Chapter 1: A Different Gleam of Gold

The world was almost silent around the tree as the blood seeped into the ground at its base. It was the quietude of death, dealt out and left uncaring to rot and fester. The only noises that dared interrupt the silence were the wind rustling the branches, the cawing and flutter of carrion birds, and the creaking of the ropes that swung within that wind, holding the bodies in their unfeeling grasps as the breeze blew the stench of the place out into the rest of the world.

Then, another sound intruded in the air, a low drumming accompanied by muttering, shouts, and laughter neighing, and nickering that even still, carried with it the ever-patient potential for death.

From around the bend in the road the tree stood sentinel over, rows of horses began to make their way down the road, the noise approaching the tree joined by the clinking and clanking of armor and weapons and the rumbling of wagon wheels. And, as the tree came into sight, the voices quieted and soon fell silent at the scene before their owners.

The man at the group's head, broad and muscled, with a clean-shaven face and alert brown eyes, regarded the tree for a moment, then looked back to ensure his men weren't holding up those behind them with any gawking. His gaze swept across the ranks, satisfied that none of them were being overly slow. His gaze, however, landed on the newest member of their mercenary band. It wasn't terribly hard to miss him.

Unlike most of the other men, who were still wearing their armor by force of habit, he wore no helmet or chestplate, most of his armor stowed away on the back of his horse, a charger of deep black that was probably one of the finer horses in their band. His shirt and pants, again unlike the rest of his men's tans and faded greens, were as black as his stallion, the only armor he wore on his legs and black boots, the black metal outlined with white and gold in the light of a sun starting its trek toward the horizon and somewhat obscured by clouds. He looked intently at the tree that was still in the distance with bright blue eyes, running a hand through short hair of a darker blond than his that sat above an oval face with a well-trimmed beard.

If that was all he'd seen of the man, the leader of the mercenary band would have dismissed him out of hand, never even considered letting him join. But then he remembered the sight of him in his first battle with them.

It was clearly not the first time he'd been in the press. He stood out even more here than when he'd first asked to join, sweeping his weapon through man and beast alike.

Here he wore a greatcoat, its edges lined in white and gold, that went down to his shins, along with armored gauntlets, the one on the right arm flared on the outward facing surface almost like a small shield, and a black chestplate, subtly etched with imagery of dragons, four wings arching up as the beasts were struck through by lightning, that flashed in the sunlight as he sidestepped and blocked blows and charged his foes. Whatever expression of anger or focus or ecstasy there might have been on his face was obscured by his helmet, a steel bucket of a thing with a bare metal crest arcing up the back of the helmet to pause just before a brow that was also etched, an image of a knight using a weapon like his to spear through another dragon sitting over a T-shaped visor, two smaller vertical lines at the ends of the T's cross.

His weapon, almost a bolt of lightning itself, was one of the stranger ones he'd ever seen. It could have been a spear, as it certainly had the haft for it, wood reinforced with strips of metal. However, its blade, black save for the silvered edges and lightning that ran down its length, wouldn't have been out of place on an arming sword. A more broad one at that.

He'd killed 20 men before the enemy routed in that battle with the blade the band's leader now looked at, sheathed and stowed on his horse's side. And he also bore the epithet his more verbose comrades had given him, the Midnight Dragon, with a kind of weary acceptance.

The leader looked back at the tree, scanning the rotting corpses dangling as he continued to contemplate the man behind him. He cut a striking figure when all was said and done. 'He'll make a good distraction in our other battles if nothing else.'

But the idea of him simply being a distraction seemed… reductive with his effectiveness. 'So why do I feel like he's holding back, somehow?'

The man could have had the lead of his own band of mercenaries, or even been a retainer in some nobleman's army, easily, he felt. 'There's no way he isn't some disgraced nobody of a noble with weapons and armor like that. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.'

'So why fall in with us?'

As the front of the band began to go past the hanging tree, the leader looked down at the roots of the tree, the blood and guts that pooled and littered the ground, and found a sight he wasn't expecting to see, lying in a puddle of blood and something he couldn't care to figure out.

