#yemdnd

There was a woman in Emmanuel's dining room.

Well, alright, the dining room wasn't quite his, and women had been in and out all day--

His brain kicked itself into a rather impressive restart.

Closing had come and gone with the fall of the first moon, and the second had begun to sink over the mountains just as Emmanuel had left the kitchen, holding loaves of day-old bread under his arm and sloppily untying his apron with his other hand.

It was the moonlight that gave her away, after all. It glinted against the strict pale of her air, and cast her shadow dramatically across the floor. She looked good in moonlight, Emmanuel thought, before shaking himself and reminding his brain that, wait, strange woman, and also, gay.

She looked up at him as his stride stumbled to a halt, and her eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion. Even through the fog, there was a glint of intelligence there that unsettled Emmanuel; He'd only ever met two people that smart, and one of them had been brutally murdered. The other was his idiot boyfriend, who had technically helped with the murdering, so, you know. 50/50.

As she studied him, and the silence stretched to a breaking point. Emmanuel shifted awkwardly under her gaze.

"Um." And that, unfortunately, was a Lem 'um', which struck Emmanuel as rather rich of his subconscious, given that they had yet to spend a full two days in each other's presence.  "We're closed, ma'am."

She sighed, a tired little sound that made him wince. It spoke of more than just a missing night's rest. That was bone deep, guilt and shame and duty, and he knew it all too well. "I'm not here for your bread, baker."

"Well, good." He placed a hand protectively on cold crust. "It's been claimed."

That seemed to amuse her. At least, she smiled, and her gaze drifted down to the bread before cutting back up to Emmanuel's face-- A little less tired, now, a little more keen. The wariness began to have a sharpness on Emmanue's tongue.

"Taking it to your friends at the camps?"

Emmanuel's shoulders rose like the proverbial hackles. Yes, he brought bread to the refugees from Nacre, but he always paid, and it would have only been thrown out, anyway. His owner had no quarrel with Emmanuel's "charitable leanings", and Emmanuel had hoped that was all it would ever be seen as. But it was only a short logical jump to 'he is one of Them', fake accent be damned, and Emmanuel wasn't going to pin his well-being on this particular woman's ability to 'look the other way'.

"Is there a problem?" Emmanuel asked, making sure his vowels were Velasian-tight.

The woman laughed. "I'm sorry, it's just that you sound ridiculous."

Emmanuel huffed, letting the unfamiliar syllables fall. "Who are you to tell me--"

"Darling," the woman said, and he heard it on her tongue, now. Something said she was letting him. "I would know. Leave it there."

Velasian, then. That made sense. Emmanuel hadn't planned to sell his (rather terrible) lie to any actual Velasians, but the Ordennans kept marching, and suddenly they were everywhere. Emmanuel's bread was running even more thin, lately.

"My accent isn't that bad." Lem had liked it, anyway.

She ignored his protests, anyway, instead letting her eyes drop back down to the bread. "Do you bring them food every night?"

"I'm sorry to be rude," Emmanuel said, not sorry at all, "but who are you?"

Her placid face did not so much as twitch. "I am Rosana, of Velas. Just a refugee, trying to get to know the town. That's all."

The settling of the Velasian refugees had troubled Emmanuel as he watched them approach over the hills just outside of Rosemerrow. It was hard to come by food and shelter for his own people as it was; competition would mean a lot of suffering, and if things got bad enough, a few actual deaths. The very thought was mind-boggling. Struggle for food was common in Nacre, so much so that a tour of duty as one of Brandish's pirateers was something of a rite of passage, but no one ever starved themselves to Tristero. It was barbaric.

Reality outside of Nacre, Emmanuel was starting to understand, was more than a little barbaric.

Emmanuel's unease wasn't settled afterwards, either-- The few of his kinsmen who had gotten employ since settling in Rosemerrow had gotten the absolute dredges of the city, or else lied their way to it, like Emmanuel had. The Velasians, while still not considered citizens, at least had the advantage of not carrying Tristero's Gift.

"You broke into my shop, Rosana of Velas. This is a very different place then where I'm from, but I don't really think that counts at sightseeing."

