To Reinhard van Astrea, the vast hallways of the Astrea estate had always been nothing but a burden upon its residents—a mere flaunt of affluence serving no reason other than to prove to other households that their primary residence was grander, larger, better. Yet, at this very moment, he couldn't help but bless the architect who designed them.
He was often lost deep within his own thoughts—he was a man who had a great deal of genuinely significant things on the forefront of his mind at all times, and he constantly needed to file them in order, yet this time it was different. He was not just thinking, he was trapped long within the depths of reminiscence, and the seeming endlessness of the halls allowed him adequate time to simply ease the pain of his grim memories.
Subaru and Emilia…he had once valued them as friends, allies. Their hearts were laden with the seeds of kindness, yet the feral crows of despair pecked away until they were almost unrecognisable. Their hearts had drowned themselves in the blood of others, leaving them to succumb to the disease known as anguish. Yet, despite their obvious wails, begging to be released from the jaws of distress, nobody rushed to their aid. Not one person, not even Reinhard himself, even bothered to glance their way.
All they needed was a guiding hand to reach into the darkness, to pull them out of the bloody ocean they were drowning in and back into the light of a hopeful future, yet not one soul came to their rescue.
Yet, even then, that revelation was not what bothered the Sword Saint so dearly at this moment in time. For that was something much more recent.
The oni adorned in a crown of bubblegum pink hair, Ram, was drowning. The straws of her past were all she could clutch onto, for she had no bright future to reach for. To Ram, whose very life had been crunched and crippled before her very eyes, only oblivion itself had made way for her mourning soul.
Once again, Reinhard was about to lose another friend.
It was all his fault. Once again, he had failed in the duty he swore himself into.
With a profound sigh, one not quite defeated yet not far from it, Reinhard paused in his tracks. His eyes lay shut, once again locked deep in thought.
"Perhaps…Father was right about me, after all. Perhaps I truly was…am…a monst-"
Reinhard's verbal thinking had led to him receiving a rather unexpected foot to the face, his unpreparedness leading to the mighty Sword Saint to stagger backwards—a look of dazed perplexion marring his face in an almost comical way. His striking blue eyes snapped open, preparing to face a vicious aggressor in a head-on battle, yet when their gazes met all he could do was smile warmly.
"Three god damned years Reinhard, and you still haven't learned a thing,"
The voice which aimed to send Reinhard's very soul into the very depths of despair itself was one of mature femininity. It was one Reinhard was exceptionally familiar with, and hearing the still-striking amount of raw disrespect embedded within its tone never failed to bring a smile to his face, even after a good few years had passed.
Reinhard grew more and more shocked at how much she had grown up in the short time they had known each other. Before him stood a young lady of obvious nobility, every aspect of her very being—from her hair to the very laces which wove her shoes to a close—screamed affluence. Her most noticeable features had always been the flowing golden locks which now ran down to her butt, and the striking crimson gemstones known as her eyes.
As she grew more and more into her femininity, the decision to let her once-shoulder length hair grow into a gorgeous aureate mane was made. It crowned her head spectacularly, its gentle shine and undeniable grace catching the eye of man and woman alike. It wasn't styled particularly fancily, for that was too much of a pain to worry about in the morning, nor was it woven into a fancy ribbon or hairpin—her hair itself was naturally brilliant.
This was only accentuated by her eyes—deep cardinal pools which captivated anyone blessed enough to gaze into them for more than a moment. They were extraordinary, not unlike the colour of blood; the life and spirit within them sparked brightly. They were, of course, the mark of the lion—an obvious indicator she was a Lugnican royal, and that fact alone allowed her eyes to be a powerful asset.
The dress which adorned her body, highlighting her full figure generously, was not dissimilar in colour to her hair. Auric brilliance paired with pure black accents wove her dress into something beyond enthral—she was nothing but a shining beacon of devastating beauty, and her clothing only served to amplify that. The low cut bodice of her flowing gown accentuated her generous breasts, something she hadn't expected to have to worry about, but had embraced nonetheless. Everything hugged her figure, seemingly serving to flaunt her assets, yet it was neither trashy nor arrogant—it simply ameliorated a beauty that was nothing but a blessing upon the world.