"Whoa!" he cried out, the column hesitating for a moment as he pulled the reins of his horse, slowing to a stop as he took in the sight before him: a baby boy, barely old enough to be born, lying under what must have been his mother.

"Hey, look!" he said as a few of his men clustered around him. "I guess the Holy See must have missed a heretic. Not that it really matters. Pretty grisly either way."

After a moment's silence from him, and the murmurs around him starting to die down, he shrugged and began to pull the reins of his horse to get back on the road.

Before he could get too far, though, he heard gasps, and a splash from behind him on the line. He turned to see a woman, a familiar one to him, jump out of a wagon, running toward the baby.

"Shisu, wait!" he shouted, annoyance in his voice turning into disgust as the woman, a camp follower he'd taken a particular shine to, knelt in the gore and picked up the limp child, holding it close and cooing to it quietly, muttered almost-words of encouragement not fully making it to his ears.

He sighed quietly, shaking his head at the sight and the smell as one of his men spoke up. "She's been acting real weird since that miscarriage. What was it, three days ago? Maybe she's not all there in the head again, yet."

The man beside him nodded, looking over to their leader. "That kid would've been yours wouldn't it, Gambino?"

Gambino shrugged. "How the hell should I know?" he said as nonchalantly as he could, a growled sigh still managing to weave its way into the words. Much as he may have liked her, he knew he hardly had exclusive rights to Shisu.

Then, he shook his head slightly as he looked back and heaved another sigh, kicking the horse gently to bring it closer to Shisu. "Shisu," he said, his jaw clenching slightly as he seemed to fail to get her attention, "how long are you going to be there like that? The battlefield's still miles away, and we can't waste all day here."

He continued to watch as Shisu hugged the child to her chest a little tighter, what must have been its umbilical cord dangling out from over her arms. His jaw clenched tighter still as he finally leaned over in his saddle and grabbed her shoulder, pulling up as he saw her eyes go wide with fear. "Give it up! The baby's dead, there's no changing that!"

"No! No!" They were the first words Gambino had heard Shisu say in days as he got her to her feet. They both watched as the baby slipped out of her hands, falling back to the ground and into the blood it had come from with a small splash.

Gambino looked over at the baby as he opened his mouth to say more, but the words died in his mouth as their eyes went wide at the sight of the impossible. They both watched, and those close to them with them, as the baby took a breath. Then it began to wail, its cries the first to pierce the shocked silence.

"Holy shit! The kid's alive!" one of Gambino's men said behind him, a fresh wave of murmuring, and a few of his men pressing forward somewhat to catch a glimpse at the sight, going unnoticed by him as Shisu ran forward again to scoop up the screaming baby, pressing it back to her chest as she hushed him while gently rocking him.

After a moment more, she turned back to the cart that she had jumped off from, the eyes of a good portion of the band following her for a moment before one of the soldiers next to Gambino looked over at him. "You're really gonna allow that?" he asked almost incredulously.

Gambino shrugged as he turned away from watching Shisu get back into the cart. "Hell if I care. She can do whatever she wants. If it'll get her back to work sooner, all the better."

With that, he began to turn his horse back to the road, looking back at the soldiers and seeing the uneasy looks on their faces as they began to follow him. "I don't know about that…" one of them said. "Yeah…" his companion added.

"Well, what is it then?" Gambino said as the front of the line began to move forward again.

"Well, sir," the first soldier to speak began, "I mean, look at this place. What just happened. It's… almost a bad omen, isn't it? Picking up a kid who came back to life from a hanging tree."

He barked out a laugh. "Oh, come on. Are you guys scared?"

Before they could reply, they all turned to see the new man, the Midnight Dragon, approaching them. The two soldiers, almost on instinct, made room for his horse as he came to ride between them, looking at Gambino. "Well, I can say that I'm not. I've dealt with plenty of 'bad omens' before." he said, a tone of assurance in his voice. "Just about every one of them was nothing more than superstition, old wive's tales to make sure the kids didn't do something stupid."

