A/N: Major self-indulgent Matthew senseless fluff ahead. There are scenes from other characters here, but for the most part, this is a Matthew-fest. Anyone can skip this chapter and not miss anything is a FILLER. With that being said I don't entirely vouch for its quality.

Warning: Slight suggestive things and vulgar language. Nothing too crass, though. That's not my style, but it's included in here because it's what's natural.

I was inspired when I thought back on one of DarkBlaziken's comments. She said: "[Oh well, I'm a girl that fangirlsEtrurians. I like to believe there are guys that exist that are not perverts.]" Here is my take on that statement. Enjoy.

0o0o0o0o0o0

THE ILLUSION OF CONTENTMENT | PART TWO

Differentiating the Similar

0o0o0o0o0o0

BERN | Along the River Rhine

Heath looked upward to the high sun, adjusting the band covering his head so it hung over his eyes a little more, to shield him from the light. He led Hyperion by the reins as they walked along Liestal, following the Rhine River towards its northbound course. Flying was not an option, unless he wanted himself to be quickly spotted by other wyvern knights. Only official riders of the military were allowed to ride wyverns, so that was not a way to proceed. But certainly, that aside, Heath was a free man.

He knew enough of the patrol patterns and the paths that soldiers tended to take to be able to walk within his own country undetected. Heath laughed at the idea that, fifteen years ago, when he was a wanted fugitive for a crime he did not commit, the knowledge would have certainly been handy. But he had not been a soldier for long that time—and now he knew much. Or, too much, which was exactly why he had to go away.

You're not safe here, he remembered what Jaffar said, as soon as he handed him his little note. You do realize this, to His Majesty, is treason, right? Are you sure you want to tell this to Kumiko? Do you have proof?

The proof is all around you, Jaffar. The soldiers know it, the Knights know it, the Generals know it—but they refuse to speak. And I refuse to be like them. I know this will put my life in danger. But whether or not I say anything, I know I will still be in danger either way. Some day the king will realize that I know too much. He might have me silenced—permanently. And so I'd rather leave and have a fighting chance than stay here and await certain death.

But much to Heath's surprise, life has not been too hard on him yet. On the first few days and weeks of his travel, if he ever ran across any soldiers, they still treated him with courtesy, as if he were still an esteemed Wyvern Knight of Bern instead of a fugitive. It seems something took the king's time and the document listing him as a traitor to his own country was not yet in circulation. Or, it might be Kumiko, getting her husband to spare him, covering for him.

Or, Heath thought, it could be the Master of Spies.

...Wishful thinking, that.

Whatever the case, Heath still decided to not risk it and not be comfortable. He put on his disguise as a travelling man who made a living breeding wyverns. It was a decent cover—because he certainly knew a lot about wyverns—and it also explained why he had Hyperion. The days passed that no one recognized him, no one knew him—or knew the past him. It seemed like a different life. Slowly the cover was starting to consume his mind and become his reality. And so Heath began to wonder what he truly wanted now, now that the sparkle of knighthood and loyalty to a liege was long lost to him.

BERN-SACAE BORDER | A log cottage

My dear Kumi,

If you receive this letter, you are to burn it as soon as you read it. Much as I risk this letter getting intercepted, or worse, bringing you trouble, I risk it for the chance to tell you that your godchild Roy of Pherae has successfully recaptured Ostia and rescued the Princess Lilina. My spiess have rushed to tell me of the great, great news. It is a day of celebration for all of Lycia. The Etrurian Army has also come to our aid and with them the remnants of Bern have been expelled from our lands. I know that you, a Lycian at heart as much as you are Bernese, would be delighted by this news. I do hope your husband would do better than to attack us again? But for now, I am overjoyed. Lycia is on the way to restoration and is recovering well with help from Etruria.

Xarin sends her well wishes.

Matthew placed his finishing touches on his letter: he signed his name at the end of the letter, folded it, and sealed it with some wax and a sealing ring—not his own seal, lest someone recognize it as the seal of Ostia. An entire month has passed since the recapture of Ostia, and Matthew wrote with a light and joyful heart. Whether or not he was actually going to send the letter was another matter, because the truth was, he only wanted someone to share the joy with—and a letter of joy on a piece of paper was enough to do that, even if he never sent it.

Of course there was Xarin, but she was barely a woman fit for that purpose. Whenever Matthew became comfortable, whenever Matthew had the opportunity to breathe and relax and shrug aside his responsibilities for one second—he could count on Xarin to spoil it and snap him to his senses. She would always tell him, don't be comfortable, Matthew. Don't be complacent. Contentment can be deceiving.

Because, Matthew thought, contentment could be a fickle thing indeed. If Matthew had forgotten all about the war waging outside of his comfortable cottage, he could have been fooled that none of it existed and was all a figment of his imagination. If he had stopped receiving the letters of correspondence from his spies, he could have thought that he was not a Master of Spies at all. If Xarin had stopped discussing about the war each and every evening at the dinner table, then he would have been convinced that none of it happened.

Sometimes, he would be tempted to make her stop talking about it, to talk about something trivial like the weather or the flowers or gossip at town, like most women would. She would talk about war, about the information given by their agents, about what they could mean, and the hidden fears and hints between the lines of every letter. What move would best be done next? Matthew, what do you think did he mean when he wrote that? What do you think is happening as of this moment?

But, thankfully, she would grow tired of that talk, too, after a long while. After she had exhausted her worries about the war, the trivial, normal talk would ensue. There were soldiers all over the market, Matthew. Everyone is frightened to move around. The melons in the market look good, I'll buy some tomorrow. Are your wounds doing well? How does the food taste?

Sometimes, he would be tempted to think that the war was not real and that their cover as a married couple living in the mountains was the reality. Much more with the recent victory of Lycia, much more with the inactivity of Bern for now, he almost felt like the nightmare was over and the reality was just beginning. He began to entertain other thoughts in his head—the little things that spywork had always forced him to push aside.

"Maybe we should open an inn, or a pub, or something..." Matthew said, somewhat dreamily, out of nowhere, one morning at breakfast with Xarin.

She looked at him as if he were absurd. He just laughed. "I could fetch a pretty penny selling the food you cook, Xarin. They always taste so good."

She shrugged off his compliment like she never heard it. "What brought on that idea, Matthew?"

"My dad—if you didn't know—he runs an inn back home. It had a tavern and I ran that before I became a spy, and then my mom was in charge of all the cooking, and my little sister kept the place clean. I kinda miss that work—of course, running the tavern and chit-chatting with all the travelers and soldiers was what made way for me to become a spy, but now, I've been dying to get back behind the bar and serve some warm, frothy ale."

She just blinked at him in disbelief, and he stared at her, a little offended, when he found that that was her only reaction. "What? You look at me as if I'm stupid to have those desires."

She shook her head a little, but then she told him, "Don't be complacent, Matthew. This silence could be an illusion, for all we know. A trick. You can't let your guard down."

And then he would frown a little and he would ask himself: What's wrong with being content? What's wrong with relaxing and keeping your guard down, even for a little while? If you keep yourself on the tips of your toes at all times, how will you ever live?

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Two Days Later

Wyverns were never suited to walk on the ground, and that was to Heath's disadvantage. His old wyvern mount, Hyperion, was itching to spread his wings and soar through the air after Heath had not allowed him to do it for around a week now. He could have gotten to wherever he was headed to days and days ago, if only he had taken to the skies with Hyperion. But it was better to be safe than sorry. Other wyvern knights of Bern had better chances of finding him if he took to the skies. He did not want that.

"Hang in there, Hyperion," Heath soothed his mount with words as he pulled on the wyvern's reins in an upward trail through some mountain. He knew that he was past the vast plains of Liestal now, following the upward course of the Rhine river through the mountain. He had no idea where he was going, and where he was going to end up. All he remembered were Jaffar's instructions of where to go. Jaffar had told him that he knew a place where Heath can stay if he planned to hide away for a while. Jaffar gave him a place and two names. Theodore and Cecile,Jaffar had said. They helped me once, they'll help you, too, without a doubt.

He imagined what these two people looked like and what they had done to Jaffar to warrant the former assassin's trust. Theodore and Cecile… Maybe they were an elderly pair who took pity on Jaffar and helped him way back when he was hiding from bounty hunters. Elderly people were like that, they helped people without caring who he was or who was your enemy. Or maybe they lived too far from other people to care about enemies. Surely, they lived in an obscure place. Heath had been trekking up the mountain for hours now, and the last living human he had seen would have to be a day away.

And then, finally, he saw a house.

It was a log cottage, like most of the houses in forests and mountains. The cottage seemed to be old—the timber used for it was certainly not new, with moss and plant life growing from it. However, the house seemed clean and lively. There was light from within, and smoke coming from the chimney. There was the smell of ginger in the air, as if someone had been boiling it. Surely someone lived there.

Heath walked up to the home, and then let go of Hyperion as he climbed up the front steps, cautiously looking around. The front door was open, and slowly he walked inside.

And then felt something hard, like a block of wood, hit him at the back. He fell face-first into the floor, and fainted.

From an inner room of the house, a man sitting on his desk chair peeked to see what the noise was about. He gasped a little when he saw Heath fainted on the floor, and then a woman standing over him, holding a thick wooden stick.

"That was the visitor we were expecting, you know," Matthew said, frowning a little.

Xarin shrugged, discarding the wooden stick she was holding, as if to say she had nothing to do with it. "You didn't tell me we were going to have a visitor." And then she bent down to check on Heath's breathing. "He's still alive. Just knocked out."

"Great," Matthew said, smiling. "Two's company, but three's a party. Aren't you glad Jaffar sent someone over?"

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

BERN-SACAE MOUNTAIN BORDER | A log cottage

Heath opened his eyes to see a blurred image of what seemed like a face with sand-brown hair piled on top. The wyvern knight blinked a few times and with that his vision improved, and he was surprised to see a familiar face looking over him. That sandy brown hair and that grin was unmistakable. Even when he claimed to be a spy, Matthew had always stood apart, and was not easily forgettable.

"Hi there!"Matthew greeted, wearing a casual smirk as he waved his hands in front of Heath's face. "Are you with us already? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Is that… Matthew?" Heath asked, but Matthew seemed to not hear, proceeding to shove his hand holding up three fingers to Heath's face. "Three," Heath finally said, to satisfy Matthew's earlier question.

"Great. You seem mentally stable," Matthew said, sounding content, as Heath pushed himself to sit up from his position on the bed. When he did, he flinched, feeling pain in his back.

"Sorry, about that," Matthew said, shaking his head a little as he saw Heath's obvious pain. "Xarin thought you were some intruder." Heath looked around when Matthew said that, as if searching for signs of the female spy. Matthew noticed. "She's not here. Went to the nearby village to fetch a few things."