Felt was now a woman in every regard, but to Reinhard, he still saw nothing but a cute little sister.
"Good to see you as healthy as always, Felt-sama," Reinhard said, his gentle smile unable to hide the obvious distress marking his conscience from the deceptively perceptive Felt.
"Cut the shit, Rein. It's been how many years now, and you still assume you can hide everything from me? It's fuckin' obvious something is up, so spit it out,"
"F-Felt-"
"Hurry, before you have to spit my boot out instead,"
"You're not wearing boots," Reinhard said, obviously hesitant to speak his mind to the girl he had stood by as a guardian for the past years.
Felt paused carefully, allowing a long moment of silence to pass before probing delicately into uncertain territory.
"Is it about that girl you keep bringing back half-dead?" she grated, albeit unintentionally, but despite her stark lack of delicacy, he was on no grounds to disagree with her statement.
"Your language is always so flowery, Felt-sama,"
Reinhard once again passively dismissed her assault into his mind, an ability that drove her fucking insane.
When would this morngy red asshole actually open up to her, she wondered, full of love for the man who protected her so dearly. He was the elder brother she never had…the family she wanted to surround her so badly. Rom and Rein, huh. Messing with her was like poking a bear with a stick…a bear that was surrounded by a small army of bigger and more dangerously violent bears.
She shot a deadly glare back in response to his evasive comment, clicking her tongue in clear irritation.
"Rein."
Her tone was cold and harsh. She was no longer playing about, not that she had been in the first place, and this realisation led Reinhard's smile to drop. A serious frown crept onto his face, prompting Felt to speak once more:
"You don't know the first thing about a woman's heart, do you?" she deadpanned, leaving the valiant Sword Saint both confused and slightly nervous. His lack of response and seemingly-genuine shock led her to simply sigh, "Alright, you big dummy, here's what ya do."
After a long ten minutes, enduring a relentless and bloodthirsty lecture from the gorgeous maiden, Reinhard had mentally steeled himself.
The walk back to Ram's temporary room was extraordinarily long, to which he now cursed the architect who designed these hallways.
Why did they even need this amount of staff bedrooms, there was like 20 people employed here max. This is ridiculous.
Despite Reinhard's internal complaints, he did eventually reach her door. Not wanting to waste time, he mindlessly pushed his way into the lavish room, his clear knock on the door unanswered as always.
"Ram-san, I-"
Silence, for she was missing—the bedroom window swinging open in the breeze.
Ram was, once again, gone.
—
The streets of Lugunica were considerably quieter during the nighttime, the only sounds coming from the inns and bars dotted throughout the streets, as well as the lone tapping of gentle footsteps.
Those footsteps belonged to a small, frail young girl—her lengthy hair trailing and snagging on the ground behind her as she fumbled through the lonely streets. She was beyond caring, far beyond it. Without the mana infusions she had come to rely on, she would silently pass away in a few days—not a soul in the world left to truly mourn her. That was okay though, for Ram knew there was not much left for her to live for.
Her life had certainly not been long, but the short years of peace she had enjoyed led her to meet some wonderful people. She may not have shown it too enthusiastically, but she really did love her friends…her sister.
She missed Rem. She missed Garf. She missed Roswaal.
They had all been taken away from her. Stripped from her arms without mercy nor reason, and nothing in her power could come close to stopping it.
But that's okay. She'd join them soon, anyway.
Her mindless wandering had no destination, she just wanted to escape the suffocating walls of the Astrea household. Reinhard meant well but his mind was naive and he lacked genuine understanding of others, so her pain to him was not truly conveyed. He would never get her. He would never understand just what she goes through…what she had suffered throughout her entire life. Yet again, at the same time, she cared not for him to know. Her own personal anguish was none of his meddling business after all.
