Shadow Hearts: Covenant and all its characters are copyright their respective creators.
Candy Canes and Gingerbread
01: There Is...
Winter, 1896
There is nothing and no one and the streets are empty, covered in blankets of white as silver powder fell from the sky. There is no first snowflake landing on shoulders, tasting like minty winter against a backdrop of stone grey and crimson fireplaces.
There is only stifling warmth of closed doors and half-drawn curtains, light wisps trailing from steaming tea in a dainty hand. A murmur, a stare, beyond the silent streets that separated them from the Winter Palace. He knew she fancied hearing laughter filter through its windows, comfort emanate from its walls, celebrations of the solstice decorate its hidden corridors.
There is golden-brown roasted turkey and vermillion wine; but the meat is cold, the bottle is empty, the tea left untouched and the focus turned elsewhere. There had been merriment of the slightest, quietest, most discreet nature; until life and laughter trickled in from across the expansive powder-white courtyard in the form of poisonous memories, and she was overwhelmed.
There is a clinking of moving plates, as small hands cleared the table and packed away the remnants of winter celebrations. They sought to remove the bottle, as her jade eyes watched wearily through steamy glass windows, leaping over the vast courtyard and piercing through the protective palace walls. She fancied she could see everything, and he knew not to disturb her in these moments where her palms were sweaty and fingers were strung together, resting in a mixture of gentle poise and deep anxiety upon her lap.
"Are you expecting anyone, mother?"
There is silence, as she turns unfocused jade eyes upon the smaller face framed by strawberry-blonde hair, so much like her own and nothing like her love's. He waited patiently, experience of an old man floating within a sapling's eyes, small hands holding carefully the plate lest it fall and create a mess.
"Could we wait just a bit longer, sweetheart?"
There is no protest, just a nod, always a nod. He could not say no, even if he wanted to, even if his eight summers' old mind knew what would happen and loathed the future that would happen. With each celebration much like the last, with each winter exactly the same, the pattern had been set and he could not break it. He could only follow, and support, and pray to the heavens and to hell that perhaps, just perhaps, one day, they would finally hear the clickety-clackety sound of horseshoes upon gravel drawing closer to their street, and this eternity would end.
But for now, there is no sound. The streets remains empty, the snow-covered pavement below remain untarnished, and no royal carriages pull up by their apartment and no princely ruler steps out, wool leather boots crinkling upon crystalline snow. There never was nor will there ever be.
There is only the silence of diminishing hope, of building anxieties, of growing heartache as her love never emerged from the Winter Palace, and she never shifted from her vigil, and he merely waited with unending patience for her will to fail and her eyes to fall and the curtains to draw close upon yet another day of waiting.