A/N: Set about 10 years after the show. I have to give a shout out to Lalaofthealpacas because this whole story is sort of me fanficcing the title of her one-shot, "weary eyes still stray to the horizon". Something about that title just... I couldn't get it out of my mind. So she definitely inspired this fic.
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He is up well before dawn, sliding out of bed – out from between the light covers, out from beneath the sleeping woman's arm – with care and precision.
He moves gracefully, silently, even in the near-pitch blackness. There was a time, before he'd fully grown into his body, when his movements were not so fluid; a time when he was liable to miss a step, trip over his own feet, feel the sting of a wooden practice sword smacking him full across the backside, accompanied by a peal of high, clear laughter. Her laughter.
But that time is gone, and even thinking about it causes his jaw to clench, hard, in the dark. He is fast and lithe now as he dresses himself by touch alone, collects his few belongings, and feels his way out of the room, his boots dangling from one hand. He will put them on outside; it would be too risky to go clumping down the rickety wooden steps in them. This inn has seen better days; unless lightly trodden, the stairs produce a veritable symphony of creaks and groans.
And in these silent and slumbering hours, this he does not need.
The stable boy is asleep, and that suits Gunther fine. After donning his boots in the dooryard, he finds and saddles his horse himself. His steed has become accustomed to these furtive pre-dawn departures, or so he assumes; the animal is stoic, and as quiet as Gunther himself. Ten minutes later, the inn is lost behind him; a memory already fading, just one of a string of similar lodgings that have begun to run together in his mind.
And the woman? Well, she too is simply one more name, one more face, one more warm and willing body, in a long and ultimately meaningless succession.
This one had honey-colored hair, eyes so blue they could almost be called indigo, and a thoroughly unpronounceable name. The names are getting less and less manageable, he finds, the further from home he gets.
Blue eyes are getting rarer, too. He'd liked her eyes. He could as easily have had the inn's other serving girl – she'd fancied him too, he could tell. But that one had a smattering of freckles across her face, and…
And freckles are best avoided. Green eyes and hair the color of flame as well, come to that… but thankfully, as he works his way southeast across the European continent, the majority of the people he encounters are becoming gradually, yet steadily, darker.
The blue-eyed girl is probably a transplant from a different place, like him.
And like the women who came before her (and the women who are sure to come after her) she had been drawn to the brooding, mysterious, foreign knight. They sense something broken deep down inside him, and each of them wants to be the one to fix it, to love him back to wholeness.
They are half right, these pretty girls that he uses and then leaves behind.
He is broken, God yes… but it's not fixable. At least, he doesn't think so.
And so he moves on. He makes his little conquests, stays a night or two – maybe three, but that's quite rare – and then moves on. Always heading south and east; steadily, doggedly away from his starting point. Feeling the leagues mounting up behind like an actual, physical ache in some deep part of him. The pit of his stomach. His bones.
His heart.
He has no concrete idea of where he is going, because he's not moving toward anything, really; he's simply moving away. He has a vague notion of possibly following this course all the way to the holy land; of turning this entire venture into… well, a pilgrimage of sorts. He finds this faintly ironic, not only because he's committing sin after sin as he goes, but also because he was raised in a distinctly secular household. His father had no use for religion; all of Magnus's zeal was reserved for the frantic acquisition of wealth.
And a good thing too, Gunther supposes. Magnus's wealth is his wealth now, after all, and it's what is funding this… this personal exodus.
At any rate, irony – and the faint shimmer of amusement that accompanies it – seem like reason enough to carry on with this plan, if it can even be called that. Take himself all the way to Jerusalem, sure. Why the hell not?
Maybe that will finally be far enough away. Maybe it will be different enough, exotic enough, enchanting enough, to make him forget what he's left behind.
That's all he wants. Dear God, is it really so much to ask? He would get down on his knees in the dusty road and beg if he thought it would do any good.
He just wants to forget.
But dawn is coming; a degree at a time, it's beginning to lighten the sky. To spread its slow-yet-inexorable stain, first watery-grey and then watery-pink, across the land. This foreign land.
And even though he hates himself a little for doing it, he reins up the horse and turns in his saddle, eyes suddenly riveted on the horizon behind him. The direction of home.
He always looks for her at dawn.
He knows how ridiculous this is. To the core of his being, he knows. First off, she's not coming. And second, even if she did come – what would be the odds that she'd appear right at the break of day? Flying out of the dark, into the sunrise, on her great green beast like something from an epic poem? Some glorious, shining Celtic goddess-queen?
Jane is drama, yes. Jane is unbridled passion. But Jane is not that predictable. Honestly, dawn? No, Jane is not a cliché.
But somehow, for whatever reason, he can't help himself. This is the time that he stops and looks back.
Every.
Single.
Torturous.
Goddamn.
Day.
It is a full minute before he can tear his eyes away and, with a soft cluck to his horse, get moving again.
She'll never come after him. He knows this. He does.
But he'll never stop glancing back, at dawn.