"Really?" Rosana leaned forward, propping her head on her hand. Her smile was sleepy and warm, in a way that made Emmanuel very, very afraid. "I can't think of anything more informative than seeing what the most dangerous man in town does when the darkness really settles."

Emmanuel's laughter was brief and hysterical, but sharp enough that the shadowy figures outside began to stir. "I'm not..." He wasn't sure when he had lost his breath, but it was certainly very far away from here.

Him, dangerous? He was just a baker! And, yes, he had once been a pirateer, but he'd been a, frankly, useless one, what with the barely being able to fight and falling head over heels with a charming terrorist. There were wizards and politicians and giant hyenas in this town, and Rosana, who looked like she could murder him without getting blood on her gown, thought he was dangerous?

Honestly, he felt a little faint.

For the first time since Emmanuel had laid eyes on her, Rosana seemed unsure of herself. Well, good, he thought sullenly. It was about time they were on the same page about something. Sad it had to be utter confusion, but, oh well. Common ground, and all that.

"I was told...." Rosana's voice dipped lower, as if to keep the nonexistent patrons from hearing. "I was told the leader of the Nacre refugees was a pirate."

"There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to begin," Emmanuel said, his indignation finally giving him his voice back.

"Try the ending; That would be novel."

Emmanuel drew himself up to his entire, not quite impressive, height. "First of all, I was not a pirate. I was a pirateer." Rosana didn't even need to ask the question, just looked at him, a little askance. Emmanuel sighed. "A pirate, but in service of the crown. I suppose. It's the honor of the thing, really."

"Honor," Rosana said, drawing the word out like she really wanted to relish in its awfulness. "Still. They were right, when they called you a pirate, then?"

"I wasn't the only one," Emmanuel said. He could hear the whine in his own voice; Suddenly he felt very much like when his mother had scolded him for sneaking fresh tarts and burning his fingertips on them. "There were loads of us, really. It was kind of a... military scholarship program."

Confusion settled on Rosana's face again. "I'm sorry?"

"Right, they don't have scholarships, anymore. Or tuitions. Or.... Universities." Emmanuel rocked back on his heels. "They, ah--"

Rosana raised a single, imperious hand, and Emmanuel ground to a halt. "I don't actually care why you did what you did, pirate." Emmanuel opened his mouth to protest, but the hand twitched, and he thought better of it. "I just want to speak to you on behalf of my people."

"Right." That had been his second quibble. "You know I'm not actually the leader of anything, right?"

He had hoped that he could at least confuse her a little more with his correction, but Rosana seemed unphased by the truth. If anything, she just looked even more smug. "And why do you think that, de Salle?"

"I--" Proving the universally accepted was far beyond Emmanuel's paygrade. "Because I'm not."

"And yet, when asked, almost every one of your people said they followed you." At Emmanuel's resulting floundering, Rosana's smile went a bit more gentle. "I'm afraid leadership isn't what it once was."

"Why would they...." Emmanuel's mind was overtaken by a long list of his own mistakes. "Why would they choose me?"

"It's not that simple. Rosemerrow is so eager to ignore the rest of Hieron, Emmanuel, and that gives them the power to pretend they will get the chance to choose their next leader. But the rest of Hieron, including your people, knows-- In times like these, leaders aren't chosen, and they certainly aren't born. They just are."

Emmanuel sighed. "That doesn't seem like a very stable form of government."

Rosana smirked, but her eyes, still so tired, held no mirth. "It's not a very stable world."

"Oh, well, that makes okay, then." Despite his protest, though, Emmanuel was already starting to resign himself to being Nacre's de facto representative. Perhaps that was why they had named him such; It was probably no secret that Emmanuel did not have much heart to deny his county, however fractured, anything.

And now he was going to be running it.

Fuck.

Rosana's dark eyes watched him approach the table she sat at. Emmanuel shuffled along on sore feet, and, after setting his staling bounty on the table, sank into the chair next to her. "Alright, so." He steeled himself for his next sentence. "What else do they say about this leader of theirs?"

He should have known to be suspicious when she tilted her head at him just so. "Only that you eloped with Lem King the night before he held your Queen down and watched his friend slit her throat."

Emmanuel choked. "That is not--"

"I know, dear." Rosana put a gentle hand on Emmanuel's wrist. "I've no end to the things I know about the Queenkiller's adventure, and I rather think Lem would have had a hard time keeping things to himself if he'd married a pirate."

