#peerlessscowl

"Here you are. You do keep yourself difficult to track down, don't you?"

It's mostly a joke - if Raven had truly wanted, he could have found the precise door to knock on, but something told him that she wasn't the type to appreciate that.

"Here. I had...meant to repay the favor a little earlier, but...well, I suppose the timing worked out. I...made these for you."

startling at the voice, what bernadetta squeaks first is exactly what could be expected of her on any given day.  “i didn't do it! and even if i did, you can't prove anything! i didn't know it was flammable!” 

it always takes her an extra second or two to recover. that's all. most people get annoyed to have to afford her that, but not the man who had watched her count all the way up to seven. no—he had never clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes or accosted bernadetta one bit.

which was why she had tried to return the favor, with her silly chocolates, which he had hopefully found edible enough. she had not lingered long enough to ask—not even to see if he might have remembered her from that bunker at all. all her life, bernadetta von varley has only ever been just this: one of many. for the millions of delusions that her head could produce, overestimating her significance would never be one.

but he does remember. bernadetta's eyes flutter back open from where they had screwed shut, and as her gaze of recognition drops from him to the chocolates, so does her jaw.

“for me?”  gloved hands stir from her sides, uncertain at first, fretting as if she were an impostor making off with someone else's kindness. they still accept this gift, and it is no small amount of emotion that makes her voice shrink.  “oh...”

difficult to track down, what a way to describe her if there ever were one. she likes her privacy, she likes her peace. she has reminded herself in recent months that the other months before them should have been a sham. that she is meant to bide her time at the officers academy, seclude herself, and eventually fade into complete obscurity with almost no one left to care for her. it is her long-sown privilege as a recluse. if she ever vanished, nothing in most people's lives would truly change.

(but maybe sometimes kindness from a stranger will be the thing that saves you. it is something to hold onto whether you are one of many or one of a kind, because you are here.)

“...thank you,”  bernadetta mumbles after a moment. she tries not to let the dam burst, to let all of the words in her heart come pouring out at once. there are so many, and he does not even know.  “they look delicious. um, i didn't think you'd remember... i mean, i don't know if you remember! it's okay if you don't! i-it's just that, well, you helped calm me down a long time ago. before i gave you those chocolates. i never forgot it.”

so if anything, he'd be repaying her for repaying him. and bernadetta has a feeling he's not keeping score, but an extra token of appreciation still comes to mind.

a hand fumbles about her person until it retrieves one of the orchid stems she's been carrying. the undeniable greed of her green thumb had been whispering to hand them out sparingly, but he would be nothing if not worth this flower and more. bernadetta holds this out to him, and she offers something else she hasn't done first in a very long time.

Whenever there's a party, there's really only one thing you have to do first. It's scouting the food! A good party has to have good food. It's what gathers people in the first place. It's what keeps the folks around who don't want to start a conversation. There's plenty of ways to start a conversation with the food, too: what'd you think of this one? Should I have this, or that? The perfect conversation starters for those who are pulling at straws to say, well, anything.

So of course Hugh's checking to see what's been rolled out so far. There's a few treats he can vaguely recall from the last time he's been to a venue like this, one being the trio of tiny, bite-sized buns.

Maybe it's the familiarity that other might share with the food, but it becomes apparent fast that there's only a few plates of the dish left. And by a few, there's actually only one plate of the buns left. They're selling out fast!

While it could be expected that the staff has more in the back, there's still a sense of urgency that has Hugh race towards them. He's about to secure the dish himself when someone else does - and boy, when his eyes wander to the person who now has them in his hands?

"You--!!"

He could ask to share. That's what any other person would do, wouldn't it? But between the dash over, and the sight of the man who has definitely noticed him? The man who probably has a word or two to say? Hugh decides that there's really only one actual answer to the problem at hand.

"You two, yes! You and you!" The very pushy attendant of the photo-artifex shoves Ethlyn and Raven into the booth to capture a memory. "What a sweet looking pair you make!" They clap their hands excitedly together, completely ignoring the pale look of horror that washes over Ethlyn's face.

"Oh no, no!" Ethlyn waves her hands dismissively in front of her. "We're not. We're definitely not."

But the attendant will have none of her protests. "No need to be shy now, hm? I'll keep your little secret safe, alright? Now, both of you give your best smile!"

If there was one thing he knew about the boy, it was that he would have a bead on every face that moved through the space, regardless of its relevance to the situation. It was a constant of any place that Chad trod, and it was a constant of any place that Raven trod, as well.

It was harder to find the boy in a crowd, due to his size, but there were tells. The peripheries of the clustered groups, those who had begin to come together, those empty spaces along the walls where it may have been less claustrophobic; other faces he might have seen nearby, those for the lad to fuss over; or, most tellingly, the gaps in that crush of bodies, the pockets where a body might have fit.

Raven's eyes zeroed in, saw the shift in the tide and pushed his way forward. "Chad?" Rose his voice over the crowd – if the boy were here, he would hear him.

"Chad?" Again, louder, trailing the now deliberate movement of the crowd, bodies being pushed to one side, and Raven stepped into those spaces, meeting the boy halfway, dropping to one knee before he had realized and crushing an arm about the boy's shoulders to draw him into a hug.

Drawing back, hands on Chad's shoulders, he began the tedious work – hen's work – of assessing the boy's face, his scrawny limbs, pressing gently against his torso. "Are you all right? No damage?"

Chad would never write off the call of a familiar voice as a spectre, no matter how impossible it would seem, no matter what time has passed— This voice is one he knows well even in slumber, one he seeks like shelter in a storm. Words stick in their throat on the first attempt to respond, a mumble of lips all they can muster in stunned fatigue, at first—

Their second attempt bursts from their lungs all the louder for it.

