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“Goodbye, Gerard!” Katarina’s fiance, friend, and death sentence was being driven out the door, which was always disappointing. He had told her he was going to show her something! Gerard had fire magic, which was pretty rare, but Gerard had another magical ability: he could figure out what other people enjoyed. Even though he only used her as a convenient barrier between him and the hordes of women who wanted to take her place by his side, he never showed up without something to tickle her fancy and leave her with a smile on her face.
“It’s too bad Mama didn’t want him to stay overnight.” Gerard was a man who was good at anything, which made him a huge wildcard. Bigger than a Joker card! Bigger than the weather! Well, unless it involved snakes. Gerard was very predictable about those, to her secret relief.
“Katarina, you know he can’t stay overnight. Even though he is currently your fiance, you aren’t married to him yet.”
Katarina pouted at Keith, though the point he was making slowly trickled through her ears into her mind. “Yeah, I guess.” Noble etiquette assumed that any unrelated man and woman who spent that much time together were going to do “improper things”. It’s just that noble etiquette doesn’t account for the fact that Gerard is not interested in her at all, so that would never happen. Even her friends, who should know better than anyone that they were never going to get married talked about it sometimes. Alan was engaged to the beautiful Mary Hunt, Nicol was above all that… None of her friends gave her any reason to worry about improper things happening. Well, they were very beautiful. And she did look exactly like a villainess who really would be interested in that sort of beauty. She guessed that maybe keeping her distance would help stop concerns.
“You can’t just guess! You should know this by now.” Keith sighed, worried but not surprised, and kept pace with his sister.
“Do you think he’ll have time to cook next time he visits?” They would have to hide it from their parents, and they would have to make sure nothing got on their good clothes- Katarina silently decided she wouldn’t wear her overalls for it- and… well, that was it really.
“Who will cook the next time he visits?” Katarina’s heart thudded in its chest, filled with newfound terror.
“No one, mother!”
===
Gerard once thought that the things that were most difficult for him were also the most exciting simply due to difficulty. Math, sports, magic, politics… all of it was incredibly easy, and therefore incredibly boring.
Now that he’d grown Gerard still enjoyed a challenge, but his happiness no longer depended on that alone. In fact, he could think of one part of his life that, if it became easier, or even just less impossible, might even make him thank a higher power.
That Katarina also made him happy due to simple, predictable actions was besides the point.
Sometimes he wondered if his brother enjoyed that Katarina’s heart was something he longed to have but couldn’t grasp, but touchy as he was, Alan couldn’t be provoked when he brought it up.
Gerard still had a simple, obvious, seemingly impossible plan to win Katarina’s love: he’d prevent her mother and admirers from cancelling their engagement, defend Katarina’s competence as a future princess, and convince her that he wasn’t just using her as some kind of seat warmer for a different, somehow more charming man or woman who might arrive to seduce him.
The last, he sometimes feared, was completely and utterly impossible.
If he ever did it, he’d accomplish something he wanted more than anything else.
He wanted Katarina to love him, to know that their love was reciprocated, more than he wanted the throne. He hadn’t given up on that either, though. He suspected he needed to keep his status as high as possible, both to defend Katarina and to defend his right to marry her.
As it was, he spent his weeks doing easy, simple, rewarding tasks, like finding new sweets-makers he had yet to buy from to give to Katarina, or honing his magical talent in case he one day dueled one of her admirers, or finding things that made Katarina even more excited about spending time together than she usually was.
His first plan for this week turned out more complicated than it had to be. He wasn’t sure whether Keith had casually let his plans slip, but it was, sadly, more likely that Katarina had done it. Either way, he was not to be allowed within the kitchen, a request that Katarina’s mother had laid down with ever-increasing assurance that she could get the third prince to obey it.
Being biddable… something that Gerard had always assumed was just a ruse he put on so that others wouldn’t push or bug him too much, one he could immediately set down whenever he got sick of it.
