reis cooks and is den mother dragon. (dragonskin) wrote in missions, @ 2012-12-21 17:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, npc: bremondt frietberg, plot: a knight errant, reis duelar |
i've got things to feel, to reimburse, i'm sick, i'm alone, and it's getting worse.
WHO: Celebrant Bremondt Frietberg and Reis Duelar.
WHAT: Reis makes contact after two years.
WHEN: Last night.
STATUS/RATING: Complete/Terrible (jk G). also i didn't proofread this at all SORRY
"Your excellency?" his secretary said quietly, poking her head around the heavy wooden door that separated his offices from the foyer. The Celebrant's rooms, handed down from leader to leader, were magisterial at their finest, merely opulent at their worst. Bremondt prided himself that his rooms, decorated with lush furnishings but not so much as to overwhelm a visitor, fell comfortably somewhere in the middle. He looked up from his papers when the woman peeked in, a small notepad clutched in her thin fingers. "You have a call on line one. A sphere-call, sir."
"Who is it?" He rarely received sphere-calls. They were a somewhat antiquated form of communication, with the rise of video phones and Tripe or whatever it was Banora Corp was churning out these days. Perhaps his eldest--the man preferred sphere-chatting for significant announcements. But what sort of announcement could he have now? A terror gripped Bremondt suddenly--what if something was wrong? What if his daughter-in-law's pregnancy had gone awry? What if it was one of his other children? He steeled himself. There was no point in fretting before he even had the news.
The secretary hesitated, ducked back into the foyer, and then opened his door again. "Reis Duelar, sir?"
Bremondt's hand moved to the rosary around his neck. The secretary glanced at his phone nervously. "For Hyne's sake," he said, suddenly breathless, "put her through. Put her through!"
Reis. Reis. Reis.
Suddenly she was there, a sphere of holographic light extending from the device on the edge of his desk, her face a watery reflection of the girl he half-raised. Her hair was longer; her face was weathered. There were deep, dark circles beneath her eyes. It had only been two years, but she looked so much older. He wondered, frantically, how old he must look to her. Was she holding onto some image of him in his prime, the hale, hearty 40-year-old who had taken her in as a girl? He had been holding onto one of her, he had to confess: 21 years old, bright-eyed, helping him run his home in the absence of his late wife. Before that damned knight had come in and ruined everything, everything. But here she was now, coming back to him.
"Reis," he said. His throat was collapsing. He swallowed. "You look..."
"Hello, Celebrant," she said after a moment, and the way she said his title made him shift uncomfortably in his chair. "You look very well."
"Thank you. You look as lovely as ever, Reis."
A wan smile drifted across her lips, listlessly, as if it had no particular destination in mind. She opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again. There was an indescribable bubble of relief welling up inside him, pushing at his lungs and his skin. He felt his chest expanding helplessly. He wanted to reach through the sphere and touch her hair, just to ensure she was real. "Where...what happened to you? All this time, not a word--what happened to you?
She glanced at him with a sharpness he was unused to seeing her, and he drew back involuntarily in his chair, as if she had lashed out at him. "You mean to say, you were not aware that I was kidnapped?"
"I--of course I was aware, Reis. We spent months searching for you."
"Months?" she repeated, and that smile flit across her face again, bitter and uncertain.
She was again silent, and he pushed forward. "I was so worried, Reis. We all were. The girls, myself, your friends here--"
"You revealed I was a sorceress in the midst of a war, Bremondt," she interrupted, a plea in her voice he didn't quite understand. "That was not your secret to tell!"
"I didn't--it was not my intention to harm you, you must understand--"
"Shin-Ra captured me, Bremondt! Shin-Ra! Do you know what was done to me? For two years, do you know what was done?"
He stared at the sphere. Reis's jaw was quivering, but her eyes were dry, and she looked at him without the hurt and outrage such an admission might have suggested. Guilt crept up inside him like an insect, finding a chink in his armor and leaving its eggs to hatch in his muscles and his heart. But this was not his fault. He loved her. He'd been searching for her. When he had told Alexandria she was a sorceress, it was not meant to endanger her. And he would not have had to do anything at all if she had not insisted on associating with that--that heretic. He leaned forward and steeled his jaw. "Come home, Reis. Come home where we can take care of you. Forget the past. Let me make amends."
Reis exhaled slowly. For a brief moment her eyes darted away from the sphere, but then they were back and shimmering faintly. "I will not go back," she said.
"Reis--"
"I will not go back," she said again, firmer.
The guilt-creature inside him began to change, to grow hot and frenetic inside him as it scrambled desperately along the walls of his ribs. "Then what will you do? Where will you go? The Duelar house is destitute. Your--your knight is gone, likely dead. There is nothing outside Alexandria for you."
She stared at him for a long minute. "Beowulf is here, and we are to be married as soon as can be allowed. Tonight, if the priest here is able."
Bremondt could not string together the words he wanted to say, that he felt he must say. Reis was finally back, finally well, and instead of coming home, she was going through with her foolhardy plan to marry the heretic? He looked at her like she was some stranger, someone who had possessed Reis' body and was using her pale mouth to spite him. It was a struggle to even get out a tremulous, "No."
"It is not your decision, Bremondt."
He stared at her. It was so quiet in the office he could hear the clack of his secretary's keyboard outside. Reis ducked her eyes, and the gesture was so like her old self, so demure and soft and kind, that he was able to find his voice. "You are not coming back, then. You call me only to say--you are not coming home?"
"I..." She faltered, and the creature inside him thrilled, brightly, sharply, digging its claws into his lungs--yes, yes, she's doubting her resolve, you can convince her, speak. Bremondt opened his mouth, but she plowed ahead. "I called to tell you that--that because of the things Shin-Ra did to me while I was kept there--that--" She paused again, swallowed. "Bremondt, I can no longer have children. I will never be a mother, not as I ought. I--I've made my peace with this. I am going to make my peace with this. I have made my peace with many things, including you, and what you have done."
"Reis, I did not intend--"
"Please, I must finish," she said over him. "I have forgiven you, Bremondt. I do not think you are a bad man, only misguided, and you acted out of some--some impulse I cannot understand. But because of your folly, I will never have a family of my own. That is what I called to tell you."
"Reis--"
She looked at him, her lips a thin line of anguish. "I never want to see you again, Lord Frietberg, I'm sorry."
He opened his mouth to protest, but her hand was already moving towards the screen, and a moment later, the sphere was gone.
Bremondt stared at the vacant space where his ward had been, the woman he had grown to love, the woman he had intended to marry, before everything had gone so horribly wrong. She couldn't be serious. She had always been so devoted to him, to his family. She loved him, he knew, if perhaps not as ardently as he loved her. But she could be made to return his affection, could she not? Sympathy and duty could and had turned into something more; it was hardly unheard of. And now, now she was saying she never wanted to see him again! He could forgive her blaming him; he did not require her to have children, as he already had heirs by his first wife. What could that knight offer her? He would grow weary of a wife who could not give him sons; he would not treasure her and care for her as she required, after the trauma she had apparently suffered. He had nary a gil to his name, while Bremondt was the head of the Alexandrian church, a man with enough gold to get Reis the very best of care, to set her up as a woman of her stature and kindness and beauty ought to live. She deserved a man like him. Not an errant, disgraced knight. She deserved better.
The secretary knocked primly on the door and poked her head in again. "Sir, Lord Wodring to see you?"
The Celebrant opened his mouth to dismiss both his assistant and the Templar commander--and then stopped. His mind moved quickly, as it had always done, darting from a vague idea to a possible solution within seconds. He folded his hands on his desk. "Bring him in."