"…The nearest village is about a day away," Heath said.

Matthew gave a shocked look. "No it is not. Three hours at most. What route did Jaffar tell you to use getting here?"

Heath told Matthew about the path he took, while Matthew listened and just nodded. "That's one way to get here. There's actually a shortcut that Ostian spies have worked on for years and Xarin and I use it. This place has been an Ostiansafehouse before I was born, I think. It's the perfect spot if you're observing Sacae or Bern."

Heath nodded, but inside he was wondering why Matthew seemed to be talking too loosely. He was telling Heath details that only a spy should know and make them sound like casual talk. It was either Matthew just badly needed someone to talk with, and was glad Heath was there, or it was Anko rubbing onto Heath, making him careful and critical.

"…You're working with Jaffar," Heath suddenly said, a realization.

Matthew took a chair and pulled it to the bedside. And then he shrugged. "I guess I am."

"He told me to come here because he said it was a place I could hide," Heath said.

Again, Matthew shrugged. "I guess it is."

"How long?" Heath asked, puzzled. The wyvern knight remembered the distant past—he, Matthew, and Jaffar had worked together in a campaign with Kumiko, brought together under different circumstances. Matthew had lost his girlfriend some time in that campaign, and a little known fact was that Jaffar, once from the enemy side, admitted that he had killed Leila, Matthew's girlfriend. The two had never gotten along ever since, and they had even tried to kill each other. Eventually, Matthew realized that it was foolish to get revenge on Jaffar, who was reformed. But even then, while Matthew had stopped pursuing the former-assassin, the two had kept avoiding each other. To imagine them settling their differences and deciding to work together was very, very difficult.

"…When I found out Kumiko was going to be queen, and that the King of Bern had also decided to take in Nino and Jaffar," Matthew answered truthfully. "I needed someone to keep an eye on Kumiko. I was worried about her, since how Zephiel became king and how his father died was a mystery and all at that time. I contacted Jaffar and proposed that we work together, and he agreed on the condition that I use my power as Ostia's Master of Spies to find his children. He has been dutifully sending me correspondences and updates about the going-ons in Bern Keep, and I have the descriptions of his missing children engraved into the minds of all my spies. Exactly why they haven't been found yet eludes me."

"But he…" killed your girlfriend, Heath almost said. He stopped himself just in time.

Matthew realized what he was about to say, though. "It's been fifteen years or more. Somewhere between all that time, you find it in your heart to forgive."

O0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

BERN | Bern Keep

Jaffar had been ultimately right, Kumiko thought. The talking did wonders. She could not afford to trust Zephiel with the physical yet but telling him of her fears, her worries, her dreams—careful not to sound offensive and on edge about the war, or lack of it—it softened him. It did not matter that he must have already heard of her traumas and pain through other sources, like Anko or Nino, but for it to have come from her very own mouth—it was an intimacy. Secrets she was starting to confide to him. The smallest acts of trust that she could afford.

And with it, he became more amiable. He was less sarcastic with his remarks and more sincere. He smiled more, he laughed more, and with the lapse in military activity—was there a war at all?—he had the time to entertain her the entire day. He was a man who had all the time and resources to spoil his wife—he took her to trips around Bern, visiting their academies and libraries, held banquets in her honor, bought her new gowns and perfumes and jewelry. With all the attention, Kumiko beamed and looked like a woman revisited by her lover; always smiling, kind to all, gracious to everyone. The king and queen looked like lovers in courtship rather than a married pair of two years in struggle, fighting over a war.

He spoiled her, giving her everything she wanted and going beyond that—before she could even voice her desire for something, it was already done and given to her. Zephiel had a way of reading her mind, knowing what she wanted before she even said it. Not only of material things—mostly, Kumiko was the woman who would like to see every man and woman of Bern prosper. She was the queen the lords and noblemen hated but the queen the citizens loved. She would walk with them in their markets, dance with them in their festivals, cook with them in their kitchens. She would ride through the farmlands and ask how the crops were and be given samples of the products, later to come back to the royal carriage carrying a bunch of wool or a fresh bottle of milk and the best qualities of cheese and butter. She was a woman so loved by the citizens that it was said she could freely walk at the towns without fear of being taken advantage of or robbed or hostaged. And that she did—she walked Bern on her own at times, never with anything to fear. Though of course her husband made sure there were always men guarding her from a distance—but that aside, she walked a free woman.

And so sometimes, it was easy to predict what she would want. When she would complain about a town's awful water system—immediately Zephiel saw that there was something done about it. When she raved about a baker's fruit pies or tarts—immediately Zephiel saw that she had those very things for breakfast the next day and, for better measure, hired the baker to work in the castle kitchen. He always seemed to think like that—for every story of what she was or learned that she told him, wide eyed and excited, he would listen carefully and pick out something from her narrative that she would enjoy. And thus he spoiled her.

"Zephiel, I am going to get fat, I swear," she said, as she ate a slice of fruit pie one morning that they were having a private breakfast together. "Please stop spoiling me so much and bringing in all these wonderful food and treats. If I gain weight I feel I have to trek through the mountains just to lose it."

"Why does it matter?" he said, puzzled. "Go ahead and eat all you want. And it's been said that I have the finest eyes in the kingdom, and with that I say that I can see you hadn't gained a pound at all. So have whatever you want."

She laughed at his obvious flattery. "Easy for you to say, my lord," she said. "You can eat all you want and yet you lose it by jousting and exercising your swordsmanship everyday. But I have no such activity. Except for walking, of course. And if I get fat I swear you will find me ugly and look for another woman."

She was chatty and cheerful these days, a huge difference. "I will not do that," he said. "And besides, though you only have walking, I must say you are an expert at it. You must walk the entire castle everyday, Kumiko. Back and forth the floors, to and fro the courtyards and gardens and libraries. You were never really one to sit still."

"Of course," she said, after thoughtfully taking a bit of her pie and savoring it. When she spoke, a quiet happiness and pride was apparent in her voice. "I was the ever wandering Strategy Queen. I never sit still."

"And I am lucky to have made you stop wandering," he said, as he held onto her hand and pulled it to his lips for a light kiss. And I am hoping that you would sit still and be content. I am doing everything I can to make you sit still and stay.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

BERN-SACAE BORDER | A log cottage

Matthew was beginning to feel his determination to see this war through slip from his fingertips. It has been a while, quite a while, since Bern did something up-front about the war. Their attacks were on-hold. Their forces have pulled out from Lycia and there was no sign that they were going to try to attack onse more. Their troops have remained in Sacae and in Ilia, but that was that. There was no news of Bernese nobles being appointed as governors of these new colonies, or additional military forces being sent elsewhere. No news on the dragons either. Everything was at a standstill. Every letter that came from every spy was the same. Even the letters from Bern Keep had become monotonous, talking about some irrelevant hunting trip or royal vacation that the king and queen and their court were having. The war was never talked about, not even by the king. It was as if it never existed.

"Still nothing?" Heath inquired, as Matthew read through another letter of correspondence.

Matthew nodded. Nothing. Nothing significant was going on, and Matthew was even beginning to feel that a miracle would happen and the war would stop because Kumiko was blessed by the gods to have such charm that her husband would abandon the war because of her. It was a possibility that Matthew always considered, but never so seriously, not until now. It seemed the entire war was stopping just because the king wants to spend time with his wife! Can anything be more trivial?

And so the days slipped by. There was always nothing. Matthew began to feel that for every day that sped by, for every letter he anticipated was about an attack but then turns out to be about nothing, he started feel his age. He felt like years were taken away from him worrying about things that were not happening instead of savoring a life that wouldn't last forever.

Finally, he decided to let himself go and stop worrying about it.

It was a great experience, as if his body had just been released from a prison, his mind released from years worth of conditioning to think that there was always trouble. He began to breathe easy. He began to hum as he moved around. He slept well at night, and slept until the sun was high. The wounds on his shoulder were healing well, and he felt that overall, he was also getting better.

Heath started to mention the war less frequently. Miraculously, even Xarindid, too, as if she were eventually forgetting it as well. But if the inexistence of war eased Matthew, it seemed to do the opposite for Xarin. There was no visible sign of relief; she always acted guarded and on-edge. And to top it all off, she talked less. Without business to actually talk about—no war—she didn't talk at all. And so Matthew found himself either immersed in silence, or in one-sided conversation. That, or Matthew would just prefer to talk to Heath, but even they ran out of topics to broach. Or he would stare at Xarin, analyzing her, the way an artist tries to peel off layers of dust from an old work of art to see its real value. There was nothing much to think of or do anymore, and so he preoccupied himself with it. He tried to, slowly but surely, bring her out of her shell.

"Why'd you ever become a spy, Xarin?" he asked her, out of the blue, as he sat by the table and waited for his breakfast. Heath was away for his routine of early-morning time with Hyperion, and had left the two spies alone.

It was the beginning of one of Matthew's many attempts at conversation with Xarinwhich would usually be met by a cold response that would kill the conversation almost immediately. "I got into this because of the money, frankly," he said. "Thought it might help my family."

She was slicing bread and cheese and fruit for them to eat, hair plaited up, in a peasant dress with an apron. By all effects, she looked like a woman of the commons, not a high-ranking spy of Lycia. Oh, heck, I probably look like that too, Matthew thought as he looked at his own clothes—off-white and tattered shirts and trousers.

Xarin looked back at him, puzzled, looking as if he had asked an absurd question, as if he said something wrong. She took the food and set them out before him, and she said, "I was trained to be a spy. What else would I do?"

"There are other things to do," Matthew suggested, as he began eating. "You cook well, for example. You can run a house well."

"So you suggest I should have married and had children?" Xarin asked. She sounded slightly offended, but with Xarin, you can never really tell.

"What's wrong with getting married?" Matthew said, and in a flash a similar conversation with him and his past girlfriend, Leila, went to his mind. I'm a spy, Matthew, I'm good at this, she had told him. I don't want my goal in life to be something as low as to get married. I want something more. Marriage can always wait.

He believed that marriage could wait, but his concern was about Leila's safety in such a dangerous profession, and while he trusted her skill, he had planned to beg her to leave that life many times. Only he was too late. "I thought of marrying too, once. I find nothing wrong with it," he told Xarin.

She just shrugged. She began eating the melon and said nothing more. That was, for her, officially the end of the conversation.

He was not giving up, though. He fired another question. "Did you ever have a lover?"

She certainly didn't see that coming. She looked at him as if he were absurd. "Excuse me?"

He repeated the question as seriously as he could, while looking detached at the same time, trying to make it sound like he meant the question yet he couldn't care less if she answered it or not. "Did you ever have a lover," he said, almost sounding gruff and offended to say it. "You know. A special boy."