But it seemed that that wasn’t always the case.
===
With cooking off the menu, Gerard moved down his list of methods to spend time with Katarina that even her family approved of. For that, the new find in the archaeological site came as a great boon to him.
Even as a Prince, Gerard had to pull some strings to get access to the latest one, which meant that lower nobles, even as “low” as the title of Duke, really had no chance.
Unless, of course, they were invited. And unless, of course, the Claes were allowed to send experienced mages in the group that went with them, along with the regular bodyguards that were suggested and typically left behind by Katarina.
Gerard still had to get Katarina to agree to it, but…
“Oh, it’s a picnic?” Gerard smiled and nodded, keeping his face as calm and gentle as he could. When dealing with Katarina, the trick was to temper his mood, his tone, and the aura he gave off. If he suggested that they picnic within one of the most heavily guarded areas in the kingdom while underground, Katarina would think it was a charming locale- which it was, even if there was a lack of sun and more than a few delicate objects nearby.
She hesitated. “So we really can’t bring anyone else? It’ll just be me and you, Gerard-sama?”
“Nicole will be there,” Gerard said easily. “And Keith,” Gerard admitted, with a tension that flew right over his beloved’s head. Her smile widened, causing jealousy to curdle in his heart.
“Well, dad did think it’d be good for me to visit,” she murmured. Gerard silently counted his blessings: even though Katarina’s mother was firmly against their engagement, and her father tended to give in to her mother, on this he held firm.
Maybe Katarina’s father saw a parallel between his own marriage and the budding romance that Gerard so stubbornly tended, determined to one day make it bloom.
It had taken almost a decade for Katarina’s parents to warm up to each other, something Gerard had learned more through gossip than his own observations, but now they were sweetly, enrapterously in love.
And if another decade was how long it would take… Gerard would wait. It’d be worth it.
===
“I’ll find a good spot!” Katarina declared. She didn’t spin in place, but she pumped her fist, the sheer energy shining from her more than making up for a lack of any real wind underground. Clutching a magical torch in her grip, she set off fleetly, leaving her friends behind her to watch her go.
They didn’t know this was the last they’d see of her for quite a while, and how could they?
Even Katarina didn’t know that.
===
In another life, Katarina Claes spotted yet another woman harassing her poor, dearest Gerard-sama. In another life she shoved herself between them, a knight in a shimmering gown, because her Gerard-sama was too political to offend even the lowest slut by telling her she couldn’t have him. In another world, Katarina turned to him, and- he wasn’t looking at her, of course.
He rarely did.
He must have looked at her, when she tore between them, because for a moment they’d made contact, physical and visceral and a half-second, far too brief to be really scandalous.
It’s a reflex to look at someone who bumps into you.
In another world Katarina abandoned her friends outside the bathroom, wanting to check if anything was out of place before she tried yet again to earn her beloved’s heart. One day she’d have a fragment, and next a fraction, and soon… she’d have more than that.
If she looked perfect.
She smoothed her hair down, wishing she had her maid with her, and inspected herself in the mirror. She was not perfect. Her hair was messy, like she’d taken off running, and her cheeks were flushed all over, instead of in neat gradient where powder had been brushed onto them. She examined her reflection, tracking down minor deviations from the way she’d left for the party, until she noticed the biggest one.
Was she smiling?
Katarina’s face flexed, a brief attempt to check if her scowl had unstuck itself from her face, but her reflection in the mirror continued to look bright, energetic, cheerful and unhurried.
A deep sense of unease washed over Katarina Claes, and she backed away just as her mirror image came forward, just as Katarina Claes marveled at the distorted image of herself in the mirror, and the necklace it had mysteriously put on there.
There was a humongous, disorienting jolt.
===
“Katarina!”
===
Just because Gerard doesn’t stalk his fiance doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.
===
“Katarina, are you okay?”
===
The opposite, really.
===
“Get out of the way!”
===
He loves her, and if he wants her to reciprocate, he can’t plaster himself to her side.
