Archive of Our Own

Charlotte was asleep on the bed, the inhale-exhale of her soft breaths drowned out by the quiet rush of wind through the open window. Griffith watched her for a moment, eyes lingering on the dark curls of hair spread across the white of her pillow. The breeze teased his skin, sent pulses of cold across his naked body, but he did not shiver.

It was tonight.

There was no sense in questioning how he knew; he did. His heart shifted within his chest – slight, ever-so-slight – but its beats remained slow, heavy. Steady. His breaths were measured and the lines of his body relaxed, his brow smooth.

By morning, the matter would be settled. Griffith did not feel much in the way of joy these days – there was his dream, only his dream, that pushed him on and he would not feel joy until it was truly complete – but on the pitch-black horizon he sensed the satisfaction that would be his soon. One less obstruction in his path after tonight, small though it might be. One less loose end.

His armor closed around him as Zodd flew silently in, hovering at the balcony just beyond its railing. The force generated by his wings agitated Griffith’s hair around his face, blowing strands against his forehead and neck, but none of the gust reached Charlotte, fast asleep and dead to the world on the bed. Griffith did not look at her but he knew she did not let out so much as a murmur.

Without a word, he stepped onto Zodd’s back, and the apostle took off across the night sky.

~

They met again at the foot of the hill.

Of course Guts would choose this place, Griffith reflected. The hill, the swords braced into its soil, all a reminder of what Guts was unable to let go of – the vulnerability of the past that he had failed to cut away. It was pitiful, but then, so was Guts.

He stood motionless in front of the grave-markers, a hulking black shadow against the stark backdrop of the snow. Hair tangled and matted, cloak tattered in places and armor caked in a thin layer of dirt, he looked wearier than Griffith recalled from their last encounter. But when their gazes met Griffith saw fire in his single dark eye.

Anywhere else would have worked just as well, yet Guts awaited him here, with that look on his face.

I would be doing you a favor, thought Griffith, a weight in his chest. When he remembered how unstoppable Guts had been since the day they met, how ferocious and unyielding, and the power he had gathered to himself over the years – the Black Swordsman, the berserker – it was disappointing, really. So much potential, so much might and intensity, and yet he still could not excise himself of his weaknesses. Why come here, why even seek Griffith out in the first place? He could have chosen a path forward, a path to a new life. It was laid out before his eyes, worn into the earth by the unceasing footsteps of his current companions. Guts could have had the future, but he had let sentimentality win instead. Grief for his fallen comrades. Anger over a betrayal. Hatred for Griffith.

Griffith would free him. If Guts wanted so much to remain chained to relics and faded grudges, Griffith would cut him loose. It was the least he could do, he supposed, for a man who was once his comrade. A past of no relevance now, but there was no harm in fulfilling basic obligations. He bore Guts no ill will; this was simply necessary cleanup.

Zodd landed with fluidity that belied his enormous size, massive clawed paws striking into the earth. Griffith felt no impact. He stepped off the apostle’s back, sollerets crunching softly within the piled snow covering the ground. There was a faint sting in his cheeks from the frigid wind.

Guts stood motionless thirty paces away, merely watching. He paid no attention to Zodd, as if the apostle wasn’t even there. His eye never left Griffith.

Zodd’s body was overflowing with murderous hostility. Griffith didn’t need to look at him to know that he was glaring. The belligerent apostle shifted around Griffith, gigantic frame subtly poised to cut through the space between him and Guts. Keeping them obstructed from each other, though it was an unneeded action.

“I’ve told you already not to interfere,” Griffith said. The coarse black fur along Zodd’s spine bristled.

“If he endangers you, that’s not an option.” The words were a deep growl. “I’ll batter him to pieces.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Guts wouldn’t endanger him. Guts could not touch him – nobody could.

With some measure of reluctance, Zodd complied, removing himself. He did not make any particular moves, but his temporary retreat was conveyed in his demeanor, in the way his muscles relaxed, however slightly. Griffith stepped around him, ignoring the low snarl that rumbled in the apostle’s chest as he did.

He sank ever-so-slightly into the snow with each step he took, imprints of metal pressed into the otherwise marble-smooth sheen of cold white. The wind was blowing, but it was oddly silent as it did so, enough that Griffith could hear the near inaudible shift of his feet in the snow. He drew closer to the dark figure that stood at the foot of the hill, awaiting him even as his gait remained unhurried. A thump-thump-thump, firm and invariable, filled his ears. It took him a moment to realize it was his own heart.

Griffith stopped ten paces away. The wind picked up, throwing snow up into his face, though he never blinked and none of it reached him. Guts’ ragged black cloak snapped haphazardly around his shoulders and the streak of white in his black hair seemed even paler than before against the gust of frost. The gale made him appear some sort of shadow, a fleeting mirage of a person liable to be broken apart by the wind and left to crumble to scattered pieces across the ground. But to compare this man to anything even loosely associated with the word fleeting was a colossal inaccuracy.

If it were not, then they would not be here at all.

“Hello, Guts.” The name was smooth on his tongue. Even as he pronounced it, nothing inside him stirred. Guts’ expression closed into a dark scowl, but Griffith only smiled at him. Easy as anything, disingenuous though not entirely insincere. “You’re a long way from your companions.”

Guts’ fingers twitched around the hilt of his massive sword. It was an imperceptible movement, but Griffith noticed it. “Shut up.” His voice scratched in his throat, not from disuse but from wear and tear. “Don’t you speak a fucking word about them.”

Griffith saw images, memories, of vocal cords frayed. Trembling, unstable hands, blood from the eyes and ears and mouth. Cartilage and muscles and mucosa beginning to split. That armor – Guts should know full well what its use was doing to him, almost as well as Griffith did. Yet it was that armor he donned before he took up his sword and then swung and swung trying to demolish everything in his path. The rabid, uncontainable fury of a wild animal.

Griffith recalled how it had once captivated him. Everything about Guts had captivated him, at a time – the stubbornness, the callous honesty, the impenetrable darkness, the searing flame. But now, it was all… irrelevant. Nothing but unfortunate happenstance that led Guts to this unnecessary scene. He could have walked away. Griffith would have let him; he cared no longer, one way or the other. But Guts had to seek him out. He had to be as rigidly obstinate as he ever was.

“You’ve always been this way,” Griffith mused aloud. It was nostalgic, in a way, reminded him of their first fight atop this hill; Guts searching for something in him, attacking with a violent rage when he found there was no sign of it. You never change. You always swing first, talk later. “You come running like clockwork, without taking a single look around you. This meeting was entirely avoidable.”

Guts barked out a sound that loosely resembled a laugh. At least, that was the closest word Griffith could find, though it was still inaccurate. There was no mirth in that sound, nothing resembling any emotion save for pain and hatred. His one dark eye gleamed with mad light. “You’re gonna say that to me here?” A voice as jagged as a rusted blade, caked over with sawdust and rot. “Like all those swords you see don’t stand for anything? Like Judeau never existed? Pippin? Corkus and Gaston? Like Casca didn’t lose years of her fucking life because of you?!”

Griffith listened to him rave. He knew. He knew, of course. But it meant nothing now, and Guts bringing it up in this moment was indication again of weakness. Indecision and ineptitude, a fragile human heart that Griffith had cut away in exchange for his wings. Even as Guts, the man who had once made him want to forget his dream, spat out the words with venom, anguish laced into the syllables of their old comrades’ names, Griffith only looked at him impassively.

“You of all people should know.” He echoed the words from back then, airborne as wind rushed around him, Guts’ shouts reverberating throughout the snow-capped peaks. “What sort of man I am.”

Blinding fury twisted Guts’ features. Fury and something else, something that Griffith could place if he tried. He did not try. He only let himself smile again, mild and indulgent, as Guts stepped towards him, drawing his weapon as he did. One two three, each foot forward faster and more forceful than the last. Guts still gave away all signs that he planned to charge. He was like that in the days of the old Hawks, too.