He scoffed as he shook his head. "I mean, it's not like we're going to get cursed because we saved a kid. Given a little time, he could be useful in camp."

Gambino rolled his eyes. "As if. You saw the kid as well as I did, I'd think. It'll be dead within a day or two. All it'll do is act as Shisu's little comfort toy and then be gone."

"And what if he survives, sir?" the Midnight Dragon said, a brow slightly arched. "What then?"

Gambino shook his head. "Well, he'll be in my camp, so he'll have to pull his weight on the battlefield when he's able to. Otherwise, we kick him out."

He watched the man's jaw clench for a moment, then unclench as he nodded. "Very well. I'll make sure he's at least properly trained and taken care of before he gets to the battlefield."

Gambino shrugged. "Whatever. If that's what you want to do in your spare time, go for it. It's not like I'll care until I have to make sure he doesn't get killed."

"Now come on!" Gambino raised his voice as he picked up speed. "Let's get out of here and stop jabbering about this crap. We've got work to get to."

With that, he watched the new guy nod as he began to fall back, and his gaze shifted back to the tree for a few moments. 'A bad omen…'

There was a part of him that could believe it, really. Something like this happening… it was kind of like an omen, wasn't it? And it didn't feel like it meant something good, at least.

But for now, he looked out towards the place they would be going to. A siege on a castle that needed breaking. Those were his favorite jobs. Not the least of which being the really good payout that he could expect.

. . .

As they rode, Daniel Theisman, the Midnight Dragon as more and more people had decided to call him, continued to slow his pace somewhat, looking to let the cart catch up with him. He sighed quietly as he considered the man that he had spoken to and the company that he now kept.

Gambino was an asshole. There was little better in the way of description of the man, and it translated to many aspects of his life that were now rather immediately important to his own.

His command style, for one, was little more than a merciless hammer or an unmoving anvil that swung at the forces defending against them or stood steadfast against the forces attacking them, uncaring of the injuries or casualties that came with it. But it gave them results, and usually gave them quickly.

Which led him to consider the man's hiring choices. That the turnaround for his vanguard was so high due to his strategy meant that he was not terribly picky when it came to who was accepted, as long as they would hold the line. It led to serving beside men that, more often than not, had narrowly escaped the pillory, or worse, or were simply desperate for work. Hardly high-quality soldiers.

In short, his life had been one of quiet perseverance, working as best he could to preserve and whip into shape the troops that stood with him, if only to stop Gambino from hiring more inept soldiers and throwing them away. But it wasn't his purpose here. No, there was something more that he needed to do here. Something that, hopefully, would make this all worth it. Someone that they had now rescued.

And as the cart came level with him and he picked up the pace to match it, he looked over at Shisu, a few other camp followers huddled around her as she breastfed the new baby she had taken in, one of the women tossing the scrap of umbilical cord out of the cart as another looked for something to wrap the child in.

There. There was his task. A part of his penance. And Shisu looked at the boy with the uttermost love in her eyes, a love that filled a space that was once hollow, looking up and speaking to the others in the cart for the first time in days.

'How short your time will be with him, Shisu.' he thought sorrowfully, images of what most likely would be flashing through his mind as he shook his head and looked forward. But not before, out of the corner of his eye, he caught Shisu looking up at him.

. . .

Finally, as the sun began to fully be swallowed by the horizon, they arrived at their destination, a campsite only about 2 miles or so from the castle that they would be besieging.

As the tents went up, and the campfires began to flicker to life, Daniel walked toward the back of the camp, to the followers' tents. He passed their resident blacksmith, giving him a nod and wave as the man prepared his forge to repair any damage that might come to their weapons. He passed by the cooks preparing supper, the medics who would tend to the wounded during and after a battle, and the menders who worked on various articles of clothing, before making his way to the washers, situated close to the nearby stream to make their efforts a little easier.

It wasn't hard to spot Shisu, now animatedly talking to a group that surrounded her as best they could around their campfire, fawning over the baby she held, now cleaned and wrapped in a warm blanket.