===
“What hurt you?”
===
But sometimes, there’s consequences for that knowledge, and the trust he extends towards her.
Consequences like a mirror the excavation team deemed harmless and inert doing something.
“Gerard?” Katarina says, soft and dazed and entirely unlike her. Her knees wobble.
When Gerard reaches out thoughtlessly to steady her, she collapses into his arms.
===
Katarina coughs up a fit. Her muscles are doing weird things, and she feels a bit unsteady, so she leans against the wall. Her hands clench against it, but soon she feels just about normal, and stands up straight.
It’s a lot like that book she was in a while ago, though she’s completely alone. It’s very beautiful, the way almost every place she’s in is. Fortune Lover had, she reflected, some really great background artists.
But here just looks like the work of some careful interior designers, or maybe a regular magical artist who wanted to make something to enjoy. She’s not sure why they picked a bathroom. Probably for the novelty! But if they did, she would really have suggested a farm. They’re beautiful and peaceful in a wholly different way than flower gardens are, and no one seems to draw them in the current era. Her fingers brush against the smooth tile, but she’s wearing gloves, so she can’t really feel it. In a much belated spurt of embarrassment, she draws her fingers back. It reminds her of her mother and her brother, telling her Katarina, please don’t touch anything you don’t have to.
It’s some kind of magical artifact though, so it’ll take care of that. She spins and finds the door quite easily, then exits to find a few women outside chatting quietly. They all look up expectantly when she exists, and Katarina finds herself a bit flustered.
“Was I holding you up? Sorry!” she calls idly, and brushes by them, taking in the scene around her.
She wonders again about the uniqueness of the vision of whoever made this, for the scene before her is very, very ordinary, or should be to anyone who could commission a magical mirror. Noblemen, noblewomen, servants flitting to and fro, room for dancing, tables of delicious food- Katarina’s vision immediately tunnels when she spots it, a bit of drool coming to her mouth. They haven’t had their picnic yet outside, and she is hungry. She shouldn’t fill up entirely, but just a little bit couldn’t hurt her…
Maybe the food is unique.
===
It’s not something Gerard wants to be aware of, but he’s intimately and immediately knowledgeable of Katarina’s movement throughout the Baron’s party. It’s impossible for him not to be, because she’s one of the biggest factors that influences its shape and movement. When she leaves, it dwindles, and when she returns, she stirs up a fuss and a flurry again wherever she lingers, which is always, without pause, next to him.
But today his Katarina detection skills are a little off, because when she starts walking towards him, his ears don’t immediately perk up. It’s her walk, he would have to guess: it’s a little faster, a little more careless than the way she usually does it.
He looks up with his angelic, meaningless smile, and finds that she’s not looking at him.
That’s a first.
She’s got one of the pastries in her hand, and it goes into her mouth without much fanfare, chewing eagerly and swallowing it down. Then she picks up another one, and another, and by the time Gerard is staring at her blatantly, head tilted slightly to the side, her cheeks are stuffed full like a chipmunk’s. She waves at him, cheerily, then doubletakes. Her eyes linger on him for a brief moment, then she shrugs and returns to her feed, seemingly tuning out the eyes on her. He’s not the only one: her cronies behind her are also staring, and were even before she got to the table, unused to the pace she picked to get to the table even when she normally has a tendency to rush her and there when something important is happening, or going to happen.
She eats five different ones before she stops. Her hand lingers over another one, a confectionary he doesn’t much care for, before she withdraws it with great reluctance. She looks at him for the third time, then braces her hands on the table to lean over. “Do you know where Keith is?” she asks, and Gerard’s mask nearly breaks.
What a strange thing to ask. Gerard is sure that the main reason Keith Claes isn’t here is because of his sister. The bad blood between the two is almost as blatant as Alan’s grudge towards him.
“I think he’s at home,” Gerard says politely.