Street after street. Alley after alley. Ram knew Lugunica was a dangerous place for a young lady at night, but the worry of criminals never once crossed her mind. She didn't care, she just wanted to be alone, and in a much similar sense to Reinhard, the meddling of some meagre criminals couldn't mean less to her at this point.
As she passed one of the many lively inns lining the sides of the cobblestone high street, Ram noticed a pallet of various alcohol sitting outside the front entrance. Inconspicuously picking up the first bottle she saw, ensuring one of the smokers standing by the door itself didn't notice her thievery, Ram continued on her aimless wander through the streets of Lugnica.
"Merl huh…I don't mind Vollachian red wine actually," she smirked, glancing at the paper label on the dark green glass bottle, "expensive, oh well,"
Ram had some rest in her bones, yet she hadn't recovered even slightly—especially after what had happened in the sanctuary, she was in no state to be moving about this much. The relentless ache shooting down her legs only grew stronger with every half-step she took, so she shuffled her way up to the rather grand staircase of what looked like a public library, planting her bottom on the third step.
What she had neglected to realise, however, was that she had accidentally intruded on the peace and quiet of a completely random man—sitting almost directly next to him as if he were a close acquaintance or friend. She didn't notice this at all, her focus directed towards tearing the cork out of the wine bottle with her bare hands, and so she was rather startled when a gruff masculine voice spoke out to her.
"Y'know, it's pretty darn dangerous for a young lady to wander around these parts at night…lots of drunkards…tho by the looks of it you may be one of em'," he teased, as Ram tore the cork out of the bottle violently—swinging it back and necking a sizeable gulp of expensive, strong wine.
Her eyes did eventually come to fall upon the gent who so kindly implied she was an alcoholic, and what she saw was…surprising, to say the least.
He was a sharp man, his face angular and rugged, yet upon closer inspection, his features were actually rather delicate. His eyes were kind and soft, everything but his top lip cleanly shaven to the skin. A fiery nest of red hair sat upon his head, yet it was clean and well-groomed. A gentle smile sat on his lips—he was content, his soul was happy.
"Danger hardly matters…when you've nothing left to lose," Ram grumbled, swinging another shot of wine to help ease the excruciating pain of her joints betraying her. Her sharp red eyes cautiously sized him up, his appearance that of but a lowly knight with a meagre resemblance to someone more significant. She mentally scoffed when his eyes fell upon the bottle that sat within the vice grip of her hands—he was surely about to plunder the rest from her, that was to be expected from a middle-aged knight such as himself. A bunch of cowardly drunkards.
"Y'know, there's a time not too long ago where I'd agree with you there," a soft chuckle escaped his lips, "back then, three of those would have been down my throat by the time I'd finished talking,"
Her surprise was evident on her face, she was only joking in her derogatory assumption, but that surprise very quickly fell back to her regular grim depression. What was the point, a stereotype exists for a reason, right? Appearances deceive.
"Ram isn't interested in a middle-aged man's tales of drunken revelry," she deadpanned, completely disinterested in his mindless drabble. She had come here to be alone, not be pestered by a member of the guard with a history of deep alcoholism.
The gent smiled softly, scratching his tidy stubble in an almost timid way.
"Well…wouldn't you be interested in a middle-aged man's story of how he lost everything, only to realise he'd never actually been walking alone?
There was a short silence, which was very quickly broken by the humiliating sound of air escaping Ram's lips.
The fiery man had been so serious, so sincere—his words were from his heart and it was clear he was just looking to open up to anyone who'd listen. But Ram found his words so genuinely amusing that she couldn't help but let out a slight chuckle.
Seriously, how…pathetic. He couldn't have understood what it felt like to lose everything—it was obvious he was living a good life: he was well-groomed, well dressed, and well-spoken. Everything pointed to this random, far too open stranger living happily in comfort, but yet even in her internal mockery did her mind flag a consistent discrepancy.