As he approached, their conversation faltered as they looked at him. More than a few of the women, Shisu included, had somewhat wary expressions. He hated that he couldn't blame them.

"Hello, Shisu," Daniel said, smiling slightly as he looked down at the baby. "How is he doing?"

Shisu blinked before she looked down at the boy. "Much better. He'll live. I'll make sure of it if nothing else."

Daniel nodded. "Good. May I have a seat? I've…" his smile disappeared as he sighed. "I've got some news about him."

He sat between two of the women who had scooted aside for him as he looked at the boy and steeled himself for what he had to say for a moment. "Gambino wants him trained when he's old enough if he's going to be kept around. Otherwise, he'll be forced out of the camp. And perhaps you along with him."

A shocked gasp went up around the group, and Daniel reached out a staying hand as Shisu clutched the boy to her chest. "I'll be the one to train him. That won't be for a little while anyways. I'll make sure that you both are taken care of if nothing else."

Shisu regarded him with no small amount of shock for a moment, then sighed as she looked back down at the boy. "I should have realized he would do something like that. Since I arrived in this camp, I've seen how strict Gambino is that everyone in this camp pulls their weight. But…"

She pressed the boy against her chest. "I'm not letting him go," she said with utter surety. "He's… a miracle. Almost sent from God to me."

Daniel nodded slightly. "Whatever happens, I promise you this. I'll make sure the boy you've made your son is safe. As long as he's with me, you can be sure of that."

She looked up at him, a near astonishment in her eyes as the only noise that came from around them for a moment was the crackle of the fire. "Thank you," she said quietly, tears welling in her eyes.

Daniel smiled slightly. "It's the least I can do for him."

He looked down at the boy. "May I see him, if you're willing?"

Shisu looked down at the boy, clearly hesitant for a moment before she stood and walked over to him, standing over his shoulder after handing him the child.

Daniel looked down at the boy, whose brown eyes were open and bright now, reaching up a thin arm towards him as he placed his finger within the boy's grasp. After a moment, he looked back up at Shisu. "Does he have a name?"

Shisu opened her mouth, then closed it, clearly embarrassed. "Well… the first thing that came to mind was… Guts. I'm terrible with names. He deserves a better one than that."

"And yet, it's terribly fitting, given the circumstances we found him in. It takes a lot of those to survive what he did. And I'm sure he'll need plenty more in the days to come. But…"

He looked up at Shisu with an expression of resolve. "I think he'll have the tenacity to survive this life he's been brought into."

He looked back down at Guts, smiling slightly as the boy cooed. "Hello, Guts. I'm Daniel. It's a pleasure to meet you." he said softly, taking in an innocent face that would not last long past this time. And a bare neck where a brand would be.

He felt the skin of his forehead tingle as he considered the brand he himself bore, invisible to all, and the weight that came with it. The blood. The eyes…

'I know what you'll go through.' Daniel thought as he returned the boy to Shisu's care. 'You'll struggle and suffer like no man ever should. But you won't struggle alone. This I promise.'

. . .

3 Years Later

Daniel made his way to the tent, careless of the castle in the distance that they would be besieging soon enough, grimly aware of what was happening. Gambino had left early in the morning to discuss pay rates and planning with their employers in the Chuder army, a process which he'd just escaped from, and Shisu had been left alone.

Her sickness had come on quickly, while they were on the road to the castle. The medics had decried it as a plague, spread from following in the footsteps of the warpath this particular army of Chuder's ranks had treaded, and did their best to curtail the spread. A few soldiers had come down with it, but the impact was felt most keenly in the camp follower's ranks.

And, as he approached a tent with a dark-haired toddler standing in front of it, the air around them smelling strongly of incense, Shisu had been one of the latest to be hit by this plague.

He came to a stop in front of Guts, crouching down to the boy's eye level. "Hello, Guts," he said, putting on as warm a smile as he could for the boy.

"Hello, Daniel." Guts replied, clearly anxious.

"Are you okay?"