Despite his deteriorating body, he hefted the immense blade with ease. That thing, really, Griffith thought, watching, waiting for Guts to approach, could not rightfully be called a sword. Only Guts would think to adopt and adapt to such an absurd weapon. Only Guts would have that reckless disregard. Only Guts would attempt such a frenzied rush into battle as he was doing now, murderous anger in his eyes, the desire to hack and cleave and break driving him. It was there every time he attacked, no matter if it was Zodd or Griffith or countless nameless apostles that he faced. He seemed to think the more his opponent towered over him, the simpler the solution: swing and scream and swing some more, hesitation and fear foreign.

Griffith watched him come. His heart beat – dispassionate, firm, steady. Guts roared his name, loud enough to knock boulders off mountaintops. Four five six, and he was upon Griffith, bearing down on him. Strange. Griffith thought—oh.

Unknowingly, he had taken a step forward to meet Guts’ charge.

~

Griffith did not avoid the blow, but the blade cleaved only empty air anyway. He breathed in, then breathed out, then breathed in again. Packed snow gave way under his feet with each small step he took but it was as easy to move as if he was standing on solid ground. Easier than.

Guts remained wonderfully unfazed by the addition to his string of failures. He struck once more, harder than ever, every movement punctuated with a howl. The first swing came unmistakable and faultless at Griffith’s neck but missed anyway. The second fell inexplicably short and the third was deflected with a flick of Griffith’s wrist, the thin blade that materialized in his hand turning the blow’s trajectory aside entirely.

There was futility in Guts’ eye. It was useless – he knew it. He couldn’t not. The knowledge was in the tightening of his features and the monstrous force thrown behind his sword as he brought it directly down on Griffith’s head. It battered a crater into the earth at Griffith’s feet and Griffith, a handspan away, tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. If he reached out now he could touch Guts’ cheek. He saw, close enough to caress, close enough to cradle, the intensity of the hate as Guts swung again and unyielding, futility and hopelessness and sheer determination in his eye.

Griffith barely looked at the blade as he deflected it.

There was something in his heart, something like threads being gently pulled and slowly unraveled. He felt as light as air, as boundless as a soaring hawk, worlds away from the earth. Looking at the face before his, he saw him – that fifteen-year-old youth who had challenged him to a duel. Freedom, or being owned. I’ll be whatever you want me to be, your soldier or your whore.

“Do you remember when we first met?” Griffith asked. Guts’ eye widened, the tapestry of rage in his features briefly slipping. He looked… stricken, almost. “I saw you and I knew I wanted you. I’d never wanted anyone before, you know. People looked at me and they flocked to me, I never did a thing more.” A clang as Griffith deflected Guts’ strike, the sleek silver blade easily repelling the slab of dark grey metal. “But you told me to fight to have you. And I wanted you so much that I did.”

That tapestry of rage returned, more vibrant than ever. Bellowing, Guts came at him, sword poised to batter flesh and splinter bone to pulp and paste. The lower half of the cliff face behind Griffith was pulverized.

“It’s funny,” Griffith said. His hair fluttered in the torrent of pressure caused by the rush of Guts’ sword, not a single strand harmed. “When I think of back then, I remember how excited I felt. I accepted that duel, but I think I was willing to put even more on the line to have you. Now—” the next blow went wildly awry, “—I wonder what I was so agitated for.”

“You don’t know anything!” Guts’ roar pierced the skies. “You didn’t accept anything. You don’t remember anything. You weren’t there!”

His sword bisected the space where Griffith was standing. It didn’t draw a drop of blood.

“But I was.” Griffith exhaled. His gazed lingered on the faint plume of steamy white that rose up into the air as he did. “I remember all of it. I already told you, didn’t I? I haven’t changed. You’re the one who deluded yourself.” Into believing Griffith was a man, with a beating heart, with mundane and banal desires.

But if Griffith had learned anything since his old life, he had learned that that was wrong. His feet had never not been treading down this path. He had always been—kinsmen, a consecrated child, eyeing the castle in the sky, taking it by piling up corpses endlessly. Looking at the man before him, his heart thumped and he felt that truth more than ever.

“Shut up.” Eye blazing, Guts righted his grip and swung again. The blade caught nothing. Griffith watched him – how his jaw clenched so hard his teeth might have cracked and he exposed the cannon that had replaced his lost left forearm. In half the blink of an eye its muzzle was in front of Griffith’s face. It fired with a deafening boom and missed.

“I always hated that about you.” An expression like a mangled animal’s. “Always talking down to people.” Clang. “Always condescending.” Stone ruptured, snow went flying. “Always acting like you know everything better than everyone else.” Griffith parried, and Guts glared at him. Like none of it really mattered, like there was really just hatred. “Always pretending you’ve got it all figured out!”

The storm of emotion on Guts’ face was familiar. Achingly so. Griffith found himself thinking, abruptly, that though time and place and circumstance had changed, nothing really had. Guts looked older, it was true, his features coarser, his edges rusted over and serrated. But the fire was never-ending and would never stop. The uncheckable bullheadedness, the uncompromising brutality. Griffith thought of a previous lifetime, one arm wrapped around Guts as they faced down the unfathomable monster in the depths of a Tudor stronghold; Guts, one arm wrapped around him, pointing his tiny dagger at the colossal black shadows looming in the sky above while a ground of distorted faces stretched beneath their feet. Keep your stupid crap to yourself. Don’t lump him together with you freaks.

“Why did you come here?” Griffith asked suddenly. Taunted, even though he had no intention to mock. “Looking for what? Remorse? Peace? Absolution? Why choose a futile battle? You can still stop. You’re objective enough to know you can’t win, Guts.” He did not dodge the next, perfectly aimed strike, but he avoided it anyway, the blade burying itself in snow and dirt. Guts pulled it free in one motion.

“Fuck you.” The words were spat out, like poison, like bile. “You want to talk about what I know?! I thought I knew the Hawks meant something, Griffith. I thought I knew we were more than just scraps of junk to you, for you to use and give up and toss out. I thought I knew you—” He cut himself off and Griffith felt a stab in his heart. Sympathy, patronizing as it was. Pity.

“You didn’t know any of that,” he replied, looking with indifferent eyes as Guts hefted the sword over his head and brought its entire massive weight crashing down on the ground right between Griffith’s feet. It touched nothing. No flesh, let alone bone. The space between them warped and widened, five paces’ worth of distance materializing from emptiness. “You believed it. And you were wrong.”

The statement settled between them. Guts raised the blade again with an almost contemptuous ease, sending stray chunks of rock through the air.

“Yeah?”

He grinned then, and Griffith blinked. There was an expression he didn’t think he had ever seen on Guts before, at least not this particular iteration of it; lips pulled back in a parody of a wide smile, bared white teeth streaked with blood and saliva. Eye wide and crinkled at the outer corner, white outlining the entire circumference of a dark iris. All of it alight with savagery, with something close to and infinitely unlike delight.

“I guess you’re right.” Guts took a step forward, then another, and another. His armor rippled and churned around him, shadows rising from its surface to crawl up the sides of his face. He seemed to welcome the voracious consumption, his tongue flicking out between his lips to lap up drops of crimson blood that leaked from the corner of his mouth. His eye was ignited in animosity. In resentment and disgust and in passion. “But you know, Griffith… I do know one thing. In Albion, when you appeared in front of me like you’d hopped right out of the past, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe my luck.”

The armor swallowed his chin first, then his cheeks. His forehead and eyes vanished next, and Griffith was staring into red-hot gashes that burst vibrantly against a mass of jagged inky black. The shape of Guts’ beast – the shape of his darkness.

“I knew then, and I know now.” Guts’ voice was strange, resounding. Like a ringing, distorted chorus, like it mimicked the shift of earth against earth, the grinding of tectonic plates and the overflow of boiling magma. “That I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

It was the last thing he said before the armor closed over his mouth. Watching and waiting, Griffith was reminded, vaguely, of what it had felt like to be mute. The pressure. The frustration. The helplessness. He wondered if Guts was feeling any of those things, submerged inside that roiling metal husk.

But no. There was only—anger, there, and a loathing so strong that to disregard it was to cover the sky with the tip of a finger. The ground seemed to fracture and split as Guts threw himself at Griffith, and Griffith thought he might be able to taste the blood flooding the inside of that armor. He heard the microscopic snap and crackle of bone fiber as the berserker came roaring fully to life, sapping its user of limits, of awareness, of care. The smell of rotting meat wafted through his nostrils.