“What? He should be just outside,” Katarina says nonsensically. “And Nicole too.” She turns around, looking through the ball, and her eyes stutter and stop over Nicole and Maria’s figures.
“Why’s Maria here?” Katarina asks, and Gerard braces again for another fight, though this should be a bit entertaining. Katarina has never liked Maria much, even though they never have much opportunity to mingle, and bringing her up now means bad things.
“She’s Nicole’s fiance,” Gerard tells her patiently, and watches in shock as a smile breaks out on her face.
“Maria and Nicole-sama are engaged?” Katarina says boldly, a very genuine smile on her face, and orients herself to face them. “Two of the most beautiful people in the kingdom...” A dreamy smile alights on her face, one only broken by a thought which seems to approach her from far away.
“But Maria shouldn’t be here...”
“Miss Campbell was invited,” Gerard says firmly, but without fire. Katarina ignores him.
“Let me go talk to Keith,” she says, and walks back towards the bathroom. Her posse follow behind her, confused as anything.
She does her best to do it politely, weaving between clusters of people, but soon enough she disappears.
===
The mirror doesn’t work.
Or at least, when Katarina pokes it it doesn’t do anything. Neither when she prods it, or when she does her best to reach into the magical core of her being and connect it to the mirror in the bathroom, and not much happens when she takes off her glove and tries it again.
If the mirror is broken she’s going to miss her picnic.
“Oh nooooo….” Katarina groans lowly.
She presses her head against the cool, flat surface, and calms herself thinking of how her friends will definitely find her.
Again.
===
There’s nothing she loves more than when she’s in her fiance’s arms, but it almost never happens. Katarina soaks it up, a princess and her prince, even though the surroundings are as dissonant as anything could be.
It’s dark, way too dark, lit by lanterns of all things.
No one is around her, there’s no toilet or sink or anyone she recognizes, except the light of her life.
The arm smells different too: too earthy, not a trace of perfume, except whatever it is that’s wafting from her dear Gerard’s body.
Katarina hugs him, giving up the view of his face for the warmth of his body against hers, but all too soon she becomes aware again that there are people watching them.
“Can you stand up?” Gerard asks, and Katarina, very reluctantly, nods.
“Perhaps we should sit down,” she asks, and to her great surprise Gerard agrees.
“Come on, I’ve got our picnic set up,” he says, and her eyes widen. Picnic? Not a ball? They almost never have picnics, especially ones set up by him, and as tempting as it is, Katarina thinks there’s something very fishy about all this.
“Where’s Nicole?” she asks reluctantly, since he is the host of all this.
“He’s in the other room,” a familiar, unwanted voice says, and even though Gerard doesn’t look up from her pale, flustered face, Katarina certainly does.
Keith is here, Keith is dressed rather unlike him. Even his voice is unlike him, neither cold nor flirtatious and deep. He’s not breezy, and the concern on his face is unmistakably directed at her.
“You shouldn’t be holding her like that. You aren’t married yet.”
“Yet,” Gerard says possessively, but his hold on her does loosen when Keith grabs her by the shoulder and tugs her towards him.
“What are you doing?” she snaps at him, pushing her body back towards Gerard. He makes a small sound, and she realizes she did that with a bit more force than she needed to.
Twin impulses flood her, and twin embarrassments too. She hasn’t lashed out like that at Keith in public in literal years, but he’s also known to never, ever get between her and her fiance before she even thought to tell him.
And someone who can, well, maybe bruise a man with her shoulder might not need help just to stand up. Katarina clutches Gerald, then decides to split the difference by acknowledging what Keith said, as much as she hates it. Instead of leaning into Gerard, she holds her hand out to him. Smart as ever, he takes it, and he leads her to a blanket where she’s gently let down onto a pillow. She ignores the trailing nuisance behind them, studying Gerard for the first time since she was transported here.