"Mama isn't. I am."

Daniel nodded. "I see. I'm going into the tent to see how she's doing." he paused for a moment. "Were you waiting for me?" he asked quietly.

Guts nodded slightly, and they both winced as they heard a retch from inside the tent.

"Okay. Let's go."

Daniel took a deep breath, the musk of camphor, lavender, and cinnamon that almost covered the lingering smell of sulfur from the cannon and arquebus fire wafting from the battlefield they'd been on for the past 3 days nearly clogging his nose as he lifted the flap of the tent and entered, Guts by his side.

There were three people in the tent, a hanging lantern with a cistern hanging beneath it providing a spot of light in the darkness as the two nurses huddled around the prone form of Shisu, cloth masks tied to their faces as they applied ointments and tinctures to her. One of them turned to look at Daniel and Guts as they entered. "What are you doing in here? You're at risk of the miasma from this plague infecting you, too. It's not safe for a child here."

Daniel raised his hand. "We're just here to check on her."

The nurse in charge shook her head. "Where is Gambino?" she said in exasperation.

Her helper looked over, a basin of water in her hands. "I think he's still at the other camp."

Daniel nodded. "He sent me away when he started discussing pay," he said gravely.

The head nurse shook her head in disgust. "Shameful! You'd think he'd be with her in her dying moments, seeing as he went to the trouble of making her his wife."

Shisu, laid on the floor, was a gaunt thing, her eyes sunken and cheeks prominent as she reached out toward Guts with wrinkled hands. "Guts…" she said, the effort of the word sending her into a coughing fit that became another retch, and she turned to the side and vomited, a clear fluid hitting the tent's floor and glistening in the lantern light for a moment before the nurse it landed beside wiped it up with a cloth and put it in a basket that they would likely burn.

The sight of it caused Daniel to pause for a moment. 'This isn't the plague. This isn't what I've seen before. No, this is… cholera.'

It was a change he should have expected, subtle but noticeable with the right eyes and the hindsight he had. 'But what can I do about that without exposing myself?'

Then, as he wracked his brain for an answer, a voice, one that he hadn't heard in an age, whispered to him, a conversation long, long before now coming back to mind.

His eyes went wide. 'There is a way.'

"This isn't a plague," he said aloud as he stepped forward, the nurses looking up at him in utter shock. "This is just a camp disease, a treatable one at that."

He ignored the shocked "What?" from the head nurse as he looked over at her assistant and the basin of water she carried. "Where did you get that?"

"From the stream nearby." the assistant stammered.

"Find a fire or start one. We'll need to boil the water to burn away any impurities. And we're going to need a decent amount of it, too."

The assistant looked over at her superior with a questioning gaze. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she said incredulously. "If he has a plan, it can't be much worse than what we're doing. Go!"

The assistant nodded, carrying the basin out the tent door as Daniel looked over at Guts. "Guts, can you go to the cooks for me, and get sugar and salt?"

"Sugar and salt. For Dan and Mama." Guts nodded.

Daniel smiled. "Good man. Sugar and salt. Go."

With that, Guts looked over at Shisu for a moment before turning and exiting the tent.

That left the head nurse to look over at him in amazement. "What are you planning to do? Where did you get this treatment from?"

Now, Daniel had to think on his feet. "She needs to be hydrated, enough to replace whatever's been lost with her diarrhea and vomiting. She'll also need to be eating a lot. Potatoes and raisins are what I've seen work."

He paused for a moment. "As for where I got the treatment, I was a mercenary working for Morgar, quite a ways away, when I and many other soldiers came down with this. We had a Kushani doctor who had defected to our side who gave us the treatment. With that, a sickness that would have taken a third of our forces cost us only a fraction of that number. I made sure to ask him for it just in case I'd ever come down with it again."

The head nurse shook her head in amazement. "I could never have guessed."

Daniel smiled slightly. "As long as we're quick with the treatment, then there's a better than good chance that she'll make it out."