"And what do you care about that?" she asked back, responding with the same gruff tone. "That's none of your business."

"I should know," Matthew pressed some more, insistent. "I'm your superior. I take it that I know the backgrounds of all my spies. So, no loved one? No weakness?"

"...No," Xarin answered, irate. He could tell by the tone and the way she shifted the table knife in her hand, as if she were going to strike him with it any minute. "No one. You should know. People like those get in the way of work."

"Ever? Even before you were a spy? Absolutely no one?"

"...Why are you asking that? Are you interested in me?"

He almost laughed at the absurdity of Xarin's question—but he stopped it just in time. To laugh was rude, and being Matthew, he just expertly took her words and flushed out the supposedly romantic implication of it. "Interested, yes," he said, levelly. "Since there is nothing much to be interested in these slow days. I believe I have no choice and am therefore forced to fixate on you. Now do me a favor and help me fight against my boredom by answering the question."

He was met by deadly silence. Xarin only stared at him, put on that scowling face that she usually wore when she was faced with something ridiculous, and turned back to her meal. Matthew gave a silent groan of defeat. He was supposed to be the best spy in Ostia—and with Ostia's standing in Lycia, he was supposed to be the best spy in all of Lycia. He could force people into telling something without using violence—usually all it took for him was a flick of wit and a turn of phrases. But Xarin was also a spy—and therefore an exception. She knew the tricks. She was not going to so easily succumb to his charms.

Surprisingly though, the answer camewhen they were nearly through with breakfast. "He was a member of Black Fang—back when the Fang was good, of course," she muttered. "And then he died the way assassins die—by being betrayed and stabbed in the back. I became a spy because of him. I worked hard because of him. I have taught myself to be like this, and now what else is there to do? I have no life outside this, Matthew. That's why I can't leave. Now, I'm going to the stream to get some laundry done."

That's stupid. We all have lives outside this. I learned that the hard way. Long ago, I waited too long before I started living my life. My REAL life. I waited too long, and because of that, she died. You're not making the same mistake I have, Xarin. We've both been here too long.

She got up and he knew the conversation was over. "Wait up, don't leave me," he told her. She looked back, and cocked her head to the side in question. "I'm dying to take a bath," Matthew explained. "Take me with you."

"No," she said, firmly. "Stay here and watch over the place. Leave me alone."

And then she stormed off, and Matthew was left, shocked, not sure what was that he saw. Did Xarin actually just—did she just talk back at him? Was she angry for some reason? Did I do or say something horribly offensive to her?

Matthew was only able to contain his curiosity for a few minutes. And then, not knowing what to do, he gave a little groan and took his cloak, scribbled a note for Heath in case he returned, and decided to follow after her.

Take me with you. Don't leave me alone. If you only knew, Xarin. I secretly hate being alone.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Matthew walked the small distance from their hideout into the streams of water in the mountains that eventually spilled out into Bern's Rhine river. He walked through the trees and bushes, the stream already in his sights, but he checked and found that Xarin wasn't there. Oh great. Where did she run off to?

But then he heard the waters move, and then he found a heap of clothes sprawled out on the rocks, and from that he didn't have to look far to see Xarin in the waters, bathing. Instinctively, Matthew backed away and hid into the foliage. If Xarin knew that he had seen her bathing, she might not take it well and he was going to end up with sharp, nasty things stuck into his flesh if that was the case.

But then she started speaking. Matthew couldn't help but glance back at her when he heard her muttering. "I swear," she said, "I swear." And then she settled herself onto the rocks by the stream and began to wring out the water from her auburn hair. "I swear," she said. And then her lips moved to a whisper so silent that Matthew didn't hear the words, and they were also too quick for him to be able to read it. What is it? What is she saying?

She was groaning and muttering things as she continued twisting her hair to expel the water from them. Obviously—for some reason—she was angry. That I asked too much? But Xarin is a professional. She wouldn't get angry at me for something so trivial as that. But did he hit a sore point? Did she not want to discuss past lovers or something of the sort? Did she have wounds of that kind, too?Because Matthew certainly knew about the pains of love, of losing a loved one. He could help her through it and give her a few words of wisdom—

And then she grabbed onto that soap—a steal from some unlucky inn on their way to here—and then started rubbing across her body. That was when Matthew couldn't help but take a good look at her. She soaped her neck, and her shoulders and her breasts and—

Damn, Matthew said to himself. Xarin was a handsome woman in her own way and he had never tried to deny that. Her skin glowed with the warm color of the skin of a common woman who spent a healthy amount of time under the sun. The Bernese weather must be doing wonders to her skin. And there was something in the way she rubbed that soap across her skin that seemed so... inviting. Something that seemed so much more than a woman taking a bath—because if that was that, why did she have to do it so slowly, as if she were trying to get every inch clean, as fanatical about cleanliness as a courtesan in a bathhouse?

Matthew found himself wordlessly staring for a few more seconds. Agh. When was the last time I saw a naked woman? ago. I was too preoccupied with work and... and... Gaah. Those breasts. That waist. Goodness gracious. Damnation, Xarin. I never knew you had this in you.

But then Matthew suddenly felt a wave of guilt wash over him when he remembered that this was Xarin—the woman who had taken care of him when he was too injured to take care of himself, and stood by his side, even just out of her duty to him because of work. She still put up with me in my worst. He forced his eyes shut and turned away from her direction. And then he moved around in the foliage and made noises, so he could alert her about his presence. "Xarin? Are you there, Xarin? It's me!"

He heard her moving, maybe back into the water, as he took a few blind steps towards the clearing by the stream with his eyes closed. As he emerged clearer into the clearing, he opened his eyes and saw that, indeed, she had stepped back into the water.

"I told you to leave me alone," she said.

He looked down at her, and shook his head to himself. Though her shoulders and everything below that was submerged in the stream, the water was too clear to hide everything. "You didn't do the laundry," he observed. "You're taking a bath."

"A statement of the obvious," she said, crossing her arms to herself. When she did, her arms pressed her breasts together, and—

Matthew, enough looking at those!

He pulled his eyes to another direction—any direction, anywhere except her!—and told her, sounding every bit awkward, "Uh, you should get dressed."

She didn't move. Obviously she wasn't a bit uncomfortable in the awkward situation that they were in. "I told you to leave me alone," she said.

"I told you to get dressed," he said, making the words sound like an order of a superior to a subordinate. If it was clearly and order from him, she could not refuse to follow never disobeyed his orders.

...Well, she did, sometimes, but not often. And when she does, oftentimes she ends up being right.

He heard the waters move and was relieved to find that she did listen, moving away to grab a drying sheet. She wrapped it around herself and then tucked it secure. And she just stared at him, waiting for whatever he was going to say.

He stared back at her and found that there was something in the way she crossed her legs, one over the other, as she sat there on the wet rocks. There was something seductive in the way that she stared at him that almost seemed to be inviting him towards her and take the damn sheet of cloth off her and do unspeakable things—

Matthew couldn't help but visibly shake his head to himself. I'm imagining things and I've been cooped up in the mountains for months without seeing another female being. Or this is the Xarin I've never really seen before. If this is what she's like, no wonder that scoundrel Erik immediately slipped into her trap...

Wait, that sounded so wrong.

Matthew shook his head again and tried to remember why he was there to begin with.

"You were angry at me," he eventually said.

"I wasn't," Xarin said, looking away from him, crossing her arms again.

"You screamed at me and then stormed off!" Matthew told her. "I was worried!"

"You're the one screaming at me now!" Xarin yelled back, as she got up with an angry stomp. "You could have just let me go off and have a little time to myself first! Let me be alone and let me deal with it myself and then I'll forget about it and I'll be okay!"

Matthew couldn't help but blink and be taken aback by all of this. It was true.Xarinwas screaming mad at him. He had never seen her like this before, but he always seemed to predict that this would happen—the lack of war seemed to turn Xarin into a teapot so very near its boiling point. And this was it. This is that boiling point.

"We could talk about it," Matthew suggested, but Xarin already had her back turned towards him. "We could talk," he said, more firmly now. "And so whatever's bothering you can be thrown out of the window right here, right now, instead of you having to deal with it in prolonged silence and me having to be troubled thinking if you're angry or not. Doesn't that sound better?"

She said nothing. He stared at her back and frowned at her obvious failure to cooperate. But at the same time, she did not leave yet. Matthew found it right to tackle the issue head-on.

"...So," Matthew began, awkwardly, "he was Black Fang."

"And he's dead," Xarin quickly added, tone clearly trying to end the conversation. "And when he died, I died along with him."

"Look," Matthew said, "I know a thing or two about losing someone you love, and I know it never gets easy. I'm sorry I made you talk about it, but it's been at least twenty years since it happened, right? You should let it go."

"It's not the same!" she yelled at him, and Matthew fell silent. "It will never be the same. And you know what my real problem is? It's not him. It's you!"

0o0o0o0o0o0

It's me.

I'm her problem.

What did I do? All I did was ask one silly question and she blows up and starts hatin'.

...Unless there's something I did that I wasn't aware I did.

But she's not telling me what it is.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Frustration getting the better of him, Matthew finally decided to write to one of his spies in Ostia to send him Xarin's records. Every spy of Ostia had his or her personal record—details about their past lives, any family they might have or any past lovers—and it was usually kept by the Master of Spies. Matthew could tell all the life stories of all his spies, but frankly, he'd never taken a look at Xarin's. When Xarin was recruited, every spy reported to Lord Uther—the duke of Ostia before his brother, Lord Hector—instead. When Xarin's records were done, he had no control over them, or every other spy's record—they were only for Lord Uther. And when Lord Uther passed, they were passed onto Lord Hector. And when he became Master of Spies, all the records were put under his care, but for some reason, he never found it in himself to read Xarin's very own life tale.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. And after a week, the records were sent to him, and he read then when Xarin was away to the nearest village to market in the mornings. She was not going to take it well if she found out he was prying, so as much as possible he was not going to alert her.

Well, she had a family. Her parents and an older brother. They had a field and they farmed for a living—and interestingly, apart from that, they also ran their village tavern. But she was unlucky to live in Bern's Landskworn region—which is now absorbed into Liestal, but back in the day, the region was governed by one of the most ruthless dukes in all of Bern's history—Pascal Grentzer.

Grentzer was formidable in battle, and even a member of the Black Fang back in those days—but he was brutal, and his bloodlust and powerlust beyond what the Fang could control. He was severe to the people in his land—he immediately burned down the properties of those who refused to pay the taxes even if there are people still inside them. Matthew felt a chill run down his spine as he read Xarin's statements, as written down by the recorder:

I went to the market to buy something. When I got back, Pascal and his men were there, and all I saw was that our house was in flames. I heard my brother screaming. They were still inside. I tried to rush into the flames and help them, but Pascal's men held me down. No one did anything. Everyone just watched.