Again, Griffith smiled. Within him, his heart pulsed.

“You can try. That’s always been your talent, Guts.”

~

In a past lifetime, Griffith had hardly passed a moment by without marveling at Guts. Back then, he realized it when it was too late, rotting away within layers of stone and dirt and damp, caged in a laughable, ruined imitation of a body. He had marveled at Guts even when he did not label it as such. Guts would smile, and Griffith would marvel. Guts would curse, and Griffith would marvel. Guts would be, and Griffith would marvel.

Now that he thought about it, he recognized that it had driven him a little bit mad.

In this lifetime, Griffith did not marvel. He was no longer capable of it… but he could still, he supposed, appreciate. Appreciate Guts’ movements, the way he fought, ferocious and inhumane. Unforgiving to his opponent – Griffith could almost believe that if he had been anyone else, he would have been crushed to dust by the sheer might behind Guts’ everything – and unforgiving, most of all, to himself. That armor was a death trap, and yet Guts attacked like he would never be more alive than he was in this moment.

It was apathy, detachment, a lack of concern. No care for himself, even now. Or perhaps it was especially now. Guts had always been reckless; that, Griffith could attest to. But this was a lunacy that went far beyond and was all the more nonsensical because it was done knowingly. Griffith could see blood beneath that shell of the armor, seeping out in fat droplets like juice from a squeezed fruit. Just the same, he could see how Guts’ motions became wilder, more vicious, more concentrated – not so much enduring the shattering of his body as relishing it, using it to propel himself to new, more barbaric heights.

Of all the things Griffith could be reminded of, he was reminded of an adolescent Guts, fearlessly catching the blade of Griffith’s sword in his teeth. Heedless of the slice of the sharp metal edge into the thin flesh of his mouth, heedless of the reality that Griffith could flood his mouth with blood, could mutilate his tongue beyond repair, could shove the point of the blade straight through his gullet, with just a single flick of the wrist. It had been like he didn’t even care. Like he was challenging Griffith to do any of those things.

They were young then. That was their first duel. Their first, and last, deal.

For a moment, Griffith let himself imagine. If they made another deal. They would be like they were young once more, fighting for ownership. If Guts won, he could walk free without incident. If Griffith won, Guts would be his. He did recall it even today, the roughness of Guts’ face against his hands as he closed them around those tanned, scarred cheeks. The heady rush in his veins as he pronounced the words that wanted to burst out from his chest. Now you belong to me.

It was just that, though. Memories, imagination. Sentimentality that they both knew Griffith had lost long ago. Guts would not join him, would never agree to be his again. Not because he was too soft to be an apostle, or too taken by his little band of companions, but because his hatred was too strong and his grudge too deep. Too encompassing.

Griffith understood that. And he understood that it no longer mattered, not really. Whatever had been between them had ended long ago, its remnants reduced to flecks of smoldering ash. All that was left was to crush those flecks underfoot.

Clang.

If Guts challenged him, if he stood in his way, in the way of his dream, Griffith would snuff him out. He had done it to countless others, had piled up his mountain with body upon body upon body.

In another lifetime, Guts had been different. He hadn’t been countless others, hadn’t been a pebble that happened to fall onto the path I walk, hadn’t even been my soldier, my comrade, my sword. In another lifetime, Griffith had wanted him so badly that he truly might have given it all away. His dream, the castle, everything. But there were only reverberations left now, faded ripples of the aching hunger that he had once feared would swallow his entire being. Like a phantom pain, another person’s dream that had been half-forgotten. He could barely remember it anymore.

And yet…

Griffith dodged, though it was unnecessary.

If he couldn’t remember it anymore… why was he here?

He had asked Guts what he came to this place looking for. If he sought remorse or peace or absolution, things that were of no consequence. And, perhaps, Guts himself did not know. Perhaps, in truth, he did not have a reason at all, and did not even realize it.

But Griffith was different. He knew he sought nothing. He knew this place had only pointlessness to offer him. There was no need to see to Guts personally. He could have sent Zodd. Irvine or Locus, Grunbeld or Rakshas. Any number of them and any number of other apostles – eventually, Guts would have fallen, if only to sheer numbers. It was inevitable.

So then… why come?

Why had he come? Why did he indulge Guts by going to him? Why did he still indulge him now, letting him thrust and swing and hammer away? You know you can’t win, Griffith had said, and it had been true. So how did they still fight? How was Guts still alive before him, roaring and struggling? 

He remembered the words he had spoken back then – in another life, another him. I sacrifice. He had spoken them to be encased in darkness, to be reborn in ice and stone, to benumb himself even to the chill of frigid blood circulating in his veins. He had cursed the flames, the heat. Had wanted to be rid of it all, and so had wiped it all away. When he was reborn in new flesh, incarnated as a being beyond possibility, he had looked upon the memento of his comrades, fallen at his hand and his word, and had felt nothing.

So why?

Guts swung. Griffith parried – clang – and as he did, he was staring straight into the vortex of Guts’ fury, Guts’ hatred. It was red and it blistered. Something inside him twisted, an ugly and caustic mass within his ribcage. Frustration, if it was there at all, should have been nothing more than the vague whisper of an impression, but what thrashed violently to life inside him was like the snapping lunge of a venomous snake. He fought this man, dodging and sidestepping, twisting space, altering cause and effect, and he realized that he felt. A surge of—something. Heat. Passion. A desire. To live. To die. With him. To breathe with him, exist with him, be with him. It was a faint throb, and a dull one at that. But—

Griffith’s eyes met the berserker’s. Guts’. They narrowed.

Enough. The word came to his mind suddenly. Enough of this.

Hadn’t he learned his lesson? Once was enough. Once was all it had taken to cast him from a bird in the skies to less than a worm in the dirt. If a part of him held onto hope – and Griffith didn’t know, wasn’t sure, if it was, and didn’t even know what hope it was that that part might be holding on to. But if it did, if there was even a possibility that it did—

That wouldn’t do.

Griffith remembered amputees from when he was a child wandering the slums, cracked, paper-thin skin stretched precariously over the ridges of his rib bones. Men and women with their toes cut off, their fingers missing, their forearms nothing more than scraps of flesh dangling from the swollen knobs of their elbows. He remembered the stink of decay, the bulge of cords in an old man’s neck as he bit down on a ragged bundle of cloth. In his hand had been a saw, hacking and hacking and hacking at his leg below the knee. The bundle of cloth hadn’t been enough to muffle his screams.

That was the way of things, wasn’t it? Fire had to run rampant for new life to take root. Overripe fruit had to be tossed. Rot had to be cut away, or it would set in, and spread, and kill.

Griffith deflected another swing. He gazed into Guts’ eyes, or where his eyes should be – those baleful red incisions, afire, flooded with destructive intent – and thought of that old man. The sweat pouring down his face. The necrotic black flesh mottling his lower leg, the membrane of swollen pink-purple and the borders of oozing yellow pus. Remembered the way his own hands shook at the sight of it, and, even from a distance, the nausea that bubbled up inside his abdomen.

That mottled flesh, that swollen membrane, that oozing pus – that. That was Guts. Guts was the rot. He was the rot and he—was he spreading? Was Griffith letting him spread?

The mountain groaned from the force behind Guts’ strike. Clang. Griffith parried. Clang. Easy as blinking. Clang.

Again, Guts swung. The berserker howled, screamed, raged. He was.

He was letting him.

He was letting him.

The life you couldn’t take by your own hand. The life of the person you loved the most and hated the most. Bury your fragile human heart. Even if just an echo. Even if hazier than another person’s long-forgotten memory. A single patch of rot could grow. A single patch of rot could kill.

Griffith adjusted his grip on his sword. He stopped dodging.

He stopped letting.

~

It was, in a way, easy.

Satisfaction – that Griffith had anticipated would be his, before the sunrise the next day – came to him in increments. It came, with every fresh droplet of blood that sprayed onto his face, splattered his armor, streaked his hair. It was—warm. Warmer than he remembered anything being since… quite a while ago, actually. Even the pain from that absurd hunk of metal Guts called a sword, lodged into Griffith’s side straight through his armor, tasted like something resembling triumph.

