Chapter Text
The declaration of war by the Archduke of Wulfenbach was met with protestations from the People's Council of Balan, who tried to claim being in the right as the Wulfenbachs had been sheltering 'enemies of the state’ all these years. The cold, furious reply was “You tried to murder children. You have killed my people. Prepare yourselves.”
Tarvek penned his request to be allowed to fight by hand, using a fountain pen that was one of the handful of possessions he had left from his past - the others being his Stradivarius that Gilgamesh had gone to great lengths to purchase on the black market, I learned, and the heirloom pocket watch that his father had pressed into his hand right before they had fled. The sigil he wore during his audience with the Archduke was the same one he'd worn during their escape, and was the one I saw the least. Tarvek passed the letter to Gilgamesh and then turned to deal with the more immediate things that was required of him in the whirlwind of days that followed.
Tarvek denied most requests for interviews, but appeared in front of the press to give a statement about how he had quietly lived as a normal civilian all the years, working as an ordinary person to pay for his sister's medical bills, posing no threat to anyone, for ‘how could I single-handedly be a threat to a government?’ He answered very few questions and ignored all questions about me, save to say, once he was pestered once too much, that we were colleagues and I was one of his precious friends, and to state in that icy, barely restrained rage-filled tone, “leave her in peace, or you will face the consequences.” His predator’s gaze raked over the gathered reporters.
Tarvek walked off stage in the silence that followed.
Naturally, a screenshot of his making that statement of being no threat was juxtaposed with one of us back to back shooting assassins very quickly became a meme. ‘With my violently protective girlfriend, on the other hand…’ was a frequent caption.
Another meme was someone doing some rather nice anime and manga style illustrations of us, and making a character sheet with it. Mine had more detail, because of the tournaments I’d won, while some of the ones made of Tarvek noted the information was out of date. There were some very beautifully drawn action scenes as well - considerably more dramatic in portrayal than it seemed to us. It was rather flattering. Tarvek found it at least an amusing distraction - though of course it was Zeetha who somehow found the Prince and Bodyguard doujinshi in the week that followed, and its variations ranging from sweetly romantic to outright (but oddly still romantic) hentai, whereupon the latter just became outright surreal. “At least the romantic ones still have me at least behave like a proper gentleman,” Tarvek sighed, resigned to the inevitable now that we’d fired up the imaginations of artists out there.
(I secretly tucked the downloads away, because maybe they’d be of help for giving me ideas when I confessed in the future. I had to believe there would be a chance.)
I endured the embarrassment because it provided a harmless distraction for Tarvek; which was exactly what Zeetha intended. But even Tarvek couldn't hide his feelings from my Dad, because one afternoon he hauled Tarvek out to the forge, heated up a bar of steel, put it on the anvil, and handed Tarvek a sledgehammer. His screams of grief and rage were punctuated by the clanging strikes of hammer against metal, with pauses for my dad to reheat the bar. It helped release a lot of the feelings that had no other safe outlet that Tarvek had begun to bury. This way they had no chance to fester and twist within his heart.
My parents moved Tarvek into the guest room across from mine while he was gone for the press statement, surprising him on his return with the statement that it was his room now. It was far more comfortable than the foldout, and sorting his clothes and setting up a few personal effects gave Tarvek a much needed distraction. It also gave him the privacy to weep in private, and a place he could retreat to if things became too overwhelming.
Out of habit and comfort Tarvek dressed in the retired office clothes he wore even at home, but only to the waistcoat. He helped with household chores, but since the house was habitually kept neat, there wasn't much of that to keep him busy. Twice a day, Gilgamesh would stop by, to update us and to bring letters of condolences. At Tarvek's suggestion a mourner’s shrine with Anevka's picture was put up in the small Roman Catholic church that was in the biggest Balanan community. It was guarded by a soldier, assigned there by the Archduke himself. The mourners and their tributes gathered there. Violetta secreted herself amongst the mourners, and told us about it.
One quiet morning, during one of the lulls in the chaos, I asked Tarvek to tell me about his home and his family. We sat side by side on the couch, leaning against each other, and he told me about anything he could remember. He sang songs he recalled his mother singing to them, in a clear operatic tenor, and how his father had sent them to live in Paris with his parents after his wife had died. “I barely knew my father, really. We’d visit him for Christmas and for a couple of weeks in the summer. I used to think he couldn't handle raising us with all of the things he needed to focus on, but now, I think he must have really treasured Anevka and I, and Father spent those years very lonely.”
A surprise was the discovery that my parents knew the bodyguards that Tarvek had hired… and that, having lost their protectorate, transferred their detail to Tarvek himself. Higgs was one of those people who seemed to stop aging at one point as if God hit a pause button, and was as relaxed as if he’d seen it all before. “We're mostly keeping the paps away, and working with His Grace’s people.”
That explained why we hadn't been bothered at all. On the other hand it seemed that only foreign agencies were really trying - when the extent of all that had happened and had been lost was understood locally, the general sentiment was commiserating and sympathetic. Even the neighbours became protective, stonewalling attempts to try to get any scraps of information from them. That was rather nice.
I was worried for Tarvek, however. He seemed to be bearing it all with stoicism, but it was different from how he had endured before. He seemed more tired, more worn down. It was understandable, given how many shocks to the system he’d endured in two days. Tarvek would often doze off while sitting upright, either at the table, or at the couch, and I found myself worriedly watching him breathe out of an eerie sense of terror that he would just slip away. I took to holding his hand, twining my fingers with his, as if I could keep Tarvek anchored to life by touch alone.
One afternoon, I found Tarvek leaning against his headboard, asleep, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations open on his lap. I removed his glasses and gently eased him down more comfortably onto the bed. I picked up the book and was about to put the bookmark in, when I stopped to read the passages Tarvek had been reading. The book was one of those older editions that had a passage per page, making it easier to find specific ones, and was well-worn and frequently read.
If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, with a recollection of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another. For neither wilt thou do anything well which pertains to man without at the same time having a reference to things divine; nor the contrary.
Had it only been weeks ago that Tarvek quoted one of the earlier passages to me? It seemed almost like a lifetime ago. I placed the book on the bedside table, with his glasses. Tarvek was a stoic man, and from some of the conversations I’d heard between my parents over the years, the most stoic of men either endured, weathering all that life’s storms sent their way, or something cracked them deep inside, a break that would never heal, and eventually take them.
I hoped with everything in me that this terrible time was a storm that Tarvek would weather, and not break from.
The call from Dr. Sun came a week and a half from the day everything went to hell. Tarvek could finally go to the hospital… and bid his sister goodbye.