And Matthew felt himself hurt, because he knew that, as with most of his spies, he was thrice lucky compared to them. His parents were alive. Sure, he never got to see them because his job demanded detachment from them, but he knew they were well and alive and they still sent him letters. But not every spy is as lucky as him.

And after I watched him burn down my entire family, I went toward him and hit him on his face so hard he fell off his horse. He grabbed me by the neck and I told him to kill me, too. But he didn't. He took me to his castle and then turned me into a slave.

He fancied me—in a horrible, sadistic way. He said he was going to make me pay for hitting him. He had me locked up and tortured and made me do things—but he never killed me. He didn't want me to die; he wanted me to suffer. He was the sickest man I ever met.

And then one day, the Black Fang came and put an end to Pascal's reign. I was set free by a Black Fang member who saw me. He gave me some money and told me that I should go back to my family. He left before I could tell him that I had no more family.

I wanted to get as far away from Landskworn; I made it to the capital. But I ran out of money soon and with the way things were, the only job I got was in a bathhouse.

Matthew blinked to himself in disbelief. First, Xarin worked in a tavern—she was a barmaid. And then second, she worked in a bathhouse—and he was not too innocent to not know what kind of services women in bathhouses offered. But when you looked at Xarin now, she looked so hard and strong and... and like she'd never fit into those jobs.

But pain changes people, he thought. Sometimes, they change too much you don't recognize them anymore from who they were to who they are now.

Matthew continued reading.

And then I one day, the man who set me free from my prison in Landskworn saw me again. He went to the bathhouse; he recognized me and asked me what I was doing there. I told him I didn't have a family to go to and that was the only job I could find. He was dismayed; he took me from the bathhouse and brought me to the inn he was staying in. He told me he'd take care of me until and help me find a decent job. I told him that I wanted to be like him instead. I wanted to be Black Fang.

He told me not to. That we'd find something more suited for me. But for the meanwhile he took care of me, and then, I started to fall in-love with him. I told him about it and he told me he loved me too and that we should stay together.

But then he died. And then I went back to the bathhouse and met a man named Alecto. He was a general of Bern and he was asking around for information I happened to know about. He was impressed. I told him I slept with enough soldiers of Bern to know what he was asking about. And he laughed and told me I shouldn't be stuck in a bathhouse waiting on soldiers. He put me under his care and taught me about spywork in Bern.

That was where the narrative ended. Matthew looked puzzled at the document, and at the little oddity he found in it.

He just died? No telling how he died—was he attacked? Someone who had a grudge on him? Was he killed in a Fang assignment? He just died?

If he just died, Xarin couldn't possibly hold on to him for this long. He knew how it felt to lose a loved one—surely, didn't his girlfriend Leila die in a mission?—but when you've found peace and accepted it, time teaches you to let go. He thinks back on Leila fondly at all times, and she would always put a smile to his lips and make him wish that she were there with him. But he had accepted that she was gone. Usually, even people wouldn't hold on too long to the memory of a loved one, and feel some sort of grudge when talking about him...

Matthew lit up, and realized what the problem was. There might be a grudge in there—because certainly, sometimes anger lasted longer than love. Maybe she has not accepted his death because there was something about him that upset her: an unfulfilled promise, an unjust death that she had to avenge—anything!

...But how am I going to know what it is when all the records say is that he 'just died'?

I have to find out. Damn, I have to, or I'm not going to get any sleep.

0o0o0o0o0

"I found this," Xarin said, as she entered their hideout from an evening in the nearest village, and Matthew heard her speaking from above him, as he was lying down on the bed, trying to catch on a nap.

He felt Xarin toss something towards him, and lazily Matthew opened his eyes and found that it was a rolled piece of parchment—her records. Matthew snapped wide awake for a second, but then decided to play innocent and ask, "What's that?"

"You should know," Xarinsaid, tone confrontational. And then she sat down on the bed beside him with a heavy thump. "So, you know everything now. Are you happy now? Got what you wanted?"

Her tone made it clear that she was upset—again. Matthew sighed and sat up in bed, deciding that he wanted none of this when he was about to sleep. "Xarin, will you please—"

His sentence was cut midway when he found that Xarin, sitting on the bed, back turned towards him, had taken her blouse off. The bare of her back was very much exposed to him as she bent down towards a bedside table and took a nightshift. Matthew made a face. "You know dear, trying to seduce me like I'm Erik isn't gonna work."

And then Matthew realized for the first time that while Xarin can be shy in certain situations—like that girl thinking that there was something going on between him and Xarin not too long ago—she also can be immune to all the attention. When men tried to sweet talk her and flatter her, she flicked off their comments like she never heard them, yet at the same time, when men stared at her, she wouldn't be much bothered. Certainly she didn't care that day when she was taking a bath while talking to her. And certainly she didn't care much about the Erik Laus assignment, or that she was currently flashing her nakedness to him. Not that Matthew was interested.

...Just a little. I'm too puzzled to be interested.

"I know you're going to be different from Erik," Xarin said, as she pulled her nightshift over her head, and Matthew swore that there was something different in her tone. "I figure you're going to be so much harder."

"Of course I'm going to be so much harder than—" Matthew then stopped himself from saying the words, suddenly thinking, Wait a second. That sounds so wrong. That sounds vaguely suggestive and sexual.

Xarin laughed, figuring why Matthew stopped midway his sentence. Now it was clear to him that she was just messing with him. She was spiting him and teasing him for reading his records, and this was her odd way of doing it.

"Xarin, this is hitting below the be—"No, wait, that sounds like an awful pun, ah, damn it, and I don't even find this situation funny. Matthew just took the piece of parchment in his hand and shoved it to her face, to make a point. "Yes! I read this! I had to! Do you have any idea how frustrating it feels, to live with this, this… this friction between us?"

"…Friction," Xarin said, enunciating the word well and slow that it came off as suggestive. In the dim of the evening, it was easy to imagine it as suggestive. Despite the awareness that she was doing it to spite him, Matthew shuddered.

"Xarin, it's not even funny," Matthew said, feeling himself back away from the bed, just to be careful. "I'm in honest-to-goodness frustration here! I'm trying to figure you out and help you but—"

"Then what are you trying to figure out, Matthew?" she asked him. "I'm not broken—I don't need your fixing. You're my superior in everything related to work, but this is stepping out of the line!"

The yelling had begun. Oh no. The yelling had begun, and somewhere in the living room, Heath was going to wake up. But there was no helping it. "No! You just said it—I am your superior—and if there's anything going on that's affecting your work, I have a say in it! You've been acting odd, as if you hate me, ever since I just asked about that lover of yours, and it's making me feel awkward. So I have a say in this, alright?"

"What do you want to hear?" she yelled, frustrated. "What do you want to know?"

"Why can't you let him go?" Matthew yelled back, knowing it can't be helped—he had to confront her about it, else this was never going to be solved. "He died well around twenty years ago and you still act odd talking about it. Why do you keep everything in instead of letting it go? I want to help you, but I don't know how! And don't you know how difficult it is for me, working with you when you're like some teapot that's always gonna boil over the next second? I always feel you're angry or upset about something and I don't know what in the hell it is!"

He had yelled so loud that he had drowned everything with his voice. She stilled, a little startled from his yell, but then she just stared back at him and asked, "…Do you really want to know?"

Exhausted from yelling, all Matthew gave her was a nod.

"It's because he's not dead."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Matthew felt his head spin as Xarin began telling her story, telling him about the man from Fang named Alexander and how she met him. It was exactly what was written in the records—he had set her free from Landskworn and remet her in the capital and helped her and then fell in-love with her. Only, Xarin tended to add a few more details. The color of his hair, his voice, his laughter—too much detail that Matthew could already paint a picture in his mind of what this man looked like and who he was, enough detail for a spy or assassin to find a man and figure his weakness. But the absurd amount of detail made Matthew's head spin. He did not want to know everything there was to this man—he only wanted to know what it was about him that made her hold onto him, what made him 'special'. Because Xarin certainly sounded like she was talking about someone special—he could see in her eyes, in the little bitter smiles she'd give, or the occasional chuckle as she described to him this man.

"…He saved me from hell," she said—mumbled—to the floor. "He rescued me and helped me start again and believe life was worth it again."

Aaand please skip to the part where he supposedly dies, Matthew thought, but then he thought better against saying it. Wasn't he getting what he wanted now—Xarin opening up? He was not going to ruin it by one snarky, misplaced comment. He sat there, patiently waiting for the rest of her story.

"And then he told me, one day, that he had a Fang assignment, so I might not see him in a while. I told him I'd wait for him. But then he never came back. I waited and waited. Even when I was free from the bathhouse, even when Sir Alecto already took me in, I kept dropping by our usual place and asking if anyone ever saw him. But, no. He never came back."

Matthew thought that was the end of it, so he said, "Maybe he did die in that Fang assignment, or something happened, so he never got back to you. Whatever it was, it wasn't fated—"

"But then I found him," Xarin continued, cutting Matthew's presumptions. "A few months after he left for the assignment, I found him in some house, living with some other woman. I asked around—I even asked other Black Fang-and found out he never went on an assignment. He left Fang—he ran from Fang. Started a new life with some other girl. And he never told me. He made me believe it was something else. He made me believe we had something else. I told myself, when I found out about it, that he was already dead. I considered him dead. But he's probably still alive, living a blissful, happy life with his woman."

He could hear the anger, the jealousy, and the spite dripping in her voice. Twenty years, and Xarin was still angry. Twenty years, and the grudge was still there. It was different from the grudge he held against Leila's killer. She held a grudge against the man who she loved the most.

"And I told myself that I was dead, too. If he disregarded me—if he didn't want me to exist—then I didn't exist. I went back to my old life. Went back to the just to forget everything. Because everything he inspired in me, all the hope he gave me before that I might fix my life fell apart. I wanted to ruin my life. If Sir Alecto hadn't picked me up and helped me, I would've… I would've…"

I would've still been a whore. I would have gotten nowhere. I would have died. Matthew's thoughts filled in the silence between him and Xarin, and told him what could have happened.

Xarin looked nowhere near tears, but all her pain was clear in her voice, and in the way she hunched around herself as if to hide away from him, to hide all this filth. Matthew awkwardly put a hand to her shoulder, trying to comfort. It all felt unnatural and unreal to him, because Xarin never asked for comfort so he wasn't even sure if she wanted it, or if it would make her feel better or worse.

"It's not your fault he turned out to be a jerk," he said, sounding careful. "…Let it go."