Emmanuel stared at her unblinkingly for a moment, and then closed his eyes, briefly. "Next time, perhaps lead with the mutual friend, next time you pop out of the shadows."

"So he is just a friend, then?"

"Yes. No. We're not-- We're certainly not married. It's complicated." Talking about politics had been easier than talking about his love life. "He's just not here," Emmanuel finished, weakly.

Being married doesn't make the leaving any easier, I'm afraid," Rosana said. Her eyes shifted out of focus for a moment and Emmanuel shivered as she stared at something beyond him and his shop. After a moment, Rosana shook herself, and sighed. "I'm sorry. It's been a long year."

Emmanuel had to agree. A year ago, he didn't know the true reach of Ordenna, or that somewhere out there was an orc who would turn his entire world upside down. Nacre had been whole and thriving. He had been alive, truly alive.

A year ago, Hieron had been a whole other world.

"Are you... married to an Archivist?" Emmanuel asked, carefully.

Rosana laughed. "No, I made the unfortunate mistake of marrying a man of the church. But he's worked with Lem a time or two, and I've heard all the stories. They have the same soul, I think. Pigheaded and too damn trusting."

Emmanuel thought about Fero in a church and dismissed the thought before it could even form.

"I take it he's not with you now?"

Her mouth drew into a tight, thin line. "I didn't come here to talk about my marriage, Master La Salle."

"No," Emmanuel said. "You just came to talk about my hypothetical one."

Rosana didn't even have the propensity to look ashamed.

"I am at my wit's end, trying to provide for my people. You know what these people are like. What would you have me do?"

"Don't march in here, planning to use Lem against me, for one."

Rosana sighed. "I admit, that was... badly done of me." She shifted, her eyes sinking back into the shadows. "But my people are dying, La Salle. Even worse, sometimes they wake back up again. I need your knowledge. And, like it or not, you need us."

She was right.

Ordenna's influence had made Rosemerrow's cold shoulder even crueler, and the people of Nacre were shunned when they were not being hunted. The Velasians had the fortune of connection, and the unobtainable advantage of being 'uncursed'.

With a camp of Velasians at his back, Emmanuel would finally have the leverage to start integrating his people into Rosemerrow society, one by one. The tempation was undeniable.

But still, Nacre had been in isolation for a reason, and Emmanuel had been betrayed by his fair share of Velasians.

"And what exactly would you want in return?" Emmanuel sighed, and looked wryly at the stale bread on the table. "Old bread? Dead flesh?"

"You know things about the plague that I could not even conceive," Rosana said, her voice falling quieter. She, like the other mortal beings of Hieron, was not quite ready to speak of the undead so casually. "And your people still outnumber mine. Add that to your reputation..."

"Not this again," Emmanuel groaned, until Rosana cut him off with a laugh.

"Honestly is well and good, La Salle, but I need to teach you the value of a well-placed exaggeration."

Emmanuel thought, fondly, of Lem's voice, spinning wilde tales out of nothing but a vague suggestion. Emmanuel knew the value, but he couldn't imagine he'd ever have Lem's talent for it.

Or, apparently, Rosana's.

"So that's it, then? You save my people from the leprosy of Adelaide's gift, and I become your cursed pirate king?"

Rosana shrugged, her pale hair cascading around her shoulders. "That's about it, yeah."

Politics were so confusing.

"You're pining," Hanna said. Most of the time, Emmanuel could block her voice out, familiar as it was, but the laughter made him aware enough to send heat across his cheeks.

"I am not pining," Emmanuel said primly. He straightened from the paper spread across his lap, hoping the solid line of his shoulders would lend weight to his words. "I'm writing."

"Writing letters," Hanna pointed out, as if that was undeniable proof. "Which you never do. Unless, apparently, it's for your lover boy."

"I regret telling you literally anything about my life."

"You keep saying that, and yet, you keep telling me these things."

"Well," Emmanuel sighed, "when you die with someone, you're stuck with them."

Hanna hummed. "Weird. I died the first time with Leo, and he never overshares about his sex life."

Emmanuel snorted. "That's because Leo doesn't have a sex life."

