tracing the image of Martyn in his head. “No, I wouldn’t.”
Etho looked at him sadly, at a loss for words. Then he lifted his mug of tea high above his head, staring at the chipped ceramic. “For the Red Ward. And its Red King.”
Ren gave a quiet laugh, feeling the weight of a crown as he raised his own mug. “For the Red Ward. For its Red King and White Night.”