"Raven!" They are not tall or strong enough for elbows and shoulders to have effect. They are too tired to slip through the cracks like water, and tumble more like a rock through a grate.

And so, the pebble of their form tumbles directly into Raven's waiting arms with a vengeance, crashing into, holding onto him like a lifeline. Chad looks like shit. He is alive. They are both alive.

In this fleeting moment, his face seeks shelter in the comfort of Raven's shoulder, pressing into it to inhale leftover traces of smoke, blood, sweat, dirt— He doesn't care, doesn't care as his fingers scrabble to crush in turn, fiercely. A hiccup, the first syllable of Uncle, before he pulls back, teeth grit on the word, grinding over the next:

"I'm fine," they are visibly shaking, and look like shit, "I hid," uttered with deep shame, "I'm—" A hiss as something tender is bothered, tears springing to their eyes again.

"—Fffck." A shaky breath. "I can handle it." Not untrue. "I..."

And the entire time their hands are still scrambling in turn to do the same, the motions of a boy used to picking up after others, shaking with the near miss of losing another anew. Cherishing hen's limbs get underfoot of eachother. That doesn't matter.

♡ ˚·  @peerlessscowl asked:

[ 𝐰𝐡𝐲 by way of 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞 ] : sender has just asked receiver "why don't you love me"; sender is getting frustrated with their repressed affection and asks receiver to leave them alone. It took him a long time to notice the ghost in between them, if only because it was not his own. So used to the distance that he had put around himself from those who might approach him, Raven scarcely considered the tug of his footsteps in her direction might be met with the similar chill, the rift and the call from the other side of the veil haunting each of her footsteps away from him. It was in the small things, the gestures that he performed not by rote but by instinct, the hand not meant to be taken as they dismounted stairs or a carriage ride into the surrounding cities, the glimpses in one another's direction during a conversation with a third party, the tacit understanding they had begun to develop. And yet always, the invisible barrier that he had not until that moment noticed was the grip of fingers, at her elbow, at her hip, around her heart. She was no more distant with him than ever, but now that he saw the figure lurking in the background, she felt as faraway as if leagues of black ocean lay between them. "We'll stop in town," he said, at first softly, breaking the easy silence that had settled upon them during the ride, nudging his horse in that direction, and then said no more until they had stabled at the inn. "I'll go ahead and pay for two rooms." His tone terse, hardened and chilled, his boots hitting heavily against the rushes of the floor until he reached the door, jerking it open and stalking inside, allowing it to slam behind him in the cool night air.

Inexplicably, something between them shifts.

It is foreign and familiar all the same; the way that everything with him seems to be. There is a security to his company, an understanding that Ishtar has grown to quietly covet, that she has begun to notice when she is without.

As she adjusts her hold on leather reins and moves to follow without question, she can convince herself that the chill seeping in to the space between them is nothing but her imagination. It would not be the first time that love's ghost has tightened his hold on the threadbare rope once woven around her throat, pulling her away every time she dares step too close.

Only as she watches his back disappear behind a door does she dare to think it may have been otherwise.

So she lets him go without chase-- stepping within the building only well after he had, disappearing into the room he had secured for her without inquiring after which might be his. That is what he had wanted of her, surely, and yet she spends the next hour watching the door as though expecting him appear through it.

He does not.

Before she can think to stop herself, Ishtar steps out into the hallway. By this hour the inn has quieted, lights beneath doors extinguished. All but one, situated not even a full stride across from her own. She swallows hard against the hand that has returned to its place around her neck and steps forward, knocking against the frame once.

"If I have done something to offend you," her voice is quiet, suddenly timid, "please allow me to apologize..."

The other man seemed hardly worse for wear, and he was glad for it - if nothing else, it meant that the supplies they procured would have remained equally unmarred.

"You caught up in the end didn't you," he said wryly, ignoring the way the corner of his lip lifted in the barest smile and twitched into a grimace at the throb of pain all over. A sigh, then his eyes creased thoughtfully.

"What have you brought back, then? I hope something good. We put our trust in you."

The only person Andrei had been directly attacked by was Innes, and while that (along with the other archer's attitude) had been an annoyance, they had run into little danger beyond pillaging bandits.

The same, apparently, could not be said for Raven's group, as the wounds on the other man could attest. He was still here, at least, which suggested he'd emerged victorious from those battles, injured as he was.

"We handed our coin off to Lukas' team, when they too came to the marketplace," Andrei explained, "I accepted the task because we were able to get there quicker, but purchasing wares is hardly my strong suit." With his experience in the previous cities, clearing the doom fog before they attempted to shut the city gates again had been a much higher priority in his mind.

"We did acquire a few weapons before they arrived," he continued. The bow was a better make than the one he'd picked up in earlier weeks and thus a worthwhile keep, and the axe had been handed off, but he pulled out the lightweight blade from Buttermilk's saddle bag, holding it out to the other.

"This one looks to be of quite good quality, if you are interested."

@peerlessscowl

Better adjusted than both her parents.

Haha just kidding.

They hadn't really seen one another or spoken in several months, but Raven recalled enjoying the professor's presence - their calm quiet, the steady surety. He wouldn't say that he regretted drifting away, but it wasn't something done deliberately or with pride, either.

He cleared his throat, bowing briefly from the waist in greeting. "Well met, again, professor. Ah...would you care to join me?"

He held up the canister of tea, and gestured to one of the tea services on a nearby table. "I can't claim that we enjoy tea to the same degree as this continent, but...my home does have a particular blend that we drink."

Watching from the sidelines, Byleth heard a familiar voice at their side. It was Raven. It had been some months since their mission together but they remembered the how reliable he'd been in accomplishing the task. A strong presence.

"Great to see you again" They replied "Sure, I'm just taking a break. How's the evening treating you?"