Ram had experienced what it was like to hit rock bottom, yet somehow manage to find a way to scrape even deeper. But she had also witnessed it in the very person she loved the most. She saw how deeply it scarred his soul—how despite a thriving outer appearance he was nothing but a husk taking the face of a once prosperous man. She saw him at his lowest, and yet even then she still saw Roswaal. Nothing else. Because she didn't need to see anything but the brilliant man she knew he could be.
That dream, the one where she felt his gentle touch on her cheek for the very last time—he had said something very similar to her. The sentiment of being a broken man who assumed he had nothing left rang awfully close to home to Ram, and seeing such a positive man recall that as if it were nothing struck something deep with her.
Roswaal had not walked alone. She made sure of that.
So rather than shakily leaving her seat on the cold concrete step as she had planned to, her backside remained firmly planted. She didn't care for his story, nor for what he had to say to her—she just felt like it was right for her to stay. It wasn't like she could do much else, after all.
The man smiled when he noticed Ram didn't leave as he had almost expected. She did not face him—her focus remained glued to the bottle of alcohol that sat firmly within her hands—yet he had a strange feeling of confirmation that she was somewhat paying attention.
"When I was young…" he paused, giving her a final chance to leave before he started, "when I was young, my family, my friends, hell…everyone I knew expected so much from me. They expected me to be better than, well, the best…but I just wasn't that. "
Ram's eyes finally broke away from the glass bottle, looking upon him with nothing more than a glare. Ram had heard so much of the same from her sister over the years—seemingly thoughtless words of self-doubt and criticism from years of inferiority, words which are only justifiable through their eyes. It filled her with a nostalgia she hated—she couldn't bear to think about her, she missed her so dearly.
Her silence prompted the man to continue, to which Ram's gaze promptly returned to her bottle—taking a large swig in the process. Ram didn't notice, but the gentle smile which adorned his face had gradually fallen into a dull frown, tones of sorrow and grief reflecting on his quivering lips.
"I was so crushed under the expectations others had placed on me that…when the time actually came to step up and prove myself worthy…I shifted my battle onto the person I knew would actually shoulder them,"
He paused momentarily, seemingly to gather his thoughts, before quickly continuing. His face had by now melted into a pained grimace—yet Ram's gaze remained latched to the bottle, but it wasn't out of disinterest.
"S-She died fighting that battle…that alone was bad enough…but not too long after…" his words were bitter and acrid, fuelled by decades of clear regret, "my wife fell into the throes of an illness that she could never escape—even the nation's greatest healers stood no chance. It felt as if I had genuinely lost everything."
Ram knew that pain intimately. The inability to feel nothing but pain eats away at the soul; the depths of despair suck you in and refuse to let go. Ram was drowning in the same depths he had, and she knew full well it would kill her sooner rather than later.
Yet, right as her mortal thoughts began their uncontrollable blossom into unshakable resolve, he continued his sorrowful anecdote:
"But I was wrong. I had my son, my wonderful baby boy," he said, his face still mangled with genuine festering sorrow, despite the beauty and wonder of his words. "In my grief, I was so convinced that I had lost everything, that I lost him too. I pushed away the one person I had left. I lost myself in liquor, in debauchery, and whatever else eased my god damned pain."
Ram slowly peaked up, her eyes mirroring the genuine waves of heartbreak that swept over her body and mind. The minuscule ember of fleeting hope that had gently blossomed was instantly extinguished.
She had no chance. There was no hope for her, after all.
"But one day, I came to realise my mistake,"
Ram noticed the gentle smile he had held before adorning his face once more. He really did look like Reinhard…
"I couldn't even understand why I pushed him away to begin with, my mind just refused to understand its own stupidity. I spent long hours agonising in my own thoughts, killing myself time and time again with the consequences of my own actions,"
In stark contrast to before, his words were downtrodden and grim…yet his face held Its warm smile firm.
