Willow raised her eyebrow.
"You can't lie?"
Lawrence nodded, reclined like a prince in a soft armchair before the evening fireplace, and took another sip from his mug. He'd very quickly developed a deep appreciation for Willow's tea. He'd never tasted anything quite so wonderful.
"Of all the things," she laughed underneath her breath, from the armchair beside his. She was curled up on her side, like a lounging, drowsy cat. "How silly. Why?"
He hummed. "Lying, I'm not sure. My siblings and I all have our little quirks and creeds, but I've always found mine to be indeterminable." There was an amused twitch to his lips, and he flourished his free hand. "The Truth, and nothing but."
Willow laughed again, mildly, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "That's quite the line to draw in the sand."
"Quite." He shrugged. "I count my blessings, though. Kos, bless her soul, was forbidden from a home. One day, she simply grew too exhausted to travel further, and died with her baby still in her womb."
Willow's smile fell. Though Lawrence now seemed entirely natural, he was still - well, periodically tactless. But perhaps that had more to do with his life as a human than his life as… whatever he had become.
"Will it be a problem for you?" She asked.
He chuckled. "No. It demands a little more guile from me, on occasion, but I enjoy the challenge." He paused, and took another sip from the tea. "And it's... reassuring, sometimes. To have such a stout anchor."
There was a pause. Willow turned her eyes from the fire to look at him. He met her gaze with soft yellow eyes. "You're an odd man," she decided.
"Hardly a man."
She shrugged, smirked, and sipped from her tea. "Well, you're strange, but you're not so strange, actually."
He gave her a funny look.
As Winter entered the breakfast room, at her usual crack-of-the-dawn hour (a habit inherited from her father, and certainly not her mother), there he was.
Tall Lawrence loomed like a spectre, stood next to the doorway the maids would come from, with his hands held before him and his eyes facing straight ahead. He fit perfectly to his surroundings; a richly tailored suit to finely sculpted furniture, elegant spectacles to dainty cutlery and frost-etched windows, a refined and pale face to a refined and pale refined home.
"Good morning, Miss Schnee," he said warmly. He walked to the main dining table and drew her out a chair.
Winter narrowed her eyes at him.
He smiled back.
She took the chair, slid it a bit closer to the table, and rang the bell. Two maids came and went like bolts of lightning, leaving before her a steaming plate of sausage, egg, tomato and toast. And a mug of tea, which smelled wonderful, like spring flowers.
She tucked in. Lawrence returned to where he had been standing, across the table from her and by the servant's entrance.
She swallowed her first mouthful of food. "Isn't that the suit you were wearing yesterday?"
He blinked, and then glanced down at himself. "Oh," he said. "I suppose it is." Winter wrinkled her nose.
"Why haven't you changed?"
He took a moment to reply. "I seem to have forgotten," he said, lips pursed. "My apologies, Miss Schnee."
Winter gave him a weird, distrustful look, and returned to her sausage. He returned to gazing into space.
Eventually, she glanced up at him again. "What's your job?" She asked.
He raised an eyebrow. "Didn't Mr Schnee tell you? I'm to be your Servingman."
"And what's that?"
He shrugged. "Likely a man who serves." Winter scowled.
"And why do I need a Servingman?"
"Perhaps we all need a Servingman."
She sniffed. "Well, I don't," she muttered, and then she stabbed quite aggressively at her egg. "Not one like you, anyways."
He raised an eyebrow. "And what's wrong with me?"
She gave him a look. "You're weird."
"Am I?"
"Yes. You froze the birds."
He paused, and Winter cried out and jabbed her fork at him, leaping from her chair. "I knew it!" She yelled. "I knew I wasn't imagining things! You made all the animals freeze! And the clouds!"
"Well," he said, straightening his cuffs, "I'm sure it's possible that-"
"Did you?"
"Pardon?"
Winter jabbed the fork at him again. "Did you freeze the animals?"
He paused again, and his lips twitched in displeasure, and he rubbed his eyebrows. "Yes," he sighed, "I probably did."
Winter nodded, grinned widely, and sat back down in her chair with a whump. "Then I'm correct," she said contentedly, more so to herself, and reached for more breakfast.
"What's that, miss?"
Weiss looked at him, and grinned even wider. Lawrence felt another sigh coming on. "I was thinking about this all night," she said. "You froze the birds, so you must have a semblance, so you must be a Huntsman in disguise. Father and Mama hired you to protect me and Weiss and baby brother Whitley."
Winter continued to look at him, expectantly, as he removed his spectacles and began to clean them with a small cloth. "Yes," he said. "I'm here to take care of you children."
"So you're a Huntsman?"
He, slowly, very slowly, cocked his head. "I partook in the hunt," he said. "Some time ago, now."
Winter nodded quickly, and looked back down at her food. She bit her lip. She plucked a tomato and popped it into her mouth. Gradually, she started to quiver with desperate energy, growing and growing, like a firework about to burst. She reached for her tea, and nearly inhaled the liquid, it came so abruptly to her lips.