"He isn't," Xarin told him, firmly. And with that certainty in her voice, Matthew knew that, just as he thought, comfort wasn't what she needed. She was rejecting his kind words, his comforting arms, his… his understanding of the truth. Matthew felt a sting of hurt. "He was amazing," Xarin said. "He showed me everything I wanted to be and gave me so much strength and…"

Yes, I know that part. He was amazing. I know. You said it a hundred times. "But then he left with nothing to leave with you but a lie," Matthew said, surprised to hear spite in his own voice. "He was a jerk, Xarin. Let it go. If he really loved you, he would have come back. He would have never lied that he was going to an assignment in the first place."

"I know that, Matthew," she quickly said, and the quickness of her response made Matthew think that it was the contrary—she didn't know or want to know, even. She was only denying everything he was telling her. She was closed, still elusive—like a frustrating locked box that you take hours to pick, only to find yet another locked box in it. You never know if at the end of it, you'll get a rare gem or treasure for your efforts, or if it was all a joke, and there was nothing there at all.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Are you and Xarin... sleeping together?" Heath suddenly asked the next morning. Matthew had been drinking his warm ale and he had nearly spit it out at Heath's question.

"Excuse me? You mean sleeping together meaning we share the same bed or sleeping together meaning sleeping together?"

Heath shrugged. "I know it's not my business, but it's... disturbing," Heath continued, definitely looking embarrassed to be asking Matthew about it, though he tried to look detached. "I almost walked into the room last night and then I saw her take her shirt off so I just went back. I'm not going to say anything or judge but if that's the case you should have warned me so I don't run into the two of you when-"

It sounded so ridiculous to Matthew that he ended up laughing. "Heath!Please! Xarin and I aren't... we're not together. And we definitely don't have that kind of relationship. Last night, that was actually her form of expressing her silly little grudge for me by tempting me—I know it sounds so twisted. But at the same time she knows that I wouldn't do it because I respect her. But point is,she did it out of hatred for me."

At the same time, Matthew's explanation sounded equally ridiculous to Heath. "She's angry at you... so she takes her clothes off?"

The absurdity of her actions then dawned on Matthew as well. Really, Xarin, these are dirty tactics. "She's angry at me. So she tempts me in hopes that I will do something wrong. Which has not crossed my mind so far, or ever will, not in these circumstances."

"Are you sure? You were never really one who seemed to pass on a treat."

Matthew checked, and turned to Heath, who, it seemed, was teasing him even more, as if giving him that little nudge that will make him fall over the cliff. That was something the wyvern rider wouldn't seem to do—that was something like a former Black Fang assassin that he knew from years past would probably do. But then Matthew found that Heath wasn't pushing him at all—the wyvern knight was engrossed in fixing his clothes, an air of detachment around him, as if he couldn't care less. The statement Heath made was just that—a statement.

And it was true. When did he ever pass out on a treat, most especially if it were advantageous to him? Being a spy was synonymous to being an opportunistic sneak—you learn to use everything you are offered and not waste it. When there was something that would grant him a benefit—like a mission that would give him more pay, or a mission that would make it possible for him to see his parents, and his promotion at his field—Matthew was first in line for it. And if he wasn't, he would be contemplating it, trying to see what he could make of the opportunity. Being an opportunistic, selfish sneak is, sadly, one thing you have to be if you want to be a good Master of Spies.

But... this?To turn Xarin's anger and weakness to his favor—to misuse it?It sounds so... sick.But if he had agreed to her temptations and suggestions—if he had talked back like the charming Master of Spies that he was that could trick anyone to giving him anythingsomething might have happened. Only, he resisted it.

Matthew turned back to his documents and tried to look and sound detached as well. "I respect Xarin," he said, firmly. "She stuck with me in my lowest, and so now I do the same to her when she is at her worst. I wouldn't even dream of imposing myself with her. I wouldn't touch a woman unless she wanted it. It's not... it's not an honorable thing, right?"

Heath stopped what he was working on to give Matthew a puzzled look. Honor wasn't exactly a word Heath imagined fit for a spy, a liar and thief by profession, and most of all the Master Spy, the biggest liar of them all. Anko herself would take pride in the fact that she never knew the meaning of the word. "...And so you have never forced yourself on a woman?" Heath asked, curiously.

"Never," Matthew said, confidently.

"And you have never charmed and bedded a woman for the sake of your work? To get information out of her?"

Matthew's confidence shook a little. "…They wanted it. That doesn't count. It wasn't by force."

"…What if Xarin wants it?"

That suggestion caught Matthew off-guard. He was silent, mouth agape at the suggestion that was preposterous and nothing else for him.

Xarin... wants it? That was just ridiculous, she wouldn't, she'd not—

Matthew shook his head to himself. "That is impossible. That was out of spite—some game. People do silly things they'll regret later out of spite. And I don't want to be part of that regret—I don't want any part in it at all."

Heath, however, clearly saw how Matthew just evaded his original question, and so the wyvern knight repeated it. "For a second, just imagine that she wants it. Would you?"

Imagine!Matthew began laughing to himself, not being able to think of the images that Heath was suggesting. Xarin! Me! Damn it, I can't even believe that she was a bathhouse whore in her past life. All the more the reason why I can't imagine her actually wanting to fuck with me. She's not the kind to—

But then he remembered her bathing in the streams, the slow, inviting way she soaped herself, that damned way she crossed one leg over the other, and that engaging, almost passionate stare of hers. She still has it in her. If she didn't, then Erik Laus wouldn't have been hooked on her. Erik was a scoundrel; he liked easy women, he wouldn't even consider pursuing a deadly beauty like Xarin—so whoever Erik desired was not the Xarin that Matthew knew at all. It was different. Another her.

And what if that other her-the whore who learned to use her body and men's desire to her advantage—wants him?

Fuck. I'd drop everything and just damn take her clothes off and abandon reason.

Matthew turned, and realized that Heath was staring at him, and with that he knew that he was silent for too long. What would it mean if he admitted that he was, honestly, going to abandon reason if Xarin ever showed signs that she wanted him? It's a treat. A blessing, even. No one says no to blessings and opportunities; they might never come again. That was how spies think. Always treat everything as if there was just one chance, as if it were never happening again. So if it ever happened...

"If it were you, would you?" Matthew suddenly turned the question back at Heath. "If a woman ever came onto you like that, would you take the chance? Even if you know it's not done out of love and that it might be wrong?"

Heath immediately looked away and turned back to his preoccupation with his belongings. "I wouldn't do that," Heath said, a little flustered, remembering Anko, and thus knowing that he was lying through his teeth. "I'd try to do what's right."

"Then I guess I would, too," Matthew said. But you and I both know we're lying.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

FOUR DAYS LATER

He was either going to be thankful for this decision, or utterly regret it later. He couldn't tell which was more likely to happen. All he knew was that somehow, this might help her.

"How long will this be?" Heath asked. The two of them were alone again, Xarin out to the village.

"A few days, maybe," Matthew said. "Won't be a week. Place isn't pretty far, lucky for me."

"And you'll go by yourself? Why not have one of your spies do it?"

Matthew pondered on the question himself. "…Firstly, my spies in Bern aren't that many to freely order around as I'd wish. They're tied to their places. I happen to be the nearest out of all of them, so I thought why not."

Heath only stared at him blankly, as if waiting for the real answer.

Matthew smirked and came out with his real reason. "This is an important thing. I can't just let any spy go there and possibly botch it, right? It has to be the best."

"But why are you even going to…? Someone might…" Heath shook his head to himself as he nearly stumbled over his next words. "Someone might recognize you. You'll be in Bern territory once you go down the mountains. Anko has spies everywhere in Bern. If any of them recognize you, you'll be taken in."

Matthew shrugged. He knew the hazards, he was aware of them, and he knew that he wasn't exactly in friendly terms with the Bernese Master Spy—war was still looming in the air, and the head of a Lycian Master Spy would fetch any Bernese a good reward.

"…I care for her," was all that Matthew said. "It's the only way I can repay her for everything good she's done for me. If I don't do this for her, Heath, it'll haunt me, too. And I don't like my sleep being bothered by something I didn't do."

O0o0o0o0o0o0o

He almost headed out, but when he was about to, until Heath chased him with a question.

"…Are you in-love with her?"

Matthew just left, letting the question hang in the air.

0o0o0o0o0o0

BERN | Somewhere in Liestal

It took Matthew a day and a half to actually find out where the man lived. He actually did well for himself, as his informant told him. The guy had a farm, had animals-horses and sheep, had a nice, warm stone home, and a few servants of his own, to boot. It was a relatively sunny day and the servants were out and about, tending to the plots and the animals.

Matthew then managed to pick out the man he was tall, almost lanky, but his arms were muscular. His built was typical of an assassin—like Matthew himself. He was tending to one of the horses, stroking its black mane while looking over his servants. There was no tension on his face-none of the usual tension that most assassin had even after they had left the field for years. He looked... content. Happy, even.

And then sounds of voices and laughter came, and from within the stone house a woman came, beautiful enough-certainly on par with Xarin-holding a laughing toddler in his arms, followed by another boy in his teens, looking a lot like the man. The man turned to them, talked with them, and ended in a fit of laughter with them. And despite not knowing them, despite their joy, Matthew couldn't help but bite down on his lip and feel awful about seeing this.

If Xarin was here to see this, she would be crushed.

0o0o0o0o0

Matthew decided to approach him as soon as his wife left. He stood by the fences of the man's land, and very quickly as that the man noticed him, and walked up to him.

"Anything I can help you with?" his voice was deep and smooth, there was almost a musical tone to it.

A lot, actually. There's a lot you can help me with here. "I'm looking for the land of sirAlexander? Someone told me it was here."

"It is here," the man said. "Is there anything you need from this place?"

Matthew listened closely to his voice-there was something in his tone and intonation that seemed familiar. He began to rack his mind for a person he knew who sounded the same, who talked the same, but when his mind failed him after three seconds, he gave up. "I'm looking for the man who owns the place. Would that be you, sirAlexander?"

"…Yes," the man said, with only a bit of hesitation as he eyed Matthew from head to toe. "…That would be me. And please, call me 'Alex'. 'Alexander' is simply too long. Anything you need?" he asked again.

And so, Matthew walked up to him, and simply told him:

"I'm here because of Black Fang."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Urgently, Alex led Matthew into the stables, and for the first time Matthew saw this man rattled. Black Fang was the magic word. This man had long forgotten how it is to be an assassin, all traces of that past erased in his face, and Matthew had brought it back and reminded him of it. Matthew was ruining his peace, threatening his life, just by saying two words: Black Fang.

"I left Fang well over twenty years ago," Alex said, quickly jumping into explanation, already defending himself. "What is it that you want? Anything anyone possibly wants to know about the organization is already out in the open. I was gone from the organization before they even began to act like mercenaries out of control. And anyone I've done ill against because of Fang, I've paid back-"

"Relax," Matthew said. "That was a ruse. I'm here because of something else."