The cavern that Griffith’s blade had blown through Guts’ abdomen was gaping. Griffith had done it intentionally, of course; to spill viscera, to shatter bone, to puncture organs. Rot had to be excised completely. Not even the barest trace could be allowed to remain.

Guts’ body shifted, moving Griffith along with it. They were close, Griffith realized, closer together than they had been in what must be years. The thought was strange. His shoulder was less than half a handspan from Guts’ chest. His sword was shoved nearly up to its hilt in Guts’ stomach and the fingers of his hand were a mere twitch shy of grazing the cracked black surface of the armor. The muzzle of the beast, jagged red slits roiling with malice, brushed into the fringe of white hair falling over Griffith’s brow. He stared silently up into that unbridled red, somehow feeling the path of the blood that ran in droplets down his armor.

Those slits dissipated first. They scattered into shards of crimson that crumbled away in the wind, baring the upper half of Guts’ face to the light of the moon. His brow was filthy, streaked with blood and sweat. One eye, dark brown in the middle and raw pink around the edges, seemed to refract the pale silvery gleam in the sky above them.

Griffith inhaled. The sound was loud, somehow. Like a hiss of air. He saw Guts’ lips move, saw blood pool in his mouth and stain his teeth. His one eye was slightly narrowed. It peered down at Griffith and he peered back.

Inexplicably, it was silence that stretched between them.

The rest of the beast’s form dispersed in a haze of smoky grey and charred black. Bit by bit, revealing first Guts’ matted hair, then his nicked ears, then his chin, his mouth, his face. The resulting smog flickered around Griffith’s face, batting at his eyes, but he did not move and did not blink. Did not avert his gaze from the man so close in front of him.

For a moment he could not put a name to it, that look in Guts’ eye. It was unreadable and it burned intensely. Was Guts’ loathing of him, Griffith wondered fleetingly, evolving and growing stronger even this second? Even now? Interesting.

He realized that Guts had let one hand go from the hilt of his sword, the clank of his gauntlet as he did so nearly inaudible. How strange, Griffith found himself thinking – that it was only here, only at the end of the end, that he witnessed Guts act in any way inconspicuous. He had never been discreet. He always insisted, and not even consciously at that, on being the eye of the storm, the center around which so much revolved. From the day they had met until this day now, he had never made a single action of his imperceptible.

Maybe that was why, when Guts’ hand moved upwards, Griffith felt oddly caught off guard. Not by the motion, not necessarily. But the softness of it. It was… tentative, almost. It was tentative, and slow, even as it moved higher and higher and the cold hard metal of Guts’ finger guards grazed the column of Griffith’s throat.

Ah. Griffith blinked languidly. Of course. If Guts had nothing at all, he had his persistence. That unforgiving, uncompromising, single-minded persistence. Even as his life spilled out into the snow around them, turning pure white to vivid crimson, he would be no one other than himself to the very end. It was just like him, using the few moments he had left in an attempt to strangle his opponent, the object of his rancor.

He must know it was futile. No – Griffith could see it in his eye, that he did. But still, he tried.

Guts sucked in a ragged breath. His gaze flickered, losing focus for a fraction of an instant. His hand, though, still moved. His fingers still twitched, and closed, and tightened to choke—

Except it was Griffith’s jaw that the metal of finger guards settled against.

The touch—was not gentle. It was unrefined, rough, and almost clumsy. Griffith breathed in. That strange, stirring discomfort curled inside his abdomen. He found himself failing to explain it.

Guts’ gaze wavered again. His pupil dilated. Griffith watched it.

No need, he thought. And it was true, there was no need for this. It was over, Guts now as good as another corpse among thousands, fallen as a new marker of the winding road that he had traveled. Griffith could pull the sword out, let him crumple to the ground. It wouldn’t take even a sliver of effort. It was easier than breathing, easier than thought.

But Griffith didn’t move. He watched the tempest in Guts’ eye, felt the cold of the metal touching his jaw.

Guts coughed, a wet, ugly sound. His lips moved.

“I…” The word was barely a wheeze. Not even a whisper. Softer, certainly, than Guts had ever spoken. “…had to.”

Griffith stared at him.

“I just…” It was clouded over, Guts’ eye. “Had to.”

In that dark circle, Griffith could see his own reflection.

Guts must have gazed at something faraway when he died. Their old comrades – Judeau, Pippin, Corkus, everyone, maybe. That rambunctious boy that followed him everywhere, or that witch girl. Or perhaps it was Casca he was looking at in his last moment, revisiting the memories of the time he had with her. When she wiped blood off his face in that damp darkness and he leaned into her touch, and when they stood outside the tent and spoke of leaving, of a future together.

If, Griffith thought, Guts had died looking at something that filled him with such heartfelt longing, then he could applaud this outcome too. It was not the worst way to send him off, the man that had once, unknowingly, held him in the palm of his hand.

He watched as the corpse swayed in the wind. It was only for a second.

In death, Guts slumped as he never had in life. His body, always poised for action, always so prepared to spring at a moment’s notice, drained of every minute thread of tension. He gave way like so much sand, like a paper castle crumbling under a siege, but he never hit the ground. Even now he was inconveniently heavy.

Griffith exhaled. He let himself sit in the snow, one arm slung loosely under Guts’ arm and Guts’ chin drooping against his shoulder. Bit by bit, he lowered the body to the ground, and as he did so his line of sight ran across Guts’ eye. It was open, but unseeing.

Griffith closed it.

He looked at the still face underneath his fingertips. Despite the blood, Guts looked like he was sleeping. The scowl lines on his face were faded to vague imprints, the usually downturned curve of his mouth relaxed. His disheveled hair quivered in the wind. Snow fell onto his body and he made no motions to brush it away.

It was… unfamiliar, the knowledge that Guts was dead. He had survived even the sacrifice, the waves and waves of monsters that the brand had called upon him. Any observer could be forgiven for starting to believe that he would never die.

But—well, he had. He was dead, and, snapped alongside him, the last fragile thread that might have tethered Griffith to the earth. If there had been any part of him that was not free before, it was now.

The tension in his chest, the faint, throbbing ache, would pass.

Griffith stood. It was cold. Not a sensation that he was used to anymore. The chill had seemed natural to him, somehow, ever since his rebirth, but now it was uncomfortable. He could feel the wind against his face, the flakes of snow that landed on his skin and melted into tiny, frigid droplets.

For a long moment, he continued to gaze down at the body. Pinkish pre-dawn light spilled across the horizon, casting a faint, rosy shine over Guts’ face, his closed eyes and set mouth and scarred nose. In the glow, his years seemed to strip away one by one, time winding backwards until Griffith thought he could catch glimpses of the quick-tempered, cocky youth that Guts had been introduced into his life as.

He had not moved when Zodd returned, powerful wings beating through the air with his landing. Strange. Griffith hadn’t even realized that he had departed until now.

“He was adamant until the end, I see,” the apostle commented, looking at the unmoving form on the ground.

“Yes.” Griffith exhaled. “It’s a pity, but he never was one to be swayed.”

“He wounded you.”

Griffith had almost forgotten about that. He glanced down at his side, where his armor was split and blood stained the exposed pale skin. The actual wound was nearly gone. “He did. I owed him a courtesy.”

“I doubt he appreciated it.”

Zodd said nothing more after that. Griffith’s gaze returned to the body.

It would not be a disagreeable idea, leaving it here. Snow would soon bury it entirely, blanketing it over in an impenetrable sheet of white and cold. When spring came, it might thaw out, a rotted, blackened husk, and then that husk too would break down into dust and dirt and nothing. Guts might even like that; he had never cared where he died or what was done with his body, and this was close enough to the memento of his comrades that it would tickle the idiosyncratic sentimentalism that he had had. He certainly would not have complained, to decay into the earth so near the monument to the band he had cherished.

“Take the body,” Griffith ordered. “We’re returning.”

He watched the apostle scoop Guts into the palm of that giant hand. It was a little uncanny. If anyone had dared jostle Guts around so unceremoniously while he slept, he would have been up in an instant, sword in his hand and annoyed scowl twisting his features. Griffith almost expected it to happen, but that face – placid, tranquil almost – remained unchanged.