She quickly lost her patience, and spun back to face him. "What's your semblance?" She chirped, eyes sparkling. Lawrence put his glasses back on.
"Oh," he said. "I have various powers." Winter, who had been so frosty, and so aloof, practically pouted.
"That's not a proper answer," she grumbled, and took another sip of her tea.
"I thought I was weird."
"Well, yes," she said, squinting at him again. "Don't you think I've forgotten. I still don't trust you. Not at all." Her eyes suddenly glinted, and she smirked. "Tell you what," she said, conspiratorially, "I'll forget all about that, if you can teach me -"
"What?"
"- Some cool Huntsman tricks."
There was silence.
"Cool tricks."
She flushed. "Nothing big. Just a... just some sword stuff, maybe, or how to use dust, or maybe even how to do a backflip -"
"I-"
Just then, Weiss tottered into the room in a rich blue dressing gown, rubbing at her eyes and clutching a teddy bear, smushing its face against her stomach. Her feet pitter-pattered on the floor, and Lawrence again moved smoothly and pulled out a chair for her next to Winter. Weiss started to clamber into it, swaying unerringly, before he set his hands under her armpits and gently helped her into her chair.
Weiss mumbled a bleary "Thanka you," and groped blindly for the bell. Lawrence dinged it for her, and in wooshed the maids, there and gone again before Lawrence could even make it back to his spot.
He blinked. Winter was, quite furiously, tapping the side of her nose at him.
"How did you sleep, Weiss?" He asked, studiously ignoring Winter. Who narrowed her eyes at him.
Weiss nibbled at a mushroom. "I had a dream," she mumbled, "but I don't remember."
He hummed in approval. "I imagine it was a good dream," he said, and Weiss nodded her head. Winter harrumphed and returned to her meal.
It was good she could be so childish near him. It was good Willow had corrected him on his laugh, and had had another friendly conversation with him this morning. He now-once again-appeared to be firmly human, and he doubted anybody would be the wiser.
Unless he wanted them to be.
Idly, he watched Weiss sit her bear on the table, making a small disappointed sound when it fell flat on its squishy face and then leaning it against the fruit bowl. Beside her, Winter sulked.
"How did you find the story, Weiss?" He asked. The little girl blinked confusedly and sleepily at him, before realisation dawned, and she gasped.
"Oh," she said, "I left it on my dressing table. Do you want it?"
Lawrence smiled. "No," he said, "It's alright. Did you read it again?"
Weiss nodded several times. "I even did some research," she said, slowly ballooning with energy. "But no one had even heard about Kisa or the Buddha!" Winter blinked, and then turned to look at him, her eyes narrow.
He laughed. "It's an old traditional story," he said. "Very secretive."
"Oh," Weiss said. "I guess that makes sense."
"And what do you think it means?"
She shrugged a little bit, and poked at her egg yolk. "I think it was about family," she said. "And saying goodbye." She bit her lip. "But I was wondering, If there was nobody who had not lost somebody, then why did Buddha only allow Kisa to bring back her baby if she found a person who had not lost anybody?"
Lawrence cocked his head, smiling, and took a moment to decrypt the silly, word-heavy sentence. "Maybe Buddha was a bad person," he said eventually. "Or maybe he was trying to tell Kisa something."
Weiss looked at him with her big blue eyes, confused and frowning."What was he trying to tell her?" She asked.
He shrugged. "I'm not entirely certain," he said. Weiss pouted, and went back to poking her egg yolk. Lawrence wondered if it was his responsibility to get her to eat.
Winter was done with her breakfast; she rang the bell, and again those maids darted in and out of the room, whisking away her plate and tea mug. The older girl wandered over to the settee in the corner, picking a book from the bookshelf and laying herself down on the cushions. Weiss continued to pick at her food, and Lawrence remained at his post by the door.
And so they passed the time.
Lawrence watched Willow put the children to bed from the doorway.
The bedroom was a grand, overlarge thing, distinctly ostentatious, but somehow still with the intimacy and messiness any young girl's home must have. Children's books were strewn on dressers, and scribble-sketches lined the walls, and dangling from the ceiling was a tremendous chandelier, from which hung row upon row of spinning, swaying, paper ballerinas. There was a grand, dramatic window at the far end of the room, through which he could see broad swathes of the night-blunted horizon, and many nodding trees underneath the brilliant stars.
Weiss whispered something to her mother, tucked away beneath her covers like a hobbit in its hideyhole. Willow laughed softly, and stroked her daughter's hair, her eyes filled with warmth like Lawrence had never seen.
It shifted. It felt like a stranger here. An intruder on a secretive, profound ritual, one it had no place in. It hadn't felt like this in such an aeon-not since it had stumbled across the Doll praying for its safety, or Gerhman, mumbling and moaning from within its nightmare-like a voyeur of the soul.