The expression on Alex's face slowly changed into puzzle. Something else? What could be worse than a confrontation about your assassin past? And who was this man who knew him and his connections to the Fang? Alex crossed his arms to himself and stood there patiently, as if waiting for Matthew to come out with the truth.

Matthew took a deep breath before saying, "Ever remember a girl with brown hair, hazel eyes, someone you rescued from Landskworn well over twenty years ago...?"

Alex's sandy brown, almost golden eyes, flickered in realization. "...Xarin?" he asked. "Are you here because of Xarin?"

Matthew simply nodded.

The man let go of a breath he was holding on to, and then smiled—a forced little smile, Matthew saw. "...Xarin," he said, his voice having a little shiver when he said the name, as if he had forbidden himself from saying it years and years ago. "What about her? And how are you related to her?"

"I'm her..." Matthew's words trailed off and he hesitated. This was something he had not decided on before. Friend sounded too obscure. And to go along with his cover in Bern that he was Xarin's husband sounded like a risky thing to say when he was faced with the man that was her lover.

"I'm someone who cares for her," Matthew decided to say, "...a lot."

The man stared at him long and hard and his eyes swept over Matthew, and Matthew knew that look: the look of a spy sizing up another man, trying to decide who he was in less than a second. And then Alex came out with his deduction. "You're her lover."

If you say so, Matthew told himself.

It seemed, with that question out of the way, the awkwardness was over for Alex. He turned to the horses in the stables and picked up stacks of hay to feed them. He looked a little detached now, a little more prepared, as if he had waited for this day and knew it was coming. "How is she?" he asked, all too normally—too normally. "Been a while since I saw her. Is she living well? Have any kids yet?"

How casually Alex was taking this offended Matthew. "...How about you tell me what you think happened to her and answer your own question?" Matthew said, the threat in his voice very clear.

Alex, however, was unfazed by it. He looked every bit like he had prepared for this day, like in his wildest dreams he considered that it would happen. "Well, judging by the looks of you, it seems she found someone to take care of her," Alex said, mirroring Matthew's slight annoyance in his tone. "I think she did well. I always imagined she'd marry a good man and have children and work in a pub she owned with her husband. Isn't that what happened to her?"

No. She clung on to your memory. She chose to live as a spy and assassin just like you were, back in the days. And forget about her getting married and having children. She shuts everyone out and it's your fault. "Not even remotely close," Matthew muttered between gritted teeth.

The air around them was becoming thick of impending confrontation. Alex took a breath of it and said, "Tell me, then. Tell me what happened to her."

"You tell me what you did to her first," Matthew said, his annoyance clear in his tone. "Twenty damn years and Xarin still remembers you. Twenty damn years and she still holds on to you. What did you do to her? Whatever made you that special?" For every statement, Matthew took a step towards Alex, eventually cornering the other man to the wall. "What did you do? Of all people, why you?"

For a second, Alex looked frightened like any man being confronted by an offended stranger. But the effect of having have worked in Black Fang for a good number of years remained with him—he managed to stay as calm as an assassin after a kill. "I wouldn't know what she saw in me. I wouldn't know why she'd want me or still want me. She's the only one who could answer that."

Matthew bit his lip as he began to pull himself from the conversation and analyze it. He was sure that somewhere along the lines, he was beginning to sound stupid. He had to make a point and he had to hammer it down, but exactly what it was and how he was going to say it eluded him when all his own anger for this man was getting in the way. He wanted to argue with him about everything he had done to Xarin, and make him pay for all of it and regret all of it.

But then he remembered, that was not his point. It was never about revenge to begin with. Xarin never wanted revenge. She needed closure, not revenge.

Matthew took a step back and thought carefully on what he was going to say next.

"...Why did you leave her, all those years ago? Why did you say that you were going on an assignment but not say that you were never coming back? Why did you disappear? ...Tell me the truth."

There was a long silence, and to Matthew, Alex almost looked as if a man thinking up of a clever story on the spot to save himself. But then he admitted, "...I was already married to another woman when I met Xarin. I just... I didn't know how to tell her. I didn't expect to fall in-love with her. I just wanted to help her. But I grew those feelings and later realized that I couldn't stand by it anyway so the best thing I could do for her was disappear. I believed she'd be better off without me. I still do. I don't regret my decision. I'd have ruined her life if I stayed. Leaving was the best thing I could do for her."

I didn't expect to fall in-love. Matthew picked out those words from Alex's statement and felt sick to know that he was blaming love for all the mistakes he did. That was sick. Even made sicker by the fact that this man was Fang—someone who lived in the shadows like a spy, like Matthew. Their kind simply did not blame emotions for their errors. Every error was your own, you didn't blame it on something like love.

"You shouldn't have loved her in the beginning," Matthew said. "If you were going to leave her and hurt her like that, you shouldn't have loved her to begin with—you shouldn't even be given the right to love. What did she do to deserve betrayal? Did Xarin ever do anything wrong?"

"It's not her—it's me," Alex said, as if that explained everything. Matthew rolled his eyes. He was a spy, he was a man, he knew that "it's not her, it's me" were the choice words of every man when they were leaving their sweethearts. He had used those very words himself to many, many women in his past, half the time meaning them, half the time only using it as an excuse.

Alex seemed to have read the disbelief in Matthew's face. "I had to leave her!" he said, stressing on the words to make a point. "I had no choice. And you make it sound like it's my fault I fell in-love with her back then. Who chooses love? Who knows when it'll come? Certainly not me. When I realized that Xarin and I weren't going to work out, it was too late. I was already in too deep. I didn't know how to break it to her. So I did what I thought would work out for the best, for both of us."

Matthew felt the muscles of his arms tighten as he clenched his fists. For the best. For the both of us. This man should listen to what he's saying! "So you lied to her," Matthew said, his voice cold. "So you lied to her so you wouldn't have to explain. So it wouldn't be harder for you. It was the best for you, but not for her. You never thought about her, about what she'd feel once she found out it was a lie."

Alex simply stared at Matthew, as if extremely puzzled. "You don't know me so you can't tell," he told Matthew. "And why dig this up? It's been twenty years. Why are you making your own ghost? You're with her now, aren't you? She loves you now. Everything probably turned out fine—why are you doing this ridiculous—"

"Because everything didn't turn out fine," Matthew said, through gritted teeth. "And there's something Xarin needs that only you can give."

"And what is that?"

"Closure," Matthew said. "So do me a favor and give her an explanation. Do me a favor and tell her the truth."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"I want you to do something for me," Matthew said, his words sounding more like an order rather than a request.

The man beside him, holding a pen nib and parchment in his hand, turned to him, and gave a puzzled look.

"Don't lie to her," Matthew said. "Xarin's had enough of lies, and all she wants is the truth. Don't tell her some crap that you still thought of her and you still loved her when it's not true."

Alex was quiet and contemplative, but then he said, "So, you'd rather she believe that she spent all her years nursing a special place in her heart for a jerk and feel stupid and hurt for it."

"She's been feeling stupid and hurt for decades. She can handle that," Matthew said. He only realized after that that was an insensitive, almost wrong thing to say, and he almost took it back, but he decided not too.

It's trust. I trust Xarin is tough and she can handle the truth. If anything else, Xarin is tough and dependable. "She's not as fragile as you think she is," Matthew said. "She can handle a bit of pain."Thanks to you.

"..I'd never dream of hurting someone I loved," Alex said, after a long, contemplative silence. They had stopped walking to look at each other and discuss this, man to man. "I'd rather bear with the guilt of lying than hurt them."

"And I'd rather the person I loved do anything but lie to me," Matthew retorted. "Because lies are unstable. They create an illusion for a while—for a few days, or maybe for a year, or maybe longer than that—but illusions don't last. No matter how well thought of the lie is, it'll crack and vanish. And when that illusion is gone, what do you leave the person who believed it? You leave her with less than she had in the beginning."

Alex gave Matthew a disbelieving look, and Matthew felt like he were staring at himself—the side of him that was a spy through and through, the side of him that relied on skillfully made lies and lived them and breathed them and offered them to anyone who might listen.

"...I'll say what I want to," Alex said. "I'll figure what I should tell her."

"If you lie to her again, I'll hunt you down again and drag you back here to apologize all over again," Matthew warned. "Save us all from that and tell the damn truth."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Matthew never expected him to agree to his request. But wasn't Matthew Lycia's Master of Spies? Couldn't he convince anyone to his side, simply with words? Or if not words—threats. Or if not threats—violence. Matthew had every trick up his sleeve.

Grudgingly, Alex let Matthew into his home for a moment so Matthew could refresh himself before he set out again. Alex thought, as most men think, that when you leave things alone and ignore them, they disappear and people forget about them and they become nothing. Xarin was living proof that it wasn't true. Twenty years, and she hadn't forgotten a single thing. People forgive, but they don't forget so easily. Even when he had forgiven Jaffar for what the former-Fang had done to Leila, he had never completely forgotten about it. But it had stopped bugging him, only because he has confronted Jaffar about it, and they had settled their differences, and understood each other. There was a closure, an ending.

"Alex," a female voice called, interrupting his thoughts, sounding stern and urgent, and Matthew heard it as he stood in front of the wash basin and the mirror and splashed his face. "Alex!" the woman called again, even more urgently, sounding like an irate lord screaming for a servant . Matthew felt himself smirk at this situation. And this is why I am glad I am not married. No one to yell at me like that.

His thoughts were interrupted when he felt a sharp nudge to his rib, and surprised, Matthew immediately turned to whoever elbowed him. He found Alex's brown-haired wife looking up at him, looking more surprised than he was. She stared at him, speechless.

He stared at her, too. Gave her that head-to-foot gaze that he knew he gave when he studied people—new people, important people, people to spy on, to get information out of, or just people you looked at because you had nothing to do. She was short—shorter than Xarin by a few, and definitely shorter than him. Her hair was a deep, dark brown, pulled away from her face. She was caramel-skinned from the sun, her build strong like a woman of the commons who carried her children and took care of the cows and sheep. She was curvy—certainly curvier than Xarin—and when she stood she did so proudly, even as she gawked at him that moment.

He stared back, trying to figure what that Alex person saw here that Xarin didn't have.

"...Alex?" the woman asked, a whisper.

"He's trying to roast some ham over the fire, I think," said Matthew.

The woman only nodded a little, while slowly backing away from Matthew, as if she had seen a ghost. "He... He didn't tell me he had a guest."

I imagine he doesn't tell you a lot of things.