“Bring the sword as well,” he added as he stepped onto Zodd’s back. The gesture would mean nothing to Guts either way, and it did not matter if anything meant anything to Guts now. But it seemed disrespectful, in a sense, to just leave the weapon lying on the ground.

Griffith’s hair fluttered against his brow as Zodd soared through the sky. Brushing a few errant strands out of his eyes, he fixed his line of sight onto the white shining outline of Falconia in the distance. He felt… well, nothing, really. One more obstacle removed, one more annoyance quashed. His dream that much closer to reality.

Ridges of black metal flashed in his peripheral vision. Guts’ body dangled from between Zodd’s curved claws. Griffith couldn’t see it very well, given the angle, but when he glanced briefly downwards, he caught a glimpse of the stiff, awkward flop of bloodstained arms and legs. An armored hand swung limply in the empty air.

There was something unsightly about it.

Griffith averted his gaze and watched Falconia draw nearer.

He ordered Zodd to lay the body in the mausoleum. A casket was to be prepared, with the sword set inside it as well.

When he returned, the sun was creeping up into the sky. Charlotte, diligent as ever, was awake, dressed and prepared for another day at court. She asked where he had gone in that singsong, chirping voice of hers. Military matters, Griffith said, and kissed her. She blushed daintily and questioned him no more after that.

Hours later, as the evening darkened to night, he stood at one of the castle’s terraces, looking out into the fading light of the sun. The day had been eventful like any other – spent meeting with this noble and that noble, convening with Zodd and Locus and Irvine, idling with Charlotte as they drank tea and sampled sweets – but it felt somehow empty, now at the end of things.

Griffith was… tired seemed not entirely accurate, but it was close enough. Yes. He was tired.

Night fell but he did not sleep. He visited the gardens, walked among the greenery with the dark blue sky stretching out above his head. Everywhere else in the world was withered by the winter, expanses of cold and ice as far as the eye could see, but this was Falconia, blooming with life amid its perpetual lush spring. Griffith passed under robust trees, between carefully kept shrubs and bushes, and through sprawling beds of flowers. Occasionally he looked skyward and the stars twinkled down at him, luminescent and clear, glittering like polished diamond.

Despite the tranquil scenery, he felt restless. He could go inside – Charlotte would be happy to see him – but as he mulled it over, his aimless stroll brought him before the gate leading to the mausoleum instead. Griffith startled to realize the metal doorway looming in his path. He had not even taken notice of his surroundings. The absentmindedness was unlike him.

For a second, he studied the gate. It was made of polished black steel, patterns of swirling waves, warriors, and monsters etched into its surface. The stylistic touches gave off a somber atmosphere; fitting, one might reckon, for an entrance to a gravesite. Griffith had only ever come to the mausoleum in passing before, but then, until the dawn prior, it had been vacant of actual bodies.

Now Guts’ corpse lay inside.

It would do no harm to check, Griffith supposed. The more thoughtless apostles had been ordered to keep away from the mausoleum, and ones like Locus or Irvine would have no interest in the first place. But there was never such a thing as too much certainty. Griffith knew well enough that wild cards existed among any force, even his. And Guts had been – well, was, still, really – held somewhat in disrepute by the reborn Band of the Hawk’s members, what with his occasions of striding around leaving a trail of massacred apostles behind him while loudly declaring his intention to kill Griffith. He couldn’t have been discreet about his objectives if his life depended on it.

The gate opened silently and easily for Griffith, smooth on its hinges. Though it had not seen upkeep in years, it was still part of Falconia and still pristine, the kind of refinement that Guts would likely have labeled pretentious. Griffith, trekking along the paved pathway leading to the door of the mausoleum, could almost hear his unimpressed voice, complaining about being laid to rest in a place like this.

He reached the mausoleum and paused at the door. It was metal, like the gate, with a design of the sun and the moon. Griffith opened it without difficulty, though the material was thick and bulky. He stepped into the mausoleum and it closed behind him.

The inside of the building was dark, illuminated only by pale moonlight streaming in through the windows near the ceiling, high above Griffith’s head. The air was cool and crisp, as if, despite its disuse, the mausoleum had been aired out every day.

Guts’ tomb had been placed rather far back inside. Griffith passed under doorways and arches, his steps echoing throughout the hollow space. Though the tap-tap-tap of metal against stone was soft, it rang strangely in his ears, loud to the point of being deafening.

Griffith could tell the mausoleum was empty. No one had trespassed. He was the first one, bar Zodd, to have entered it.

He walked on.

Tucked away in one corner, just shy of a ray of silver moonlight, was the stone casket. Its placement cast it in shadow, wrapping it in a haze of darkness that seemed deeper, somehow, than the rest of the mausoleum, but that might have only been Griffith’s imagination.

He stopped in front of the casket. Its unmarked, even surface, a flat shade of pale grey, stared back at him.

For a moment Griffith contemplated walking away. He had confirmed what he came for and there was no reason to remain. But his hand came up and pressed against the smooth stone at the casket’s crown. He only realized the action when he heard the clink of the metal gauntlet against the rock.

His hand lingered on the casket, unmoving.

Slowly, Griffith inhaled. To his faint surprise, there was a shift in his heart. Discontent, he realized. He understood now that he was faced with the coffin, with the body inside it: that some part of him was displeased. If Guts had only not been so hot-headed; if only he had stopped. His death had been necessary but still a disappointment. He could have joined Griffith, could have become an apostle. Griffith would have been glad to welcome an old comrade, especially one of such magnificent ability. But Guts had chosen to burn his life away instead. Had chosen to die before letting go of that grudge – that sentimentality.

“You are a fool,” Griffith sighed. Aloud, into the empty air.

When he left the mausoleum just before dawn, its silence echoed in his ears.

~

The days passed in a steady string of monotonous events. More meetings, more councils and formalities. More chattering nobles, aristocrats who didn’t know half of what they were talking about, but regardless of their complaints and misgivings, the kingdom was flourishing. The apostles were restless but stayed in line, slaking their bloodthirst inside Pandemonium. Tensions were easing between the different groups of people residing in Falconia and the education policies that had been implemented continued their development. The orphanages sponsored by Charlotte grew ever more well-staffed and well-equipped. She visited them often and returned cheerily with anecdotes of the children that she met there.

Griffith observed all of it, making his case when necessary. Things had gone well and still were – better, even, than he would have dared to hope in his human lifetime. It was not enough, of course, but the progress that was made was gratifying regardless.

“Sir Griffith.” Locus’ armor rattled softly as he approached from behind Griffith. “Will you be in attendance of today’s council?”

Griffith glanced over his shoulder at the apostle. Locus’ head was lowered deferentially, though his eyes were fixed on Griffith’s. He still carried himself with that same combination of fascination and reverence that he had possessed when he first approached Griffith, years ago. Today, for some reason or another, there was something vaguely stifling about it.

Nevertheless, Griffith mulled the inquiry over. A council. These days he skipped them from time to time. They were… oh, boring, with the tedium and the parochial, closeminded perspectives that he was obligated to sit through when he could be elsewhere, doing anything else – but they had never been particularly engrossing in the first place. Perhaps boring was the wrong word?

“No,” he decided. “I’d like to see to other matters. Inform me should anything happen, Sir Locus.”

“Of course.” The apostle saluted him as he walked away. Griffith never looked back, but he felt the grey eyes following him.

Later, as he strapped his armor back on piece by piece, Charlotte’s voice drew him from his absentminded contemplation. The princess was redoing the intricate ties of her dress and smoothing her rumpled bodice down when she addressed him.

“Lord Griffith, are you… alright?”

It had been a long time since Charlotte bemused him. Perhaps owing to her status or the nature of her upbringing, she was straightforward, and more candid with him than most people, but Griffith had become accustomed to that over the years. Her words now caught him off guard.

Without a word, he refastened the last buckle of his gauntlet and turned halfway back towards her, taking in the expression on her face. She looked worried. Nothing too serious, it was true; but the worry was still there. Her thin brows were pulled together slightly and her doe-like eyes were wider than usual. It was the same expression she had worn in the early days of their relationship, when she was under the impression that he was overworking himself, that he slept too little, that he had not taken enough time to rest. Griffith thought he would have assuaged her unease about those things by now.