Watching Hanna laugh, no matter how often it happened or how Emmanuel strived to make it happen, was still unsettling. Hanna wasn't the first ghost Emmanuel had been close to, but she was the first he had known before the second death, and laughter had always been Hanna's favourite form of communication. Once, her laughter had been loud and manic, her smile wild as she darted from one joke to another. Now, though, even the fall of her hair was slower, her laugh deeper, and though her soft translucent blues stood out against the dark night, it was never more apparent that the third life could not be more different from the second one.

The thought terrified Emmanuel, and not because he was afraid of the life waiting for him-- No, instead Emmanuel could not help but think of the spectres he had known in Nacre. They had been someone else, once, before he had known them. Someone brighter, once, before he had known them. Someone brighter, maybe. And what did it mean that no one spoke of their dimming? Was this-- the replacement of loved ones, shadows wearing long gone faces --what the Ordennans called a curse?

Emmanuel shook himself. No, the Ordennans considered him a curse, too, and besides, what did it matter that Hanna was a little quieter, a little slower? Death did that to a person. Emmanuel certainly couldn't see himself being any happier with Hanna far from his side, the halls of Tristero just out of his reach.

"Are you alright?" Hanna asked, breaking Emmanuel from his soliloquy-- Maybe Hanna wasn't the only one who'd gotten a little slower with death.

"I'm fine," he said, his smile almost genuine. "Just a little tired."

"Unsurprising, really," a voice said behind them, and Emmanuel suppressed the need to groan.

"Hello, Rosana," Emmanuel and Hanna chorused, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"La Salle. Treville."

Rosana stepped into the light of their smaller campfire, out of the snow and into the small, still wet area that they had cleared for themselves.

Being quite dead, Emmanuel and Hanna had traded warmth for solitude, and Emmanuel noted with concern that Rosana was shivering as she sat next to him. And then, with more concern, that she was sitting. There went his night off.

"Is everything alright?" Hanna asked tentatively when Rosana made no move to speak.

"No." Rosana stared into the fire, unconcerned.

"... Right." Hanna and Emmanuel exchanged glances. "Well, as I was saying--"

"No," Emmanuel interrupted. He refused to have this conversation with an audience, especially with one who knew Len. "When the moons are up, you can both tell me to do whatever it is you need, but right now they are down and I will spend my time however I want."

"And how is that?" Rosana leaned closer, trying to peek at the pile of paper Emmanuel was struggling to keep from the wet and the heat.

"He's writing letters," Hanna said, mock-whispering to Rosana across the fire. Even as Emmanuel hissed a weak protest, Rosana turned to him with surprised eyes.

"Has the messengers' guild opened its doors again?"

"No." There was a long moment as Rosana looked over at Hanna in confusion; Hanna barely held in her laughter. Emmanuel sighed, "It makes things easier to process, okay?" It's not pining. It's not.

The explanation seemed to satisfy Rosana (Hanna still looked too amused to be trusted) who shrugged and turned back to the fire. "Prayer serves much the same purpose, I've found."

"Oh yeah, we don't pray," Hanna said, "Our god got murdered. Dead as dicks, poor old Trist'."

"You only have the one?" Rosana asked.

Emmanuel shrugged. "Technically three, but, uh… We really only have one at the time."

"Very small, was Nacre," Hanna said, sagely. "Bit crowded to have all three at once."

Rosana managed a laugh. "I can't imagine…"

"You lot have just Samothes, don't you?" Hanna asked. Emmanuel managed not to flinch at the question, unsure if Rosana even knew of Samot.

"He's the only one most of us worship, yes," Rosana said. Her voice was stiff, and that told Emmanuel everything he needed to know.

"Hadrian told you, then? Before he left?"

Rosana's eyes narrowed. "He told you?"

"What? Oh, no, I don't--" Emmanuel couldn't remember if he and Hadrian had ever spoken a single word to each other. "Lem told me. There was a, a-- Well, I don't know, but it fell out of the sky looking for, well, him and so--"

"The thing the Queenkiller killed?" Hanna interrupted. The air around them had been cold but not uncomfortable before those words.

"Y-yeah," Emmanuel said, and tried not to remember the cold on her face as her blade sunk in.

"I see a Varal will not change its spots," Rosana said stiffly.