"I came unannounced. I'm sorry about that," Matthew said, trying to sound apologetic, kind, or relatable—but he knew he failed. He saw it in the way she crept away from him, as if she knew that in his head, he was comparing her to another woman, judging what he saw. He could have tried to charm her, to make her open up to him so that he'd have a better view of who she was—but then he realized that he didn't care. His opinion was unchanged that this guy was a jerk, and trying to even begin to understand him and why he chose this woman over Xarin would nowhere be near pleasurable to him. He just wanted to drag the guy back to Xarin to apologize, get it over and done with, and forget he'd ever did this.

"Alex didn't tell me he had a brother," the woman suddenly said, and then left to find her husband.

Matthew watched her leave, puzzled by the statement. But then he turned back to the washing basin and the wall mirror, and realized why.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

It never left Matthew's mind, the fact that she mistook them as brothers. With small, careful glances—lest the other man notice it and interpret it as something else—he looked at him, and realized one thing.

They did look alike. They had the same eyes with the same sand-brown color that almost glowed golden depending on the lighting, or their mood. They had the same built, the same complexion, the only difference was one was taller than the other.

But the worst was when Matthew closed his eyes as the other man talked—and then he realized that they sounded the same laughter that almost always sounded stifled and controlled. He tended to enunciate the same words, follow the same tone, and the guy even had that same annoying habit of his—how he made those silly involuntary hand gestures as he talked. It's like he's a copy of me, in more than one way.

But then Matthew realized one thing. To Xarin, the guy wasn't a copy of him. It was him who was the copy, the duplicate of an original.

Do you know what my problem is, Matthew? It's you!

It's you, because you have the same eyes with him. It's you, because you sound just like him. It's you, because you make me remember things I've sworn to forget. You're his ghost.

So all the anger Xarin ever had for me was because of this man?

And maybe, all the kindness she'd ever shown him was because of the same man as well. Xarin was his most loyal spy, the one he depended on the most, the one that put up with him the most and didn't hesitate to help whenever he needed it; she did her duty wordlessly. She was distant, yes, she never told anything of herself too much and never really let them be friends, so Matthew always wondered why exactly she unfailingly helped him out and was loyal to him even if she didn't seem to want to be friends with him.

And maybe this is my answer. Because I look like the person she used to love. All her kindness, just because I look like someone she knew. If I didn't have the same sand-brown hair and eyes, the same built, the same complexion, the same sound as this man, I would be no one to her, like she treats almost everyone.

Matthew wondered if he were lucky, to look like someone else, or if it was his curse.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Matthew knew how it took a while for anyone to actually realize and admit that he or she looked like someone. Xarin had given him the features and gave him mental images of this man, but he had never thought, not in the slightest, that he would look like him. If Alex's wife had never mistaken one for the other, Matthew might never had realized at all.

He wished he had never realized at all.

He wondered if Alex realized that they looked alike. He must have. He had told his wife that Matthew was his brother. He must've seen their similarities. Matthew wondered if Alex found it odd, that the man Xarin stood by after he left her looked a lot like him. Did it bother him, or did it secretly make him feel smug about himself?

"You've never told me how you met her," Alex said, an observation. "You know everything that happened between me and Xarin but you've never told me how you met her."

Matthew sighed, and thought back on the day he had first met Xarin. She had managed to find Ostia's castle town and had asked around specifically for him. She had wanted to receive his endorsement to be a spy of Ostia, and had become aware of him because of their mutual friend, Kumiko. Honoring Matthew's friendship with Kumiko, Matthew decided to help her, giving word about her to the then-Duke of Ostia and explaining a bit of why a Bernese spy could be useful to them. But there was nothing to tell of about that—Xarin was no one special, just a colleague. He only got to know her better after Leila died...

"...My girlfriend died," Matthew decided to say, "The one I had before Xarin. She was murdered and I... didn't know what to do. I was angry. I wanted revenge. And at the same time, I was lonely... That was when I... met her."

Matthew pictured the story in his mind. He imagined that Leila had died, and he remembered how it felt. He would have gotten drunk in every tavern in Bern and maybe one day, out of loneliness, he went to a bathhouse and picked out Xarin for her steely, cold eyes that made her look like she knew pain, like he did.

"And then I... I cried," Matthew said, his voice cracking as he spoke, as if he were about to cry like he was saying. Alex listened intently, unaware that Matthew was lying through his teeth. Matthew had forgotten that he was lying as well. "I cried afterwards and she noticed and she just... she told me she knew how it felt. Losing someone you love. You cry because no matter what you do, no matter who you replace her with, you always end up wishing it were her."

Alex was quiet, imagining the story Matthew was telling in his head as well. "And after that, I kept seeing her again. Kept coming back to the bathhouse to see her because I wanted to see someone who understood and knew what I felt. And then eventually I realized I had fallen for her. I asked her if she would live with me, and she agreed. That's how it is."

Alex nodded to himself, as if finding sense in Matthew's story. "And that has been, what? Fifteen years ago? And you've had no children yet?"

Matthew let out a little laugh, trying to imagine Xarin with a child in her arms. But then his laughter immediately vanished when he had tried to imagine why Xarin would deny him of children. "For a while we were busy," Matthew said, "and for a while we agreed that we couldn't afford to have extra mouths to feed just yet. And so we took precautions. But when the time came that I wanted children, she still didn't want them. She refused to sleep with me and... and I didn't understand why."

There was a small silence as Matthew took a breath and closed his eyes, trying to imagine the scene in his mind, the lies that somehow sounded and felt so real. "And then I found out that she had lied to me all this time. I had thought you were dead, Alex. She told me you were dead. But then she told me you were actually alive and the thought kept her awake at night, kept her from fully moving on. A part of her is still waiting for you, Alex. A part of her is still hoping you'd come back."

Again there was silence, and Matthew closed his eyes to play the made-up scenes in his mind, to imagine himself in the roles he had given himself and Xarin. He wondered what he would have said, and what she would have said back, or what he would have done, and what she would have done in return. They were lies and they were make-believe, but when Matthew thought long and hard on them, they felt real. His pain, his love, his jealously—it all began to feel so real.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

BERN-SACAE BORDER | A log cottage

When he had stepped up to the doorway of their log cottage, he felt like a man returning to his home after over a year, rather than a man who had been gone for only a few days. When Xarin walked towards him, looking relieved but also looking like she were about to scold him the next second, Matthew felt like a lost, wayward husband who was finally coming home to his wife.

He walked up to her and grinned widely, and then—muchto her surprise—he took her in his arms and held her tight.

"I'm back," he told her.

In shock, she was unable to offer him any resistance. He effortlessly managed to squeeze her in his arms, and he relished the feel of her, even if she did not return his embrace at all

"Don't be mad at me," Matthew told Xarin, face looking grave but apologetic. "I knew you'd hate me for this. But I know that you've also secretly been waiting for this moment." And then he put a hand to his trouser pockets, producing a slip of parchment and giving it to her.

She took the paper and pulled it open. And then she froze in her place and began to weep silently.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o

He put his arms around her the entire night as she quietly sobbed beside him. Matthew said nothing, knowing how words could mess things up as much as they could help. He lie awake on their bed, looking up at the wooden ceiling and thinking how odd Xarin's sobs sounded against the cold silence. She never really cried. Until now.

So, she could be soft and fragile, too. He remembered the Xarin that Alex had described to him, and the Xarin that he had seen today. He felt himself hold her tighter, as if trying to protect this newfound side of her that he discovered.

"...Why did you do it?"

Xarin collected herself from her sobs to ask him that—the question he'd been asking himself ever since he started that little journey. Why did she have to ask? The end result was all that matter—she had her closure. She had her truth.

"You needed it," was what Matthew found to say. "I saw what you needed. I'd be cruel if I didn't try to get it for you."

She gave him a silence that he just knew meant that she was not satisfied with his answer. Of course. He made it sound like he pitied her, and he went out of his way just out of pity, just because he was kind. Which he wasn't exactly. He would never go this far for someone unless that someone mattered a lot. Maybe for his family, or for Leila, or for his closest friends and allies like Hector.

"...Because you're the only one I have right now," Matthew suddenly said, eyes still up to the ceiling, but he held onto Xarin's arm and pulled her closer. "Because fifteen years ago you did the same thing for me. You went out of your way and tried to tell me that revenge over Leila's death was a petty thing. You told me the truth of who killed her—but only to teach me a lesson. Why would you go so far and care back then, for me? I was no one. Just some colleague. I wasn't even your superior back then."

"Because you..." Xarin began to answer, but then the words faded, as if she thought against replying. Matthew had a good bet of what was on the tip of her tongue, though.

Because you reminded me of him.

"And now we're stuck together, and you're the only one I can trust or depend on fully. And when I saw you in pain, I just couldn't help it," Matthew continued, not even feeling his words come out of his mouth—he was too bothered to hear himself. He didn't even know why he had a certain confusion about this, why at certain times he would feel spiteful and... jealous.

Jealous! Yes, jealous was exactly the word. But what was there to be jealous of? He definitely had the upper hand against Alex: he was richer, he was more connected, he had the most prestigious title coveted by all spies in Ostia, and he was probably twice or thrice more educated. What was there to be jealous of?

He had a girl who loved him and held on to him even after all the shit and lies he put her through. He had someone who was willing to throw away everything for him.

He had Leila, and Leila loved him to her dying breath, but that was well over decades ago. And now—now!—the idea of having a woman who would love him and throw everything for him sounded tempting.

I'm jealous of the fact that he came into Xarin's life before I did. If I had met her earlier—if I were him—I wouldn't even dream of hurting her. I would never lie to her.

And maybe then I wouldn't have to be someone's shadow. Then I would know that everything Xarin did for me was because she liked me, not because of who I looked like.

Then maybe, she would take me seriously. She wouldn't just see me as someone who looks like her first love. She wouldn't just treat me as some man she uses just to show that she's happy and that she did better—I wouldn't be a substitute, I wouldn't be a lie. I don't want to remain a lie. I want her to consider me as a possibility.

...Damn, I am in-love with Xarin.

Cripes, I am in-love with Xarin! And that is why I am so jealous! I want to be him instead! I wish I were him! Damn!

The realization made him shudder. Slowly he turned to look at Xarin, who was lying beside him, eyes closed, as if trying to get some rest. She was so vulnerable in her pain that she allowed herself to be this close to him. He stared at her, and considered his feelings. Should I tell her? What would happen if I told her? What if she doesn't feel the same? What if she would never take me seriously?

He took deep breaths as he tried to organize his rattled mind, and that was when graver things fell into their places. He couldn't just tell Xarin that he loved her. They were colleagues. They were spies. They were in a flawless professional partnership and trying to turn it into a romantic relationship might just ruin everything that they currently had. They were in the middle of war. They were in Bern territory. He had duties to his spies and she was one of them. She had only recently had closure with a man that she had held onto for twenty years. She needed time to get over this event. It was not the right time.