He smiled at her. “Why do you ask?”

Charlotte hesitated, opting to finish re-braiding her hair before she answered. “It’s just that you seem a bit weary these days. Of course, you must be very busy, I understand. You have the kingdom to take care of.” The words left her mouth easily, with the delicate grace she always bore. “But please, Lord Griffith… take care of yourself too.”

He assured her that he would. Kissed her on the forehead, thanked her for her love and Charlotte smiled at him as he left the room. Outside, with the breeze sifting through his hair, he pondered her words. She thought he seemed weary? Charlotte was knowledgeable in certain areas, but not particularly observant. If she fancied that he was tired…

Well, it didn’t matter. Whatever Charlotte had sensed, if there was anything at all, would pass.

~

“Lord Griffith?” Charlotte wrapped the blanket around herself as she spoke.

Griffith glanced in her direction. She beamed shyly when their gazes met, dark hair loose around her face. Even in only the moonlight, he could make out the faint blush on her cheeks, the adoring glow in her mahogany eyes. Her smile was heartfelt.

He smiled back. The marble windowsill, where he sat, felt cold underneath his bare skin.

“What is it, Princess Charlotte?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Charlotte said, “would it not be good to go on a procession through the city?”

Griffith said nothing. He was mildly surprised at the proposal, though no immediate reason to object came to him. A procession… it was not as if he could not tell where the princess was coming from.

“It’s true that things are improving,” Charlotte continued, “but these are still difficult times. Our people must grapple with uncertainty every waking hour, thinking of their future, and the future of their loved ones. Would your presence not bolster their hope and their morale? If they could see the Falcon of Light with their own eyes…”

Griffith saw that her gaze was eager, excited. She felt strongly about this, he knew. She had always felt strongly about her people’s suffering – as much as she could, at least, within the walls of that cloistered world of hers. He was fond of her for it.

 “You truly are like a mother to this kingdom.” He closed his eyes. Opened them, smiled at her again. “I cannot refuse you.”

He accepted her into his arms when she leapt from the bed and ran to him in delight.

Two days later, he passed into Falconia’s lower city among cheers and smiling faces. Citizens waved at him, mothers asked him to bless their children, and clergymen wove about within the crowd, loudly praising the name of the Falcon of Light. Locus, riding a little way back from Griffith’s side, looked out over the throng with something close to pride. Charlotte, perched in the carriage behind Griffith’s horse, beamed at the merrymaking, delighted in her guileless way at the joy all around her. Sonia, as was her wont, cheerfully frolicked and romped, lifting the atmosphere further, while Mule… well. He scrambled, this way and that way and back this way again, trying to keep her out of trouble.

Griffith watched them silently. The celebrations, the smiles, the hum of frenetic, disorderly activity. They did all look happy, he thought. It was… pleasant. He would continue in this way, advancing his dream, ironing out the creases that divided his kingdom. Common or high-born, man or woman, Kushan or Midlander, they were all one. Just like this.

After the procession, he idled with Charlotte on one of the balconies of the castle, listening to her enthusiastic account of the event. She rambled happily on about how joyful the crowd had looked gathered around him, how it delighted her to hear them cheer, how uplifting their adoration for him was. She said that he had looked more himself during the procession, as decisive and resplendent as he usually was, and that she was glad it had made him feel better. Griffith placed his hands on the balcony’s railing and looked out over the city, nodding along and occasionally smiling as she talked. So he had still appeared weary to her before the procession, even after so many days? Fascinating.

Regardless, it had passed, as he had known it would.

He exhaled.

It was a pleasant afternoon. The sky was bright and clear, voluminous white clouds roaming across the expanse of vast blue. A light breeze was present, stirring strands of Griffith’s hair against his face.

From something, somewhere, as he gazed out across the stretch of white that was Falconia, he felt a tingle of distant nostalgia. It had been a similar afternoon then, standing underneath a clear blue sky with the feeling of wind in his hair and a stone railing beneath his hands. The rustle of leaves was reminiscent of it as well, the way that they capered about in the air, riding the coast of the wind. And there was that, too – that question, the one that had been accompanied by all those things, the one that had once brought him to a loss. So why?

Griffith inhaled. He was startled to find that it caught in his chest.

Behind him, Charlotte was still speaking. Something about an old woman she had seen at the procession, who had lifted her hands toward the sky and given thanks to the Falcon of Light. She sounded delighted as she recalled the scene, but Griffith was no longer listening to her. He was conscious of only the hiss of the wind and the silence that settled between himself and that man, from another lifetime, who lounged on the railing next to him. There was that man’s question, then Griffith’s own inability to answer it, and then, in the end, his response. The closest that he had allowed himself to come to… something.

Do I need a reason?

It had been an excuse at best. No plausible rationalization to give, and so he had evaded. At the time, he hadn’t realized that it was an evasion. At the time, he thought he was being honest. Only later, trapped and chained in the depths of the earth, had he realized the truth of it.

Griffith blinked. He looked down at his hand, covered in the engraved metal of its gauntlet, laid flat out over the railing.

Why was he thinking of this now?

It was as vivid as if it had all happened only days ago. His loss of words as Guts looked at him so earnestly, waiting for an answer. The foreign uncertainty that gripped him when he responded, and the odd desperation that he felt, returning Guts’ stare. The desire to be… heard, for Guts to understand the gravity of what he was saying, even as a part of him balked at the notion.

Yes, Guts had been significant to him. Irreplaceable, even. But that was the past. He had intended to stamp it out, to crush that weakness to dust, and he had. Guts was dead, gone, nothing. Griffith was free. After everything, he was free. Why was he thinking of Guts? Why was all of it so clear? Why now? Why even now?

Did he still…

No. No, it was nothing. It had to be nothing. He had killed Guts. He had killed him and his heart had been silent. He had looked down at his body and his heart had been silent. He—

Oh. The body. That was right, Guts was still in the mausoleum. Griffith had wanted it, had wanted that last expression of respect for him. For his death to go unmarked, unacknowledged, had felt improper. Undue. But if it had come to this…

No. It had not come to anything. And he would not destroy the body. He wouldn’t be so ungracious to an old comrade, to a man whose willpower might have, in another life, eclipsed the world. The body would remain in the mausoleum, and he would affirm that it meant nothing, just as he had at the Hill of Swords. Back then he had stood in the snow, impassive, watching Guts clash with Zodd, and later listening to his anguished demands for some sort of regret. His heart had not stirred.

Back then it had meant nothing. And it meant nothing now.

“Lord Griffith?”

Griffith blinked. Charlotte’s voice, restless with slight worry, drifted into his ears. A backwards glance at her revealed the anxious curiosity laced into her soft features. A few stray curls of hair had come loose from her winding, ornate braids. Her voluminous blue skirt had bits of dust in it from the procession.

Ever since they had first laid eyes on each other, Charlotte had been an existence he was grateful for. Acceptable and convenient, always light and always mellow, only sometimes exasperating. She was lush and colorful and vibrant as she was by nature but right now, something about it picked at him. Her lissome figure was intolerable to look at. Her youthful face was cloying in its sweetness. Her warmhearted manner, gentle and gracious, turned his stomach.

“Excuse me for a minute.” Griffith smiled, but his own voice sounded far away. Charlotte’s words of concern followed him as he left the balcony, but he did not hear any of them.

~

The mausoleum seemed colder and stiller than when Griffith last visited. The clang of the door closing reverberated off the walls of stone, but otherwise he could hear only the sound of his own breaths and then the tap of metal against rock as he walked. He passed under an archway, turned a corridor, wove around a series of columns, and there was the casket. It was still tucked in the same corner. Still shrouded in the same darkness.

Griffith stopped in front of it. Its smooth surface stared back at him, and suddenly he had the vague and absurd sense that it was deliberately refraining from words. Or perhaps it was Guts that he was really envisioning, lying within the rectangular confines of his tomb, making the deliberate choice to remain silent as he looked up at Griffith with a blank expression.