Willow had already read them a fairytale. From a small, wrinkled book she'd taken from her jacket, the edges frayed with love and attention. A story about how the world came to be; spilt from the split jaws of two celestial dragons, one dark, pouring out the monsters and the fears and the diseases, and one light, pouring out the animals and the hope and the warmth. Then, together they had created man and faunus, and had broken the moon to remind their children that they were never far away.
Lawrence had filed the words away in his memory, as he always did, even as he questioned whether he knew those dragons, or at least who they represented. Irae, perhaps. Or young Vin.
Willow kissed Weiss's forehead, and then Winter's. He felt the brief urge to turn away. Willow rose from the beds, laid side by side, and walked towards him and the door. She flicked off the light, and the room was swallowed with gentle darkness, the ruptured moon glimmering through the enormous window.
"Is papa coming to say goodnight?" He heard Weiss say, very softly and quietly. Over Willow's shoulder, he saw Winter abruptly turn away.
The atmosphere of the room, quite sharply, transformed. It had been warm, and happy, and bubbling to the brim with love. Now, it was tinged heavier, with the weight behind Weiss's words that he couldn't quite perceive, but knew was there. A sort of hopeless, familial loneliness.
Willow turned to her youngest daughter and smiled. Even from where it stood, and despite the deadness of his heart, he could see the sad tinge to it, at the edges and in her eyes.
"Not tonight, sweetheart," she whispered. "Maybe tomorrow."
Winter curled up tighter in her bed. Weiss's eyelids fluttered rapidly. Her lips bent downwards, and her fingers, wrapped around the top of her covers, clenched. Then she nodded, slowly, somehow unable to meet her Mama's eyes.
Willow, for a singular instant, looked near to weeping. "Goodnight, girls," she murmured, and they both murmured it back.
Lawrence stepped aside, and Willow walked past him. Around the corner, hidden by the wall, she cupped her face in her hands. Lawrence averted its eyes, again feeling that uncomfortableness strike through him, and moved to close the door.
"Goodnight, Mister Lawrence," said Weiss. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. His eyes settled on Weiss, and she smiled blearily at him.
"G'night," Winter mumbled into her pillow.
For a long, pregnant moment, he didn't move. He felt something unmentionable within his chest. He didn't so much as blink. As if he had been petrified.
He smiled. "Sleep well," he said quietly, and closed the door.
Willow took her face from her hands and turned to face him. In the dark, he could see that her eyes were reddened.
"What was that?" He asked.
She took a delicate moment to respond.
"Jacques," she murmured. "He used to help me put the girls to bed every night, always reluctantly, but he always did - then he stopped, some weeks ago. He hasn't seen them very much, since then. He was always distant, but now he's… worse. Weiss still doesn't quite - doesn't quite understand."
He felt a chasm open from deep within his chest, raw and blue. It sturdily ignored the feeling. The implication, should it choose to accept it, was… frightening.
"Winter does," he said softly.
Willow inhaled unevenly, and shut her eyes. "Yes," she said. "Old enough to understand, but young enough to hurt."
Things whirled inside of it, its heart. Offensive, alien things. He felt the momentary urge to say something he meant to her, or at least comfort her. But such things weren't on the contract, and it was reminded of its place in the universe, and it wrestled back control of itself.
"I'm sorry," it said.
Her eyes met his. He could see she knew the platitude for what it was, and he could see she knew she would find no respite in him. It was a thing, after all, not a man. It had a contract, not a soul.
It, again, ignored the ache in its chest.
She pursed her lips, and in her eyes he saw a sudden triumphant spark. "I'd forgotten. I'm busy tomorrow evening. Could you put them to bed for me?"
He frowned. "I can't imagine you'd want me putting your children to sleep, of all things."
"Well," she said, and shrugged. "It's rather inevitable, isn't it? You're here to stay. And I'd rather you be closer to my children than not." She smiled. "You told me yesterday that of all the things, my children and I have nothing to fear from you."
He considered her for a moment.
"I suppose I did," he murmured.
"And they did say Goodnight to you."
"They did."
For the third time, he ignored the unnatural, alien feeling such an acknowledgement brought to his heart.
This time, rather than sore emptiness, a soft and trembling warmth.
lore on and of the Great Ones is ambiguous at best. predictably so, maybe, when you're writing fromsoftware, or cosmic horror, or (even worse) both. I'll most probably be adding tidbits I like as I go along, as I do here.
The lie thing (rather, the unbroken covenant) attempts to explain why Oedon is formless, why Kos died, why Mergo's wet nurse is a wet nurse, or why all these all-powerful eldritch entities can be killed by a naked man with a stick, or why they all want for children, and so forth. By nature, cosmic horror aims to terrify with the inexplicable - but this story is not really cosmic horror, and as such I'm forced to sometimes explain the unexplainable. outlining has already become quite blasphemous. forgive me.
Thank you for reading. please review if sufficient enjoyment was attained.
And considering the state of it all, stay safe. Call your mum, or something.