"I realised that above all, I needed to make things right with the people that deserved it…with those I still had the chance to, anyway,"
He leant back, propping himself up with his arms stuck out behind him. His head lazily flopped back, his eyes gazing longingly at the ever-growing warmth raising its head from the horizon.
"You know what he did?"
"Go on?" she answered, genuinely lost in the story. The knight sighed deeply. It was the first time he had reached this point in the story. He had always backed out in the past, the shame eating away at him before he could steel his will.
"He…he asked me to forgive him."
"Your son is a fool," Ram remarked, yet her words were without their usual venom. They had no bite, for a gentle smile had since crept Its way onto her face as well.
"Oh, believe me, I know he is," he chuckled, "But there is something to learn from that boy's foolishness…from ours as well."
The man sat himself up, twisting his head and torso to face Ram directly. Their eyes met for the first time since they began speaking, and he uttered his salient words:
"Only by giving up on the threads of the past, only by giving up on what I was meant to be—what everyone thought I was meant to be—could I see clearly. Only when I stopped struggling to grasp at straws and actually tried to reach out to something more, someone more, was I able to be the best version of myself…the one that people knew I could be."
Ram sat in thoughtful silence for a short while, before taking a final swig of her alcohol. As she knocked her head back, the sight of the ever-rising sun filled her with an unexpected sense of calm, one she would have never dreamed of just twenty minutes ago. One she would have dreaded, had she not had the time to let her mind process what it needed to.
She had made it to another day, huh.
The man ruffled his crimson hair, before slapping his knees and standing from his seat on the concrete staircase. He thoughtlessly trotted down the final few steps, before swinging back around to face ram—who remained seated, gazing longing at the brightening horizon.
"Well then, duty calls. My shift starts at daybreak," he sighed, sloppily stretching in place, "You know, Ram was it, if you don't have anywhere else to go, I'm sure my family would be more than delighted to take you in. My son is about your age, and he's a real looker."
His face was brimming with pride as he scratched his chin.
Ram shook her head, not looking back in his direction. This was reciprocated, though, as he too had turned his back towards her, preparing himself to leave.
"Ram…has a lot to think about…thank you kindly for your words…"
"Heinkel. My name is Heinkel van Astrea. It's been a pleasure."
He swung his head around to shoot the withdrawn Oni a last grin of encouragement. She too had done the same. With one final glance, the pair acknowledged each other with a thankfulness they had never anticipated.
—
Only about an hour had passed, and Ram had found herself somewhere on the capital's edge. The field surrounding her was closer to a jungle than a meadow—choruses of vastly overgrown flowers layered the ground in swathes, their pink petals swaying delicately in the morning breeze. Her back rested against a ruinous brick wall, shielding her from the flares of eager sunlight, casting her instead in a cool shadow.
It was quiet, peaceful. Her crimson eyes remained shut, not resting per se, but rather deep in a complex web of thoughts and emotions she was yet to truly untangle. She let her lengthy hair rest over her shoulder as someone she once served had done, running her dainty fingers through it like a comb, enjoying its remarkable softness.
"Say, do you like flowers?" a masculine yet comfortingly gentle voice asked.
Ram let her eyes flutter open once more, focusing them on the outline of the rather tall young man standing elegantly before her. His eyes spoke to her soul—where she once associated their gentleness with pity, she now understood it was something far more complex. His eyes held the same guilt hers did, yet the hope that swarmed within them was something she had not quite found. She let her eyes explore him for just a moment, his truly pristine uniform and objectively beautiful visage nothing she could complain about.
The shade of the wall did not meet him—the flaming rays of sunlight only serving to accentuate his own fiery features.
Ram eased herself onto her feet, flicking her elegant pink hair back over her petite shoulders.
Their eyes met naturally.
"Hah,"
A smug smile adorned Ram's face.
"Ram is the prettiest flower she knows."