WFRP: Shadows
Challenge #154 for Musemuggers
Option: Shadows
Notes: the Alice stories are on hold for the time being while I gather notes and prepare to shift gears for NaNoWriMo - so here’s a little something... Cap’n Kat is my character from a Warhammer Fantasy game - I took some liberties...but I like to think this might be some where near what could happen. Lyrics: Maria Mena | Shadows
“But if I wanted silence,
I would whisper”
He won’t even look at me. I’m not sure what I can do, I can’t take back the words I said last time we met. So, I sit and watch him...wait for something...anything.
His hands wring around each other, fidgeting in the way he does when he’s worried about something. His dark hair a halo of shadow in the candlelit room falls across his face as he looks down at the floor. The pearls in my hand are cold and stiff, I drape them on the bed next to me, without taking my eyes off of him. They slide off the covers and clatter onto the floor breaking the silence between us.
“And if I wanted loneliness,
I’d choose to go”
“I don’t know what you want Kat.” He never breaks his gaze from the dirty dusty floor of the room we’re in. But, I can hear the need in his voice without seeing it on his face.
“I wanted you Erik,” I keep my voice steady, or as steady as I can when I feel my whole word is about to fall down around me, again.
“Why, did you bring him?” He gestures behind me, to the sleeping little boy curled up under the covers.
Without looking behind me at our son Max, I stand and cross the room to the other bed and sit beside Erik. He turns his head a little to look at me, and untangles his hands from one another to place one hand on my knee.
“Did you like the gift I sent?” His voice is soft like velvet in the darkness, and I have to remind myself to be strong.
“And if I liked rejection,
I’d audition”
“No Erik, pearls did not win me over after you married. Nor did they work when you ran home after you father died. They will not work on me now, because you’re lonely.”
He sniffs disdainfully at my honesty, an attack I cannot feel remorse for. I cover his hand on my leg with one of my own, and slip my fingers inbetween his.
“But you came...” He finally looks up from the floor to search my face with his blue eyes.
“I did. It’s been too long, and the war...” I can feel my breath catch as the tears push through to the surface. Blinking them back, I break our eye contact and look over at our son curled up on the opposite bed.
“And if I didn’t love you, You would know”“I was afraid of you, for you.” I know I cannot tell him everything - but something inside me screams for me to leave and never come back. He squeezes my fingers tightly and leans foward trying to get me to look back at him.
“It was a hard war. This city will not be the same I think. I thought of you often, Kat...Katrina.”
“As often I’m sure, as you thought about your wife...”
He lifts his hand off my leg untangling our fingers as he moves. I can feel him tensing up beside me, full of bottled anger waiting for him to lose control.
“Kat, why be cruel?”
“It’s what I know, Erik. Your father died, and you could’ve come to me then. But you didn’t, did you?”
He stands and crosses the room, his leather boots shuffling on the hard floors. I follow the sound of him in the soft light as he sits down on the bed Max is sleeping in.
“You wouldn’t have had me then Kat. We both know that, what I did...”
“You did what you thought was best. As did I then, there were far worse fates I could’ve left you to.”
“And why can’t you just hold me?
And how come it is so hard?”
He chuckles quietly and turns to study the sleeping frame of our small boy. He brushes back dark hair that matches his own from Max’s face before turning back to look at me.
“We never make this easy on ourselves, do we?”
“No. That’s part of why I came to see you.” Sighing I stand and cross the room to him. Looking down at him, I can see the tiredness in his face, the hard choices he must’ve made during the war weigh on him as heavily as everything we’ve put each other through. I hold my hands down to him, and I help pull him up to stand with me.
“And Max?” He slips his arms around me slowly, and he’s close enough that those dark blue eyes of his feel like they’re boring a hole in my heart.
“He’s old enough to know who you are...to remember you now. I figured it was time you met properly.” I sink into his embrace, but have trouble relaxing completely.
“So...what now?” That soft voice is back, curling around me, making my skin tingle.
“You talk to him, in the morning. Show him your estate...be a proper father.” Even if only for a day or two, I think to myself.
“I meant us Kat. Captain Katrina, why would you really come when Genevieve is still my wife? You have to know that she won’t like this... It can’t have only been because of Max. You have another reason.” I know that I have to be honest now, I can’t make it easy on him.
“And do you like to see me broken?
And why do I still care?”
“I know that. The Countess sent me Erik.” And the truth I don’t want to tell him, is that it’s my hardest assignment...but I asked to be sent instead of the other girl in her employ.
Even in the shadows and candlelight, the surprise on his face is obvious no matter how hard he tries to hide it.
“For me?”
“For the both of you. She’s consolidating resources now that the war is over Erik, and the Hawland estate is a necessary piece.”
“So she sent her best, her most loyal assassin.” He falls onto the bed behind him unceremoniously as he tries to gather his thoughts. I nod, and lose that battle with the tears as I look down at him once more.
“I’ve bought us some time, you can be with your wife and your son for a few days. But Maximillian and I will arrive the day after next on your doorstep. You’ll spend time with him, we’ll leave...and then...”
“I could run.”
“You could try, Erik. Don’t make me have to ride after you.”
“I taught you to ride, Captain.”
“No Erik. You only think you did.”
“Poor little misunderstood baby,
No one likes a sad face”
He’ll make me ride after him, I know he will. He picks up the pearls he gave me from the floor before he leaves. I know he’ll give them to his wife for his time away, and she won’t know where he’s been. He’ll leave them, I’m confident, leave them as he packs up his horse and flees to the south.
I’ll have to leave Max here for a few days, maybe weeks, and I’m grateful that I made those arrangements before I sent the message to Erik that I’d arrived.
He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek as he leaves my room. He stuffs the pearls under his jacket as he rushes down the steps from the room. He looks back once as he reaches the bottom steps and I think he blushes before he turns back to the main room of the inn. If the stable boy did his job, my horse will be saddled and ready before I make it downstairs, so I take the time to pack what I need.
Kissing my sweet little boy on the cheek, I tell him I’ll be back soon for him. He doesn’t stir in his sleep as I leave a note on the table next to the bed, or gather my pack of supplies. I strap on my pistols, grab my black hat and jump from the window to the stable roof.
He’ll head home, and grab his things - kissing his pretty blonde wife and giving her the pearls before racing to his own weapons. She won’t ask him, she won’t even see him when he leaves the house and grabs his horse.
I wait in the shadows outside his house, my horse tied to a tree near the road, and wait for him to leave.
But I can’t remember life without him,
I think I did have good days.”
She has the pearls on when I find her. I’d considered in the beginning, saving her for last, that it’d feel good to let her know it was me. It would be a pleasant sort of revenge for her being everything I couldn’t be when Erik’s father planned his marriage. But I know, that once I catch him, I won’t want to travel back here...to this house...to her life, or see his son that’s a mirror image of my own.
She never even sees me; she continues to admire her own reflection in the small hand mirror as she looks at her new set of pearls. I leave the house quickly after she falls, knowing he’s had enough time to reach the edge of town before I can even get out of the courtyard.
I’m sure he’ll head for his house in the south, the house he set up with her in the beginning. He’ll think he’s safe there...that the Duke will protect him if he asks. He’ll find however that the Duke already understands his place, and that he knows a traitor to the Countess (and future Emperess) when he sees one.