Title: On the Mend
Rating: PG
Theme/Prompt being used: Yuuri x anyone.
Timeline: The war with the humans is finally over.

Disclaimer: I own none of these very entertaining characters, and I'm making no money off this, so please don't sue me. Thank you.

She stopped when she heard his voice.

For a moment, she had forgotten that he had returned, it was still something of a shock to turn a corner and run into him. Seeing him always made her think of Julia—how fond she had been of him!—and then the pain was always visceral and inescapable and so very immediate.

She was not yet strong enough to tolerate such reminders of her loss on a daily basis.

Anissina hesitated, locked in indecision as she stared down the corridor where she could hear the conversation in progress. How long would she continue to hide from her grief? It had to be faced sooner or later, but then there was also the instinctive need to protect oneself from further pain…

She closed her eyes a moment, standing very still as she took a deep breath. Snapping them open again, she firmed her jaw as she strode down the corridor to Conrart—not running, but walking as normally as possible—because she would not betray her turmoil to anyone, even if von Voltaire castle were to collapse around her very ears.

She turned the corner, and the voices became louder. She frowned in bewilderment when she saw Gwendal standing just outside the library, a pensive frown on his own face. She stopped just behind him and peered into the room.

Conrart was seated in an armchair in one corner of the library, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward in his excitement. Gunter was sitting opposite him and listening in polite curiosity, while Wolfram stood at the windows, turning back occasionally to look at his half brother when he thought the other didn't notice.

'You won't believe it, Gunter, but he had already begun to recognise my voice by the time I left Earth,' Conrart was saying, a reminiscent smile on his face.

She blinked at the life in his voice. When he had left their kingdom, the only thing Conrart had cared about had been his obligation to the task Julia had asked of him. He had been angry and hurt and full of a bitter rage, and to see him smiling now...

She came back to the conversation in time to hear him speak again.

'It's amazing how fast they grow.'

'How old is Yuuri now?' Gunter asked, leaning forward to pick up his cup of tea and take a sip.

Yuuri. Julia's favourite time of year.

She wondered suddenly, with a fierce curiosity, whether there would be anything else of Julia in the new Maou. Would she look into his eyes and see her lost friend looking back at her?

Was that what Conrart had seen?

'He's nearly a year old, now. But then he is half human—' he shot a quick glance at the motionless figure at the window—'so he'll age much faster than a Mazoku. I guess we can call him here in about twenty years or so, at the most.'

'Twenty years!' Gunter's eyebrows nearly met his hairline. 'That hardly gives us any time to make preparations, and everyone's still recovering from the war…'

The words were unspoken, but his frown said the rest: and what if we finally get everything back into order, just in time for this half human Maou to come and declare another war?

'I'm sure everything will be fine,' Conrart said soothingly, replying to Gunter's worried grimace, rather than his words. 'Yuuri is different. I don't think we'll have anything to worry about.'

Gwendal gave a convulsive movement in front of her, and Anissina turned to him in alarm. She touched his elbow, and he blinked as he turned to her, almost as if he had forgotten she had been standing next to him. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he motioned to her not to reveal their presence as he caught her by the arm to silently lead her away from the library and its occupants.

He led her to his office, where he dropped her arm to fidget with the quill on his desk as he avoided looking at her. She supressed a sigh as she realised that he would try to ignore the problem now, whatever it was.

'Gwendal,' she bit out. 'Just tell me what's wrong. I don't quite have the patience right now to pry the words out of your mouth.'

He turned stormy eyes to her. 'Anissina,' he snarled, 'mind your own business.'

She propped her hands on her hips and glared at him. 'I will not.'

'Go and bother someone else, you little—'

'There is no one else!'

They stared at each other for a moment, both of them shocked by the unexpected pain in her voice.

'Julia is gone.' The words cut through her, and she took a shaky breath before saying quietly, 'You're all that's left to me now, Gwendal.'

His face tightened as he turned away from her, visibly struck by her words. Silence reigned for a few minutes as she dropped into a chair and passed a hand over her brow, wondering vaguely what had been her plans for the day before she had run into Gwendal. Right now she couldn't remember, and the thought worried her more than she cared to admit.

'It's Conrart.'

She looked up at the low voice. He still stood facing the bookshelf, but the stubborn set to his shoulders was gone now.

She said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

'You remember what he was like when he left, don't you?' Gwendal swung around to face her, and she nodded at him. Yes, she remembered.

Where she had fallen into a kind of numbness following the shock of Julia's death, Conrart had had not only her death to contend with, but the loss of nearly all the men under his command—friends and comrades both. Yozak and his family were all that had been left to him, and by the end of the war, he had spiralled into a dark indifference, caring nothing for whether he even lived or died.

'Perhaps it might have been different if his father had been alive, but he wasn't,' Gwendal went on, beginning to pace down the length of his office. 'There was only us.'

'Mother tried to get him to talk about it, but he never did. I tried to help, too, but…'

He trailed off helplessly, his back to her as he whispered, 'He told me, once, when he first returned, that for a long time, he did not wish to come back to us.'

She gasped, hand going to her mouth in shock. That Conrart would think of never returning, of leaving behind his family and the only life he had ever known…

'Now this child comes along—and suddenly he's smiling and laughing again!' Gwendal spun around at that, meeting her eyes with his own anguished ones. 'I tried everything I could,' he confessed, voice tortured. 'Everything.'

But none of it had been enough, she thought, heart aching. And now it was eating him up that he had failed his brother, but a child he had never even seen had done what he couldn't, and brought Conrart back to himself.

'Gwendal,' she started, and then stopped, unsure of what to say. She had never really understood siblings, having never had the best of relationships with her own brother. She knew that it was likely that she couldn't even begin to understand the depths of such a bond; what it meant to a sibling to fail to look after one of their own. And then, Gwendal had always felt responsible for his half brothers, being so much older than them.

She stood and moved to him, forcing him to meet her gaze. 'You have to let it go, Gwendal.'

He narrowed his eyes and glared at her, but he said nothing. Taking that as permission, she continued. 'Better that he accepted healing from elsewhere, than things continuing as they had been,' she said, trying to make him see reason.

'I know that,' he snapped back at her, crossing his arms. 'It's just…'

He trailed off, his eyes clouding with regret as he sighed, and she nodded. 'I know,' she said, laying a hand on his arm.

'Yes, you do, don't you?' A small smile quirked his lips as he looked down at her. 'Anissina, sometimes I think you know me too well.'

She gave a weak laugh as he uncrossed his arms and took her hand in his, raising it to his lips in gratitude. He had done this once before, she remembered, and even then it had made her heart pound strangely. His smile was so warm as he looked down at her, the affection in gaze doubly precious for all that it was so rarely visible…

Her hand twitched in his grasp, and she snatched it away quickly, leaving him blinking at her in surprise. She could feel a flush rising up her cheeks despite her best efforts, and his gaze lingered on her face for a long moment before he turned away, much to her relief.

She took a deep breath, ignoring the odd pounding of her heart to focus on the issue at hand.

'I think I'll be joining Conrart and Gunter in the library now,' she said slowly and deliberately, and he turned to her again. She waited for a moment, seeing his struggle reflected in his face.

Then, finally:

'I'll come with you.'

She smiled at him as he turned to accompany her. It would not be easy, but they would help each other through it.

Perhaps they were both on the way to mending, after all.

A/N: Thank you very much for reading, all comments and concrit are very welcome. )