He’s wearing something very close to his usual suit, but it’s not quite that, and his posture is odd. He’s tense, not out of mere physical stress, but fear, confusion, and it relaxes over time, even if it doesn’t quite settle back to normal, her beautiful angel who is never moved by anything, no matter how much she wishes he was.
Katarina isn’t sure of anything, of if she’s dreaming or why, so she takes a cookie that’s set on a platter before her and nibbles at it, slowly. It’s good, tastes different than anything she’s had before. Some kind of rare spice that’s not used in normal banquets, maybe? The cooking is definitely up to her standards, the icing sugary but not sickeningly sweet, the cookie crumbling, soft and delicious, in her mouth.
And they’re both looking at her, now. Her stomach growls, despite her corset’s fastening, but… it’s Gerard’s food. She could certainly stand to have another one. Especially if this is a dream.
Katarina helps herself to another one equally slowly, both of them watching like it’s the most fascinating scene they’ve ever witnessed, until Nicole arrives behind them. Katarina makes eye contact, but it’s hard to read him as ever. She instead busies herself with drinking in her sweetest of sweets, the delicious Prince Gerard, her makeup making a poor attempt to hide her enthrallment via shading the flushed cheeks she surely has.
“How long has this picnic been planned,” she asks, and Gerard answers.
“Almost a month now.”
A month… could she have gotten amnesia.
“I don’t remember that,” Katarina admits, and the maid behind her pales.
“Not again...” she says, and both of the men in front of her look at Anne.
“Again?”
===
It’s something that Anne often thinks about but never says out loud, the contrast of before and after Katarina’s accident. It’s something that almost blends in with Katarina’s engagement to Prince Gerard. Before that Katarina was very demanding and very finicky. She rarely had a neutral word to share, let alone a kind one. And afterwards…
Katarina seemed to completely change. There were still some ways in which she remained the same, some dots to connect the two, but her priorities, her day to day behavior…
Anne put it all out of her mind before, but here and now she’s being asked to explain it.
Katarina’s grimace is about as frightening as her “villainous smile” never was.
She hopes, more than anything, she won’t be the one who has to explain it to Katarina’s parents.
===
Katarina is resilient, and she’s always been this way, even when she’s scared. There’s definitely worse situations to be in than a normal ball, even with everything subtly off. It’s like she was tossed into the game world again, like all her attempts to avert her own doom never happened.
Brrrr.
If the mirror was an illustration of her worst fears, though, it missed the mark. Maria is engaged to Nicole, which means there’s no reason for them to intersect, unless this is the harem ending… someone as loveable as Maria surely could manage that, but Gerard seems completely disinterested in Maria today, so that flag hasn’t been triggered yet.
All that’s left to do is avoid drawing Gerard’s ire and wait for rescue! And maybe finish her snacks. No one is paying the delicious food the attention it deserves here…
She’ll have to rescue it.
Surely her friends will understand that circumstances conspired to act against her?
===
“Katarina,” a voice says, and Katarina turns to face him. It’s Gerard’s voice, unmistakably, but there’s something off about it, something in the way he’s calling her that the Gerard outside of the mirror has never imitated.
“Yes,” she responds, though it’s after a pause to chew.
“Did something happen?”
For a brief second, Katarina considers telling him. She’d normally tell Gerard about almost anything, except her past life and her most accurate snake imitations. But she does have to remember that he’s a black hearted prince, and telling him about what happened means telling him about another dimension.
“I just needed to use the restroom,” Katarina lies, trying her very best to look innocent.
“Oh, if that’s all,” he says arily, and Katarina feels a wave of relief. He bought it! She loves when that happens. She can never get anything past Gerard.
He stares at her, but that’s not out of the ordinary, so Katarina tunes it out, looking around the room. “You don’t have to greet everyone this time, right? You should eat.” Katarina tells him, since he seems to be lingering at the table with her, unable to make a decision. Maybe watching her makes him hungry. He is more of an expert at buying sweets than eating them.
“Try this one,” Katarina suggests, taking a cloth napkin and wrapping one of the cupcakes she likes best in it, holding it out to her fiance.
