He had only come home to say goodbye.
The funeral had been that morning, and Percival had scattered her ashes in the yellow fields of Iskay until there was nothing left of her for him to hold. The sky was the same crisp orange and gold of the Zexen uniform he was not wearing. His mother had loved the village with all her heart, and he knew that she would like nothing better to spend eternity on the wind above it.
He felt awkward without his armor. Percival was no stranger to funerals, but it was odd to feel the stares on the back of his neck and know they wanted something more than a stoic expression. He knew then that he had forgotten how to mourn.
Percival was disappointed to find that the mud caked under his boots and the gentle smell of wet earth still felt like home. But he remembered the feeling of the rough-hewn wood of the old windmill fence pressed against his arms and the moon hanging low and lonely in the clear country sky. Even the splinters were a familiar pain.
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His mother was a kind, ordinary woman with dull brown hair and rosy cheeks. She loved to bake, and Percival could remember watching her knead dough every morning. Some mornings, when he was lucky, she would let him help, and he could remember feeling the dough find every gap between his fingers and filling it with something warm his mother made.
It was a heavy summer afternoon and Percy was nine years old. He was playing alone, chasing an old crooked hoop in the fields outside of town. That was when they came riding, faceless and unrelenting, the sun glaring fiercely off their exquisitely polished armor. At first he thought they were monsters-- something sharp and strange. As they rode closer, he decided they were more likely angels. Nothing evil or ugly could shine as bright as they did. He stood rapt as they rode on towards the village, emblazoned in his mind like a cross on a shield. When it was time for dinner, he left his hoop somewhere in the fields. It was a week before he even remembered to look for it.
Percival did not find out the truth about the knights until he asked the old man who lived up the street. And Percy rushed home, his face alight in the late-afternoon sun, to tell his mother that he would become a knight. Her voice caught as she reminded him that his father had died a nameless soldier in a skirmish six months before he was born. Face red with tears and frustration, she begged him to change his mind. She knew the disease of chivalry better than he could have imagined, knew the hunger that drove a man further and further from home. But Percival was nine, and she was his mother. After six months of him asking why, the answer became too hard for her to give. So when Percival was twelve and his mother had saved enough money washing neighbors' clothes, he left to become a knight.
He was good at it; but then, he knew he would be. The wooden sword they gave him for practice wasn't so much different from the sticks he used to chase hoops, and he already knew how to ride a horse. Magic took some practice, but he learned what it felt like to have a rune engraved on his right hand and how to cast spells with head bowed to a blade. The hard part was learning not to ask questions. But that was a lesson he learned well enough with time.
When he met the other boys at the academy, it became clear that they were different. For one thing, they had two names. What they belonged to was not a place or a person, but a legacy. The words "honor" and "pride" felt strange on his lips, and when he spoke them aloud they did not sound convincing. After all, Percival was just Percival. But he learned to cover the dirt on his feet with an easy arrogance and a lazy sort of smile. And when Galahad finally gave him his last name, it seemed to fit.
Percival couldn't remember exactly how he and Borus had become friends, but it had something to do with the bottle of a cheap local vintage they snuck one night from the castle kitchens. Percival had never tasted real wine before, but he pretended the burning sensation in his throat was a familiar one. But Borus was no amateur, annd he held the goblet like someone who knew how. So Borus kept pouring and Percy kept trying to keep his armor on and his expression easy. Too late Percy realized that this was not how wine worked. As his composure wavered, the chink in the armor was exposed. And Borus had always been quicker with a sword.
"Why do you want to be a knight?" At the academy, it was a simple question, the sort recruits woke up to every morning. Percival had long since memorized a stock speech about honor and Zexen pride, because he could not tell his captain that he yearned for it like spring crops did for rain. He could not say that once upon a time something brilliant and merciless had come riding through his childhood and had taken him with it. But he told this to Borus, with a conviction he would not be able to wave away in the morning. And the curious thing was that Borus did not laugh or smile or look away in awkward, drunken silence but instead raised his goblet to some lingering above that neither of them could see. And that night, though the lines of his vision weren't as straight as they should be, Percival realized that they might be chasing after the same thing.