He looked down at Shisu, whose hollow eyes now stirred with some small flickering of hope, as he took her hand. "So hang on. For your son."

. . .

2 Years Later

Guts was tired. He'd been very busy today, finishing with the last of the unpacking as they got to the next place that their group had to be at. Mama had let him play with Daniel before he went off to do his work as a reward for being so helpful. He was very patient and liked teaching him how to swing the swords that he had grown up around. They used sticks in their place, and Daniel said they would be a little heavier when he started holding a real one, but he still enjoyed it nonetheless.

Mama was still a little weak from when she had gotten really sick, but she had always smiled at him when he asked if she was okay. "I'll be fine." she always said. "Don't worry about me. After all, being with you is enough to make up for everything else."

Even still, she had decided to go to bed early tonight. Gambino wasn't there right now. He usually wasn't. Guts had followed her lead, as he was now very tired himself. Everyone was back in camp now for the work that they were doing that day, many of them lying on stretchers as they went to some of Mama's friends.

He lay in the tent next to Mama, listening to her quiet, steady breathing as he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. However, there was the not-so-subtle fact that he really, really needed to pee.

He tried to hold it in as best he could. Mama was nice and warm now, after all. But eventually, the urge grew too strong, and he sighed quietly as he extricated himself as quietly as he could from his mama's embrace.

Succeeding, he paused for a moment to make sure he didn't disturb Mama, then crept towards the tent flap, the quiet crackling of the fires beginning to die down calling him forward.

As he reached the flap and began to push it aside, a shadow fell in front of the door, and he barely had time to step back before a hand darted out, grabbing him by his shirt and yanking him out of the tent.

He spun around, and before he could shout, he felt something cold pressed to his throat. "You scream, you die, kid." the man said in a low, gruff voice as Guts watched two other men, dressed to blend into the night, enter the tent.

Guts felt his heart pounding in his ears as he saw one of them exit the tent again after a moment. "No good. He's not here."

The man who held him shook his head in disgust. "God damn it. Then it looks like we're going loud. Grab the woman. He'll come running when he knows his wife's in danger."

The man in front of him nodded, poking his head back into the tent and saying something. It was moments later that Guts heard the scream of his mama, not able to see her at the moment he was jostled away, towards the rest of the people Gambino worked with. Towards Daniel.

"This is stupid!" Guts shouted. "Let me go!"

The man's only response was to press the knife blade a little tighter, Guts feeling the blade draw blood as he watched the camp begin to spring to life, several soldiers rushing out of their tents with knives or swords. "Watch it, you little shit. You move too much, your throat gets cut."

Then the man began to shout at the rest of the camp. "Bring me Gambino! Or the wife and kid get it!"

The camp was in chaos now, several soldiers rushing toward the commotion, Daniel foremost among them, a blade that wasn't his pointed at the man who held Guts as Mama was manhandled to his side.

"Who the hell are you?" Daniel said, and Guts saw on the man's face an expression that he hadn't seen so blatantly displayed on his face. Anger. As much as it scared him, it somehow also soothed his fears in turn.

"We want Gambino." the man who held him said. "You've all been an awful thorn in our sides. So, either you accept what we're willing to pay to get rid of you, or we kill his wife and kid."

"My kid?"

Guts looked over as Gambino pushed through some of the other soldiers wielding swords or spears, a crossbow in his hand. "He's Shisu's kid. I just happen to be related to him. What do you want?"

"We want you to stop besieging us." the man holding Mama said. "We're willing to pay good money to get you to go away. We might even throw in a bonus if you decide to switch sides. Right now, the kid and the woman are just insurance."

Guts looked at Gambino as the rest of the soldiers looked at each other, unable to make out the whispers from the rest of the men that surrounded them. He saw… a gleam in Gambino's eyes. One that he couldn't understand, but had seen before.

"Okay," Gambino said, the crossbow in his hands dipping somewhat. "What kind of deal are we talking about?"

Daniel looked over at Gambino for a moment, then back at them, shock joining the anger in his expression. "You'll let go of them before we start talking about any sort of pay. And even still, if these are the lengths you'll go to, who says we can trust you?"