She’s not sure if mirror Gerards can taste food, but they deserve to be able to try.
“I will,” Gerard says, smiling sweetly. He takes the cupcake from her, fingers brushing lightly across her exposed fingertips, and grasps it firmly.
Her fingertips are tingling. It’s a pleasant feeling, and she rubs them together before she returns her gaze to the table. There is pudding which she can’t pass up today at all! Oh no.
Besides her, Gerard carefully unwraps the cupcake, wondering what’s responsible for his fiance’s completely out of character behavior.
Oh well. Even if she hit her head, it’s not going to last very long.
===
Home feels a lot different than Katarina remembers, even if most of it looks the same. It makes sense that her version of the original, no good Katarina wouldn’t have fields; that was never a hobby in the game. But it’s sad, eating dinner in complete silence, and it’s even sadder when she returns to her room to find every small difference from her memory. She doesn’t have old letters from her friends, she doesn’t have pressed flowers as keepsakes in a special book, and she doesn’t have her old, differently excellent snake toys to compare to the one that she still keeps with her at all times.
She thinks she remembers why her parents are so cold. She goes to talk to her dad about it: mom is scary when she’s mad, even though she hasn’t even done anything improper yet.
“Mom really does love you, dad. You just need to talk to her about it!”
There’s probably something more she could have opened with, but Katarina speaks from the heart when she says it. The memory of that day is pretty blurry, mostly suppressed by sheer surprise that they weren’t getting divorced and that she’d get to keep her cute little brother.
“It’s not that easy, Katarina sweetie,” Dad says. “She’s never forgiven me for marrying her… I’m just glad she’s with me at all.”
“She’s not mad about that! She just thinks that you got forced to marry her! And that Keith is your mistress’ son!” Katarina said that last one a bit too loudly. “But he’s not, so... Uh.”
He looks like she hit him over the head with a brick, and Katarina wonders how he didn’t notice it before. Well, it’s pretty understandable.
“She thinks… Keith is… that I had a mistress?”
After that, a lot of things happen very quickly. But this time she is in another room when it happens, and that’s a big relief.
===
They learn that Katarina is different from the Katarina they know very quickly, mostly through Gerard’s efforts. He holds her hand and speaks in a soft, low voice, and Katarina tells him everything.
Something about that is disappointing. Or maybe it’s just that it’s the wrong person, so close to who he wants, so subtly wrong.
He wants Katarina to look at him with undisguised love. He wants Katarina to tell him what is going on in her mind, and what he can do about it, or maybe just let him stay next to her long enough to try and figure it out himself.
This is Claes-chan, who, aside from being baffling for sharing his fiance’s face, is very predictable. She’s the same sort of admirer he’s usually so careful to shoot down, quickly and bluntly, lest Katarina get the wrong idea and try to break up with him for the sake of pure love with a noblewoman he couldn’t care less about.
He doesn’t think that Claes-chan would give him that issue.
He’s having tea with her now, to try and figure it out. Are there any similarities? Why is she different? What happened?
Claes-chan doesn’t care about gardening. She doesn’t carry anything in her pockets except a handkerchief. She doesn’t know what “Romeo and Juliet” is, and when he talks about trying to send a play like what she mentioned to a playwright she doesn’t cling to him and tell him he can’t publish it.
She doesn’t hum the strange tunes only Katarina hums, and most of the mannerisms he finds so natural coming from her are a little different. Not all of them, though. When he gives her sweets, some that Katarina likes, and he encourages her to eat them… she stuffs her cheeks in a very similar way, but like her mother is just behind her back, ready to pinch her by her ear if she gets too excited about it.
One of the differences almost doesn’t surprise him.
Claes-chan doesn’t have the same line of suitors or friends, not Nicole or Mary or his bothersome twin. She does, however, recognize that she’s been courted, and Gerard wonders if that’s every potential suitor, if she really noticed every time someone sought her and failed to get her attention.