"Matthew."

He stirred, and he realized that she was staring at her now, looking into his eyes with her own glossy eyes. She looked so vulnerable now that it made him hold her tighter and closer. Dammit, Xarin. I am in-love with you.

And maybe that was why, when their faces came close to each other, he found himself staring at her lips, contemplating a kiss. He looked at her eyes and found that she was fixated on him, too, as if she were waiting for what he was going to do.

But then he blinked, and with that the desire that fogged his eyes and his mind seemed to clear up. She's in pain. She was crying. She needs time. If I kiss her, I just signed my own death warrant. I'll be nothing but a substitute.He looked down at her, at Xarin—and he swore she looked magical that moment, that every fiber of his being was telling him that the right thing to do was kiss her, damn everything. But he bit back his impulse and just whispered:

"Well… this is awkward."

He knew, though, that awkward would be the last word he'd use to describe the scene. It was magical. . It was a moment when he knew that a connection, a spark suddenly grew. Xarin knew it, and she was not resisting it; she was waiting for the next move, the next scene. And when she closed her eyes as invitation, he could not resist.

Her lips were soft; she almost tasted sweet. Her kiss, oddly, was not as fierce or strong or cold as Xarin was as a person; it was warm and it yielded to him, only reacting smoothly to the advances his lips made.

Damn, why are we doing this. Oh, yes, I am in-love with her. We are in-love.

He briefly pulled away from her to catch his breath, but he never pulled away too much; he was still close enough that the tip of his nose still touched hers. He could hear her breathing. She looked soft and vulnerable and warm underneath him, nothing like the woman he knew for almost sixteen years now.

Maybe this is how she was with Alex.

And with that one random thought, the spell broke, and Matthew woke up from its illusion.

He backed away from her, ungracefully, like a frightened cat skittering away from a ghost. This is unreal. I can't believe I did this. And in a few seconds confusion sank into Matthew—he felt ashamed of himself and angry at himself and her and him but agonized of why he had to deprive himself of something that was so good.

Xarin sat up, and looked just as confused as him.

"…I'm not him," Matthew said, a whisper, his explanation. "I want you to know that I'm not him."

A cold silence fell between them.

"…I know," Xarin said. Her voice was tinged with disappointment.

Disappointment for what?Because I stopped? Or because she wished I was someone else?

"…I only …look like him. A little. …Okay. A lot." Matthew said.

"…I know." The disappointment was still there, only this time, her voice had a little shiver to it, as if she were going to burst into tears any moment.

And Matthew knew that he was going to break his heart if he asked her this—because he knew what she could say—but he had to ask it anyway. "You're my most trusted, Xarin. The one I depended on the most, the one I knew I could count on. You were kind and loyal to me even when I didn't demand your respect, when you were cold and spiteful to everyone else. Do I… Do I owe all that to him?"

"Why are you asking me that, Matthew?" she looked up to him, with that confused, helpless look, tinged with pity, as if she felt bad for him because he just had to ask her that—because she knew her answer.

Why did he have to ask, anyway?Xarin had a point. Here he was, lucky to be in Xarin's good graces when she was grouchy to everyone else, lucky to receive her loyalty—and he still had to question it. He knew he was going to make his own ghost if he pushed on with the question, he knew he was only going to create something that he would be insecure about. Something to be jealous of, something to be angry about. But he was already jealous and angry to begin with. But if she answered his question and said yes, that would drive him to be more jealous, to be angrier. To question everything she ever did for him, all her loyalty, and call it fake. To be angry at her and him and himself.

He let the question go.

"I'm not… I'm not him," Matthew said, breathing a little, trying to calm himself a little. "I'm not someone else," he said, more firmly, as if to make her understand his point. "I'm one of me. I can't be someone else. I can't be someone's substitute. I'm sorry about what happened, Xarin. We got carried away."

Xarin only stared at him, unable to say anything.

"I've… I've been there, Xarin," Matthew said. "I've been so hurt and angry and confused that I wanted to hurt anyone badly. Or felt so desperate I just wanted to fuck anyone. Or so sad and alone I wanted to grab any girl and turn her into a… substitute. It never works. You regret all of it later. You feel worse because you know that the truth is that you wish it were someone else."

She was silent. She only gave a small, barely visible nod that Matthew knew meant another "I know". Because sometimes, you do things and you know their consequences, but you still do them anyway, wanting to do anything just to feel better, even temporarily.

"You're awesome, Xarin," he said. "And there were too many times that you were stronger than me. You'll get through this, and I'll always be here if you ever need any support. But not… but not in that way." He sighed and decided to get up, taking the bedcovers and pulling them up to cover Xarin, who sat there in bed. "I think I'll just take a little walk outside. I need some air. You should get some sleep," he said.

He was surprised that she suddenly took his wrist before he could walk away. "It's late," she said. "It's dark outside. It might be dangerous."

He smiled a little, at how somehow, she was still concerned for him. "I'll be just outside. If something happens, I've got a you, the best Ostian field spy, to run to," Matthew said. "I can handle it. …Goodnight."

Goodnight, Xarin. I love you.

End of Chapter.

0o0oo0o0o0o0o0

Author's notes:

Bring on the haters. I warned you this was a Matthew chapter with self-indulgent fluff. As I said in the header, I don't entirely attest to the quality of this chapter. It needs so much more critical editing and I have already edited it a lot. There's a whole lot of scenes I deleted—philosophical talks between Matt and Heath, and in the original the Alex dude actually comes back with Matt to face Xarin, and Xarin and Matt keep up with the act that they're married. Matthew ends up feeling awkward in it because he figures Xarin was keeping the act up only to show Alex that she did better; it felt to Matt that she was using him as a shield or to make the other man jealous. That's the original flow of things, and thus those solidify Matthew's stance on why he didn't make a move on Xarin even when he realized that he loved her, but I cut them out because they were TOO LONG. I also got the feel that the story was starting to drag. If anyone wants to read how the 'longer' version went on and think it seems cooler, I could send you a copy, I still have it.

I also wanted to delete the scene where Matt tells a made-up story of how she met Xarin to Alex, but I found that there was a powerful side to it and is a point where Matt starts realizing that he's starting to feel something real for her.

Here there are still scenes that I could delete or shorten, and some scenes that needed smoother transitions to the next ones. Matthew is supposed to be confused and puzzled for the most part of this chapter, so for the most part I think I jumped into the emotion so much that I became confused as well, and so my writing ended up seeming scattered in parts. The reason this chapter took so long to post even if the bulk of it was typed out was because of the painful editing I had to do. I edit myself. I should, because I've been editing other's works for years, but editing other's work is fairly very easy compared to editing yourself. Sorry. But I also know I am here on FF.N where people really read for the plot and will hardly criticize you for the things I fret about. I'm just paranoid, sorry.

This chapter is my homage to Matthew, who is one of the characters who brought life to my fics—from this to The Journey. While I've ran into other thieves in Fire Emblem, like Colm or Sothe or Chad, Matthew still stands apart from me and is special. There's something so casual and normal about him but at the same time, there's also something extraordinary and mysterious. Writing a guy like Matthew always gives me so much joy and inspiration, and I'm glad when readers tell me that I write him well. And when someone tells me that I DON'T write him well, I go through pains to make sure everything is OK. I remember one time I wrote an old chapter for this fic and I got a critique that I wrote Matthew wrong. I edited the entire thing and re-wrote it. If I get the same critique here, I will do the same thing. I'll edit the entire chapter or take it down. Such is my devotion to Matt.

At the header of the fic I shared DarkBlaziken's comment about her dream guy that is not perverted, and that is basically the prompt for the majority of this chapter. I think men are still mostly sexual creatures and society paints them that way, so it's unreal for anyone to expect a guy to not be affected/tempted by everything he sees (like gorgeous women on the street or on tv) but the nobility of a guy can be seen when he chooses to respect that woman that he sees, even if she somehow doesn't even respect herself. Matthew does this repeatedly in this chapter with Xarin. He doesn't deny his desire, but he chooses to shrug it off, for her sake. But I figure, with Matthew, while he's a spy by profession and the job forces him to ignore some ethics and moral standards, there's still a bit of chivalry in there. I think Matthew's supports and script points to someone who's a nice guy at heart. What strikes me the most is in his support with Oswin, he says, "At least Lord Hector isn't capable of treachery, unlike Lord Uther." I think this points out that Matt, while used to underhanded things, still places value in honesty and loyalty and would prefer them if he could.

I've been told that I do one-sided romances fairly well. And I've been advised to incorporate them into the story as much as I do mutual love and admiration. This is actually my take on it. Matthew somehow suddenly realizes he is in-love with Xarin. Yay!

Yay to Jaffar aligning himself with master spies from opposing countries since who-knows-when.I think he's a pretty clever character himself.

Anyway, here are my points to ponder on for this sorta-filler chapter:

Here, ironically, we had Matthew, the spy used to immoral, underhanded things, doing a sorta chivalrous thing, contrasted by Heath, the knight who is the very image of chivalry, doing the opposite a few chapters ago(albeit with solid justifications as to why, but still, it's a contrast). Clearly, there are people who are more noble than they look. Legault also springs to mind as one who fits this role.

And here I also turn tables on Matthew, with him having to deal with being compared to another guy, when usually we have fics where he compares other girls to Leila. I imagine that after twenty years, Matthew would have learned to let go. His love for Leila is love, not an obsession, like we see with Xarin. Do you think love lets go?

We also have progress a previous question—do you hurt the person you love with the truth, or lie to save them from hurt?

Do you think Matthew's fears about making a move on Xarin after he realizes he loves her are true? Do you think, like Matt thinks, that he just "signed his own death warrant" if he made a move on her while she was clearly still not over the past relationship? Do you think Matthew's choice was wise, or stupid? (Do you prefer a guy who immediately makes his move or one that studies everything first and waits?)

If you met someone who eerily reminds you a lot of a past great love, will you try to get as close to him/her as possible or stay away?

Ciao!

-kageshoujo

EDIT: Screw it. I wrote a chapter about Matthew being someone's look-alike and Xarin growing a soft spot for him because of that, AND THEN I meet someone who looks exactly like my ex in real life, the only difference would be the height. Fate tends to play these tricks on me. I don't know if I should feel privileged or creeped out; the things I write in fiction tend to awfully happen to me in real life. Anything like this ever happen to you?

(And btw, yes, I ran away from him as fast as I could even if he was flirting with me and telling me I was cute and after my interview he waited around for me and was calling me. I ignored him and ran away before he ended up with my number. O.O I REGRET ALL OF IT! XD I should have slipped him my number! Hahaha!)

*Apparently DarkBlaziken says this is because I am "blessed by the goddess". lol. The goddess should give me a job, then.