When they met Chris, he was sure of it.
She attended the Zexen anniversary gala, but she did not wear a dress and she did not dance. He was sure that Borus could only see how straight she stood and the color of her eyes in the candlelight. But Percival fell in love when her composure broke and Chris slapped Lilly Pendragon across the face.
He hadn't brought her to Iskay to seduce her, exactly—what he had planned was more a declaration of faith. He would tell the whole stupid story and maybe she would finally become something he could feel. But that was the day the Lizard-king and his men invaded, the day his home became a wasteland. It was lucky Chris had never taken off her armor. As the embers burned his cheeks with their small fire, he realized that her hair shone the same white-silver as those first knights did so long ago. He was so caught up in the sight of her that he didn't notice the tall blond man whose face was bunched up in half of a wink. And when he did, it was too late. She was gone, and he had learned long ago not to ask questions.
He had tried to come home then, to rebuild his burned up village and to taste his mother's bread. It had been nice, for a while, to wear colors besides orange and gold, and to go out in the rain without worrying if he would rust. Iskay was still cheerful, and everyone worked hard to make it as beautiful as it had been before the war. But Percival was not like the other villagers. He had a last name, and endless, restless ache that came with it. The girls in the village were pretty and affable, but when he felt them warm in his hands, he knew they could not quench his fires. After a few years in Iskay, Percival was eager to return to his armor, and he left when the first whispers of war made their way through the wheat.
Several years later, Borus was shot in the leg by an enemy arrow fighting on the Zexen-Tinto border. Percival rode to his friend with all the speed his reputation could lend him, fearing it would not be enough. When finally got there, Borus was staring at something in the sky that Percival could not quite make out. His friend was gesturing so frantically at the sun behind the clouds that Percival forgot about his right-hand rune and the incantation that would remove the wound from his leg. But Chris was right behind him, and she was a better healer than he could ever hope to be. She drew a sign with her fingers and brought down ephemeral rain from some high place inside of her, and it fit into the wound like his mother's dough had fit between his fingers. But Borus kept staring at whatever he saw in the sky. He did not get up until nightfall.
Time passed, and one day Borus met a new girl, a redheaded noblewoman who could drink him under he table. After two years, they were married. At the bachelor party, when Borus was drunk out of his mind and Percy was no longer an amateur, he longed to ask what his friend saw that day on the battlefield. But it seemed cheap to do it then, so he vowed to ask his friend the next day, when they were both sober. And then he kept putting it off, for weeks and for months, until it became one of those things he was content not to know.
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The night was warm and the air clung to him like sweat. Percival could tell it would be a good summer for the crops, not that he cared anymore. Percival Fraulein had been leaving Iskay all his life. But the dirt under his feet had never yet told a lie. Like the moral of a story, Iskay was something that he could never leave.
And so he stood alone, bound by the dual prisons of love and chivalry, the taste of his mother's bread inexplicably filling the back of his throat. She was like the town, he realized moving but never changing, dancing and burning in a place just out of reach. He wondered why, after all these years, she was still something he could not touch. He did not expect an answer, but it came to him nonetheless.
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When Percy was still a child, before the knights came and Iskay burned, he had a neighbor called Edward whose mother made delicious stew. Percy knew the stew was good because he could smell it outside their house some afternoons, but Ed would prattle on for longer than it took the woman to cook it. Eventually, Percival got so tired of hearing about the taste and not tasting that he decided to take up arms. "Mom," he said, "Why do we never have beef stew for dinner?"
"Don't be silly," she replied, smiling even as she chided him. "Because you never asked."
Author's Note: This, my first Suikoden story, is heavily inspired by the legend of Percival as recounted in the Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes. A lot of the motifs were borrowed from that old story, but I think it's significant that Percival had never talked about Iskay with Chris until the events of the game. I also don't own Suikoden. That about covers it.