Her bitterness was enough to relax Emmanuel a little. "At least you don't like her, either," he sighed. "We were afraid you two were… close."

Rosana scoffed. "I don't follow my husband's path, not in faith and certainly not in friends."

"Oh, shit," Hanna breathed, and Emmanuel raced to speak over her.

"I mean, Len was literally traveling with her when his friends murdered our Queen, so, you know-- I get the frustration."

The revelation didn't lift the corners of Rosana's frown any. "Not to be the bearer of an ill omen, but I can't say Hadrian is less likely to resort to violence than... the company he keeps."

Emmanuel remembers a quiet confession in his doorway, a curse between them, and says nothing. "Oh, he can't be all that bad," Hanna said, though her voice didn't sound any surer than Emmanuel felt. "Tell us about him! He works with you, right?"

"Not with me, no," Rosana said, with reluctance. "Under the crown of Samothes, yes, but I work with the people of Velas. Lately, our Lord has required Hadrian's sword in… outreach."

"Oh," Hanna said, knowingly. "He kills people."

"They call him 'paladin' for a reason, it would seem."

"He's not like those… things." A wave of revulsion rolled through their tiny group, the memories of armies marching through the camp. The sounds of metal on stone shook in their silence, a shared waking dream. "Hadrian has a heart; It is what guides his blade."

"We believe you," Emmanuel said. There was a guilt there he couldn't shake, after all, an awareness of his own hypocrisy. Lem did not even have a God to blame for the blood on his hands, just his own logic, and Emmanuel saw the soul in him still.

"Okay, but enough about sad, shitty war stuff," Hanna said. "Tell us something cute. Like how you and Hadrian met or whatever."

Rosana managed a smile, albeit a sad one. "Believe it or not, he was not Hadrian, then. He was my Alexander."

"He changed his name?"

"It is tradition, in the church--" Rosana sighed. "It is supposed to be symbolic of leaving your past behind you and giving yourself over to Samothes completely."

Emmanuel and Hanna contemplated this silently.

"That's… pretty fucked up, actually." Emmanuel couldn't help but agree.

"Samothes demands our devotion," Rosana said, which wasn't exactly a disagreement.

"So what's the story? Did you help him pick his new name? Did he change it to something you liked? Were you already married? Come on, don't hold out on me; From the beginning!"

"What could you possibly want to know?"

"Everything!" Hanna tossed her hands into the air. "How'd you meet? Where did you have your first kiss? How did he propose?"

Emmanuel laughed. "Pearl and bone, Hanna, let her breathe."

Hanna ignored him, and leaned closer to Rosana, not noticing as she began to merge with the light of the fire. "You have to give me something good. I need romance to live, and Emmanuel is endlessly boring."

Emmanuel sputtered a protest. "You were just complaining about me telling you too much!"

"I said romance," Hanna scoffed, "Not sad sex stories."

Emmanuel flushed, as well as a man without a beating heart could flush, anyway. "Can we not talk about my sex life to the priest, please?"

Maybe it was just that she needed the distraction from her own secrets, but Rosana sounded delighted at the new subject. "No, no, I want to hear this. I mean, I know how you met, I've heard the stories--"

Luckily, Hanna was onto Rosana's tricks. " Oh, no, you're not getting out of it that easily. I still want all the juicy details about your hubby."

Rosana paused and then said, laughing, "Fine, fine. How's this? I'll tell my story if Emmanuel tells his first."

Immediately, Hanna's pale eyes were on Emmanuel, wide and pleading. He could feel himself relenting already, his stomach sinking along with his resolve.

It wasn't that Emmanuel was… ashamed of Lem. Not exactly. Lem could be a handful, and if Emmanuel's parents had been alive, he wasn't sure what they would think of him, but-- Emmanuel loved him wholeheartedly.

At the heart, the problem was Emmanuel's longing, his unending, eternal hunger for things it was impossible for him to have. It was something he'd always struggled with; As a human, Emmanuel had wanted everything, refused to compromise his dreams or his duty to the crown. That denial was what got him where he ended up, saying goodbye to an orc he didn't know but was half in love with, his previous bakery under siege. He had wanted too much, and he had gotten it.