The image was uncharacteristic of Guts, Griffith decided. He was an expressive man – severe and often extreme in those expressions, but an expressive man nonetheless. And though he certainly had never been conversational, this was the precise sort of situation in which he would have made some scathing remark. Those comments – the gruff voice that had spoken them, the dry, unimpressed tone that they had been spoken in – had once made Griffith smile like nothing else did.

But right now, he felt nothing. No impulse to smile. No mirth.

A flick of his fingers was all it took to remove the lid of the casket. It dropped lightly to the ground, like a leaf floating down to earth. Griffith didn’t remember if it made any noise at all.

This really was uncanny, he thought.

He had seen how death looked on Guts’ face already, but it was still uncanny to see it again. The body had not decomposed; Griffith had ensured that. The flesh, although crusted over with dried blood, was intact and seemed paler than normal only because of the silver moonlight flooding into the mausoleum. The hair was a mess, truthfully, as it often had been with Guts, but it had not become brittle, nor had it begun to break apart. Overall, the body looked as fresh as it had when it was first brought in.

Nothing, really, had changed since the last time Griffith saw it. Guts’ eyes were still closed. His mouth was still a relaxed line, his dark brows still slack. His hard features were imbued with a sheer ease that made him resemble the subject of a painting – as if his face, down to its most minute detail, had been lovingly mapped out under the stroke of a brush, brought to life by the deft manipulations of an accomplished professional. Powerful body lain straight out and hands clasped over his chest, his sword’s hilt tucked into the interlace of his scarred fingers, he gave the impression of being utterly at rest.

Griffith stared at him. He could have looked away. But he only stared. It was the novelty – the idea that Guts had truly remained so still, had truly looked so calm, for all this time.

But this was good. If Guts could find any sort of rest in that swirling vortex of od and chaos where the branded ones went, that was good. It was not as if Griffith wanted him to suffer. If they were both at peace, if they were both ending everything at peace—that was good.

That was good. Griffith felt… good. His weakness had been severed. His dream was secure. His dream…

Guts’ face blurred below him. If not for that, Griffith might have noticed that his shoulders seized with his next inhale, and he might have noticed the abnormal sharpness of the noise produced as air was drawn haphazardly into his lungs. But the sudden haziness of his surroundings monopolized his attention. For a second, he thought it was only Guts’ face that was growing indistinct, and a foolish part of him was instantly convinced that the body in the coffin was fading away into empty air, as if it was morning mist that dissipated under the heat of the sun. No. The word came to his mind before he had time to react. No, stop, you can’t. I—

But that wasn’t it. The coffin was blurred too. The walls and floor as well. The rays of moonlight spilling in through the windows.

At first, Griffith didn’t understand what had happened. Bemused, he blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the motion only caused something warm and wet to run from his left eye. He felt it traipse downwards, over his cheekbone and past his nose and against the corner of his mouth before it rolled along his jaw and stopped to cling to the taper of his chin. For a second it dangled there. Then it dripped off, breaking silently against the stone of the coffin’s rim and leaving a tiny, dark smear.

Griffith couldn’t make out the smear clearly. His vision still blurred. His eyes stung. He blinked again, and that made the droplets run down his face, linger again at his chin. Then they fell, another and another and another and another, until it came to him what might be happening.

But that couldn’t be right.

Griffith touched his cheek. When he drew his hand back, the gauntlet came away wet.

It was impossible, he knew perfectly well, for the entire world to tilt under his feet. That simply didn’t happen. But it did. It lurched.

No, he thought, staring at the bead of water as it rolled down the metal covering his finger. No.

Though the mausoleum was silent, his ears were full to bursting with the lack of noise.

In his peripheral vision, Griffith saw the hazy shape of Guts’ face. That face had once borne every emotion without pause, without shame or hesitation, but now it was as blank and smoothed over as a stretch of water on a calm night. That face, and the voice that it matched to, the hands and the sword and the fire and the rage, had once claimed near ownership of Griffith’s waking days and sleepless nights, all the while oblivious to how it was choking him to death in its grip. He had been frustrated, voracious, aimless and helpless, prey to an obsession. Guts, enclosed within the confines of his hand, yet perpetually, effortlessly, out of reach. Always giving and serving, while needing nothing and asking for nothing. Looking at him with trust, with affection, and still looking at him like it would make no difference if he had been anyone else in the world.

It had driven Griffith insane. He would have given anything to possess that man, anything to keep him. Anything to be closer to him. But Guts was dead. Whatever had survived between them had been less than remnants of smoldering ash, less than nothing for the fact that it had failed even as it existed, and Guts was dead. It was over. Guts was gone. And for Griffith…

Disappointment. Wasn’t that right? He was… disappointed. That it had ended this way, this needlessly. That Guts had thrown his life away. That he had hated Griffith still, had hated him until his last breath and had chosen to live and die by that hatred.

Griffith stared at the droplet as it wandered idly down along the metal of his gauntlet. For a split second it glistened, catching a ray of moonlight that was filtering in through the empty space of the mausoleum. This—this was disappointment, displeasure. Discontent. It… it—

His mind wouldn’t turn. His head hurt. His heart pounded.

He remembered the day they met, the foreign hunger that had burst to life within his chest then. It had ached and ached and ached and he hadn’t understood, had sought to stamp it out or else control it, somehow, in some way. Now you belong to me, he had declared, and, later, I will decide the place where you die. And the ache had not stopped.

In the depths of the Tudor keep, Zodd’s immense form had blotted out all light and then been blotted out, in turn, by the sight of Guts’ peril. The questions had come, one after another, heartfelt demands for an answer as to why. Griffith hadn’t given one, but he had looked at Guts’ face and watched and breathed and inside him the ache had twisted and thrashed.

Outside the city, as the weight of his sword dangled in his hand and blood roared in his ears, Griffith had faced Guts and refused to let him go. You belong to me, he had said, and had meant it. Your life and your death, I hold both. But it hadn’t worked, and Guts had walked away, his feet crunching gently in the snow as he left Griffith kneeling motionless in a field of white, his body nerveless, his eyes unseeing. No, he had thought, with each step, his voice splintered within his throat, no, and no, and no, and no. You can’t. I need you. You were mine. I want you. You can’t. And the ache had grown so unbearable that he had thrown himself into ruin trying to dull it.

In that underground chamber where he became less than a corpse, forgetting what sunlight felt like, forgetting the divide between delusion and reality, forgetting the motions necessary for his lips and teeth and the stump of his tongue to coordinate anything beyond aborted, cracked syllables, Griffith had clung to the feverish whispers inside his addled mind, to the phantom of a strong jaw and scarred nose and intent, piercing eyes, and had forgotten all emotion but despair. He had stared at the face that was not even there in front of him and tried to reach out to tear it apart with his bare hands, feel it twitch and convulse as its owner bled out under his fingertips. I hate you, he had screamed, over and over in his mind because his throat would not work, I hate you. It’s only you. I’ll kill you. Come back. And all the while, the ache had eaten him alive.

Under a blood-red sky and the fiery outline of a deep black moon, bodies twisting and beasts howling and the world itself groaning underneath his feet while voices hummed in his ears and filled the recesses of his skull, Griffith had thought of him. Of Guts. A choice. Choose, choose. Sever it, cut it out, crush it into the dust. Bury your human heart. Offer it to us, the life, the sacrifice. The one you love most, the one you hate most. What do you fear in that place? And he, head pounding, heart screaming, had broken and remade everything, broken and remade himself, as he pronounced those words. I sacrifice. He had pronounced them because he remembered the gentle crunch of footsteps in the snow as Guts walked away from him, because the thought that Guts would walk away from him again had shattered him so utterly that he had begged to never see the day. Because the ache had burned, and burned far too hot for him to bear.

On the hill after his rebirth in ice and stone, where he had stood watching Guts rage against Zodd’s overwhelming might, his hand had pressed to his breastplate and he had closed his eyes at the throbbing underneath it, the pounding and singing of his heart as it witnessed the storm of Guts’ fervor. And when Guts had thrown himself after Griffith, demands to know if he truly felt nothing echoing through the snowy summits, Griffith had looked at him without expression. He had spoken the proof of his frozen heart and empty veins—and within his chest, the ache had torn mercilessly into him, its claws cruel and cold and mocking.

His fingers trembled. The droplet trickled off entirely and fell to the ground. Griffith could not bear to watch it go.