The man that held Guts growled, and Guts looked over at his Mama. She was afraid, looking back at him with tears in her eyes as she tried to talk to… someone. The sight of his mama, so scared, stirred a coal of anger in him, the emotion burning with an unexpected intensity. He had to do… something.

So, he acted, reaching up towards the wrist of the hand that held the knife against his throat, squeezing hard and digging his thumb into the soft underside as he kicked at the man's knee with all his might.

The man shouted, the knife falling from his hands as Guts fell to the ground. Before the boy could get anywhere, the man's boot landed square on his back, and he heard the man unsheathing something. "Damn little brat!"

Guts felt someone rushing forward through the ground, someone who was above him in seconds, and he heard, for the first time, the sliding, sucking sound of a sword being buried in someone's chest, the pained gasp that became a gurgled growl of a death rattle, and felt warm, almost hot droplets of blood hitting his back.

The camp became a mess of noise, and he almost missed the sound of another body hitting the ground before the twang of a crossbow sounded.

Then, Daniel flipped over Guts, the concern in his expression sweeping out all else as he wiped at Guts' bleeding neck with… something. "Are you okay?"

Guts nodded wordlessly, and Daniel seemed to smile. It didn't reach his eyes as he handed him the cloth he was using to staunch the blood. "Hold this, okay?" he said, looking back at something. "I'll…" he trailed off as he saw… something. But what?

"Guts…"

It was a gurgling, drowning cry that drew Guts' eye to his Mama, crawling towards him with her hand on her throat, blood slipping past her fingers regardless as she reached out towards him. "Guts…"

Guts' eyes went wide. She… she was dying. "Mama…"

Mama slowed to a stop, desperately reaching for him. He stood unsteadily, taking a few steps forward and grabbing her hand.

"Guts… Guts…"

Then, her head dipped, slowly falling to the floor, and she went still.

Guts couldn't let go of her hand. It was… impossible.

Then, he felt a hand on his shoulder gently turn him away from the sight, and he disappeared into Daniel's chest as he felt the man's arms wrap tightly around him.

. . .

Daniel waited for the sob, the cries that would have been normal for any boy that had just lost his mother as he watched Shisu's hand slowly drop from Guts'. But it never came. Or at least, he never heard or felt it.

'Then again, you've never had normal, have you?' he thought, mourning the fact as a few men began to clear off the bodies, two men to each of the two who had fallen. Before they could take Shisu's body, Gambino stepped forward, kneeling and putting an almost shockingly tender hand on her cheek. And for the briefest of moments, Daniel could have sworn that tears were welling up in the man's eyes.

Then, he looked over at him, and Daniel once again saw the man who was his commander, flintstones for eyes and a set jaw. "We have an informant in our camp. I'm going to find whoever tipped these bastards off, and I'm going to gut them."

With that, he stood, allowing the men to hoist Shisu's body, and carry her away.

Daniel sighed quietly before he put Guts at arm's length. "Come on, Guts. Let's go to my tent. Try to get some rest."

Guts looked up at him, tears in his eyes, then nodded silently after a moment, walking by Daniel's side without a word.

As they reached his tent and settled in to try and sleep, Daniel looked over at Guts. "I'm sorry."

Guts looked over at him, and Daniel could see the glimmer of confusion in the boy's eyes. "Why?"

It was silent for a moment before Daniel sighed. "For not being able to save your mother. I wish I could have. But I wasn't fast enough."

'You could have been.' a part of him whispered as they rolled over again. 'You could have saved them both without lifting a finger.'

'No.' he stubbornly fought back against the temptation. 'I can't think like that. I can't think like… like him.'

He remembered Shisu's eyes. They would be joining the eyes that always bore down on him. And he was sure he would see those eyes, always accusing, always condemning, tonight. 'I tried to keep her safe. But death came for her anyway. Was it always meant to be? Do they interfere, even this far before?'

But Guts was safe. A hollow victory, but it was the only victory he could take tonight.