Now, the wants were simpler, and still so big they swallowed him whole. Mostly, he wanted to keep his people safe-- Not just Nacre, or its scattered remnants, but Rosana and her ilk as well. It was a big ask, unwieldy in its enormity. But in these intimate moments, Emmanuel found his wants growing inward, more selfish with every word.

He wanted a love story. A real one, full of jokes to tell and secrets to keep. He wanted months with Lem, an endless supply of memories and daydreams to indulge in. Anything to prove that he had not imagined this pain nested in his ribs.

It was a want big enough to choke, a longing so complete that Emmanuel was sure only a dead man could carry it. Surely Len could not feel this, too; Emmanuel could not imagine a heart beating while this full.

"There's nothing to tell," Emmanuel said, his gaze lowering from Rosana's. "We met, he left, and I wouldn't follow. And then I died and history repeated itself. I--" Emmanuel sighed. "I barely know him."

"And yet," Rosana teased, "you write him longing love letters in the dark."

Emmanuel hugged his parchment to his chest as Hanna snorted.

"You don't understand." Hanna rolled her eyes and took on an affectation that sounded a bit like Emmanuel's Velasian accent played through an untuned flute. "They have a connection. They fought amidst the ravaging hoards of Nacre--"

"Hey," Emmanuel chastised.

"-- and the drunken mess of Velas--"

"Fair," Rosana said, laughing.

"They had a cigarette on a hotel balcony. There was murder. There was legal intrigue. There was a disproportionate amount of goodbye sex. Truly, the stuff of legends." The sarcasm was palpable.

"Well, there are songs written about less," Rosana said.

"Oh," said Emmanuel, still thinking of all the things his story was missing. "We have one of those."

The little dome of firelight and conversation stilled.

"Who wrote a song about that mess?" Hanna said, breaking the silence only when it was well and truly settled.

"Well, Lem did." Hanna made a noise, a sound of confusion and frustration, so outraged that Emmanuel flushed with shame on pure reflex. "I would have told you! Honestly, I meant to, I just didn't think it was all that important."

"A man writes a song for you, and that's not important?" Hanna scoffed. "I owe Lem an apology; you two absolutely deserve each other."

On his other side, Rosana was looking at Emmanuel with all the rapture of a teen with her first crush.

"Did he play it for you?" she asked, her voice so airy it was almost a whisper.

"Yeah. Before he left for the Archives. It was--" Emmanuel's throat closed with a click as he remembered the wailing notes of the violin, and the tears in the corners of Lem's eyes. At the moment, Emmanuel had ignored the wistfulness of the scene, simply because it made hiding his own agony all that easier, but now he wished he had said something to make Lem a little happier while his words could still reach him. "It was terribly beautiful."

"They're like that, sometimes, aren't they?" Rosana's voice still sounded like she was locked in a dream, but her voice was sadder now. Emmanuel knew that tone; It happened to all pirates at one point or another. Eventually, you learned that the stories that you loved were just that, and that reality was much, much messier. For Emmanuel and his bretheren, it was legends of the sail and sea. He guessed for Rosana, it was love stories.

He didn't envy her.

"Who?" Hanna asked.

"Men with a greater purpose. Men can be beautiful in all sorts of ways--"

"Can they?" Hanna interrupted. "Huh, I'd never noticed."

"But there's something about a man with a mission that can be so etherally beautiful it's... terrifying, really. Like there's something not quite real about them." Rosana sighed, and turned her sad smile to Emmanuel, looking for a little comradeship. "Of course, that's why it's so sad to love them. Their mission is what makes them beautiful, but the things they do in its name--"

"Oh," Emmanuel said, a humorless laugh bubbling up, "you mean like doom an entire city?"

"No," Rosana said. Finally, she was frowning, and Emmanuel wondered if it was the first true emotion he'd ever seen on her face. "Thought I suppose that's part of it. I mean the things only someone completely convinced of their righteousness could achieve."

Emmanuel flinched at the pointed look Hanna shot him. "Wow," she said, her sarcasm lengthening her vowels until the word was a long, poisonous drawl. "I wonder what would happen if two of those men ever fell in love. Huh."

"Shut up, Hanna," Emmanuel said, and pointedly turned his back to her as he rounded on Rosana. "Okay, then. Tell us who Hadrian was before he was beautiful."