What was this? What was… this?

His body, frozen as he stared at Guts’ unmoving corpse. His breath, erratic in his ribcage. The heat and the wetness of the tears that rolled down his face. His lungs wouldn’t obey him. His chest rang like it would split apart down the middle. He wanted to laugh. Wanted to sob, wanted to scream and dash that tranquil face under him against peaks of jagged stone until it was nothing more than a paste of fragmented bone and squelching brain matter. He wanted to cradle it in his arms, hold it to his chest, curl himself around it and breathe life and warmth back in until those closed eyes opened and met his. It was nothing and it was everything. He hated him. Hated him. Raged at him, clung to him, wept for him. Begged him.

And the ache…  in the midst of it, in the midst of a maelstrom of resentment and affection, spite and sorrow and passion so strong that Griffith’s throat threatened to close around it… the ache still burned. Sharp, starving. Untouched. Pristine.

I want you, he had said. It was so simple. I want you.

His mouth made a strange noise, suspended halfway between a moan and a gasp. He tried to swallow but it caught in his throat. His legs wavered and he reached to steady himself with a hand on the coffin, but when he placed it there all he could see was Guts’ face, thrown in grey shadow and looming pitiless below him. The curve of his closed eyelids. The stoic plane of his cold lips. The impenetrable stillness of his peaceful features.

Griffith tried to inhale. The breath collapsed in on itself, ending in a tattered half-sob that stung his throat. The ground rose to meet him and the poleyns of his armor clanged quietly against the mausoleum’s stone floor. The frame of the coffin bumped against his forehead as he bowed over, dully watching tears trickle down the bridge of his nose, drip from his chin, scatter across the ground. Their salt was acrid on his tongue.

How?

It was that day. That day—he cursed it in his mind. The day they met. The day he damned, the day he wanted to go back to, the day that would never return. How could this have happened? How could he have become so weak?

Say something.

Griffith beat his fist against the coffin, once, twice. His body wouldn’t stop trembling. The tears wouldn’t stop falling.

What did you do? What did you do to me?

If only. If only—he wished, he wished, that they had never met. Three years, those three years from another lifetime, those three years that bloomed as a noxious flower inside his heart even now – they couldn’t be worth it. They couldn’t be worth this. He wished he had never met Guts. He wished Guts had never been born—

But that was a dead end, even that. Even that would have come to nothing. If Guts had never been born, Griffith never would have met him. If he had never met Guts, he never would have lost everything. If he had never lost everything, he would have become king, he would have gained the world in his hands—and still he would have continued to chase his dream, still he would have pursued the castle in the sky. Running faster, flying higher, piling corpses, never stopping as he crumbled into oblivion.

In the end, it was hollow, all of it. There was no other way. Never had been. Never would be.

It was his own fault. His own folly, his own weakness, and no one to blame but himself. Guts had seeped into the cracks in his chest like water through the fissures of rock, filling up his heart even as he broke it down to a sham of dirt and dust. Had made Griffith forget what it was like to be faultless, to exist as nothing but immovable stone, and Griffith fully understood, only now: he shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have let it happen. Shouldn’t have bared his heart.

But it was Guts. It had been Guts. Fate, causality, any power—none of them were any match. What was the God Hand? What was a god supposed to be, when Guts had stepped onto the path before his eyes, calling his name as he placed a scarred hand on his shoulder?

Griffith keeled over beside the coffin, his forehead nearly touching the ground. Darkness swam before his vision. Blindly, he reached for his shoulder, fingers scrabbling to find purchase on flesh so they could sink in, claw, tear, rip until blood ran. But there was no flesh. No blood, only the empty, ineffectual scratch of metal grating against metal. He wanted to scream, perhaps, but no sound would come out.

Worthless, he thought. His fingers went still on his shoulder. This is all… worthless. Did it ever matter? Could it ever have?

He knelt there for a long time, arms wrapped around himself. The tears continued to fall.

Griffith didn’t try to stop them.

~

The mausoleum was silent. Griffith felt that he had grown accustomed to it, by now. Between the nobles and the councils and the apostles and Charlotte, silence was all he was surrounded by.

He lifted his hand and placed it on the coffin lid, the stone smooth and cold under his bare fingertips.

It had remained closed since that night. Griffith didn’t think he could bear it, seeing that face again. Taking in the quiet, the stillness. Even now, even with the heavy block of stone between them, the reality of what lay inside—

Griffith closed his eyes. He inhaled, slow and deep, as if that would help him.

“You truly never change,” he said. His voice was hushed even though he didn’t know why. “How are you always so heedless? You never cared what people thought, or about how your actions affected others. I lost count, you know – of how many tactics I’ve had to revise to account for your bullheadedness.”

Anyone else, he could have talked down. Anyone else, he could have disarmed with his mere presence, with the mere impossibility that was his being. In front of Guts all it had ever seemed to achieve was to heighten his eagerness for blood. He had always been… spiteful, like that. Like he couldn’t stand to see things going the way they, by all rationality, ought to. Like he hated the very thought that something, especially something indisputable, was yoking him.

Griffith had witnessed that spite play out before his eyes, time and time again. Within countless scenarios, atop innumerable battlefields, it had been the same. Even when directed at him, it had been the same. Even when directed at him, it… it had made him feel—

Rage, true. Hatred. Frustration, longing. Interminable nights of what are you really and why won’t you look at me and, later, why did you leave. He had resented that spite, that stubbornness. He still resented it now. But… even so, even now—even despising it…

“I lied.” The words hung in the empty air. He swallowed, fought against the thickness behind his tongue, the squeeze in his chest. The ache. “You asked me if I really didn’t feel anything. I lied. I…”

He had lied, because he couldn’t bear it. Because he rejected the thought that, after everything, his heart still beat. Had rejected it even as he lived in it, a world where his blood had not been frozen. A world where, after everything, he was not free, and he never would be.

He’d just wanted it to stop. The pain of it. The fire that burned too hot for him to bear. Desperation and hopelessness and terror, the gaping maw of dread that had consumed him at the knowledge that I need you. I want you. I’m losing you. I already lost you.

“I never had you, did I?” He closed his eyes again, his lips curving into a wry smile. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. “All that time. You wouldn’t allow me to. You… well, that’s just like you too. You refused to be held. You balked at the very idea. But I refused to realize it.” He hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t wanted to understand that the flames burning white-hot by his side, the ones that had lent him so much boundless warmth even on the darkest, coldest nights – they were only ever lending. They didn’t want to be held. Not by anybody. Not by him.

“Maybe if I had seen it sooner. Maybe…”

Maybe what? He would have given up? Would have contented himself with being a comrade, a commander? Would have accepted that Guts had affection for him, and also that Guts could have easily replaced him with anyone else?

Perhaps it would have all turned out like this anyway. Perhaps he would have done the same thing regardless, clenching his teeth and screaming in defiance as he tried to close his hands around a fire that seared through his flesh and charred his bones to ash.

He remembered what Guts had said that night in the snow, his mouth filled with blood and Griffith’s sword running through his abdomen. Griffith didn’t know – what those words had meant, or who they had been meant for. He didn’t know who Guts had been seeing when the life bled from his body, when his single dark eye clouded over with so much longing that Griffith’s chest had hurt to look at it. He didn’t know and he never would. But those words… he felt that he could understand them.

I had to. I just had to.

I just had to have you. I wanted you so much.

Would it have been worth it? Was it worth it now, here, where he was cold and it was dark and Guts lay quiet and dead inside a husk of polished stone? It wasn’t. It wasn’t… but even knowing that, could he have stopped?

He couldn’t answer. It didn’t matter. What could he possibly say? For him, for them, even the end was already over.

Griffith took a deep breath. His hand curled halfway into a fist on the coffin lid, fingernails scraping softly against rock. As if he could claw through the stone and reach the man lying inside. As if he could pull him out, draw him back from being engulfed into the torrent of their own actions.

As if, after everything, there could be anything left between them.

His shoulders trembled. The knot in his throat threatened to strangle him. His heart, thrashing and bloody and raw, ached.

“I’ll return to you in another life,” he whispered, knowing full well there was no another. “And try again.”