Apparently hitting your head as a child doesn’t inherently remove your ability to tell when someone likes you. It’s hilarious in the most painful way.
Gerard considers telling her he loves her, just to test it. Maybe this Katarina will be able to hear him express his deepest feelings and know what he’s talking about, but he can’t. It might be easy, it might be socially acceptable, but part of him still stalls at the gate, lips clamped shut.
He doesn’t love her , after all.
He doesn’t remember exactly when honesty started mattering, or speaking from the heart, but it does now.
Maybe this is what Katarina is like when she’s in love, obsessive and clingy and jealous.
Maybe Katarina doesn’t love him.
Well.
At least then he knows she doesn’t love anyone quite yet.
===
Waiting for rescue is boring and stressful until Katarina thinks of a few ways to pass the time. She goes out to buy some romance novels (most of them are the same, but the trend for oblivious saintesses never caught on). She spends a bit of time with her parents, but her mother is quickly catching on to her new tricks, even though they’re old tricks to Katarina.
She gets letters from Gerard too, but they’re a lot different than the usual ones. It’s just a short pleasantry and mentions that she attended Nicole’s ball. There’s no personal details in it, no funny stories, no mentions of her other friends. It’s only a page long, and it isn’t a full page either.
Well, they also didn’t spend as much time talking as she usually does with Gerard. It might be possible that she charges up his letter meter when she does that.
“There’s no letter meter in-game…” Katarina considers, then dismisses the thought entirely. It seems rude to just leave Gerard hanging, waiting for a letter until she gets back and the other Katarina can send him one, so she sits down at her foreign desk and gets out her quill.
She’s not sure what to say, so she only mentions a few things. She’s growing peonies again, for example! It’s not as big as her farm back home, but her mom didn’t complain too much about it, and she doesn’t have anyone coming over to help.
He doesn’t care about other things, she thinks. He’s not Sophia, and she’s not sure he’d be interested in what she’s reading anyways. But he does like peonies. She gave him one, once, and he absolutely loved it. Maybe it’s because he usually gets roses, but he said he liked the novelty and the gift.
If she was this Katarina, maybe that train of thought would derail into a thought of planting rows of peonies so that Gerard would be lured into staying just long enough to steal his heart.
But Katarina just spends time at home, almost in mourning, thinking about her Gerard and her brother and every other friend that isn’t really here.
She wants them back. Seeing Gerard’s letter just reminded her.
She wants him back.
===
Being here is reminding Katarina of a lot of things about the game world that she refuses to think about.
Like how Gerard shouldn’t be visiting her as often as he does.
It scared her a little when she was a kid, like he was trying to stare into her soul and figure out he had the wrong person, but eventually she figured out he just wanted to keep up the pretense.
But the pretense is kept up here, too.
They’re engaged. Anyone who wants to take Gerard’s hand still has to go through her, and it doesn’t require weekly visits, or regular gifts, or any of that.
It’s possible that Gerard just likes her garden. He does mostly give her gifts relating to it, even though he occasionally just gives her jewelry and things.
It could be that Gerard just thinks it’ll be a little weird if her fiance is more distant to her than her other friends.
But it’s something about his face…
She drifts over to the mirror on her wall, presses a hand against it. It sends shivers through her, like static electricity. She closes her eyes.
She drifts into the parlor like a ghost, misplaced, and when she gets to the parlor she sees Keith and Gerard in it, looking at her like she’s a ghost too.
It has been a while since she’s seen either of them in person.
And seeing the confusion on their faces seems to confirm something for them.
“Kataraina!”
“Sister!”
They throw their arms around her. Katarina almost gets crushed! But she can’t help but think.
Well, Gerard here and Gerard there.
Gerard looks at her in a much different way.
It’s more… tender, somehow.
It should be suspicious. It is incredibly suspicious.
But the difference in the way he looks at her makes her break down crying tears of joy.