How I Spent My Days Without Him
Summary: Marta's thoughts on every time Emil leaves her...and how he always comes back. Journal-Style oneshot/drabble.
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The first time I met him, I saw him as my perfect knight, suddenly appearing when I was hoping to be saved and rescuing me from the clutches of my father's forces.
Cliché I know, it's charm could never fade.
He came from nowhere and yet I don't think I ever felt threatened by him, a stranger suddenly defending someone like me, didn't occur to me as strange.
But he left me behind, silent and never turning back.
To my surprise, I met him again, instantly recognizing him, when I ran into him outside of Luin finding him fighting off a wild monster. I confronted him afterward but he didn't remember me. I shrugged it off and chalked it up to the situation we met in.
Maybe he hadn't seen me, maybe he had but paid no attention to me? Or maybe, I had thought, I was the one who mistook him for someone else...
I had warned him to go back to town as I headed off into the lake bed cave. I'm not sure but I think it was my way of confirming that I was independent, that I shouldn't get my hopes up that it was him.
I guess it was funny in a way that it was only a little while later when he came back to save me again and again. His natural inability to stand up for himself, for fear of agitating someone else, someone like him setting out to rescue me and stand up against someone who always seemed to be stronger than him.
But Emil would come through. He would always come back.
When Richter had come to kill me in the cave and when Magnar had decided to behead me to take Ratatosk's core from my forehead by force. He was there to rescue me both times, even after I had been the one to leave him, both times.
He had now sworn to protect me, as my Knight of Ratatosk. He was my Knight.
I remember, the next time he left me, was when he brought us back to Hakonesia Peak, when he said he needed to talk to Koton and if he told me why then it would ruin the surprise.
I was excited to hear Emil was planning a surprise for me, but the fact that he needed to speak with Koton to get it made me doubtful, the old pervert hated Emil the last time we were there and so I didn't expect for Emil to come out so quickly saying there was somewhere else for us to go.
Emil had gone into Koton's shop and had left me alone for no longer than five minutes...but it was the first time he left me instead of the other way around.
Emil told me that we might need to stop off in Asgard for him to pick up my surprise, and so I agreed that we could head there before moving on, since I figured it would be quick.
We had arrived in Asgard a few days later, and although it had been meant to be my surprise I had planned to follow Emil.
Well, at least until the Mayor came up to me and asked me to perform the Maiden Ritual in a town festival, before he moved towards Emil and whispered something into his ear. It was a little suspicious, Emil still hadn't explained what he was going to do besides the fact that it was supposed to be a surprise.
I warned him he was going to have to explain all of this when it was all over. I didn't like the idea of Emil keeping secrets from me...It was hard to imagine, this princely, timid character, capable of keeping a secret...but he did.
I remember thinking at the time, that Emil certainly had this planned out, I was diverted away from following Emil like I had planned and left to not only to perform the Maiden's Ritual, but teach some of the girls who were to perform and even plan the majority of the festival. All with the Mayor's perfectionist crow of a wife hovering over my shoulder every time I turned, criticizing what I had already done and what I was about to do!
By the time Emil had come back, I was ready to escape. But first, the explanation of what he had been doing. Tenebrae cut in and told me that Emil had gone to the Balacruf Mausoleum to get the Balacruf Bracelet, a relic that had been sealed away in the mausoleum.
To hear that Emil had gone through that for me, it was wonderful. Maybe I could let my hopes rise-just a little.
We passed through Triet and the fortune teller was giving away free fortunes, but there was a ridiculously long line. Emil had agreed to meet up with me later, after I had gotten my fortune, at the shape of the Chosen. And again, Emil left me alone.
But he came back, a little later than I had hoped. But he had come back.
I immediately wondered what could have kept him so long.
Tenebrae (once again) cut off Emil as he began to stutter, and Tenebrae explained that Emil had feared what the fortune teller would tell me. I was aware that Emil wasn't very comfortable with my affections or my displays of them but I think I decided to turn a blind eye to that for once.
Emil was back, and safe, he hadn't gone somewhere dangerous like the Balacruf Mausoleum alone again, and we were traveling together again. Emil silently listening to my retelling of my interrogation of the fortune teller about my future.
She had said that we were a perfect match, but I had a feeling she said that to every lovestruck teenager who walked into her tent. I wanted details. And Emil, being Emil, listened to every minute of it...even if he didn't want to.
It was in Sybak, that Emil overheard us. It was horrible to watch him, he was conflicted but he convinced us that he wanted to know the same things as us. He wanted to know the truth about his problem. The "why?" behind it all.
But as we were leaving the city, we overheard Richter, speaking nearby to one of the research assistants at the library. We had arrived at the conclusion as a group that following Richter wasn't worth losing the chance to awaken another core.
But Emil still led the group to the Cape Fortress and asked that he be left to follow Richter alone. It turned out, that all those times he had left me, was because he was following Richter.
I was hurt. Not only had he lied to me. But he was putting himself in danger, and not to mention-following Richter, the guy's been trying to kill me-
But he went on to explain, that was the exact reason, Richter had been trying to kill me, Emil felt it was significant enough to follow Richter and keep an eye on what he was doing, to make sure he wasn't planning on killing me to get Ratatosk's core.
And so before we left him, I made him promise he would come back and explain everything, this time leaving nothing out.
He had to come back.
And he did.
Emil had saved me once again. But I returned the favor this time. Alice and Decus were dead now, and they had made their choice and we had made ours.
Emil and I were together in this, no matter what and we wouldn't let anything come in-between us. Or at least that's what I liked to think. Something seemed to have changed with Emil recently, and I couldn't place what was wrong. But it was something important enough to make me feel uneasy as we descended further into the Ginnugagap.
Something wasn't right...
I've found out what was wrong, Emil... was trying to get us to kill him...so he could be used to seal the portal... We stopped him... but why-why would he ever do that? He sacrifices everything for others, he treasures his friends more than his life! He always keeps his promises-to explain himself, to help me, to come back!
He's now working together with them to seal the demons out. We had had to leave them down there...there wasn't any other choice...Ratatosk himself, told us so.
The demons can't come through as long as they're there holding the portal closed while Ratatosk seals the portal permanently. They'll all be sealed down there for at least a 1,000 years before any of them will see the light of day again.
And I'll be dead long before that... I guess Emil... this is the one time you won't come back to see me even after I made you promise. I'm sorry... I shouldn't have made you break your promise...
"Marta? I've never had the nerve to break my promises."
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First fic on this account. Whee~.
It's really vague because it was a birthday fic for a friend of mine who hasn't completed the game but loved the pairing so I wrote this for her. Hope it wasn't too crappy.
-Maniac Mangaka